Page 180 of Veil of Blood and Bone

The main road curves away from Nightshade Hollow, and through the dip between two swells of hills. There are no more houses here. Only creatures moving through the weight in a shade darker than night, pushing from one plane of existence to the next.

And somewhere out there, Helene. Bleeding.

“Don’t do this to me, monster.”

We track the scent of her through the curse, my powers going haywire the closer we get. At last something eases, a shifting in the world, and with the yellow paint on the road a suggestion of color, we catch it.

Tracks of tire prints swerving from one side of the street to the other.

I clamp down on the animalistic sound forcing higher up my throat. My hand lifts, shadows pushing across those lines, and even those resist me.

Traitors.

“Find her!” I yell.

Thunder cracks, a biting wind nipping beneath our clothes, stealing life and warmth and my fucking afterglow.

For Nicholas, it doesn’t matter.

His blood stilled in his veins on the battlefield too long ago to mention. His undead heart doesn’t need paltry things like sunlight or heat to exist.

And Forest⁠—

Branches crack overhead and I glance up in time to watch the huge raven take off between them, dive bombing toward the faint disappearing wheel marks, barely visible through the snowfall.

“Fuck,” Nicholas grumbles.

Forest disappears into the storm. If he dies before I kill him myself, I'll be furious.

“He’s ahead, following the tire tracks.” Nicholas takes off, pumping his arms faster.

Worry strings us together, and I’m only a step behind him, trees closing ranks to the rear of us.

Blocking the road. Blocking the world. Like no one has ever dared to build among them until now.

Shadows bind tight, landing on their target. Nicholas and I pull up short as snow breaks into ice, driving against our skin. Thick clouds overhead pummel the world in cold. The car.

The giant.

At first there’s only wreckage, twisted metal buried under ice and snowdrifts. Steam has long since stopped curling up, leaving only the ghost of pale ribbons.

Then the creature moves, and the world shrinks around the car.

A massive shape, too large for this realm. It crouches over the frozen heap of the midsize sedan, hovers, claws digging into the rear bumper. Fucking huge thing, its attention focused on the vehicle.

And the screams inside.

Ice groans under those four massive limbs when the ice giant shifts. Its claws drag, harsh, diagonally over the crushed hood of the car and frost tendrils spiral outward. Wherever the frost touches, violent cracks spread like spiderwebs.

Well. Fuck.

The brute is enormous.

Spiny shoulders hunch high into the lower pine branches with skin the color of creeping glaciers stretched over the wolf’s form. Faint runes and words of power hum inside translucent flesh and pulse white and blue, alive.

From the backseat of the sedan, one of the girls screams. Helene.

The tenor of it slices through every thought in my head. A smaller, shriller cry sounds from overhead.