I straighten warily. My fingers creak as they curl around my dagger and pull it free of its sheath. I scan the dim. Two women, alone in thedark. What infests these woods? What have we called closer with our fire and light?
“What do we do?” Harper whispers.
I whip up a hand, demanding silence.
The vibrations arrive in beats of four. A momentary pause before they resume, shuddering up my legs and stirring the fabric of my skirt. Somewhere in the distance, a tree shatters, and Harper recoils, whimpering. The four-legged gait picks up speed. Whatever the manner of beast, it is massive.
“We run.” It’s our only option.
Harper backs away, eyes flitting from pocket to darkened hollow, searching the darkness oozing across the forest floor. A hair-raising howl crests and dies.
“We’ll go north,” I murmur, rushing to gather our supplies. I toss Harper her rucksack and slide mine onto my shoulders. “Do you remember the fork in the trail we took earlier? Go left. We can hide in the caves.”
A bellow sends Harper fleeing into the woods. I’m right on her heels, plunging through the enclosing murk where the brush snags our ankles and calves. We veer around a tree and converge a few steps ahead. Beyond lies the divide.
“Left!” I bark, cutting down the path. But when I glance over my shoulder, Harper is gone.
13
BRANCHES CRACK LIKE BONES ANDvines snake across the mossy floor. Springing over a collapsed tree, I veer into Carterhaugh’s black depths, thorns clawing at my dress. My mind is twelve steps ahead, grasping at directions, possible options, as I crash blindly through the brush. The beast gives chase.
South, toward Harper? Or north, into the highlands? Westward, the canyon expands in folds of baked red clay with few places to hide. That leaves the Gray, sitting across the strait to the east.
I push onward. My pack slams into my lower back. My legs ache as the terrain fractures into small eruptions of stone. I clamber over another fallen tree, and the earth buckles as a wave of shattering noise crashes at my back. If I can hide until the creature passes, I can backtrack to the fork and find Harper. A high place. A low place. Any will do.
A creek runs a line of silver through the darkness ahead. The icy water burns, but I follow the current half a mile downstream before leaping onto dry land and circling back. I lose track of how many times I do this, threads crisscrossing in the dark. Panting, soaked in sweat, I sag against a tree when an ear-shattering scream rends the night.
Harper.
My wet boots slip and slide through muck as I race south, the air heavy with damp. Alabaster light leaks through the dense canopy, spotting the mossy ground.
Eventually, the terrain shallows out, and I push my exhausted body to its brink, sprinting flat-out toward a copse of trees in the distance. Meanwhile, Harper’s screams reach me with decreasing frequency. I fear what that might mean.
The reek hits me first: rotting flesh overlaying thick, choking smoke. I’m leaping over fallen trunks and weaving through collapsed branches when I spot her, white skin luminous in the night.
She crouches between the roots of a vast, ancient oak, trying to make herself as small as possible among the crowded ferns. The beast has cornered her. An elongated spine forms ridges along its back, a gross protrusion that matches the bulging cage of its ribs, all clothed in heavy, streaming shadows. It hails from Under. It hails from the deep.
A second set of pitted eyes suddenly appears beyond the collapsed trees surrounding Harper. She does not notice. She is frozen, terror having bled her features of color. And I am nothing but a body in motion, flinging myself into its path.
My appearance draws the beasts’ attention, and one of them snarls. I angle my hips to keep the second creature in sight, fingers tightening around my dagger—one blade, two foes.
“Your dagger,” I hiss. “Give me your dagger!”
“I don’t have it!” Her voice cracks. She is a whimpering dog, flinching from the hand it has bitten. “My bag—” She gestures to the lumpy sack lying between the legs of the advancing beast.
The creature eases forward. Its glistening lips peel back, saliva dripping from a collection of serrated teeth.
My world has narrowed. There is no rock, no vegetation, no earth. I am a woman standing still.
“Listen to me,” I mutter, focusing on the beast before us, its smaller shadow padding closer from behind. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for me.” Slowly, I lower my bag to the ground.
“I don’t care who you’re doing it for!” The whites of her eyes flash. “Just kill the damn beasts.”
“I want my bedroll back.”
“What?”
A fat, glistening tongue drags across the larger beast’s upper canines. Branches snap as its companion shoves forward.
