As sleep pulled her under between one breath and the next, a single vine had begun to grow through a crack in the bathroom tile, tender and green and patient.
Chapter five
Midnight.
The pain started small, a prickle in her wrist spreading pins and needles beneath the skin. Briar shifted in the lumpy motel bed, still half-asleep, and rubbed at the mark through her shirt.
The prickling became burning.
Her eyes snapped open. Wrongness permeated the room, darkness swallowing all light as though someone had snuffed out every source at once. Even the parking lot lights that had bled through the thin curtains were gone. And beneath the reek of must and old cigarettes, something else threaded through the stale air—pine sap and dark earth, the scent of green things growing where they shouldn't.
The mark flared hot without warning. She sat up, hand going to the bedside lamp.
Her fingers touched bark instead.
She jerked back. In the darkness, she could just make out the lamp's shape, but it had transformed into something wrong and twisted. The base had split open, rough wood emerging from plastic casing.
A soft sound made her freeze. Not quite breathing but more rhythmic, more organic—the sound of growing.
She fumbled for her phone, needing light.
The screen illuminated the ground. Gone was the stained, grimy carpet and in its place? Moss. Thick, verdant moss spreading across the floor in real time, creeping forward with visible momentum. Where it touched the walls, the dingy wallpaper bubbled and peeled, revealing wood beneath. Not motel walls, but tree bark.
"No."
A crack split the air. In the bathroom, tiles splintered as something forced through—a root thick as her arm, followed by another. They crawled across the ceiling with purpose, and where they touched, the motel room began to transform.
The mark burned hotter. She gasped, clutching her wrist, and felt wetness seeping through her fingers. Looking down she saw blood oozing from where thorns had finally broken skin from within.
She had to move, had to get out now.
She rolled off the bed as the mattress split open, vines erupting from its heart. The sheets tangled in her legs and she kicked free, scrambling for the door.
The armchair blocked her path. She forgot that she had barricaded herself in.
"No, no, no—" She grabbed the chair, tried to pull it aside. Vines had already found it, wrapping around the legs and binding it to the door. The wood groaned as she pulled, but held fast.
"Such panic." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, cultured and amused. "You can hear her heart from here. Like a rabbit caught in a snare."
Movement flickered in her peripheral vision. She spun to see a figure stepping from the shadows by the bathroom, not emerging from them but being born from them. Tall, whipcord lean, with sharp features that looked carved from pale wood. His clothes shifted between leather and bark and shadow.
"You're not him." Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
"How observant." His smile was perfect—too perfect, predator's teeth maintained with care. "I'm Thaine. His Huntsman. And you..." He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. "You're the little runaway who thought she could hide." He tilted his head, considering. "Tell me, did you really think walls would stop him? That distance measured in miles meant anything to something that exists between spaces?"
The window cracked behind her. Not breaking yet, but spiderwebbing as vines pressed against it from outside.
"Did you know," Thaine continued, his tone casual as he took a single step closer, "that he wanted to come himself? Was quite insistent about it. The fury in his voice..." He shivered theatrically. "Delicious. But I convinced him to let me handle the retrieval. Professional courtesy, you understand. Hunter to hunter."
"I completed the bargain. Three days. It's been three days."
"Three days to say goodbye." His expression shifted to mock sympathy. "Not three days to run. But please, tell me more about how you've outsmarted centuries of forest law with... a motel room?" He laughed, soft and genuinely delighted.
Before she could speak, the bathroom door exploded outward, wood and plastic becoming mulch as a tree trunk forced its way through. The toilet cracked and water sprayed everywhere, immediately absorbed by the spreading moss.
Briar leaped sideways as roots erupted where she'd been standing. She hit the window, still intact but barely, and spun to find another way out. The room was shrinking, walls bowing inward as the forest reclaimed the space.
"You could make this easier," Thaine suggested. He hadn't moved from his spot, just watched her scramble with infinite patience. "Come quietly. Let me deliver you with some dignity intact. He might even forgive the insult." His smile widened. "In a decade or two."
