Chapter 1
Mei
Past
The deadly silence around me is a warning scream telling me I’m screwed.
With desperation born from the desire to live, I force my lungs to move slowly, curling my body into a stillness that only comes from a lifetime of being hunted. The wind stirs small bits of debris, shifting it in whorls before snatching it away. Something died not far from here; the sweet smell of decay lingers, thick and heavy, a warning of what complacency or bad luck gets you.
I press my fingertips to the earth, feeling for telltale vibrations or echoes in the rock that can help me see through this endless dark I live in.
Every single part of me responds to the danger from years of conditioning. Days and nights of running and using every trick I know to fight and escape with my life has me exhausted. Maybe this is the time I don’t make it. Maybe this time, he will have me.
The song gets louder, coming from every corner of the world, filling it, consuming it. This music! No one else can hear it; I’vechecked with the other monsters. But it calls to me, distracts me, and that is dangerous for a monster that is barely surviving. I don’t have the strength to fight off a lot of the more dangerous creatures that live in Nightmare. To them, I am weak, I am food.
I’m ripped down memory lane, picturing the one person I would give anything to see. I remember my mother but just barely. She had hair with highlights that shone red like blood, and it hung down to her mid-back. She would get me to brush it with my fingers, which were so much like hers. She never could explain why we didn’t have talons like everyone else. My mother was human, and that made us both weak in this world. My sire was…something else. But my mother kept me with her as long as she could, teaching me as much as she knew.
She used to sing. I haven’t heard music since she walked out of our cave and didn’t come home. Until not long ago when this booming song burst into the world, travelling through water.
Inescapable.
Like a summons, it throbs in the air now.
“Healer,” a dark and gravelly voice says with a menacing and eerie warble. It’s so sudden and quiet that I almost second guess hearing it.
I tense and crouch down smaller, sniffing the air. My whiskers help me feel the world that I can no longer see. Just hearing his voice has my empty sockets aching. The phantom pains return, his fingers digging into my skull and tearing my eyeballs from my head. I can still hear the pop sound they made when he consumed them. I reach up and grab the tattered veil twisted around my horns and bring it over my face to cover, to hide. It’s a mask and a defense.
Not much of one, but it helps me pretend.
“Rowanee,” he stretches out the word as he gets closer. A whisper of malevolence in the air. A sound so horrifying thateven the bugs stop humming. The wind ceases to move. The world holds its breath.
Deux is a monster in a world of monsters. A hunter with relentless obsession. His skill and strength are only surpassed by the Grim, the Nightmare King and the Prince of Sorrows. And ever since the day I got away, he’s been on my tail, trying to recapture me so he can consume me like he does all the other poor souls who cross his path.
He might actually get to do that this time. I’m backed up between a proverbial rock and a larger rock with only sweeping heated plains in front of me. I can feel the wind telling me nothing but sand and warmth is there. The lack of moisture will kill someone like me.
I have nowhere to go.
The wind sears my body, but I feel cold inside. I try to picture the space around me, feeding the tiny details into it. The cool of the rocks behind me, the trickle of fetid water into a fairly deep but stagnant pool, the sun like a furnace beating down on me. I can hear leaves, but not just any leaves, dry leaves that rustle against each other.
The Ireneaille Tree.
I snap my head in that direction. The tree spits out poison barbs at anyone who gets close and almost always has a thick network of roots that grow over and in water. I run my fingers over my arm until the rune I need heats. With one quick sniff of my surroundings, I sketch the rune in the air. Heat and magic lift the hairs on my arms in a tingling wave that presses into me like the memory of my mother’s warm hugs. The world throbs, and I know it’s worked. I dart towards the tree, stepping carefully down into the water, trying to leave as little movement on the surface as possible. I move quietly but surely and sink down until I’m completely submerged, then I pull myself under the roots and lie there.
Waiting to live.
Waiting to die.
Everything is still. Long, terrible moments pass; every second could be my last. My lungs are burning, ready to burst, but I hold on, trying desperately not to let the air out and give away my location. I think he’s gone; I'm almost certain of it. My grip on the roots loosens, and I slide out towards the surface.
A hand slices through the water, dispersing it, bringing a sick taste of decay in the water. I shift to the side, only just missing the grasping claws as the tip runs along the side of my throat.
I thrash, trying to get away, but to where? There’s nowhere to go. After all this time and all these years, he’s finally got me. Well, I won’t go down without a fight.
The song screams in my ears louder than ever, the water sloshes, his claws stab down, and I can’t hear anything but that sound.
I let out a loud scream underwater, bubbles escaping from my lungs. The pool gets deeper and colder. I’m grabbed and pulled backwards, away from the horrible taint of Deux. The force of that pull is so strong that I couldn’t stop it if I tried. The world rushes, roaring, and then I’m thrown up into a brine-filled sky, and when I land, it’s on cold, wet sand that smells of salt and nothing like the world I know.
“Ow,” I moan and sit up. Where am I?
