by Chloe Jacobs
“It’s fine Sloane. Jacob, you can definitely come sit with me. I need someone to help me get warm again.”
There was a little bit of shuffling, and then Wyatt handed the small boy over to her. She settled him in her lap and wrapped her arms around him tight, ignoring the pain in her chest and thigh.
She felt his tiny shoulders relax within her embrace and wished it could be that easy for her to find solace, but images of a certain goblin’s broken and bleeding face haunted her.
Greta peered over Jacob’s head into the darkness where she knew Wyatt sat. Not that she could see him. Not even a faint outline of his shape. If she didn’t have Jacob in her arms, she would have thought she was dreaming and the voices were all in her head—obviously not the first time she’d blended fantasy and reality.
“Where are we?” she asked again.
“A very small bunker that we dug into the ground, for just this type of emergency,” Ray said.
“We’re in the ground?” In a grave! “I thought I touched…rock.” She shivered again. Jacob reacted to her uneasiness by softly caressing the back of her hand with his tiny one, as if he were petting a skittish kitten.
“Yes, we used the rock to shore up the walls.”
That did not make her feel better. Now all she could think about was how they would suffocate and die slowly if the walls and roof caved in on them…
She swallowed and took a deep breath. “How big?”
“Not very,” Wyatt responded. “Maybe ten by six, shored up every few feet. Enough for us to lay low, but no room to move and no room for provisions. We won’t be able to stay long.”
Wyatt was all about the understatements. “How well is the entrance protected?”
He didn’t answer her right away. “We lowered a pretty solid slab of limestone over the opening, and it’s hidden within some dense foliage.”
“Oh, God.” The close feeling crept back up her throat until she wanted to tear at the walls to get out. The only thing keeping the scream from escaping was the distinct awareness of Jacob’s little hand on hers, softly soothing.
Going ballistic in front of these guys wouldn’t do anyone any good—although it might not be very long before Greta didn’t have a choice in the matter. Her insides were burning with the need for clean air even though she recognized that she technically had no difficulty breathing. “Where is the oxygen coming from?”
Niall piped up this time, from somewhere behind her. “I buried a thick, cored-out log in the ground with us. One end opens up in here and the other on the surface so that we won’t run out of air.”
“How ingenious,” she mumbled.
Wyatt’s hand landed on her shoulder again. More than just offering support, this time he was demanding that she keep it together. Greta swallowed and nodded. “So now what?” she asked.
“Well, the good news is that nobody was badly hurt in the raid and we’re all here,” he replied.
Raid? Is that what that had been? Greta would have called it something else—if there weren’t little ears listening intently. “What do we have in terms of weapons?”
“Not much,” said Niall. “A couple of knives. Sloane and I have a few arrows left. And we’ve got your sword.”
Greta worried her lip with her teeth, turning the possibilities over in her head. Sadly, no matter how she looked at the situation, she couldn’t find an upside. They were in the thick of the eclipse without gear and food.
“Nothing has changed. We were going to leave the camp today anyway. Now we just have to travel more carefully. The plan is still essentially the same.” The defensive tone of Ray’s voice grated on her nerves.
“The plan was flawed to begin with, Ray,” she said, biting her tongue against the more colorful language she knew she shouldn’t use in front of the younger boys. “And it was made before we knew the eclipse was going to have such a pronounced effect this early.”
She didn’t even bother to mention the problem of Lazarus. He could still be out there, still coming for her. That particular doozy was wholly hers to deal with and for as long as she could, Greta was going to try and keep the others out of it.
“We can’t stay here for long, so what do you propose we do?” Ray snapped. “You’re supposed to be the bounty hunter, renowned far and wide across this goddamn hellhole, and yet all we’ve done since you showed up is save your ass. Why the hell are you even here if you’re not going to be of any use?”
“Ray,” Wyatt warned.
“There’s a lot more to what I do than being a badass,” Greta snapped. “And obviously, it looks like I’m here to be the voice of reason in the face of your reckless, impetuous—”
“Hey, not that I don’t find your two disembodied voices going at it highly entertaining and all…but do you really think this is helping the situation right now?” Sloane piped in. “Can we try and focus on something a little more constructive for five minutes?”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry.”
Both Ray’s and Greta’s echoed apologies fell flat in the sudden silence that followed.
“All right, then,” Sloane continued. “I hereby call this first meeting of the Lost Boys to order.”
Greta could sense the grin in his voice and shook her head. Their presence had made being stuck in the dark…almost bearable. And the discussion had helped keep her from thinking about Isaac. Wondering if he was still out there somewhere, or if…
“We get the point Sloane,” Wyatt said with a long-suffering sigh. “But he is right. Greta. Ray. Both of you try putting that energy into helping us come up with a plan that will work.”
“This hole isn’t going to hold us for very long.” Ray let out a huff. “To start, we get out of here, and then we can make a break for Agramon’s fortress.”
Greta could agree with at least part of that. “Let me go back up,” she said. “I’ll check things out and make sure it’s safe to leave.”
“And then what?” Carter cut in, sounding apprehensive. “How are we going to survive with those…things roaming the woods? We’ll have a hard enough time keeping ourselves alive. I can’t see how we can rescue anyone else.”
Good point. Greta hadn’t forgotten the kid was only thirteen years old. That they were all much too young to even be having this discussion, not to mention too young for everything else that went along with it.
“I think maybe we should focus on one thing at a time,” Wyatt said. “I’m not sure it’s realistic anymore to think that we can make it to Agramon’s castle with all of Mylena baying at the moons.”
“We have to try!” Ray’s shout caused Jacob to cringe in her lap, but he stifled his cry behind a hand pressed bravely to his mouth and she didn’t think anyone else heard it but her.
“No. I’m sorry Ray, but I have a responsibility to everyone here first and foremost, and that means keeping us alive. Once the eclipse has passed—”
“Once the eclipse has passed half of the others will be dead and it will be too late, don’t you see that?”
“And if we try to go in there now, then we’re all dead!”
Greta put her hand out to stop the two of them from arguing before she remembered that they couldn’t see her. “I’ll go.”
“What?”
“Not a chance,” Wyatt said.
“I know of a place where you and the boys can hunker down for the next few days. Once I get you there safely, I’ll trek out to this fortress of Agramon’s and take a look around. I can’t promise I’ll be able to rescue anybody, but if it looks like I can…I will.”
“Then I’m going with her.”
There was absolutely no way she was bringing Ray along. She refused to have a loose cannon on her hands on top of everything else.
Luckily, Wyatt was of the same mind. “Forget it,” he said. “I don’t want either of you out there in the middle of this craziness.”
“Honestly, it’s better this way.” She sighed. “I’ll have slightly less suicidal odds of stayin
g off everyone else’s radar if I’m not dragging all of you with me. And Ray’s right about one thing: If we leave the rest of the kids to rot in there during the eclipse, they’re going to be sitting ducks. At least if I’m able to get them out into the forest we all have a fighting chance.”
Wyatt was silent for a long time, but Greta knew he was going to agree. “How much time do you need?” he asked.
“Tell me where this place is again?”
“North. The fortress is built into the mountains and its levels go deep into the rock,” Ray said. “But you don’t need to know, because I’ll show you the way.”
“No, you won’t.” Wyatt’s voice took on a hard edge that defied the young man to keep arguing. “Let Greta do her job, Ray. I trust that when she gets there, if she sees an opportunity to rescue the others, she’ll take it. What I don’t trust is that you will use the same reasonable judgment, and I can’t risk losing you to something so reckless. I need you too much.”
Ray didn’t reply. Greta hoped he would be able to see the wisdom of Wyatt’s decision, but the hostility coming from his general area of the darkness was palpable.
Everyone else was very quiet as Greta and Wyatt continued to make plans. “It will take three hours to make the trek to Luke’s place, and that’s if we hoof it. Once there, you should be able to find enough food and blankets to bring down with you.”
“Down where?”
“Underneath the cottage. It’s kind of like a bomb shelter, with a real steel door that you can bolt from the inside.” She didn’t mention that it could also be bolted from the outside, like Luke had done when he locked her into it. “It kept me safe the last time Mylena went through an eclipse.” She swallowed. “But it’s easily big enough for all of you if you don’t mind close quarters for a couple of days.”
They hashed out a few more of the details, making sure everyone knew what their job was so there would be no confusion once they pushed the stone off the top of the crypt. Greta took a few moments to work the tension out of her muscles. She felt stiff and sore, as if she were made of machined parts that had rusted up on her, but she was used to working through the pain.
Finally, it was time. Wyatt and Ray stood and shoved at the heavy stone slab until the light started to filter in and they could see one another for the first time in hours. Greta let out a long, relieved breath.
Everyone was grimy and tired looking, but nobody seemed to have been injured—
Turning toward Wyatt, she gasped. How could she have forgotten that he’d been hurt last night? “Ah crap. Wyatt, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I’m fine,” he argued. Two ragged lines marked his face, cutting through his eyebrow and down his cheek, having just missed being deep enough to gouge out his eye. The other eye hadn’t fared any better, it was swollen and had already turned a deep shade of purple.
“What happened?”
“Crazed goblin.” He stopped and gazed at her with a hooded look, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Come on, let’s get a move on.”
When Greta hesitated, he urged her onward with impatience. “Go. We aren’t going to have a lot of time.”
She looked over Wyatt’s shoulder at Ray. He nodded and moved forward, notching a handmade arrow in his short bow. “I’ll return in five minutes,” she said, “and if I don’t, that rock goes right back over the hole with everyone inside.”
Chapter Eighteen
When Greta returned to the others, she was sporting a new gash in her forearm and breathing hard.
The woods were not safe. Not by a long shot. And getting everyone to Lucius’s bunker wasn’t going to be easy…not that anything was ever easy in Mylena.
“We good to go?” Ray stepped out from behind the dense brush in front of the hideaway.
She nodded. “But it’s got to be now, and we have to be fast.”
Both of them knelt on either side of the large stone they’d replaced over the entrance to the hole earlier. Ray tapped the top five times in quick succession, waited until Wyatt started to push from inside, and then all three of them moved the slab away as quickly as possible.
“Hurry,” she whispered, helping Jacob up out of the hole and then passing him back over to Sloane, who was to be responsible for the little one along the way.
Greta took the lead. As they walked, she remained on guard. The first twenty minutes of absolute silence might have given her a false sense of security if she hadn’t sensed the unrest lurking just beyond her sight.
The skies were dark with clouds covering both suns and any evidence of the eclipse’s progress, but she could see the needles that had been shaken from the trees and scattered across the snow. She could see the broken remains of smaller animals—too many of them—littering the path she’d chosen.
At her side, Ray jumped. “What was that?”
She shook her head and urged him to continue. “It doesn’t matter. No matter what you hear…to stop is worse. Keep going.”
Worry was making her edgier the longer they were out in the open.
She tensed at a crunching sound in the bushes on her right, then her left. Her heart pounded hard and fast. The night teemed with sounds, all of them terrifying.
She glanced behind her. Wyatt and Sloane had Jacob sandwiched between them. Wyatt’s face was a determined mask of shadowed angles. Sloane couldn’t hide his fear. He winced and started at every hiss and crack.
Someone behind her stumbled and let out a sharp grunt.
She spun around with a gasp. Niall was helping Jack back onto his feet. “He just tripped.”
“Are you okay?” She asked, glancing over Jack’s shoulder. Her tone stayed composed, but inside she was screaming at them all to hurry.
Jack nodded and wiped the snow from his pant legs. “I’m good, let’s move,” he said.
Something huge lunged from the writhing foliage. It knocked Niall over like a bowling pin and landed right on Jack, propelling them both off the path into the bushes. Covered in matted black fur, there was no telling what it might have been before the eclipse, but now, like everything else, it sported a set of extra long teeth and claws that it was already using to tear Jack apart.
The other boys’ screams rang out as Greta swore and sprinted forward. She jabbed the creature with her blade and shoved it as hard as she could. It fell back and snarled up at her. Jack’s blood coated its chin, and its eyes glowed red as it lunged for her.
Greta’s back hit the ground and she dropped her sword as she tried to hold its violently snapping jaws away from her face. Her arms trembled with the strain. Those teeth were less than an inch from her nose.
Wyatt was there in an instant. He grabbed up her weapon and stuck the creature again, just as one of Carter’s arrows lodged in the side of its head.
It slumped over her. She pushed the dead body aside, ignoring the blood staining her arms and her clothes. She got up, heart in her throat. “Jack. Is he—?”
Niall held the crying Jacob, and the other boys had all gathered around Jack’s body. Greta went cold when Sloane turned his tear-streaked face up to her and shook his face.
Wyatt was trying to calm them down, but Greta looked down. She couldn’t take her eyes from the lifeless body.
Another sharp noise rebounded out of the thick forest.
There was no time to issue a warning. She grabbed Niall and Jacob, shoving them behind her just as a gnome lurched from the trees. It had turned, topping her height by at least two feet when it normally would have reached her shoulders. Its bulbous, deformed head was squished between massive, hunched shoulders. Its long arms bulged with muscle the likes of which no gnome could hold on his short, stocky frame without the added impetus of the eclipse.
Its knuckles dragged the ground until it saw the group, and then it raised its fists into the air and roared.
Wyatt, Ray, and Sloane corralled the younger boys into a small circle as per the emergency plan. She’d debated the wisdom of telling them to bolt, but
ultimately decided that if they ran into trouble, it wouldn’t do any good to separate, in case the boys ended up in more—or bigger—trouble.
The gnome snarled and swung for the boys. She jumped between them and leveled her sword, but it hesitated. Looking at her, it gave what she was certain was supposed to be a grin. It mumbled something underneath its breath that sounded a lot like “Kill. Kill. Kill.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” she muttered before charging, just to make it stop torturing her with its lame attempt at speech. But it was just warming up and as she launched a roundhouse kick to the thing’s sternum, she realized “kill” wasn’t what the thing was saying at all.
The gnome reached for her. “Key. Key. Key. Master want. Master need.”
Key?
The gnome was freaking her out now. She’d dealt with the Lost long enough that the snapping and snarling didn’t faze her at all…but the idea that this creature was able to retain some shadow of premeditation in the face of an eclipse that was turning everything into mindless monsters hinted at a motivation more persuasive than nature, something more powerful than the moons.
Agramon. The gnome was one of the demon’s creatures.
It came for her, but its tactics had changed noticeably. It no longer swung wildly, intent on destruction, but was actually trying to grab her.
Greta gave no quarter. She didn’t need to know what the hell the key was and what made her so damn important this creature would try to override its own powerful, raw instincts. There wasn’t time for an inquisition, only death. Swift and absolute.
Wyatt tossed her sword, and she grabbed it and swung at the gnome’s reaching hand in one smooth movement. Before the gnarled appendage struck the snow, she’d stabbed it in the chest and the creature expelled a final breath, the rest of its body crumpling to the ground as well.
The entire encounter was disturbing, and the kill ultimately all too easy, but everything else had been hard enough that coming out of one battle without shedding anymore of her own blood was a blessing.
