I noticed hoofprints in the dirt. A horse had been through here recently, and even though it hadn’t seemed to be in a hurry, it would likely be faster than us if we continued to go by foot. I straddled my broom and streaked ahead of Narcissa, trying to get a sense of our surroundings. The horse marks were even easier to pick out once the green grass gave way to a dirt road.
Narcissa yowled beside me as she beat her wings to match my speed.
Thanks to a potion of oil I’d coated along the bottom of my broom, I would appear invisible to those looking up at me. So I shouldn’t attract unwanted attention if I decided to climb higher into the air. Here, it might have the added advantage of allowing me to escape Ambrosia’s territory. If only I should be so lucky.
A fog began to rise ahead of us, which gave me pause. Just because this was Ambrosia’s territory didn’t mean that she was the only witch around. Nothing about this mist in particular made me think it was anything supernatural, but it made me nervous, nonetheless.
A forest appeared ahead, and of course, the hoofprints disappeared within. I watched the dark trees, tall and spindly, with bare arms reaching out as if to grab passersby, leaves conspicuously missing from their branches.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” I murmured to my companions and slowed as I approached the first row of trees, descending to only a few feet off the ground.
We flew slowly on, sticking to the path as the light was shadowed by the branches overhead. After a moment, Narcissa touched down on the end of my broom and stared up at me, mewing. I stopped midair to regard her.
“What is it?” I asked.
She lifted her head and let out a stream of fire to the side, then gestured to the trees.
I lifted my nose to take a sniff. Yes, I could smell it just barely, the scent of burnt wood. “But who would burn a forest?” I asked.
A series of loud creaks behind me drew my attention, and I looked back to find the trees bowing to block our path back the way we’d come. Then the trees alongside us reached out their branches, swinging at us. One branch glanced my broom, nearly knocking me off, but I steered out of its path. The trees ahead were shifting as well, making to block our way.
“Hold on tight,” I ordered, grabbing Narcissa with little ceremony and pulling her to my lap. I shot forward on my broom, twisting and turning to elude the branches of the trees.
It hadn’t occurred to me that a necromancer could control dead plants, but of course, plants were a form of life as well.
Narrowly missing a collision with a particularly large branch, I had to fly nearly sideways to squeeze through a dense patch of branches. I noted some trees were lifting their roots to further impede my progress. Thick roots tore from the soil as the trees shimmied into my path. My instinct was to slow sufficiently to calculate my way through the trees, but that would only give them more time to block my escape. Already, the path was nearly impossible to make out from the rest of the forest.
I was so preoccupied with navigating through the shifting forest that I nearly missed a branch as it shot out, making for my throat. If I hadn’t ducked, it would have taken my head clear off. As it was, it nicked my cheek, a painful slice that served to sharpen my focus.
Narcissa mewed loudly from my lap and, as I twisted around another dense collection of trees, I saw what she’d seen. The way ahead was completely blocked, trees falling over themselves to create a near-solid wall. There were not going to be any holes large enough for me to squeeze through on my broom.
“Hold on,” I grunted, eyes shifting to the sky beyond the gnarled branches. I pulled the broom into a near-vertical flight, Narcissa yowling as she was flung back into me. I roared as we ascended, branches realizing what I was doing and desperately shifting their focus to try to stop me. I shot out from the canopy of trees with a sigh of relief, giving myself plenty of space to fly overhead without fear of them reaching out to snatch me from the sky.
Narcissa glared up at me, and I shrugged at her. “Hey, we’re alive, aren’t we?” I asked. As if in reply, she leapt from the broom, opting to fly at my back.
I squinted below to find that we’d nearly made it out of the forest. The black trees thinned out ahead and became lively trees with arms full of leaves once more. “That’s more like it,” I murmured, flying over the remaining dead trees before descending once more to find the path.
“And that’s as far as you go,” a voice ahead called out.
I stopped my broom to regard the road. It was still foggy, but not nearly as dense as before venturing into the forest. It was enough to make the scene before me appear surreal, however. A woman rode atop a horse. Or rather, what had once been a horse. It was a horse’s skeletal remains now, a red glow burning from its eye sockets.
And lying motionless across its back, like a sack of grain, was Auggie.
CHAPTER SIX
Seeing Auggie lyingmotionless on the back of the horse sent a rage coursing through me that I couldn’t quite explain. Perhaps it stemmed from the audacity of this witch trying to rip my ticket to freedom from me.
I stepped off my broom and walked purposefully toward the woman on the dead horse. As I drew nearer, I could make out the green hue to her skin, as if she herself were dead and rotting. Her black hair was pulled back into a tight knot, and she watched me with unblinking black eyes, much like my own. Her bulk was hidden beneath a coarse wool cloak, but as I stopped, I could make out a cut that nearly split the bottom half of her face from the top half, and another, snaking along her right shoulder. Metal staples seemed to stitch the skin together, and I realized that the two portions of her face, although very similar, did not quite match. Was this woman … stitched together from different people?
“You aren’t Ambrosia,” I said.
“Aren’t I?” the woman replied, black lips lifting into a smile. “Then perhaps I am something worse.”
I considered. I doubted much could be worse than a necromancer, aside from Lucifer himself. But given her black eyes, this woman was likely a witch herself, and I had no idea what her powers consisted of. “You could always let the boy go, and we can go our separate ways without any bloodshed,” I suggested. “He’s just a scrawny little thing anyway. Hardly good for eating, even as stock for stew.”
A muffled croak of concern issued from the bag at my back.
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Is that all he’s good for?” She crossed her arms, looking me over. “I don’t see why Lucifer would go to the trouble of having you protect him if he’s not even worth the meat on his bones.”
