“Let’s keep going,” Arthur said, voice tight, not turning his gaze away from the trees around them. The only sound was the babbling of the Dismal and their deep breaths.
They went from tree to tree, oak after birch after pine, finding the same upturned soil. The longer they searched, the more Maggie’s hands shook. A cold wash of fear cascaded over her, like the shivering palpable fright she’d felt within the pall. An animal instinct drove her to look around the too-quiet forest, scanning the spaces between the trees. “Something isn’t right, Arthur,” she whispered, trying to keep the fear out of her voice and failing.
Arthur walked on, but Maggie couldn’t lift her foot, couldn’t bring herself to go forward. “Arthur!” She wanted to yell it, but it came out again like a whisper, and he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the Dismal’s current beside them. Ahead, he crouched down in front of a sassafras tree that was about fifteen yards away. Too far from her.
He reached down to the soil and pulled up a long vine, its leaves a dark green, nearly black. Maggie could see its stem was the earthy purple they were looking for. He looked back and began to say something, but instead his mouth contorted into a curse, and feeling came crashing into Maggie all at once.
A hissing screech echoed through the woods, a sound that seeped into Maggie like venom. Above her, a figure sped through the trees. She caught only glimpses of it through the leaves—sallow skin; deep red, animal eyes; a hand with fingernails like claws, sharpened into points, holding an already wilting bundle of gloaming creeper with dangling, exposed roots.It laid a trap for us.And the monster screeched again, revealing a mouth full of dagger teeth stained dark that made Maggie’s heart drop. Though she had heard the sound for weeks at a distance, it was nothing like the agony of hearing a banshee’s scream up close. She brought her hands up to her ears and pressed them in, trying to find some relief, but it did little to muffle the wail.
When there was finally a break in its cry, Maggie looked around and saw Arthur on the ground, holding his hands against the sides of his head. He grimaced in pain and Maggie didn’t think, she just ran toward him, tripping over roots and underbrush. She urged herself forward, trying to get to Arthur before the banshee, and lifting her bat in a fluid motion. It was the only graceful thing she managed, though, as low branches scraped across her skin, and she nearly skidded on a bank of mud.
The creature dropped its gloaming creeper trap and hovered above Arthur, a beast over its prey. It reached down slowly, whatever covering it wore over its skin hanging in filthy tatters.Long nails scraped against the bark above Arthur’s head, just barely brushing his hair in a sinister taunt. He cringed and scooted away from the tree trunk, clambering for his bat. He didn’t tear his eyes away from the banshee, which was slowly making its way toward him with hands outstretched as he hissed, “Get back to the path!”
Despite her fear, Maggie managed to scoff. As if she would leave him here, abandon him when he hadn’t abandoned her. He was ridiculous.
With a final lurch forward, the banshee reached a hand out toward Arthur, ready to drag its claws down his cheek, but then there was the undeniablesnapof magic, and the banshee was retreating, hissing and cradling its hand as if it had been burned. Her rune had worked.
Arthur kicked a leg up and managed to snag the banshee’s leg, enraging the beast even more until it was screeching again. “Get back, Maggie!” Arthur yelled once more, getting up on his knees with enough purchase to swing his bat. With another one of those horrendous hisses through its fangs that Maggie swore she could feel in her chest, the banshee grabbed the bat and tugged it out of Arthur’s hands, tossing it into the Dismal. “Fuck,” he cursed. “Throw me your bat!” he gasped, trying to catch his breath.
“Absolutely not!” Maggie shouted, half hoping the banshee would turn its attention toward her. She was upright and uninjured. She’d been farther away from the banshee as it had screeched, and it seemed to have made a difference in how affected they both were. “Only one of us has played in an all-star softball game, and obviously it wasn’t you.” Maggie steppedback on her heel, cocking her elbow, and allowed muscle memory from years of practice to completely take over. “If you think I’m going to let you take credit for fighting off a banshee like you did the day the pall fell out of some sort of misguided, self-righteous belief that I’m a damsel…”
“This is not the time!” Arthur yelled, his eyes wide as the banshee came careening back. When it was close enough, Maggie swung the bat as hard as she could, missing the beast by a hair’s breadth, but it was enough. It shrieked, the force of the magic contained in the rune on the bat pinning the banshee against a tree trunk.
Maggie reached a hand down to Arthur and yanked him to standing. Ridiculously, he had a huge grin on his face. “Come on,” she said, already beginning to jog back to the warded pathway.
“I got the gloaming creeper!” He grinned even wider, holding it up to show her.
“And almost got killed in the process,” she muttered, turning to see if the banshee had been released from its invisible shackles. It was still pinned by the magic, frothing and writhing against the force that kept it down. “How long will that magic hold?”
“Not long.” They were nearly there, the wards shimmering in the late-afternoon sun. Arthur reached for Maggie as they ran, tugging her through the wards, before they collapsed over the line that marked the path. He caught her in his arms, and they tumbled together to the ground with anoofand a sharp pain in Maggie’s hip. She had landed halfway onto Arthur’s chest, his hard body, all lean and muscle, beneath her. Incomprehensibly, he was laughing. Giggling.
She leaned up on her elbow and furrowed her brow, which seemed to make him laugh harder. “Nothing about that was funny.”
“You’re very right about that,” he said, nearly out of breath from the running and the bubbling laughter. “You were spectacular. I don’t know why you were ever frightened.” After a moment, he added, “Thank you. I would have been a banshee’s dinner if it weren’t for you.”
Abruptly, Arthur’s eyes widened, and Maggie turned to see the banshee had pulled free of its invisible shackles to follow their scent. Banshees couldn’t see well in daylight, and their presence was masked by the runes on the path, but they both held their breath. With a huff that felt too human for Maggie’s comfort, the banshee vanished into the trees. After a moment, Maggie realized she was still half on top of Arthur and his fingers were tight around her arm, sure and safe.
She cleared her throat, and he let her go so she could stand and brush off her leggings, looking warily toward the sun that was close to setting. “What happens at night?” she asked.
Arthur came up beside her and took the bat she still gripped in her hands, his touch gentle. “Nothing,” he said calmly. “We camp. We eat and have a drink and tell ghost stories around the fire.”
“Please, no more ghosts.”
“Fine. Tell me stories about Branagh.” He paused. “About enemies who become lovers.”
She swallowed. She wanted to give in to what was clearly flirting, but she bit her lip. “Won’t the banshees be able to see us at night?”
“The wards will keep them away. We’re safe now,” he said. “I promise.”
—
Maggie sat onan old picnic table covered in engravings left by previous campers while Arthur unpacked his supplies. He set a rune afire in the middle of the small, warded circle until it burned with a pleasant heat, and then set up faefire torches that burned heatless flame. They doubled as protection and cast the clearing in a charming, flickering light that did as much to settle Maggie’s nerves as the wards themselves. Maggie had finally caught her breath, but she couldn’t stop looking for the banshee in the darkening forest that surrounded their small, illuminated campsite.
She traced the engravings on the picnic table and watched Arthur. He had removed his fleece long ago, and she was trying to pretend she wasn’t watching the muscles in his arms flex as he lifted supplies out of his pack. There were now two large nylon bags sitting on the packed dirt, along with a clear box she could see contained food, but he was still digging around in the interdimensional pocket. He swore and then looked through the supplies again.
“What is it?” Maggie asked, standing to come and help.
He looked through the pack one more time and shook his head. “It’s nothing. I just forgot something, but it’s not important.”
