I pull Clara to her feet and run for the door. Rascal follows, a chunk of black silk hanging from his mouth.
“Bram!” I scream, turning when the snow outside lashes my face.
He is there, at the door, the dead women holding back the Haunts. Ransom is on his hands and knees, black slime slurrying down his face. Bram is almost past him.
And then Ransom’s hand snaps out, a knife glinting in the moonlight.
He slices Bram throat to navel, and I watch in stunned horror while the dried and dead viscera spills out like ash.
Bram’s face twists, turns gray, and he falls to his knees.
“Bram!” I scream again, going to run, to hold my hands against his skin.
Clara’s fingers hold me fast, pulling at me.
“Addie, we must go!”
Ransom stands, smiles with too many teeth, while Bram kneels before him. He turns, makes sure I am watching—knowing—and sinks his fingers between the cut in Bram’s chest, pulling out his heart.
It is still beating. Just barely. A shrunken, wilting flower of pale pink. A remembrance of life.
A cry curdles at the back of my throat. Clara’s arms come to wrap around my waist. Rascal’s teeth are at my heels.
Ransom holds up the heart, squeezes it. Bram buckles and gasps for air. Ransom’s brow peaks, eyes glinting like wicked coals. His lips part, and he speaks a single word.
“Run.”
And so, I do.
twenty-seven
Through the trees, the sky drips like blood. This world smells of it too, and my throat closes in on itself. I push up from the damp leaves, leaning back against the nearest tree, sharp-edged twigs scraping my palms. My gown is stained with mud. The skin on my wrists, where Ransom held me, molts purple.
I catch my breath, shivering in the cold, my arms goosing. Clara lies beside me, bundled in her wool cloak. Bits of red leaves catch in her oak-brown hair, and she turns to face me, blinking in the sullen light.
“What time is it?”
I stare blankly ahead. “There’s no way to tell. I think we’ve been asleep for a few hours.”
It is a lie. I have not slept at all. How can I?
I close my eyes, conjuring the image of Bram slit open, gray guts spilling to the mud at his feet. My own ache from running, blisters rubbing raw on my heels, boots puddling with my own blood. We stopped only when Clara could go no further. I told her to sleep, and she did. Though judging by the charcoal circles beneath her eyes, she has not gotten much.
“Any sign of them?” She rubs the dirt from her cheeks.
I assume she means the Haunts, and I shake my head. We ran as though they had whips at our backs, but we never saw them. Rascal stirs in the leaves at my side, sits and sniffs the air. I ruffle his ears.
“Do you smell something, boy?” I bury my nose in his fur, taking deep breaths of his smoky musk.
He prickles, skin pulling taut. My eyes dart to the trees surrounding us, each gray and white trunk a corpse. A forest of living death.
A branch snaps in the undergrowth behind us, and I push to my feet. Clara and Rascal are alert at my sides. She takes a hold of my hand, her skin chilled.
A shape grows amongst the trees. A shadow of a black so deep the space it takes almost seems empty. More a void than a solid thing.
A growl starts at the back of Rascal’s throat. I place a hand on his head to settle him, to calm myself. Fear grows in my gut like mold while the thing before us blossoms, stretches tall, and turns a face toward us in the red light.
My stomach drops to the soles of my feet.
