“How deadly?”
“They drain everything—life, soul, consciousness, memories—until there’s nothing left but an empty husk.”
That was a hard pass for me. “How do we fight them?”
“They’re not corporeal.”
This was their shortcut? Through a forest filled with bloody nightmares? Men were idiots. I clenched my fists and thought. Hard. There had to be a way to protect ourselves. Using Grayson’s wind, I blew the fog back into the woods.
A growl, low and deep and utterly spine-chilling, rumbled through the trees. Then the fog approached from a different direction.
Again, I used the wind to blow it away from us. “Guys …”
Flynn turned in a circle, gripping his sword as if its blade could somehow slay moist air.
“I’m not the best with wind. If the fog comes from more than one direction, we’re screwed.”
Teal’s eyes narrowed. “I have an idea.” He yanked Flynn’s arm, pulling him close.
I sent another gust of wind at the encroaching fog. “Your idea?”
Teal’s gaze searched the dark woods, looking for the next attack. “A vortex. Make the wind spin around us.”
I lifted my hands, sensing the different magics—fire that wanted to burn everything in its path, water (could I drown a wraith?), earth (weak and sickly in this fucking clearing), and wind that wanted to shred the trees that caged us. Keeping the elements separate took effort. What would happen if I let them touch? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Ignoring the rest, I made the wind circle around us. As it swirled, it gathered leaves and twigs and—I narrowed my eyes—small shards of bone and bits of bloody cloth. My stomach lurched. Those weren’t animal bones. The fabric still held traces of color—a child’s blue tunic, a woman’s green scarf. This clearing was a trap, one designed to lure weary travelers to their deaths. And we weren’t the first to fall into the snare.
Teal’s jaw tightened as he spotted a guard’s insignia among the debris. “Some of these are ours,” he said grimly. “Our people died here.”
We were standing in a graveyard, a killing field.
Next to me, Flynn gave a bitter laugh. “Well, this is just perfect. First, a giant dog drags me around like I’m his favorite bone, then we discover we’ve walked into a trap, now a grim reaper wants to play.”
My gaze followed the direction of Flynn’s pointer finger.
The wraiths had emerged from the trees. They were bony, and terrifying, and wrapped in wispy black shrouds. My breath caught in my throat. The wolven had been a predator, but these things were something else entirely. Death itself seemed to emanate from their forms. They certainly carried the stench of the tomb. The smell snuck through the vortex, and I gagged.
“How long can you keep this up?” Teal sounded worried.
As long as I had to. I wasn’t losing my soul to one of those things. “Where are Grayson and Pierce?”
He frowned as if my answering his question with one of my own annoyed him. “They’re on patrol, circling our perimeter, but they should be back by now.” Teal’s voice carried a hint of worry beneath the irritation.
We’d been attacked twice. Without any advance notice. “Doesn’t that mean they’re looking for threats? They’re not very good at it.”
Flynn barked a laugh. “I’ll tell them you said so.”
That assumed they were alive and we somehow saw morning. “These things only come out at night?”
Teal gave a brief nod. “That’s right.”
So I had to hold them off till sunrise? Exhaustion pulled at my already tired limbs. We were screwed. “Please tell me dawn is soon.”
Teal looked up at the star-scattered sky. “We’ve got hours yet. Three at least, probably four.”
“Might as well be days. Why the fuck did we cut through this forest?”
“We were late.”
