by Lexi George
Beck turned and ran into the woods. She ran until she couldn’t hear Evan screaming anymore.
Chapter Nineteen
Beck stopped to catch her breath and held up the bottle, taking care not to tip it. The demon clung to the glass like a sickly black spider. The sun was setting and the shadows were deep. A slight breeze rustled through the woods, scenting the chilly air with the smell of pine needles and the musty odor of dried leaves and lichen. Somewhere in the woods up ahead, she heard the frenzied cries of the kith on Verbena’s trail.
Or at least she thought they were up ahead. She’d flailed through the woods in a blind panic, eager to put distance between her and Evan, and now she was completely turned around. She had no idea where she was or how to find the Skinner girl. She wished she had Toby’s snoot. Tracking was not one of her gifts.
As if summoned by her thoughts, a lean, shaggy dog slunk out of the bushes with his head down.
“Don’t give me that hang dog look,” she said, adopting a scolding tone to hide her relief. “You should be ashamed of yourself. You tried to bite me.”
Toby rolled over and showed his belly.
“Oh, stop.” She set the bottle on the ground and gave the dog an affectionate rub. “You know I can’t stay mad at you. Are you feeling better?”
The dog bounced back to his feet, and barked.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ ” She wasn’t surprised. Most kith metabolized alcohol at a rapid rate, which was good for business at the bar. Shifting took a lot of energy and speeded up the process. “I need your help to find someone.”
She held out Verbena’s bandanna for Toby to inspect—she’d snagged it off the ground on impulse as she made her mad dash for the woods. Toby gave the cloth a brief, disinterested sniff, and turned his attention to her injured face and arm. He cocked his head and looked at her as if to say What happened to you?
“I had a run-in with a demon,” she explained. She rested her good hand on his rough head. “I’ll be fine. We need to find the girl who was wearing this scarf. Her name is Verbena and she’s in big trouble.” The mournful, yodeling howl of a coyote rose above the noise of a large pack of animals on the prowl. “Hear that?” Beck said. “That’s the kith. Charlie Skinner set the pack on his own daughter. Nice, huh?”
Toby swallowed a yowl.
“Yeah, I think it’s shitty, too.” She picked up the bottle, taking care not to slosh the contents, and got to her feet. She couldn’t care less about Hagilth, but the sound of Evan’s screams would haunt her for a long time. She hoped he’d given up the chase, for both their sakes. “Do you think you can find her?”
Toby rolled his mismatched eyes as if to say duh.
“Good. I’m counting on you, ’cause I’m totally lost.”
BOOM.
Something big crashed in the woods to the east. Beck’s pulse quickened. It was a tree. A tree had fallen, that was all. Trees fall all the time. Storms, insects, and disease weaken them. They topple from age and—
BOOM. Another crash.
Two trees falling? Unlikely but not impossible, especially if they grew close together. The first one could have hit the second one going down.
Maybe it wasn’t a tree at all. Maybe it was thunder. Yeah, that made sense. A storm was coming.
A mocking voice made her jerk in alarm and brought her pleasant little trip through the Land of Denial to a screeching halt.
“Cooo-kie.”
Ah, hell. Not thunder and not a tree; Evan. She should have known he wouldn’t quit. Couldn’t quit, until he freed Hagilth. It was the bindings.
She held the bottle aloft with shaking hands. “Let him go, you sick piece of shit,” she said to the shriveled demon. “He’s suffered enough because of you.”
Words formed on the surface of the glass.
He is mine and you will die.
“Predictable,” Beck said. “You know, Haggy, I’m starting to dislike you.”
She shoved the bottle back in her pocket.
BOOM. BOOM.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Cookie.” Evan sounded closer now. “I’m not happy with you.”
Toby gave a questioning whine.
“A lot happened after you left,” Beck said. “I found out that Evan’s the zombie maker.”
Toby cocked his head.
“Yeah, it surprised me, too,” Beck said in answer to his unspoken question. “There was a fight. I killed a demon and trapped another one. Turns out, the demons put some kind of curse on Evan.” She patted her pocket. “He won’t stop until he gets this one back. He can’t—she controls him.”
Toby growled.
“No, leave it alone.” Beck grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. Toby was a big dog, but nowhere near big enough to tangle with Evan and that thing he was riding. “Let’s find the girl and get out of here.”
Toby whined in disgust, but put his nose to the ground. He ran this way and that, his tail waving like a flag as he sought the scent. Beck tried to keep up, but her adrenaline high from the fight was wearing off and so was the alcohol. The scratches on her cheek throbbed and her arm hurt like a son of a bitch.
“Coo-kie.”
Beck swore and broke into a jog. Evan was toying with her, trying to break her. Trying to make her feel like a hunted animal.
It was working.
“Coo-kie. .”
“Shut the hell up,” she muttered.
She pressed her hand against her leather jacket. The hot sauce bottle bulged against her palm.
Shake it. That’ll slow his ass down. So what if it burns him? He’s nothing to you. A stranger. Think of the things he’s probably done, the people he’s hurt. He sure as hell won’t hesitate to hurt you.
It’s you or him. Do it.
She drew her hand away. No; not unless she had no other choice. She kept running.
She was gasping for breath when Toby disappeared into a stand of scrubby bushes. The shrubbery shook and something moved in the branches, something big.
Beck halted, staring at the trembling shrubbery with unease. What now? Bad enough Evan and My Little Monster Pony were behind them. God-knows-what waited in the bushes.
Beck picked up a stick and edged closer. “Toby?”
The underbrush parted and Toby trotted out. At his heels was a black bear—Hank.
Verbena Skinner rode astride Hank’s broad back. Her arms and legs were covered in scratches, and her fried hair stuck out every which way.
Verbena gave Beck the once-over. Beck didn’t blame her for being skittish, not after the way she’d been treated.
“Who are you?” Verbena demanded. Her large eyes were slightly bulbous, like a purple-eyed cocker spaniel, giving her a perpetually startled look.
“I’m a friend of the bear’s.”
Verbena poked the bear with her finger. “That so?”
Hank rumbled in response.
“That must be why he took off a-running. He smelt you.” Verbena seemed to relax a little. “I tried to git him to turn, but he weren’t having none of it.” Her pop eyes widened at a chorus of yodeling yips in the woods nearby. “We’d best git. The bear done kilt two of them, but the rest are coming on, fast, and there’s a passel of them.”
BOOM.
“Coo-kie.” Evan’s voice rang through the woods, closer still.
Verbena clutched the bear’s thick, black fur. “What’s that?”
“My brother.”
“He sounds pissed.”
“He is. I’m at the top of his shit list at the moment.”
“Know what that’s like,” Verbena said. “I got brothers.”
Yes, she did, Beck thought with a shudder. Compared to Earl, Evan was a prize.
“Coo-kie.”
BOOM. BOOM.
Then again, maybe not.
“If you can get us to the road, Toby can hotwire a car and get us out of here,” Beck said. “Right, Tobe?”
Toby barked.
“Road’s this a-way,” Verbena
said.
She kicked her bony heels against the bear’s flanks, and Hank turned and padded off. Toby ran ahead of the bear. Beck followed at a clumsy trot. She was winded, her ribs ached from Meat Hooks’ embrace, and her brain felt hot and fuzzy. Her frozen arm hung useless at her side, hard and heavy as concrete. The slashes on her cheek throbbed.
If this was what “sick” felt like, then it sucked to be a norm. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down her back, and every step was an effort. Elgdrek’s claws were probably poisonous, she reflected glumly. If she weren’t kith, she’d already be dead.
Unbidden, Conall’s face swam before her. Poison or no poison, she couldn’t die. She had to tell Conall about the hot sauce. It was important, and she’d discovered it, not him. She was looking forward to telling him about it. It was going to be sweet.
Thinking about Conall made her feel better, stronger. Not that she gave a flying flip about him. God, no. That would be pathetic. Poor little demonoid crushing on the big bad demon hunter.
BOOM. BOOM.
BOOM.
Her heart rate slowed. They were losing Evan. She stumbled and almost fell. Her lungs burned and her jaw and neck felt stiff. Slowing to catch her breath, she listened. A warbling howl drifted from another section of the woods. By some miracle, they’d eluded the kith, too.
The sound of a slow-moving truck reached her ears. Relief surged through her. They were close to the road. They were going to make it.
Toby and the bear broke into a lope, and Beck struggled to keep up. She huffed up a gentle slope, her boots sinking into the thick carpet of fallen leaves. She was tired, so tired, but eager to get out of these creepy woods. Toby, Verbena, and the bear waited at the bottom of the swell.
Toby stood stiff-legged, hackles raised, his gaze fixed on a shallow ravine in front of them, one of many that creased the rolling woodland. Most were dry and filled with rotting leaves, tumbled, mossy stones, and slender saplings stretching eager limbs toward the sunlight. This one, though, held a small spring. It wasn’t visible from here, but the steady trickle of water sang its presence.
Beck’s weariness and pain eased. Being near water always strengthened her.
She joined them at the foot of the hill. “What is it?”
“Dunno,” Verbena said. The bear grunted and swayed back and forth, his snout in the air. “They smell something.”
Verbena dismounted and picked up a stout branch.
“Just in case,” she said.
Beck was looking around for a stick of her own when the kith attacked.
Conall slammed his fist into the padded panel in front of him. “By the sword, this machine is infernally slow. Can you not make it go faster?”
“Take it easy,” Cassie said. “You crack my dashboard and you’ll pay to have it fixed.”
“I will gladly buy you an entire fleet of conveyances, if you will but hurry.”
“I’ve never been here before. It’s private land and most of these dirt roads are unmarked,” Cassie said. “If we don’t go slow, we’ll miss the turn.”
Conall tamped down his rage and frustration. The ring had been activated. He’d felt it blaze to life and consume the demon. And then it went dark.
What was happening? Rebekah was somewhere near and in need. He could feel it. And because he could not see her or her surroundings, he could not hasten to her in the way of the Dalvahni, navigating through space and time in the blink of an eye.
Instead, he was trapped in this modern coach traveling at a snail’s pace down yet another nameless dirt track.
It was enough to drive a warrior berserk.
He rested his fists on his thighs and willed his roiling impatience to dissipate. This insanity must cease and desist. Rebekah’s well-being had become far too important to his peace of mind. He would end it now.
Today.
He would find Rebekah and ensure her safety. Then he would leave, reconnoiter, and find another base from which to uncover the djegrali’s plans. He would never see her again. Things would be as they were before. He would fix his thoughts on duty and the hunt, and forget Rebekah Damian. His strange fascination with her was an aberration. It would fade in a year, a decade, a few centuries at most.
Cassie slowed the truck to a crawl. “Let me see. It may be that we should have turned back there . . .”
Conall seethed with irritation as she checked the directions on the invitation for the thousandth time.
Not strictly true. The actual number was twenty-seven. He had counted.
A warrior does not exaggerate, he reminded himself sternly.
Such uncharacteristic behavior strengthened his resolve to leave. The Dal did not engage in hyperbole. A Dalvahni warrior was calm and rational, succinct and economical in speech and thought, his actions ruled by logic and unfettered by emotion. Embellishment, overstatement, and flights of fancy were a human indulgence outside the purview of his kind.
“Third road on the right.” Cassie swung the wheeled contraption down yet another nameless rough trail. “Yep, this is it.”
“Thank the gods,” he muttered. “We have explored every infernal pig track in the past ten leagues and wasted the better part of a day doing it.”
Cassie shot him a look. “We left Beck’s less than an hour ago, and we’ve made one wrong turn.”
“Exactly,” Conall said through his teeth. He lifted his head, listening. “Stop the carriage.”
“It’s a truck, not a carriage.”
“Stop now.”
“All right, all right.” Cassie applied the brakes. “You don’t have to bite my head off.”
There was a hollow boom from the northeast.
“Hear that?”
“We’re in the middle of the woods. Somebody’s cutting down trees,” Cassie said. “Big deal.”
“At nightfall?”
“People do all kinds of stupid things, usually prefaced by, ‘Hey, y’all, watch this,’ followed by some bubba getting himself dead.”
Deep in the woods, there was a strange, wavering cry, followed by another and another.
Conall’s senses sharpened. “Wolves,” he said, “coursing large game, a deer perhaps.”
“We don’t have wolves in Alabama. Those are coyotes.”
Conall processed the strange term with his translator. Coyote: a small wolflike carnivore with slender build, large ears, and a narrow muzzle. Similar to the jackals of Algroth, only with four legs, not six.
The excited yips and howls of the coyotes mingled with the deep bay of a hound, the unmistakable growl of a large feline, and other animal sounds Conall did not recognize. The scene in the bar from the night before flashed through his mind, a strange menagerie of shape-shifters wreaking havoc before running off into the night.
“Do these coyotes run in packs with other wild creatures?”
“No,” Cassie said, frowning. “That must be the kith. From the sound of it, their blood’s up about something.”
He flung open the vehicle door and climbed out.
BOOM. BOOM.
No woodcutter, that; a behemoth moving through the woods, destroying everything in its path. The djegrali had such power. He opened his mind and caught a faint trace of demon, too faint and weak to be the cause of such havoc.
BOOM. BOOM.
“Coo-kie,” someone shouted.
Evan, the brother; headed in the same direction as the kith and seeking the same prey.
Rebekah.
A black rage seized Conall. He clamped down on it, calling instead upon the detachment that had served him so well for centuries. He was steel and ice, relentless and unforgiving. Cloaking himself in the merciless cold, he stalked through the woods toward the sounds of battle.
Chapter Twenty
The kith boiled out of the gulch, dozens of them in animal form. They’d divided their numbers, clever creatures. While a few sounded the chase in another part of the woods, the rest had crouched in the leaf-choked gorge, waiting to spring the trap.<
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Beck gave up looking for a stick and broke off a tree limb to use against them. Exhaustion and her injuries made the task more difficult than it should have been, given her kith strength, but staring a snarling posse of wild animals down the throat was sufficient motivation to get the job done.
A group of coyotes with dingy fur, black markings, and the Skinner sneaky looks led the attack. Eyes glowing red from the combined effects of blood lust, gold fever, and Charlie’s magic elixir, and they charged.
Hank met them head-on. The bear swung a great paw and a coyote went flying. He swatted another one. It yelped and hit the ground in a limp heap.
Toby went after a third. He caught the smaller canine in his jaws, slung it to the ground, and went for the belly.
The rest of the kith wised up. Making a wide circle around the dog and the bear, they swarmed Verbena.
“Go ’way,” she shrieked, batting at the snarling animals with her stick.
A raccoon with eyes the color of blood latched on to one of Verbena’s skinny legs and dug in with teeth and claws. Verbena screamed and danced around, but the animal held on. Wading into the fray, Beck pulled the coon off Verbena’s leg and flung it aside. A collie–German shepherd mix slunk forward, belly to the ground, and rushed them. Beck downed it with a kick to the head.
“Put your back to mine,” Beck told Verbena. “We’ll fight better that way.”
Verbena complied. The next few minutes went by in a blur. Thwack. Beck bashed a bobcat in the head. Thwack, double thwack. She knocked aside an oversized ferret and two gigantic possums. On top of everything else, Charlie’s moonshine had supersized some of the kith.
Creepiest of all was a jumbo bunny with burning eyes and incisors like a saber-toothed tiger. The Velveteen rabbit on Skinner crack. She punted it aside. It was soft and squishy, like kicking a teddy bear. Ugh.
Verbena was crying. Racking sobs shook her thin body, but she kept swinging her stick.
Kick, jab, bash, bonk, smack, thunk. The fight took on a rhythm of its own.
Beck ignored the pain in her head and the leaden weight of her frozen arm and concentrated on fending off the kith with her makeshift club. Her right arm ached from use, but she gritted her teeth and kept moving, always moving, back to back with Verbena.