He nods, and starts down the steep slope to the lake’s edge.
Liam and I start to follow, but Carys’s voice stops us a moment later.
(So, just so you know, I’m pretty sure there are people heading toward you.)
(People?)
(A couple of dumb teenagers, it looked like. They were getting close to the campsite, but then they veered left and headed off in the direction y’all did. Which is kind of a bummer, because I’m getting bored. I was going to shift and scare the crap out of them.)
(We’re trying to keep a low profile here,) I remind her. It’s why we’d decided to camp instead of staying in the lone inn that was somewhat close to this desolate place.
(Yeah, but I’m pretty sure I saw one of them litter. So they probably deserve to be terrified, is all I’m saying.)
“Are you two coming?” Soren calls without turning back, or even slowing down, in his pursuit of the shoreline.
“Maybe you should go check it out?” I suggest to Liam, who’s looking into the darkness behind us and anxiously sniffing at the air. “Whatever trouble we’re about to unleash here, it would probably be better if we didn’t have humans witnessing it or getting in the way, right?”
He nods, but his expression is less decisive as he glances at Soren.
“I’ll be fine,” I assure him. “I have my sword. If he tries anything funny, I’ll just cut him into lots of unrecognizable pieces and then drown them in separate corners of the lake.”
“You’re terrifying sometimes; do you know that?”
I flash a quick smile, then shoo him away with a flick of that sword. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
He finally gives in—probably in part because he also wants to have some fun terrorizing the teenagers—and shifts into his white wolf form that, giant as he is, still blends surprisingly well with the fog and hazy moonlight.
I half jog, half slide my way down the slippery hill, crashing into Soren and nearly sending him face first into the water.
“Graceful, aren’t you?” he says, jerking his foot from the muddy pool that’s attempting to claim it.
“Grace is my middle name.”
“Really?”
“No, it’s Ann, actually. After my mom’s mom. What’s yours?”
“Nothing matters less in this moment,” he says drolly.
“Just trying to make conversation.”
“Let’s conversate about how we’re going to retrieve whatever is causing that glow, how about?”
“All business with you, isn’t it?”
“I thought we’d already established that, oh business partner of mine.”
“I just thought we might make a better team if we knew more about each other. Think of it as a trust-building exercise, maybe?”
“You would trust me more if you knew my middle name? Honestly?”
“That was just an example—I just meant we could talk about general stuff.”
“Like?”
“Like…I don’t know. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A wizard.”
“Hardy har har.”
“I’m serious.”
I flick my ankle and send bits of mud flying from it and plopping into the water. “What are your dreams and stuff?”
“Once I dreamed that I was standing naked in the middle of Times Square, offering freshly-baked cookies to people. And everyone raved about them, too—said they were the most delicious things they’d ever eaten.”
“You know what I meant, smartass. Dreams for the future. Hopes.”
“Mostly I just hope this conversation will end soon.”
“Okay, fine, consider it ended—I give up.” I sigh. “Back to business: kind of seems like our business is under the water, doesn’t it? All the way at the bottom of the lake, knowing my luck.”
“So how long can you hold your breath?” he says with a quiet laugh.
I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“Surely you don’t expect me to dive after this thing,” I say.
“Unless you can think of something better.”
“I can think of lots of things that sound better than diving into a freezing cold lake that’s full of mud and probably like…dead bodies and snakes and—”
“There are no snakes in Ireland. Haven’t you ever heard of St. Patrick? He supposedly drove them all out, according to legend.”
“I’m pretty sure there aren’t supposed to be any wolves in Ireland anymore either, and yet here me and my friends are all the same.”
“Anyway, I was thinking I’d let you go first,” he says, ignoring my totally-valid snake fear. “Since you’re a lady and all.”
“And they say chivalry is dead.”
“My cousin once told me that was something only girls who dated assholes said.”
“And you’re not an asshole, apparently?”
“I don’t strive to be.” I can feel his glance shift to me, and even though I don’t look back, I can still picture that particular way he arches his eyebrows as he says, “Unless that’s your type?”
I let out an amused snort, my eyes still on the glowing lake. “Why do you care what my type is?”
It was an offhanded comment, but the longer he takes to answer it, the more curious I find myself growing about his answer. Determined not to let myself focus on it, I instead take a deep breath, sheath my sword and set it carefully on a nearby rock. I feel naked without it, but I’m not risking the rust and other deterioration caused by the gods know what is in this lake. Plus, I need both hands free for balancing as I chance a few steps forward into the water. Just to acclimate myself. Just in case we can’t come up with a better plan.
We really need to come up with a better plan.
“Holy hell, this water is freezing. And I can barely walk in this mud. Ugh—” The lake bottom drops off suddenly, and I slip on the sudden edge. The only thing that keeps me from a shockingly cold and muddy awakening is the way Soren somehow moves faster than my fall and manages to catch me. His grip on my waist is firm, and his arms steady even as I’m flailing about and trying to find grip in the slippery mud.
“Be still for a second,” he whispers as his fingers dig a little more securely into my sides. I still haven’t found my footing, and so the only way I can manage stillness is to completely relax into his arms. And suddenly the water I’m knee-deep in doesn’t seem so cold, because all I’m aware of is the heat that’s radiating out from his touch.
“Do you hear that?” he asks.
“Hear what?”
I’d been too busy listening to his pounding heart, his quickening breaths—and completely misinterpreting them, it seems.
Get it together, Elle.
I make myself completely still and listen more closely to the sounds filling the night: the soft breeze splashing water against the bank, the slightly mournful call of what I’m pretty sure is a loon… And then the sound of something large wading its way through the water. I squint into the fog, trying to see what that something large might be. I see nothing, but a moment later I hear the distinct clip clop squish of hooves in the mud, followed by a distant, echoing, whinny-like sound.
“Is that…a horse?”
If it is, it sounds sick. But I don’t know how else to describe it, other than vaguely horse-like.
He slowly backs toward the shore, pulling me steadily out of the water alongside him. Even once we’re relatively safe and steady on that shore, he doesn’t let go of my arm. “Shouldn’t your hearing be better than mine?” he muses under his breath.
“I might have heard it first if I wasn’t busy freezing to death in that water.”
“I’m just saying, your situational awareness needs work.”
I wrench my arm from his grip and, without answering him, I crane my neck toward the direction where I thought the possible-horse sounded like it was approaching from. There’s no sound of it or its movement, though. There’s no sound of anything anymore, it seems; it’s lik
e we’ve stepped into a void.
“Is this one of your weird illusion tricks at work again?” I whisper.
“We’re on the same side, you know. Why would I be trying to trick you?”
“Well you say that, and yet on the plane ride over here I distinctly remember waking up to the illusion of a giant bug crawling across my hand, so…”
“That was different,” he says, his lips quirking into an almost-smile as I glance back. “That was funny. This is clearly not a laughing matter.”
“The other passengers didn’t think my scream was funny.”
We’d played it off as me simply waking up from a nightmare. I’d almost—almost—forgiven him for doing it, too, because it was harmless enough, and because practicing magic was his way of coping with the anxiety that flying had been causing him. I’d fallen asleep on that plane with his hand beside mine, both of our palms open toward the ceiling while he danced a mesmerizing illusion of black stars and swirls across them.
It had been almost romantic.
At least until I’d woken up to him playing dumb tricks on me instead.
And I haven’t decided how I’m going to repay the favor of him scaring the crap out of me yet, but I’ve given him fair warning to sleep with one eye open.
“Besides,” he whispers to me, “do you know how difficult it is to create illusions of sound and silence? I’m definitely not doing…” He trails off as the sound of water slapping against rocks reaches us. “…That,” he finishes.
A moment later, the creature we’ve been hearing actually appears
It is a horse. A silvery-white beast of a horse with black eyes rimmed in glowing green. As it walks through the water, that water parts with greater force than normal. It rolls into rough waves, like the kind a speeding boat leaves in its wake, even though the horse’s movements are slow and subtle.
“What is wrong with that thing’s eyes?” I back my way toward the rock where I placed my sword, not taking my gaze off the creature. “Please tell me that at least that part is an illusion that you’re—”
My hand, reaching backward for my sword, suddenly hits a human instead. I let out a yelp, and the horse-creature stops. It gives an angry snort and a toss of its head, and suddenly its terrifying eyes are narrowed in my direction.
“I don’t think it’s an illusion,” says Carys—the person I bumped into. Apparently she talked Liam into guarding the campsite instead, switching places with her to help combat her boredom. “There are a lot of myths about demon water horses in this part of the world.”
“Kelpie?” Soren guesses.
Carys shakes her head. “Kelpies are generally believed to dwell near rivers—near running water. This is a lake. So that would make this guy an each-uisce. Similar to a kelpie, but much more vicious in nature.”
“Oh good,” I say.
“I know right?” She sounds almost like she really thinks it is a good thing. Her endless nerd fascination at work again. “Sightings of this kind are much less common. And it seems really interested in you, doesn’t it Elle?”
I start to reach again for my sword, and I see what she means: the demon horse’s head follows my every moment.
“So I wonder if it showed up because you’re here?” she guesses.
“If it—oh. Right.” Somehow I’d almost forgotten what Soren had said about there being guardians around the three keys we’re trying to track down.
Is that what this thing is?
If so, I guess it confirms that we aren’t leaving here without whatever is glowing at the bottom of this lake.
“So what is that demon going to do if I try diving into the water?”
“Diving into the water?” Carys gives me an incredulous look. “That was your plan?”
I shift my weight from side to side. “Well it was the beginning of my plan.”
“This is why I should have come along in the first place,” she says with a sigh. “Do you have any idea how deep this lake is?”
“No, but I’m guessing you do, since you’re full of those sort of random factoids.”
“Well, I don’t know the exact depth,” she says in that sort of mumbling, offhanded way that she does sometimes—the one that means she actually does know the answer and she’s just trying to pretend she doesn’t. Trying to make herself look less smart so she’s less intimidating, I know. I’ve told her before not to do that. And I’m about to tell her again, but she’s talking too fast for me to interrupt.
“But I’m almost positive it’s too deep for you to dive to the bottom,” she continues “even if you didn’t have a demonic horse chasing after you.”
“So it would probably chase me?” I think aloud, sizing up the creature and trying to imagine myself in a swordfight against it.
“I didn’t…Well that’s not generally how the legends go, no.”
“No?”
The creature is still watching me, turning slow circles in its place some fifteen feet away from us. It feels like each circle is coiling the tension in the air tighter and tighter, like it’s just waiting for me to make one wrong move, and then it’s going to spring at me and tear me to pieces.
“Is that legend similar to the kelpie myth, too?” Soren asks.
She nods. “The legend claims that it tries to lure weary travelers onto its back, and then it drags them to the bottom of the lake to drown them and rip their body apart.”
“…To the bottom of the lake?” I hear myself repeating the words without thinking, and I instantly realize how crazy that hopeful tone of my voice is. But I can’t help it, nor can I stop the crazy plan forming in my mind.
“Yes, to drown them and rip their body apart,” Carys repeats. “Did you hear that last part?”
“Yeah, but back to that part about it taking riders to the bottom of the lake…and the fact that the key we’re searching for is also most likely at the bottom of the lake. I mean, come on, this is sort of a no-brainer, isn’t it?”
I try to look as confident as I sound as I grab my sword and secure it in the sheathe at my hip. I’ll just have to risk exposing it to this gross water, I guess. I still have the dagger Soren loaned me, too, secured in a separate sheath around my ankle. I tried to give it back, but he told me I’d probably need it again. And I’m not one to turn down a free weapon.
So at least I’m reasonably well-armed as I step back into the water.
“Are you sure about this?” Soren asks.
I’d steeled myself, and was prepared to walk toward that demon guardian without stopping or looking back, but the strange tone of his voice manages to make me hesitate.
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound even a little bit afraid, I think.
And that fear causes a weird stirring in the pit of my stomach.
Is it fear for me, or simply fear that I won’t be able to accomplish these tasks we set out to do? Either way, I don’t really know what to do with it, so I just keep walking.
“Never been more sure of anything in my life,” I say, waving a dismissive hand without looking back.
“Elle…” Carys begins in a slightly pleading voice.
But I don’t hear the rest of her plea, because at that moment the demon horse stops its circling and squares its body up with my approaching one. It lets out another snort. Lifts one of its front legs. As it stomps it back into the water, that water darkens and churns and folds away from it. Wave after wave folds away until the creature is standing in mud instead of water. And then that muddy island extends, reaching toward me, the water rolling apart until there is a very clear, very obvious path inviting me toward the demon.
I step from the water and onto that muddy path.
One step after the other. With every one, the parted water collapses behind me, splashing cool drops against the backs of my legs and closing off any chance at a quick escape.
The mark on my wrist tingles a warning.
Every wolfish instinct I have, however buried it might be, is telling me to turn ar
ound.
The glow the key is throwing off is so bright that it’s near blinding me even though it’s only in the corner of my vision.
The creature in front of me is unnaturally still. And it doesn’t move as I reach it; it barely even breathes as I stretch a hand forward. My fingers brush skin that feels rubbery, and then they cautiously curl around a mane that feels like its made of seaweed. Or like maybe it’s made of snakes, judging by the way it seems to move and, I swear, to tighten around my wrist and try to squeeze the life out of my veins. I hear shouting from the shoreline; it sounds like Liam, but I don’t turn around to check, because I don’t need his concern distracting me right now.
Water drips down my arm, so dirty and thick with mud that it looks more like blood in the moonlight.
The demon’s nostrils flare.
Its eyes burn a bolder shade of white.
I picture that last beast I fought—the one I let in, the one that left my mom bloody and beaten and my pack facing the threat of war from the entire supernatural community.
And then I think of my sword and dagger.
I brace a hand against the demon’s neck and hoist myself onto its back.
Chapter Ten
For the record, I don’t suggest hopping onto the backs of demons.
This was a terribly reckless, dangerous idea, and the creature wastes no time in showing me why: after a vicious shake that flings mud and what looks like gallons of water in every direction, it lunges forward into a deeper part of the lake. I barely have a chance to take a breath.
It dives.
That snaky seaweed mane tangles around both my wrists and fastens me to its body, so that I have no choice but to press flat against its back and bury my face in its neck, trying to protect my eyes from the dirt and wood and other debris littering the water.
We dive deeper and deeper.
Just as I start to panic at the thought that this lake might actually be bottomless, we slam against that bottom. A cloud of leafy mud erupts around us. I’m flung against the ground hard enough to jar my shoulder despite the water slowing my fall.
The demon is looming over me a moment later, its hooves pressing against my chest, body buoyant in the water but still heavy enough to push me down into a watery grave. Mud collapses in around me, filling that grave in. I feel fear like a physical presence. Like chains draped over me, weighing me further down, down, down into that grave—
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