My eyes cracked open. I was in the passenger seat of a truck. Brandon sat next to me on the driver’s side, gripping the wheel. We were still parked on the bridge and it was still night. The truck wasn’t turned on.
Brandon looked like he’d aged. His eyes seemed sunken slightly into his head, his skin paler than I’d ever seen it.
My body was slumped, spread out across the bench seat. I pushed up but Brandon didn’t look at me. His knuckles were white, gripping the wheel too tight. How long had he sat there like that?
“They’re gone. Matthias—” he cut off, his voice choking as he said the name.
“How long was I out?” I asked. Brandon swallowed and seemed to come back to himself some.
“An hour, I think. I’m not sure. It took forever to drag your massive ass over. I tried looking for the keys in the… well no one out there had the keys I don’t think. It was hard to search the bodies too much.” His voice faded out then he peeled his fingers from the steering wheel and sagged in the seat. He dragged his hands down his face and wiped at some tears that had crawled from his eyes.
His face was red and puffy, the eyes bloodshot. Clearly, he had been crying. My teeth pressed together tightly in discomfort. His pain weighed on me. It was thick in the car. I didn’t know what to do though. I wasn’t the type to offer comfort to anyone but Ava.
My eyes slid to the scene outside the windshield. Grady was out there, along with the dead hunters. I noticed a puddle of blood with no body and lunged forward in the truck.
“Where’s the leader?”
“What?” Brandon asked frantically, leaning forward. “He was there. He was dead! I looked in his pockets for the keys. He…Fuck!” Brandon snarled. He punched the steering wheel and a short honk blasted.
“We need to go,“ I said, reaching for the handle and opening up the door. I slipped out of the car. My leg muscles were loose and shaky. I swayed and my knees kept giving away as I took steps. I looked drunk but could at least stand up and move.
Brandon came up beside me, his head jerking back and forth, looking out for anything.
“Where did he go? He was right there. Did he fall off?” He finally asked, sounding hopeful as he craned his neck to peer over the edge of the bridge. I shook my head as we moved slowly towards the woods.
“No. A corpse doesn’t heft itself off the bridge. Neither does a living man. He’s alive,” I said. Brandon slid his gaze to me and it stuck there as we moved off the bridge. I went the opposite direction of the trail, pushing into the forest towards where I’d seen Mothman flying.
“Where are we going?” Brandon asked, following without hesitation.
“Ava.” Instead of arguing or asking for more details he just nodded. After a couple minutes of walking his energy began to deplete and the haunted look came back to his eyes. I didn’t like it—knowing what the cause was. I wasn’t going to hug him or say it was okay or anything but I could give him something to concentrate on that wasn’t Matthias and the rest of the band.
“It’s Mothman that has her,” I said. His eyes widened as his attention snapped to me. I kept pushing through the forest. Something in my gut told me I was getting closer to her, going the right way. “He stole her from me,” I said in anger.
“Fuck…” Brandon mumbled looking disturbed and confused. “He plans to uh… eat—”
“No,” I snapped. I was still tired, my muscles burned from our walk. Off the trail was harder work. We stepped over fallen logs, shuffled through plants, and thorny veins snagged on us.
“I don’t think he eats people. He doesn’t look the type,” I said in amusement, thinking back to when I beat him in a fight. Without his gun, he was just a furry fucker with wings. Brandon grimaced at the tone of my voice. His eyes sliding back to me in between watching his progress in the forest. I sighed.
“I don’t eat people either.”
“Of course not,” he snapped in agitation but swallowed thickly afterwards. The sound of twigs snapped under our feet as we walked.
Loren was alive and out there. He wasn’t going to just let this go. He very well could be following us. Actually, I expected he was. I didn’t have the energy to deal with him though. If he was just going to slink around I’d let him for now.
Brandon and I had a little ways to go and I needed to reserve my energy, build it back up. My body was still sluggish, wavering around the woods. I had to reach out and use nearby branches as support to help my wobbly legs.
“I’m starving,” I grumbled, thinking food might help me shake off the drugs faster. Brandon stiffened and I recalled what we just talked about. I laughed at him and after a moment he started to laugh too. We kept laughing until tears began rolling down his face and he had to suck back in his noises or else he’d start sobbing.
23
The air this high above the mountains was surprisingly frigid compared to the warmth at the ground level. I was a shivering mess, burrowing into the monster to steal body heat. Mothman’s arms wrapped tighter around me when he felt me shaking. His hand gently pressed the back of my head, holding my face to his chest. I felt simultaneously cared for and concerned—unsure if this was comfort or restraint.
We didn’t fly for too long but it felt like ages. All I could do was cling to Mothman while thinking about my numb nose and fingers. His wings were big, dark things that stretched behind him, making stars blink out of existence. The edges were tattered, lifetimes of wear to the scales. The wings were fuzzy, little soft hairs covering every part. Near the bottom, the design looked like two dark, red eyes—similar to his own eyes but larger and more menacing.
We began to swoop down and my stomach felt weightless, curling upwards in my gut. I clawed at Mothman’s leather duster, my teeth chattering in my mouth as we descended. His hand trailed down my head and threaded through my hair several times. He was petting me, I realized.
His boots smacked onto a wooden porch. The old planks creaked in time to his shifting weight. I wasn’t ready to process that I was with the monster in the woods. That he’d just taken me somewhere I didn’t know. That Caspian was still on the bridge, along with Brandon.
