Before Lucy could answer, Davina slipped away silently, she was almost invisible in her suit. The front door whispered shut behind her, and she vanished into the mist outside.
The forest swallowed her whole.
Davina moved like shadow and wind, gliding across the branches as vines curled around her arms, lifting and carrying her forward. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light, every movement of the trees pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat.
Then she saw them.
A column of figures moving through the fog, soldiers, armoured and armed, their insignias faintly glowing white against their uniforms.
They were close enough to see, close enough to reach. Mandy had been right; they were coming in fast.
“It’s not two hundred,” Davina whispered to herself, crouching on a high branch. “Closer to fifty… maybe less.”
She crept lower, close enough to hear their voices.
“…same trouble on the other side,” one of them was saying. “Chainsaws are cutting slower than expected.”
Davina’s eyes widened. “Chainsaws?” she mouthed.
Before she could stop herself, a quiet gasp escaped her lips.
One of the soldiers turned. “Did you hear that?”
“Probably a wild animal,” another muttered.
Davina’s expression darkened. “A wild animal? Really?”
She reached out, letting her power flow through the forest floor.
A vine slithered up from the soil like a snake, coiling around the ankles of two guards at the rear. They barely had time to shout before they were catapulted into the air, flung high above the treetops. Their screams vanished into the distance, leaving only chaos below.
The others panicked. Guns lifted. Orders barked. They split into smaller units, scattering through the woods.
Davina moved fast, a blur of motion between the trees.
She sent thorns shooting like arrows through the branches. One impaled a soldier through the neck, another wrapped a vine around his torso, pulling him upward until the forest swallowed him whole.
The trees themselves seemed to respond, shifting and cracking, impaling and closing in.
The forest bled around her, crimson splattering across her suit. The smell of gunpowder and sap filled the air.
Then came the return fire. Gunshots erupted from all sides, flashes of light cutting through the dark. Davina ducked, rolled, and ran the vines snapping up behind her to cover her trail.
Back at the manor, Corey froze. His head snapped toward the window. “Gunfire.”
Lucy’s stomach dropped. “Davina.”
Corey spun around. “What about Davina?”
“She went into the forest,” Lucy said quickly, panic rising in her voice. “She said it’s the only way she knows how to fight.”
“What?!” Corey’s voice cracked through the air like a whip. He was already moving toward the back door. “You let her go?”
“There was no stopping her,” Lucy shot back. “You know how she is!”
Byron was already beside them, weapons ready. The three burst into the garden together, the cold air biting their skin. The sound of distant gunfire echoed through the trees, then something else, deep cracks, groans, the sound of the forest itself coming alive.
Lucy pointed toward the horizon. “There! The trees, look!”
