I glanced over my shoulder at the small clearing, but nothing could be seen except shadows. My heart thumped loudly in my chest as I looked up at my companion. “Do you think they’ll follow us?”
His grim eyes stared ahead of us. “Undoubtedly.”
“Can we outrun them on your horse?”
“We shall see.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, even as I heard other, far worse sounds. The heavy thump of padded feet broke the silence of the woods. I glanced behind us and beheld thin shadows in pursuit.
And they were gaining.
“Look ahead!” the king shouted as he tightened his grip on the reins.
I snapped to and clutched onto the horn as the horse increased its speed. We flew over ground and fallen logs, and the shadows flickered by like an old movie reel. The horse’s panting was matched by the heavy breathing of our pursuers.
Soon, I didn’t have to look behind us. The nethral hellhounds sidled up to the horse, their tongues lolling out and their wild yellow eyes staring hungrily at us. The creatures snapped at the horse’s legs and our own. The steed in turn whinnied and slammed its body into them, knocking our foes into trees and boulders.
The king’s sharp voice captured my attention. “Hold the reins!”
He shoved the ropes into my hands, and I juggled them for a bit before getting a good grasp. The king slipped his sleeve up just beside me and brushed his other hand up his arm. My mouth fell open as I beheld for the first time what he was actually doing. The scales popped out of his own flesh, and he plucked them as one plucks fruit from a tree.
The king used them as he had done before, as weapons that brought down one nethral after another. I couldn’t see their bodies melt to nothing, but their dwindling numbers were proof of his efforts. The horse kicked the last monster, and he finished it off with a quick strike to the head.
I could breathe a sigh of relief, at least for a little while.
Chapter 12
The king took up the reins from me, and we galloped onward, with my legs quickly reminding me that I was untrained in riding. We journeyed for a mile before the steed slowed to a relaxing trot. At least, relaxing for the horse. My legs hummed with the familiar dull ache of pain that threatened to become a tsunami of agony.
The king’s voice interrupted the silence of the woods. “Did you ever learn why the professor kidnapped you?”
“He said he was looking into the magic that brought me into the woods without him noticing.”
“Did he find it?”
I set my hand over my chest where the locket had tucked itself back under my shirt. “I…I don’t think so.”
I stiffened when I felt the king’s hand slip up my side. A warm, pleasant thrill ran up and down my body. The king’s soft, low voice didn’t help the situation. Or maybe it did. “What did he do to you?”
There was a certain tension in his words that ruined the moment. I turned my head around to study his face, and the worry in his eyes made my heart quicken. “What do you mean?”
Those brilliant blue eyes flickered over me. “You had no magic in you before, but now I sense something else.”
I turned to stare ahead and tightened my grip on the horn. “Like there’s a nethral riding with you?”
I could feel a slight tension in his body. “What do you mean?”
“That man, you called him a professor, he…he made me…” I swallowed hard before I lifted my chin. “He pulled some of that gunk off a hellhound, that is, a nethral, and forced me to swallow it.”
“God in Heaven…”
Now I was worried. My whole body trembled as I twisted around in the saddle and found myself staring into his bright, horrified eyes. “What? What is it? Is it that bad?”
He turned the reins ever so slightly, and the horse changed directions. We no longer headed east, but southwest. “We’ll head to the inn after we’ve taken care of the thing inside you.”
My heart skipped a beat at his pronouncement. “But what’s wrong? What is that stuff going to do to me if we don’t take care of it?”
“The nethral flesh will eventually transform you into a pitchghast.”
