“What the heck?” I hurry over and shake them. “Guys… What happened?”
Neither of them move.
Damn. What now? I check them over for stingers, unable to explain why they both lost consciousness at the same time.
Cracking and snapping comes from the main bush. I spin toward the noise, leaning back in surprise as a thin, genderless figure made of wood emerges from the dark blue leaves. The creature has a generally humanoid shape with branches for arms and legs, though it’s as thin as a telephone pole, and a few inches shorter than me. Well, there’s a first. For once, I’m taller than the monster.
Two almond-shaped spots of red light on its bulb-shaped head approximate eyes. After a few seconds of blank staring, the eye-spots narrow at me. Though it lacks any sort of mouth, a male voice fills the air. “How is it that you remain awake? How have the aromatic nectars not lulled you to sleep?”
“I have a really high metabolism. And my sister is like crazy into scented candles. I’ve built up a tolerance.”
The wood-thing takes a step toward me, reaching his three-fingered branch hand out to point. “You have come to steal a fey amaranth.”
“Actually, I was hoping you had some perennials. My mom really likes Hibiscus.”
He stands there silent. Not like the round blob of wood he’s got for a face can convey any emotional expression.
“Yes, I’m here for a fey amaranth. Let me guess, you’re going to tell me to go kill 300 wild boars for you before I can take one?”
“I do not understand, human.”
“Forget it. You’re like some guardian of the bush or something, right?”
“I am a forest spirit. This is my home. I offer an exchange. You may take one of my flowers in exchange for them.” He points at the boys.
“Umm. No. One, they’re not mine to give away, two, they’re people.”
The wood creature’s arm falls to his side with a faint crackle of trampled twigs. “Foolish human. What do you think those flowers are?”
“Umm. Fey amaranths?”
He tilts backward, body faintly shaking as deep male laughter surrounds me from no apparent source. “Those flowers are grown from former fools.”
I gasp. The more I look at my surroundings, the more I have the sense those vines are blood red for a good reason. Here and there in the grass, I make out the shapes of human bones peeking up. “Whoa. The flowers are made from dead people?”
“You would use the term souls.” He spreads his arms out to the sides. “You may take one amaranth in exchange for a soul to replace it, plus one.”
“So… you steal souls?”
“It is not stealing to claim what fools forfeit. By entering this grove, you have surrendered. Be appreciative you are able to leave. Most cannot. Most never wake.”
I cringe inwardly at the thought of harvesting someone’s soul to power a potion. That certainly explains why not every vampire tries to change their bloodline. Still, who or whatever became those flowers is already dead, and bringing one to Garrett will potentially save hundreds of lives.
“I can’t give you the boys.”
He bows his bulb head. “Alas. My fascination with your lack of sleep wanes. As you refuse to be reasonable, I shall have to claim all three of you.” He lunges at me, grabbing for my arm with long, twig like fingers. I lean to the right, avoiding his grip, and pound him square in the face. My punch knocks him flat and sliding—and breaks every bone in my hand.
The wood man sails headfirst into one of the spoke roots with a dull thud, flipping up and over it.
“Ow. Son of a bitch.” I shake my hand out as the bones re-knit.
Incoherent babbling in the wood creature’s voice emanates from everywhere. He waves his arms around like he can’t quite figure out how to stand back up. Having little interest in fighting this thing, I dash forward and flick a claw at the stem of the nearest fey amaranth, slicing it off as close to the base as possible.
“Stop!” shouts the wood man, sitting up.
I clamp the stem in my teeth and run, grabbing the brothers by their backpacks and dashing out of the grove, dragging them, their arms and legs flopping around.
The wood creature chases, but only to the edge of the wreath. His branchy fingers swipe at me, but I’m way too fast for him. I stop after about twenty yards and look back. Wood Man glares at me from the wreath for a moment, then storms back inside, disappearing into the bush.
Okay, now I have questions.
Does Garrett know what these flowers are?
Did he deliberately send multiple ghouls in here expecting to make a trade?
Would ghouls have been able to resist the sleeping gas in there?
Did Garrett fail to warn us of that and let the boys go expecting I’d have to broker them for a flower? Or did he not know any of this?
I look down at two very unconscious teenage boys.
“Shit. This is not what Mom meant by boys being baggage!”
25
Wild Dreams
Well, I suppose it’s a simple matter of waiting for the poison fumes to wear off, right?
Still holding the fey amaranth stem in my teeth, I drag the boys along at a jog, hurrying back to the sunken burrow. Once inside, I take their backpacks off and lay them beside each other. I’m no doctor, but as far as I can tell, they’re still alive, breathing normally, and their heart rates sound fine.
Considering the two-ish hours it took to go from here to the grove, and back here, I don’t have enough night left to get far before sunrise. I’m also quite in need of a snack, so I can’t afford sun exposure.
Oh well. May as well make myself comfortable. I remove my sneakers, peel my soaked socks off, and drape them over the backpack. My clothes have mostly dried out by now, but it will be days before my sneakers recover from that downpour.
The fey amaranth glows from where I left it on the ground. It hasn’t dimmed at all, nor does it look withered. Then again, no flower really withers within two hours of being picked. It’s eerie, but I have the strangest feeling it’s looking at me. When I try to ‘mind read’ it, there’s no connection at all, so I disregard the odd feeling as my overactive imagination. It might’ve consumed ‘soul energy’ to create that flower, but I don’t think it’s a ‘trapped soul’ that still has any sort of awareness.
I take the blanket out of my backpack, wrap the flower as carefully as I can, and ease it back inside. That done, I set up my sleeping bag and sack out.
Consciousness returns the next afternoon.
Worry about my family comes out of nowhere, but I hold it back by chanting ‘fifteen minutes’ to myself over and over for a while. The least I can do for them is to handle this weird shit myself and leave them out of it. If they remain clueless that anything bizarre happened during our vacation, I’ll consider it a win. And I swear, this is the last time I complain about a vacation being boring. How could I have known the universe listens to me now?
I force myself up and stretch. Socks are dry but sneakers are still damp inside. Ugh. If I didn’t have a three-day hike, I’d say screw it and go barefoot. Despite knowing my feet would heal in seconds from stepping on anything sharp, it still hurts. So, gritting my teeth, I suffer the spine-wiggling sensation of putting on cold, wet sneakers. The only feeling worse than that is putting a cold, wet swimsuit bottom back on. No point re-soaking the socks, so I stuff them in my pocket.
The boys are still out cold. Prodding and shaking doesn’t do any good.
I peel open Cody’s eyes with my thumbs and dive into his mind, but it’s blank. I’ve only seen a head that empty once before. No, I’m not going to say Bree Swanson. I’m thinking more of Scott whenever one of his sportsball teams was on TV.
“Okay, that’s really messed up. There’s nothing going on in there at all.” I check Ben, and he’s the same. “Whatever they breathed in like turned them off. They’re not even dreaming.”
They’re still both breathing, heartbeat seems okay.
> I edge up to the tunnel and peer out. It’s kinda bright, but not instant-death sun.
A few minutes pass as I stand there looking back and forth between the way out and the brothers. Are they going to wake up or is that permanent? Could they get worse? Dammit. Grr. I can’t sit around.
“Sorry guys,” I say to my dry socks, before putting them on. “Gotta cover my ankles.”
I take the blanket from Cody’s pack and set it aside before borrowing his socks for mittens. I pull Ben’s coat off to take his shirt, which I wrap around my head, covering everything except for a narrow eye-slit. I put his coat back on him, drag the brothers onto the floor, and strap them into their backpacks. After donning my pack, I wrap myself in the blanket so I’m basically a Pac Man ghost, and grab their packs.
About halfway up the exit tunnel, the sun hits me… and the boys’ weight drags me over backward, sliding back into the room. Grr. As a mortal, I’m nowhere near strong enough to drag them both at once. I could probably carry either one of them without a backpack, though it wouldn’t be fun. And there’s no way I can carry both without my vampiric strength. I can’t even drag them both in ‘normal mode.’
“Dammit! We’re stuck here.” I slouch. “Well… I tried.”
I put all clothing back where it belongs and hang my socks up again to dry. Since I’m going to be here until dark, I might as well leave my sneakers off so they air out, too. At least I’m saving energy and won’t make myself famished. Hours of mind-numbing boredom drag by.
“Whoa,” says Cody in a drawn-out, sleepy voice. Seconds later, he erupts in laughter.
“You’re awake!” I yell, leaping to my feet.
“Pickles,” says Ben.
“What?” I ask.
“The stars are on fire,” mutters Cody.
“No, the marshmallows are rebelling.” Ben points at the ceiling. “King Peep is going down.”
I lean over and grasp his cheeks, making him look at me. Junior year, Ashley got some weed and totally overdid it. She couldn’t even stand. Cody looks twice as high as she’d been that night. One of Scott’s friends once had something he called Khadafy Weed, basically pot mixed with LSD. No, I didn’t try it, but these two look like they stole the entire stash.
“Girl,” says Cody. He tries to point at me, but sticks his finger up my nose.
“Gah!” I jump back.
Ben starts laughing.
“Ugh.” I sit back down on the floor. “At least you guys are awake… sorta.”
They proceed to babble random nonsense and make strange noises for the next few hours. Ben tries swimming in place. Cody makes popping noises like a fish trying to breathe air before discovering he has fingers and staring at them in total awe, mystified at how he can move them my mental command.
By the time it’s become dim enough outside that I can tolerate it without mummifying myself, they’ve tamed down to random giggles and a thick mental fog. Whenever I try talking to them, they react a few seconds late. That beats unconscious dead weight. DMV sloths I can work with.
I pull my sneakers back on without socks since they’re still a bit squishy inside, then put the backpacks on the boys like I’m dressing toddlers. Ben complains that the walls are melting after I pull him upright. Cody screams, staring at his feet.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He keeps screaming.
I dive into his head. He sees himself sinking into the floor, the stone melting and tentacles coming up to grab him. Ugh. To save time, I give them both a mental command to follow me and ignore anything weird. They stumble along as I herd them out the tunnel into the woods. Even the almost-twilight gloom makes me hungry as hell, but I am so done with this place it’s not even funny. Sheer determination to go home keeps my growling stomach quiet.
The boys stop laughing randomly after a while, and we walk in silence through the night. By the time sunrise feels imminent, they’ve returned to their relatively normal—though foggy and sluggish—selves. Ben raises his arm and points while emitting a zombie-like moan.
“What?” I ask, for a second almost hoping it’s another troll. Disgusting as it tasted, I’d still force myself to drink that blood.
“Hut.”
“Oh.” Yeah, the sky’s bluing again. I veer to the right and climb a bit of a hill to the same decrepit shack the boys took me to the first time the sun snuck up on me in here. Good enough.
After collecting six giant apples, we hurry inside before the sun peeks over the forest canopy. Each boy takes an apple and savages it like they haven’t eaten in days.
“What happened?” asks Cody past a full mouth. “I think I blacked out.”
“Me too,” says Ben. “I remember going into that place with the glowing flowers, then we’re walking in the woods and everything is hazy and weird.”
“That plant gives off some kinda sleeping gas. Both of you fainted in seconds of walking into the middle part. Some creature came out of it and wanted to take your souls. I think people who go in there usually, umm, don’t get back up.”
They stare at me.
I start explaining everything in greater detail, but the sun sneaks up on me.
When I regain consciousness, I’m on the cot with a blanket over me. Like all the way over me, covering my face, too. Lead in my bones tells me the sun’s in a pissy mood. I lay there with no desire to move for some time. The door clatters open, blasting me with hellfire. Fortunately, the blanket keeps the flames to a minimum.
“Ow,” I deadpan.
“Don’t sit up!” says Ben.
“Yeah, kinda got that feeling from the smoke. It’s bright.”
Cody laughs. “Nah. Ben’s only wearing his briefs. We just cleaned up in the stream.”
“You’re in your underwear, too.”
“Yeah, but I’m not worried my girlfriend’s going to see how skinny I am.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Then why are you glowing red?”
“Stuff it, Cody.”
I chuckle under my breath. Rustling and rummaging accompanies them getting dressed. Since the sun is brutal today, I throw myself back into not-dreaming. A hand jostles me awake in what feels like seconds.
“Sun’s going down,” says Cody.
“Cool.” I pull the blanket off my face and sit up. It’s dark enough inside the hut with the door closed to qualify as night… and my sneakers are missing. “Shoes?”
“Oh. Put ’em out in the sun for you so they dry.” Cody stands. “I’ll get ’em.” He goes outside and returns a moment later with my sneakers, which feel mostly dry.
“Cool. Thanks.” I dust my soles off, then slip the sneakers on. “You guys ready to get the hell out of here?”
“You know it,” says Ben, holding up his left hand to show off his glowing ring. “We’re close enough to detect the portal.”
A six-ish hour walk brings us to the small clearing where Garrett stands in the portal waiting for us. Seeing that doorway kills all my worries and makes the most pressing matter on my mind a long, hot shower. I don’t care if I have to share the tiny bathroom with all three of my siblings at once, a shower is happening the instant I’m back at the RV. I’ve had enough ‘roughing it’ for a century.
Garrett watches us from inside the door, his expression one of astonished bewilderment… like he saw a guy dressed as Darth Vader playing the bagpipes while riding a unicycle.
I step through the portal and bask in the stale fragrance of the caverns. Ahh… reality. Normality. Sanity… or some pretend combination thereof. At least the trolls here only exist on the Internet. “Hey. Why the face?”
“It was most bizarre watching the three of you walk out of the forest as if on fast-forwarded video. You appeared to cover several miles in seconds.”
“Oh. Yeah. I can see why that would be weird.”
Garrett grasps me by the shoulders, making me feel super tiny. “Did you find it?”
“Yeah. Relax. I have it.” I shrug off the back
pack as the boys step in. “How much do you know about the fey amaranth?”
He scratches his head. “Only that it exists and there’s a grove.” I can’t see into his head, but his demeanor seems genuine. “Why?”
“Ghouls wouldn’t have worked.” I unpack the flower and explain about my encounter with the wood man.
“Oh.” He turns toward the brothers. “I am truly sorry that you faced such a risk.”
They unload their backpacks and stick everything on the shelves.
“No problem,” says Ben, not looking at him.
“Here.” I hold up the glowing flower.
Garrett takes it in both hands, as awestruck as a small boy meeting Santa Claus. “It’s magnificent. Far more beautiful than I ever imagined.” He sighs. “But, this is a soul?”
“I don’t know if it is a soul or only made from one. Either way, the person is dead. You might as well use it. Not making that potion won’t change what happened. And I picked it, so the thing might wither and fade anyway.”
“Knowing the true cost of this fills me with regret, but you raise a valid point.” He clutches the stem. “I shall not waste this opportunity you have provided. You have my deepest thanks.”
“No problem. We can find our way out.”
Garrett nods.
The three of us walk gingerly behind him as he returns to his bedroom. The instant he’s no longer between us and the way out, I scurry up to a brisk trot. I’m sure he’s painfully aware that we all want to be away from him as fast as possible in case has an ‘episode,’ but he shows no reaction. Being back in the real world gives the boys a second wind.
It’s still the middle of the night here, so the cavern lights are off. As much as I want to race to the top, I force myself to stay with them as they’re navigating by one flashlight. According to my—yay!—once again working iPhone, it’s 2:53 a.m. by the time we climb all the way back to the cave entrance.
I take the flashlight from Cody and return it to the bewildered park ranger who’s still standing near the entrance. He’s kind enough to donate a pint and a half or so of blood that tastes like trail mix.
The Last Family Road Trip (Vampire Innocent Book 4) Page 19
