by Sarah Jaune
Oliver nodded and didn’t even yell at Eli for the slip up. In some ways, Oliver understood perfectly, but in others he didn’t. He’d been rescued as a small child. He didn’t remember his Overseer father. What Oliver did remember was all the times Eli, Graham, and Naim had woken up screaming from their night terrors. “I promise that I won’t say anything about the storm.”
Eli didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. They’d come to an understanding and that was enough.
CHAPTER 14
TRUE FEAR
He didn’t want to dream. Eli would have loved anything but to dream, even though he knew he was dreaming, and that nothing could really hurt him. Logic meant nothing in dreams.
His father towered over Eli, who hated that his hands were small and his arms were weak. Campbell’s cold, evil, pale blue eyes bore into Elijah’s as the light of a single lamp overhead lit his black hair, making it stand out against his olive skin. “Put him in the basement,” came Campbell’s voice as though from the long end of an echoing tunnel.
Arms lifted him, carrying him as he kicked and fought. The strong man, the head of security, threw Eli over his shoulder and pinned him in his powerful arms. The door to the basement opened, and Eli bumped his head on the railing as he tried to thrash his way free.
“Stop it,” the security man said in a gruff voice as he dropped Eli onto the floor.
“No!” Eli cried out in alarm as he tried to rush the man. A powerful hand shoved him back, and Eli skidded on his butt away from the stairway, away from his one last chance.
The man jogged up the stairs and his bulk blotted out the light from above. It flashed, a rectangle of hope shining just for a moment before the door slammed and a lock turned.
Helpless, now, Eli backed up against the cold stone wall and curled into a ball as he fought not to cry. That was why he was down here in the first place. He’d cried over something his father had done, something that Eli knew was going to change his life forever. Campbell had fired Nanny Florence. He hadn’t given them any warning. They were too old for a nanny, and she was gone. She hadn’t even been able to say goodbye to them.
Naomi had told Eli that it would be okay, and that she’d look after them, but Naomi was only thirteen and she couldn’t help him now. She was so small compared to their father.
Campbell’s voice filled his head, even though his father wasn’t in the room. Campbell’s voice was deep, controlled, and more than a little arrogant. “You will do what I demand, Elijah, or there will be consequences. You will grow to be a tall, powerful man. I expect nothing less. You will do what is expected of you until you are thirty. Then, and only then, will you be handed the seat of Chicago.”
Eli had cried then. He didn’t care about being the Overseer of Chicago. He didn’t care about having the seat of power. He didn’t want the pressure to be tall when it felt like that was completely out of his control. Eli especially didn’t want to think about all of the politics that went into keeping the peace between the zones. He was eight years old, and his nanny, the one who had loved him, was gone. That’s all he wanted to think about. He wanted to cry over his loss and feel sorry for himself.
“Overseers do not cry!” his father had bellowed. Eli was sure that he’d be hit, then, but a wild, untamed glint filled Campbell’s eyes as he’d ordered Eli to the basement.
A sound to Eli’s right made him turn his head, even though he couldn’t see. He willed his ears to work better, to hear clearly what was moving around in the dark. Terror choked at his throat, strangling him until even screaming was impossible. He scrambled up and pressed his back against the stone wall while his shoes scraped the small bit of dirt that sat on the cement floor. It was so loud, so grating, in the silence of the basement that it hurt Eli’s ears.
The sound came again, but he knew what it was now. Something scraped, then something rustled. It was almost exactly the same sound that two hands made as they rubbed back and forth against each other. It sent a chill up his spine.
Another scrape, more rustling. Another scrape, and even more rustling.
Then the hiss sounded low, and dread filled every pore of his being as Eli realized what was in the room with him. He’d never seen a snake, not in real life, but he knew from books what sounds they made.
He screamed for all he was worth and rushed blindly forward in the pitch dark as he groped for the stairs. He stepped on something and fell hard, smacking his head on the bottom step even as a blinding pain shot up his leg. Fangs sank in, then more, then even more, and the agony was so unbearable that his mind took pity on him and Elijah sank into sweet unconsciousness.
Eli jumped as he woke, but managed to halt the scream that sat unsaid in his mouth. Anger swelled through him and despite years of drilling from Maia, he let it ride. He let his fury with his father stay with him, fueling his hatred and revulsion over everything Campbell had done to him. He stared at the ceiling of the cabin as light began to filter in through the cracks around the door frame.
He turned his head and saw Oliver sleeping a few feet away, on the other side of the fire. He rose quietly and silently slid on his shoes before pulling on his backpack and heading for the door. He couldn’t look back at Ivy. For some reason, one he couldn’t name, Eli couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her just then.
They needed breakfast, and Eli couldn’t sit still a moment longer.
Eli stalked the forest, silent and unheard by anything around him. He knew how to move this way. If he wanted, he could move faster than a hummingbird, but with the added bonus that he could do so without anyone hearing anything.
He needed this moment as he moved through the trees, carefully placing his feet so as not to snap a twig and alert any prey. Eli didn’t have to hunt often, but he knew how, and there was no doubt he needed the time alone to come to terms with what he’d remembered.
It hadn’t just been a dream. Eli knew that now. When he’d told Ivy he’d never seen a snake before, apart from that time in Yellowstone, he hadn’t been lying. But that hadn’t meant that he’d never been bitten.
He had no scars. He had no memories apart from the glimpse his dreams had showed him. Eli imagined his father had hoped that incident would toughen him up, but all it had done was implant an unbreakable fear of snakes into Eli’s soul. There were some things that one couldn’t come back from. For Eli, it was being tossed into a dark basement and then having snakes set upon him.
He spotted the rabbit, the first one he’d seen since they’d started into the forest and froze. Its fur was golden, almost the same shade as honey, and it hopped while nibbling on blades of grass.
Eli couldn’t move.
It was stupid. He knew it was stupid. He’d eaten fish the day before, and adored eating chicken. Rabbit was the same. It was meat… he’d killed them before. He sagged down to the forest floor, dropping his head into his hands and gave up on the pretense that he could do this.
He needed his dad. He needed Pablo. He really needed Maia to help him sort through the jumble of garbage that was running through his head. The earth below his jeans was damp, and smelled just like water through a creek.
A creek…
He tilted his head to the side and listened as he heard the faint babble of running water, and he grinned in relief. “You get a pass, bunny,” he told the rabbit, which scampered away at the sound of his voice.
Rabbits were cute. There was absolutely nothing cute about trout.
“You were up early,” Ivy commented as they walked further into the forest, now with a solid lead that Pablo had been there. Eli and Oliver were both scouting for tracks, which meant keeping their heads down. Unfortunately, the heavy downpour the night before had obscured much of what they might have found.
Eli didn’t say anything as he studied the ground, scouring for the imprints of his dad’s passage through this part of the forest.
“Elijah,” Ivy touched his arm, which sent a shock through him. “Sorry,” she apologized quickly. “I didn�
�t mean to—”
“Forget it,” he said as he moved away from her. He didn’t want to talk. He still couldn’t look at her, not even when he’d gone back to the cabin with two fish for them to share for breakfast.
If he stopped moving, he heard the slithering. If he closed his eyes, even for a moment, he was back in that basement and the bites came all over again.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ivy demanded as she caught up to him. This time she took his arm in a vice-grip and forced him to stop. Her expression hardened as she studied his face. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Then knock it off or tell me what’s wrong,” she told him forcefully. “Daggers, Eli! How many times have we been like this? You can trust me.” Then quietly, she added, “Oliver isn’t here. It’s you and me.”
Shame. He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. He wanted to turn away, but she wouldn’t let him.
“You’re fine,” Ivy said simply, echoing her own words from the night before. She linked their hands, squeezing his fingers. “Tell me.”
He did, haltingly, and she listened without interruption until he’d told her the whole story. Finally, Eli met Ivy’s devastated eyes. She didn’t know what to say, and he found that that was okay. She hugged him hard, and kissed his cheek. “You’re fine,” she said again. “So am I. We’re going to find your dad, and he’ll know better what to do.”
“I want to kill Campbell,” Eli said gruffly as he let go of her.
Ivy’s grin was slow. “Come on, Eli… you couldn’t even kill the rabbit this morning.”
“How did you…” his voice trailed off as a chuckle broke his lips. He definitely felt better. “Never mind.”
“I think I have a foot print.”
Eli and Ivy turned at the sound of Oliver’s voice. He stood ten feet away, studying them, but quickly turned and walked back into the trees.
They followed. About a hundred feet further down the path, which was increasingly becoming more overgrown, they found what Oliver was talking about.
It was a footprint, but not Pablo’s.
“Sasquatch,” Eli said as he bent to study the huge print. It was at least as long as Eli’s forearm and hand, with long toes at the end. It pointed north. “So we keep going this way,” he said as he pointed ahead. “It looks to be following this path.”
“The path looks almost completely unused, though,” Ivy said pensively.
“They move through without being noticed, which is impressive,” Oliver whistled out in appreciation. “This is the only footprint I’ve seen. I saw a tiny bit of snagged hair, but nothing else.”
Ivy knelt down to study it further. “Is it even fresh? The dirt looks mostly dry here.”
Eli shook his head. He and Oliver had both been taught to track animals. That had been part of their training, but Ivy was still learning. This, however, was beyond him. “It must not have been hit by the rain, but since it is mostly dry, I’d assume it was at least a few days ago.”
“Let’s see if we can find anything else,” Eli told them. “Ivy, do you want to take point and try to locate the next lead?”
She nodded and they followed after her, with Oliver fanning off to the west to see if he could spot anything in the trees away from the path.
The sun continued its arc across the sky and they found nothing. If Eli had to estimate, he’d have said they hiked at least ten miles before it became too dark to see anything. They camped that night in a small clearing after building up a small fire to stay warm. It wasn’t cold, probably only sixty degrees, but with the damp of the night air they all started to feel the chill.
They ate rabbit that night. Eli had, with Oliver’s help, caught and killed the fluffy thing. Ivy had learned to skin it. “This is so gross,” she muttered as she worked. It was gross, but necessary.
They still hadn’t spotted a single deer.
“I think the water is being rerouted to the west,” Ivy said as they ate rabbit, along with some canned beans that they’d brought along in the backpacks. “The pull that way is stronger, the farther north we go. It feels like I’m leaning that way. It’s not right, though. There isn’t enough life around here.”
“Your dad would have to be doing that, right?” Eli questioned as he picked at something that was stuck between his teeth. He may have hated killing the rabbit, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hungry enough for it to taste bad.
“I would assume so,” Ivy agreed as she gazed off into the blackness of the forest, which the firelight couldn’t penetrate.
“The thing I don’t understand,” Oliver said into the symphony of faint cricket calls, “is why would he ruin the forests around here? These forests are ancient and don’t like to be messed with. You’d think he’d know not to do anything to them.”
Ivy jabbed at the fire with a stick, setting off pops and cracks as tiny sparks jumped into the air. Eli smelled the smoke, the aroma of burning peat moss, and was instantly brought back to all those times he’d been camping with Maia and Pablo over the years. It made something in his gut clench to realize that he may never get that again, not if they couldn’t find Pablo. His mom had to be going out of her mind, too. Eli couldn’t imagine going back to tell Maia that they’d struck out.
“Whatever my dad is doing,” Ivy said eventually, “whatever his plan, it had to be really important to him. I feel completely unstable, like I’ve been knocked in the head. The water isn’t supposed to be like this. Most of the underground reserves have been shifted. I have no idea how the trees aren’t dying.”
Eli sighed as he realized there would be another problem to solve. “We have to stop your dad.”
“We have to find Pablo,” Ivy countered. “I care more about Pablo than my stupid dad.”
“Eli’s right, though,” Oliver said urgently. “We can’t have the trees dying. We need to put things back the way they were. That’s what the Guard is all about.”
Ivy glared into the fire, clearly not happy with what she was hearing. “Can’t we just sic a wendigo on him?”
CHAPTER 15
SCARY STORIES IN THE DARK
“Speaking of wendigoes,” Oliver said.
“We weren’t speaking of them,” Eli retorted. “Isn’t part of the legend that you’re not supposed to talk about them?”
“I think that’s more of a myth than fact,” Oliver replied with a grin.
“We’re not supposed to talk about them?” Ivy asked Eli curiously.
Eli shifted uncomfortably. “That was what I heard from my nanny. She said they weren’t supposed to be talked about, because talking about them could call them to you.”
“I think that’s crap,” Oliver assured him. “No offense to your nanny, of course. How would it know we were talking about it?”
“Magic?” Ivy pointed out dryly. “There are weirder things out there.”
Oliver considered that for a moment. “Nah, I don’t buy it. If they are really men who went crazy—”
“I heard that they abused magic,” Eli interrupted.
“Uh, I heard it was men who turned cannibal, and they were cursed for it,” Oliver told him.
“So basically,” Ivy put in, “we have absolutely no idea what they are.”
“They scared the pod of Sasquatch,” Eli said as he thought back to that night in the cave. “They are so fast, so dangerous, that grown Bigfoots can’t take them on.”
“That sounds pleasant,” Ivy muttered. “Why are we talking about this?”
“Because you want to feed your dad to one,” Oliver reminded her with a laugh.
“Oh, right,” Ivy sighed as she rubbed at her arms and scooted a little closer to the fire. “So we have these creatures that are hairy, walk around on two legs, and are perfectly suited to killing us magical people?”
Eli shook his head. “I never really understood the stories behind them, actually. However they became, they have antlers and glowing red eyes. In the pictures I saw they have claws and are
shaped like a man, but almost like a withered man, except very strong.”
“Here’s something I don’t understand,” Oliver said. “If someone is close enough to get a picture, you’d think they’d be dead. What the legend says is that they’re absolutely lethal.”
Eli had heard that as well. “They weren’t real pictures, just drawings. The book had a collection of them. None of the drawings matched perfectly, but they were all close. I wasn’t old enough to read when I found that book in my father’s library, so I don’t know what it said, but I did look at the pictures a couple of times. All I know is that they’re basically impossible to kill and almost no one survives an encounter with one.”
