Page 61 of The Wild Zone

“Like, weird weird,” Harper agreed.

I wrinkled my forehead and looked at each of them.

“Okay,” I said, “time for you guys to come clean. I told you about the ring Grant and I found in the fissure. I told you about the creature in the trees. What really happened to you all during the hazing? I want details.”

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Benny stared into the lava. “I didn’t think it was connected to anything…. But I did pass this one tree that had a weird rune carved into the trunk.”

Ice water trickled down the back of my neck. I thought about the sigil on the scroll I’d found under my pillow.

“What did the rune look like?” I tried to keep my voice even.

“Like an eta.” Benny drew it with his finger in the air—a mark nothing like the sigil on my scroll. “It’s a Greek h. The rune of Hermes.”

Harper spread his hands. “So someone from your cabin tagged a tree the old-timey way. Big deal.”

“Except the symbol was glowing,” Benny added. “And when I touched it…”

He rubbed his forearms. I remembered the weird red marks he’d had on his hands when I met him in the field.

“It burned you,” I guessed.

Benny nodded. “One time on the farm, I got bit by a rattlesnake. It felt like that.”

“Ouch,” Harper said. “Okay, that is weird.”

“Could you find this tree again?” Zuri asked.

Benny’s eye twitched. “I’d rather not. But yeah, probably.”

I turned to Harper. “What about you? Anything you’ve left out?”

Harper blushed and lowered his gaze. “I, uh…well, I did pass a kind of…cave? Tunnel entrance? It was a hole in the ground, anyway. I didn’t go close enough to see inside.” He sneaked a guilty glance at us.

I remembered how he’d balked at going through that drainage pipe during the obstacle course. I wondered if Harper was claustrophobic. Either way, I couldn’t blame him for not exploring a creepy cave in a monster-infested forest at night.

“We should definitely check that out,” Zuri said, rubbing her thumb against her bow pendant.

Benny and Harper looked less than thrilled by that idea.

“And you?” I asked Zuri. “Did you see anything aside from the form in the mist?”

She shifted her weight uneasily, like I’d asked for a kidney instead of a comment.

“During the hazing, no,” she said. “But tonight…”

I felt like I’d been kneed in the gut again. “You went back into the Zone, too? After all that talk about how I should wait for the group, how you couldn’t help me because you were too busy—”

Zuri’s glare stopped me cold.

“I’ve had a lot of practice hunting,” she said. “I can get around the woods without drawing attention. But only if I’m alone.”

I wanted to feel offended. On the other hand, I’d seen how silently she could sneak up on people. When I went into the woods, I tended to scream, rip up trees, and have fights with possibly imaginary enemies.

I grunted. “So what did you discover?”

“I went back to the spot where I saw that thing in the mist,” she said. “I was hoping to find monster tracks. Maybe Grant’s footprints. Instead, I found something worse.”