I saw... a large black spot in the middle of a large forest—a circular clearing. Extremely large. I just couldn’t tell if anything was built in that clearing.
“If that’s Cluj, then these are those haunted woods. The Hoia Forest,” he said, soundingfartoo excited for someone who was about to crash a plane. “Remember? The brochure we were reading on the train? One of the many places Vlad was beheaded? The brochure said it was near Cluj, and it had a big dead spot where nothing grew. This is that dead spot!”
“Yay?” I said.
“I think there’s room to land.”
“Wait!” I said. “Are you sure?”
“Fifty percent sure? Besides, it’s too late now. Better there than in the trees.” Huck took the plane lower. The sheer of wind as we descended was almost as loud as the engine had been before it died.
“My kingdom for a fucking parachute,” Huck mumbled as he tilted the plane, guiding it over the treetops, lower, and lower, and lower....
“Oh, Huck,” I said. “I’m so very sorry.”
“What’s that? Must need to clean my ears, because that sounded like an apology. And Theodora Fox never apologizes.”
“I mean it, Huck. I’m truly sorry.”
“Why? You didn’t kill the engine.”
“But I may be killing us. We should’ve slept in the hangar as you suggested.”
“It’s done now. Don’t think of it.”
How could I not? I thought about that and about my father. Of the cursed bone ring calling to me back in Sighi?oara. Of Lovena telling me I had old blood and of Valentin’s stories about giant white wolf priests.
And I thought about Huck. His hands on my face in the hotel in Bucharest... I left everything on the table, unfinished and unsaid. I should have talked to him. I should have told him how I felt. Now it was too late.
Still. If I was going to die with anyone, I was glad it was with him.
This was it. I braced for death. How truly ironic that we were going to die where the Impaler, Vlad ?epe?, was rumored to have been beheaded.
“Banshee?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to try to land us best I can. But if I screw it all up and I die but you survive, I want you to know something.” The entire plane was shuddering. Everything below was coming toward us far too fast. “I regret...”
The rest of his words were lost under the riotous sound of the plane.
Regret what?Regret what?
“What did you say?” I shouted.
“Hold on,” he yelled back. “This is going to sting like Satan’s whip!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for death. Then I opened them again, because, dammit, I was not a coward!
Much!
Something banged against my side of the plane. Did a wing clip a tree branch? We tilted precariously to one side, and then—
We hit the ground with a terrible crash. All at once it was:
My head hitting the back of the seat.
A wave of earth and snow coming up over the propeller.
