Light flickered in the darkness. It was steady, bobbing up and down slightly as if someone was walking with one of those lanterns you took on camping trips.
I paused, making sure the light wasn’t moving in my direction, before carefully slipping past clinging branches. At one point I had to drop and crawl as the underbrush grew too dense to walk. At least not without making a racket fit to announce my presence to any and every one.
The bobbing light paused and then lowered, as if someone had set the lantern down. Now I was curious what anyone would be doing out here at night. Columbus didn’t have many areas overgrown like this, but every once in a while I happened on a small slice of woods that hid a surprising amount of wildlife, including deer, skunks, and ground hogs.
It wasn’t surprising this one paralleled a popular bike path. My hearing picked up the gentle gurgle of the river so we must be close to that as well.
What was surprising was that a human would venture out here in the dead of night. It didn’t seem like safe behavior in a day and age where parents wouldn’t even let their kids walk to the park across the street without adult company.
I edged to a spot where I could see.
I blinked. The lamp wasn’t a lamp so much as a—well I didn’t know what to call it—maybe a sphere. A white sphere of light the size of my head hovering right above the grass.
So, not a human. That answered the question of what someone would be doing out here.
It wasn’t just one person either. There were a handful gathered in the clearing, faces wiped clean of emotion as they stared sightlessly into the distance. It was like a bunch of sleepwalkers had somehow managed to walk in the same direction and then stop in the same little clearing.
Something told me magic played a big part in whatever this was.
Even from here I could tell some of the people weren’t human. One looked like a naiad, essentially a water sprite that usually resided in a body of water like a river or a lake. I didn’t even know naiads could leave their waters. I kind of thought they would dry up and suffocate like a fish.
This one’s hair had whatever the freshwater equivalent of seaweed was threaded through it, and her skin was a brownish green. She wore no clothes and her limbs were a little less human than I was used to seeing, way longer and ending in webbed hands.
A few in the gathering looked entirely human and my only clue that they weren’t was the company they kept.
There was also a figure, the shortest in the group with the hood of his sweatshirt up to hide his face from view.
A reddish brown wolf trotted into the clearing and sat down at the hooded person’s feet like a well-trained dog.
“Change.” The voice whispered through the leaves, dry and crackling, like sandpaper against wood. I hated the sound of sandpaper. My ears nearly turned themselves inside out whenever I heard the scrape and slide of it. The voice gave me that same cringe worthy feeling. The kind that sent my skin trying to crawl down my back to get away.
The wolf’s fur peeled back and the sound of bones cracking and popping as the skeleton reshaped itself made my body twinge in sympathy. This wasn’t the graceful transition I’d seen from Brax. This was painful and long and hideous.
For once I was grateful fate had decided to make me one of the fanged instead of a shapeshifter. Going through that at least once a month, and probably more, would have been enough to drive me insane. It was a wonder there weren’t pain crazed wolves running amok
A woman with wild hair knelt at the hooded man’s feet, her head bowed and her body clenched against the pain.
“Stand.”
She unfolded, wobbling on her feet.
Sondra.
What was she doing here?
The red in the wolf’s coat made sense now. Her hair had a reddish tint to it as it curled around her face in a mane of tangles.
Her face was as blank and expressionless as the rest of those in the clearing. Something that struck me as unnatural. Her face always had an intense alertness to it as if she was just waiting to act. The feral, untamed air she usually carried with her was muted, almost gone beneath that blankness. Her face had less expression in it than some dolls I’d seen, as if someone had molded a person into flesh and bone but forgot to include the soul.
One of the men in the clearing suddenly started hissing, the sound similar to what a very pissed off cat sounds like. A pair of fangs glinted from his mouth as the sound rose and fell.
“Quiet.”
The tangled snarl cut off as if someone had muted the volume. The man’s throat continued to work as though he was still trying to hiss, though no sound emerged.
This was wrong, whatever this was.
Sondra standing next to a vampire and a naiad. It was almost as if they were emotionless zombies being compelled to do the hooded person’s bidding.
