I needed more. I needed a barrier. I scanned the ground searching for inspiration, torch held aloft to ward off the weavers. Leaves crunched beneath my boots.
The ground was dry. Kindling all around. I darted forward, dragging my torch along the ground, lighting up bracken to create a fiery line between us and them. A circle to protect us.
“What the Fel are you doing?” Bryce demanded. “Salamanders will come!”
The wood weavers screeched and reared back.
“Fuck the salamanders. We can deal with them after these soil sucking bastards are gone,” Poppy said, hauling Bella over her shoulders. “Worst case, I’ll draw water from the air and hold them back while we make a run for it.”
The wood weavers pressed in, testing the barrier, then retreated, only to test it again.
“The fire’s dying,” Poppy said.
The barrier fizzled, burning low in places with nothing to fuel it. “Shit.”
My torch was almost dead too. “Come on! Come on, burn.” I pressed the torch to the barrier flames. “I need you, please.”
A root whipped out, slashing my hand. I pulled it back sharply, and a droplet of blood hit the flames with a sizzle. Another root tried to snag my wrist, and I dodged it, splashing more drops of blood into the fire.
The flames fizzed and flared—blue then purple, and a male voice spoke from within them. “Onyx blood spilled in offering is now ours to protect.”
“Solaris?”
The flames flared higher, morphing into a large lizard-like beast, then into a humanoid form which split into several, until the fire itself became an army of burning figures.
The wood weavers attempted to retreat, but the fire men swept toward them, engulfing them in flames, and for the next few moments, the forest was filled with the shrill screams of dying Horrors.
When silence finally fell, and the flames winked out with a satisfied sigh, we were left with five blackened, crystallized hearts.
The hearts of wood weavers.
* * *
Bella regainedconsciousness once we were back on the plains, but she was pale and weak. Bryce offered to carry her now that she was able to hold on to him, and we picked up the pace.
No one asked me about the salamanders—or why they’d helped us. Just as well, because I didn’t understand it myself.
The five wood weaver hearts were in Poppy’s pack, tiny things for creatures that had looked so large.
The ravens tracked us from above, silent and watchful.
It’s over, right?” Bella said, her face pressed to Bryce’s back. “It’s midnight.”
“Yes,” Poppy said. “We just have to get back now.”
Figures sprinted toward us across the plain. Tyler and his cronies. “Great.”
Tyler had something dangling from his hand, and as he got closer, I made out the details—a disembodied head with long, dark hair and empty sockets where the eyes had been.
“They got an undine,” Poppy said.
“One?” Bella scoffed. “Ha!”
Bryce chuckled.
“Heading back with your tails between your legs, eh?” Tyler gloated as he approached. “Oh, did you get hurt?” He pressed his hand to his chest, mock concern twisting his smirk.
“Fuck off, Damascus,” Poppy said.
