Rushing toward Lu.
I ran.
Lorde snarled and barked. Ahead of us Val spooked out and instantly stood in front of Lu who had turned toward us, knife in her hand. She couldn’t see the creatures coming like an avalanche, storming over the Route.
The ghost wolf lowered his head and bared his teeth. Val matched its stance facing down the creatures.
“Lu!” I yelled again, pointing north, just as the wave of creatures crested and began to crash downward over her.
Val and the wolf leaped up into the creatures, breaking the momentum of the wave. The creatures scattered and lurched skyward, a shrieking, grasping, clawing dust devil that faded and was gone just as suddenly as it had begun.
I was at Lu’s side, pulling her into me, my hands and arms shaking. “Did they touch you? Did they hurt you?” The words were fear-thin, barely understandable, even to my own ears.
Blood arrowed across her neck. Only a scratch, only a scratch, but my fear snapped right on over into rage.
“No,” Lu said. “Brogan, look at me. I’m fine. It’s a scratch.”
But the words I’d heard on the wind came back to me:Blood and thread. Strange, the key upon her skin.
“They marked you.”
“Something did,” she said. “It’s okay, Brogan. I can take care of myself. I’m okay.”
I finally unlocked my arms and let her step back enough I could inspect the mark. Itwasjust a scratch and had already stopped bleeding.
“Did you hear them?” I asked. “Did you see them?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” she said, sheathing her knife, “except you yelling and Lorde barking.”
The gas nozzle clunked, and I jumped. Lu turned and removed it from the tank, setting it back in its cradle.
“I know there were creatures on the wind,” she said. “I felt fingers digging at the chain.” She touched the chain on her neck, then leaned her hip into Silver and crossed her arms over her chest.
“When I pulled my knife, the fingers were gone. Now it’s your turn. What happened? What did you see?”
Lorde moved over to her and snuffled around her feet and legs. Lu reached down and petted Lorde’s head.
“There was something in the wind. Old magic.”
“How old?” she asked.
My gaze darted to the thin, dry line of blood on her neck, then back to her honey eyes. “You didn’t see any of them?”
“No.”
“Ancient, I think. They came on the gust of wind across the Route, across the parking lot. Too much like smoke for me to make out details.”
“Not ghosts?”
“No. They were dark. From somewhere Beneath.” I considered not telling her the next bit, but we didn’t need lies between us. “Val pushed me, snapped me out of a…I don’t know…hypnosis.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Did he?”
“By then the creatures were almost on you, falling like a wave.”
“And what did they say? You heard them.”
“They said they tasted magic. Something about blood and thread and a strange key on her skin. I’m assuming your skin.”
