“The Children of the Earth are special, Emmett. Druids hear the call of animals, or Wisdoms, often when they venture closer to forests. Bards hear the Song in the rain and waters. It may happen at any age, though it is most common in adolescence. Because you had left Houston for Florida and resisted the Rot—something normally only a Druid or Bard could do—it seemed reasonable that you might have heard the Song and gone out in search of answers.”
“No voices. I just needed to hit the reset button on life.”
Emmett wondered if the entire trip away from Silvan Dea—the drive, the late lunch, and now the stroll—had just been an opportunity to ask the question in a neutral, non-mystical setting.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not special.”
Keiran shook his head. “No, you must be. Your coloring—your aura—is different. Amala said so. Even Paulo noticed it.”
Emmett’s heart dropped, and he was uncertain why. His face flushed as Keiran stared at him, and though he had to force himself not to look away, Emmett found neither jealousy nor competition in his expression. Only wonder. And confusion.
“As it is, the sun is setting, and we should be heading back soon. Have a seat and wait for me here. I’d like to speak to Mrs. Carmichael before we leave.”
Emmett sat down and shook his head, the abruptness of Keiran’s shift in conversation jarring. He watched Keiran disappear back inside Hiraeth. Whether it was the heavy meal or his physical exhaustion from the Rot, he could not help but yawn.
The horizon darkened with the setting sun. Fifteen minutes passed since Keiran had left. Emmett wondered if he had decided to leave him now that he had confirmed Emmett wasn’t a fellow monster hunter.
Emmett nearly jumped with surprise when he turned his head and saw a child standing silently to his right. It was a little girl with light blond hair and blue eyes dressed in what looked like a Bugs Bunny costume and holding a basket with both hands.
“Oh, you scared me,” Emmett smiled. He had no experience with kids and was never clear how to talk to them.
“Are you ready, E?” she tugged at his arm.
Emmett looked around for the child’s parents and saw no one. The evening had grown bitterly cold and wet with a scattered drizzle. It was no place for a child alone.
Turning back to ask the girl her name, Emmett saw she had already run off. He could see the flopping ears bouncing on her head as she plunged in and out of darkness running underneath the few streetlamps.
“Wait!” he yelled, running after her.
“Come on!” she called out excitedly ahead.
The girl rounded the corner and disappeared. Only the rare beams of distant traffic reflected in closed storefront windows allowed Emmett to finally catch sight of her. He broke into a fast sprint, turning to follow her down a narrow one-way alley.
“Wait!” Emmett struggled to say, panting and shaking his head. He doubled over for a moment coughing, steadying himself against a trashcan.
The girl was standing at the far end of the alley, looking up at the tall brick buildings on three sides of her. Emmett caught his breath and began walking slowly toward her, hopeful the kid had calmed enough to allow him to lead her to an open store and call her parents or the police.
As Emmett drew close, the girl turned around and smiled wide at him. “I want to go trick-or-treating! You promised mom you’d take me!”
Emmett was about to sputter something when he heard a whistle behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the shadows of several figures sauntering down the alleyway dressed in black with hoods covering their faces.
“Hey there, little lady,” one of the figures leered. The others were fanning out to block the alley’s exit.
Somewhere in Emmett’s stomach, the bottom fell out. There were twelve figures total behind the lead. Emmett heard the urgent warnings from that quiet voice within each person. Run!
Emmett’s hand instinctively went behind him, feeling the little girl draw close. He looked up either side of the alley, finding no doors or windows. The figures seemed to be laughing at his searching for escape, the lead one now drawing close enough that Emmett could see the wire-rimmed glasses he wore over passionless brown eyes.
“You wanna play tonight?” he taunted, eliciting more chuckles from those behind him. Emmett could smell the heavy alcohol and tobacco seeping through the man’s pores. The man cocked his head to one side and appraised Emmett like an animal readied for slaughter.
“I thought we’d have to settle for a runaway,” he slurred, licking his lips. “But fate gives us two well-fed beauties.”
Emmett’s body tensed as he prepared to lunge. But the lead man threw a heavy hook across his jaw, stars exploding in his vision as he painfully fell down to the ground. There was a muffled scream as the others swooped down upon the little girl, covering her mouth even as her costume was easily ripped from her body.
“Let the older one watch. Despair can be the most potent offering,” the lead’s voice drawled. Emmett tried to call out for help, his breath stolen by a chokehold from one of his captors. He struggled vainly against several strong hands that pulled him up and forced his head toward the alley’s corner where two dainty legs trembled underneath a pack of feasting animals.
The lead man raised his hands and grunted guttural sounds. Over the rolling thunder, Emmett heard a low roar in his ears. He thought it was the adrenaline rushing through his body, but the roar grew so suddenly that he felt his ears popping from the pressure. His attackers seemed enraptured by the sound, their faces twisted in feral visages of exaggerated pleasure.
When Emmett thought his ears would bleed from the pressure, it suddenly receded, replaced with the attackers’ labored breathing. The older man fell to his knees, his arms still held out wide as he lifted his head up toward a corner area where two of the buildings met in the rear of the alley.
A pair of red eyes appeared in the shadowy corner and beneath the eyes an exaggerated grinning mouth. The eyes looked down at the unfolding horror, the adults excitedly ravaging the now-unmoving girl. The eyes then looked upon the kneeling man, who by now was offering whispered exaltations upon the shadowy presence.
Your obeisance is acknowledged. The voice was an explosion of disharmonious, conflicting sounds in Emmett’s mind, and he buckled under its weight.
“We seek your favor, Old One,” the kneeling man said with trembling hands raised above his head.
I require a living offering, the voice responded as its red eyes turned to the unmoving child who, even in apparent death, was still being violated.
“We have another!” the kneeling man proclaimed, pivoting on his knees to turn around and point at Emmett.
Emmett struggled again to free himself, but his captor’s chokehold only tightened around his neck as the red eyes lingered on Emmett.
That is not … wait … let me see the eyes, the voice commanded.
Emmett felt the chokehold increase, and it was the loss of air that stopped him from moving. The red eyes bore down into his.
Mother will hide you, but I will always find you, the voice mocked.
“Is our sacrifice acceptable, Old One? Shall I shed blood for you?” the kneeling man asked. He removed a serrated knife from his back pocket and advanced toward Emmett.
The capricious, violent grin widened even greater than before as the red eyes narrowed. There is only one thing you could ever do to truly appease me … monkey.
The kneeling man’s expression registered confusion. He began to turn back toward the red eyes when a gloved hand appeared from the shadows beneath the mouth and made a backhand shooing gesture. As one, all of Emmett’s attackers were lifted upward by some unseen force and violently thrown backward at the surrounding buildings, their heads twisted completely around.
Emmett felt the grip loosen around his neck. Crumpled bodies and pooling blood along the rain-soaked alleyway surrounded him. The red eyes and unnatural, wide grin stared back at him from the shadows.
> Do you remember the unending rains that drove the Master’s children underground?
The shadows unfurled around the red eyes and poured out across the alleyway, rolling over the unmoving bodies and toward Emmett. Thunder roared louder overhead as the red eyes drew closer.
Do you hear the call of your Master?
The shadows were upon Emmett, slithering up his body. The gloved hands reached out toward his face to touch him, and Emmett burst into a terrible scream so loud that he could wake the entire world from its slumber.
“Nooooooo!”
There was sudden and complete darkness.
A dull, dizzying thump against his head, followed by queasy uncertainty, and Emmett felt something—someone—gently caressing his face. He blinked the blurriness in his vision away, recoiling from a dark, featureless shape looming over him.
“Emmett, you’re okay.” The voice was familiar. It was Amala.
He blinked again, and the pier came into focus. In the soft glow of the slow-setting winter sun, he was sitting still on the bench where Keiran had left him. Families were passing him. Shops were still open. Amala was kneeling before him.
“Just breathe, Emmett.”
His pulse was still racing. He felt as if he were just waking from a dream. Yet never before had he dreamt and not known that he was dreaming. He always knew.
He looked into Amala’s eyes, and it was not the surreal expression from his dreams. Nor was it the intimate one in the cave. It was panic.
“Emmett, have the waking dreams begun yet? Have the red eyes returned?”
CHAPTER 9
Emmett looked out the window at the passing lights along the dark highway. He sat mutely stricken in the backseat, barely following the rapidly changing situation. Amala had been driving them back to Silvan Dea for nearly thirty minutes at speeds that teetered between dangerous and prosecutable, with Emmett managing to understand only half of what Amala and Keiran discussed.
Finding him apparently dreaming on the bench, Amala had drawn close to him and whispered into his ear: “Say nothing of this to anyone. Tell no one.” He’d had no time to question her when Keiran had returned from Hiraeth, and it was a measure of Keiran’s effortless calm that he had not questioned her when she’d told him that an attack against Silvan Dea was imminent and they must immediately return to their Grove.
They did not know Emmett, had no reason to care about or for him, and yet they faced danger beyond anything Emmett could conceptualize. Something in the dream with the red eyes and Amala’s knowing he had been having a waking dream confirmed this. They faced this danger with a methodical, calculated preparation to protect him. He knew they would endanger their own lives to protect him. They had already done so in Florida, and Emmett sensed they would soon again.
Risking their lives to protect me. Words failed to affect Emmett more than that.
“Protecting Emmett until the Archivist makes contact is all that matters. If we do not reach her soon, he will die.”
“I can go to warn the Grove while you take him away,” Keiran offered as he continued to check the mirrors for what Emmett assumed was someone following them. “I can meet you both somewhere safe. Derrick’s?”
“No, we cannot separate. Not yet. I have my reasons.”
Keiran did not question this. Emmett wanted to interrupt, to somehow offer assistance in the face of danger. But he found only a litany of film clichés available to him and, feeling inadequate in the moment, retreated into silence.
“We have the river should retreat be necessary, Keiran. You understand what needs to be done if that occurs.”
“Of course.”
“And don’t ever leave him again,” Amala whispered, to which Keiran only looked down at his hands in his lap.
As the highway led toward the darkening curtain of rock from the mountains towering over them, Emmett began to feel his pulse quickening with anticipation. Amala began looking back and forth through all of the car’s windows—her wide, searching eyes penetrating the darkness for any sign of movement. Keiran rolled his window down and allowed his head to lean slightly out into the cold, rushing wind. So far from the city, the car’s lone headlights penetrated the night’s blackness with great effort, and only the sound of the car’s tires broke the forest’s silence.
The paved asphalt of the highway soon gave way to gravel that spat out underneath their speeding tires as they turned off onto a series of winding roads. Every so often, the outline of a fleeing image would register in Emmett’s peripheral vision. Always he would startle, his foot reflexively going down as if to tap the gas pedal harder to speed forward, and always he would look in vain for signs of the vanished something. The night seemed determined to torture him with hints of pursuit.
The enveloping silence of the dark night was maddening. Amala slowed to negotiate the narrow turns of the ascending path up and through the ravine to the Grove. Emmett’s senses were exaggerated beyond comfort by the intensity of the drive. Plunged into total darkness and with only the span of the car’s headlights to see, Amala seemed to jerk back and forth between the pressure to race back to the Grove and the care to not drive off of a cliff.
During the ascent, Keiran and Amala rapidly discussed details. Emmett’s concentration was absorbed watching for unseen attackers, and thus he still could not follow what they were saying. Their planning was filled with names, places, and descriptions that he did not recognize. In fact, the only thing that he was certain of was that his safety was their top priority.
The road banked sharply to the right, and through the canopy of snow-tipped fir trees along the mountainside, the compound of living stone came suddenly into view. Both fell silent, searching in the darkness for signs of danger.
“No lights,” Keiran said. “The great rooms’ hearths always burn through the night, Emmett,” he added.
“As with the moon, we are the light in the darkness,” Amala said. She leaned forward over the steering wheel, indicating a point up ahead with an outstretched arm. “We’ll stop right up there. We’re going in the rest of the way on foot.”
The car idled to a stop, and the three of them got out.
“Do we want to leave the car here?” Emmett wondered aloud, wanting to somehow contribute but feeling like the weak link in the proverbial chain.
Amala nodded, walking slowly past him as she scanned the road ahead. “I have a plan to escape if it comes to that, and it doesn’t necessarily require the car,” she whispered, turning to Emmett and holding a finger to her lips. “Keep him close to you.” She nodded from Keiran to Emmett.
They wound up through the ravine toward the compound. Even with Keiran less than two paces behind him, Emmett suppressed a shudder from the feeling that he was being stalked. Trees and thick underbrush on either side of the road drew dark curtains around them, with the cold air swallowing any sound. The darkness, it seemed, jealously guarded its own secrets.
Amala veered off the path into the tree line. Emmett winced at the twigs snapping and snow crunching underfoot.
“Too much noise,” he whispered. “Can’t you walk over the snow?”
“Those are elves,” Keiran responded equally quietly.
The moon’s pale sliver overhead was a ribbon of gossamer in the sky. Flowing through the trees with a dusting of fine snow, the cold Northern winds howled as if the forest itself were weeping from some tragedy yet to be revealed.
Pausing next to a large copse of firs, Amala held up one hand. She craned her neck, and Emmett saw a dark shape slithering down through the trees and across her shoulders. A pair of long black serpents coiled around her neck, one sliding into her hand while the other turned its darkly glowing eyes to watch behind her.
With a gesture to follow, Amala began lightly stepping forward again toward the compound. Several more silent moments passed, and they soon were no more than twenty yards away from one of the meandering walkways circling back toward the Grove’s rear.
Emmett felt it suddenly a
nd without warning: a deep, tearing nausea that wrenched through his insides. He slumped against a tree, and as his insides heaved with protest, he vomited on the ground. He managed to gasp once for air before falling forward. Keiran’s strong forearm swung around his waist and caught him, keeping him from falling into his own sick steaming in the snow.
Keiran carefully eased Emmett backward against a tree while cradling his head. He raised one hand to his lips and pled for silence. Emmett watched him crane his neck and lift his ear. He pointed up ahead on the path and mouthed words that set Amala’s face rigid.
Emmett’s face felt swollen and hot, spittle running down his chin. Keiran pulled close to him, whispering into his ear: “There are at least twenty Revenants ahead of us. The proximity of dark magiks will affect you because of the Rot.”
Keiran’s hold on him grew tighter, and he drew him so close to his body that he could feel his breathing on his neck. Keiran reached his other arm around him to encircle him, holding his neck in both of his hands. He made a deep, rolling sound in his throat that vibrated down Emmett’s spine, a vibration that felt like cleansing water pouring over him. Within moments, his head felt light as his stomach settled.
A hawk with glowing eyes soared soundlessly down through the trees to land on Amala’s shoulder. It made no noises except for the soft rush of fluttering wings in the darkness. Amala took a pebble from the hawk’s mouth before it returned to the air.
Kneeling down to Emmett with Keiran behind her, she whispered into his ear. “Listen very carefully, Emmett. We need to reach the opposite side of the Grove. No matter what happens, do not allow yourself to be separated from Keiran.”
Emmett nodded as Amala looked deeply into his eyes. Just like the first time he had seen her attack the Underdweller, Emmett could see her concern for him.
“We’re going to make it,” she whispered.
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