Dangling from a length of twine tied around the rail, was an X, formed of twigs and thin white bones tied together. Something round and lumpy was pinned with a needle in the center of the X.
I gave the lumpy thing a poke with my finger, and my stomach curled in revulsion.
It was an eye. A fish’s eyeball, pinned in the center of the twigs and bones.
It dropped from my hands, swinging back and forth on its length of twine as cold dread flooded me. I looked frantically around the yard. Who the hell had left this here? It hadn’t been there the day before, which meant someone had to have come through the night, come into my yard, and tied this hideous thing outside my door. Nauseous, I ran back in the house, grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut the thing loose from the porch. I went to the edge of the trees, and with as much strength as I could muster, I hurled it into the forest.
As I stood there, shaking, I heard a twig snap.
I froze, staring at the kaleidoscope of shrubs and branches. The sound of the rain was like static in my ears, dripping off my hood and pooling in the mud around my feet. Something had moved. Somewhere out there, in the shadows, something was watching.
Too scared to leave him alone, I put Cheesecake in his harness and packed him into the car with me. He’d gone on enough car rides to be calm, and he stared curiously out the window as I drove to Inaya’s apartment. I wanted to keep driving and driving until I was out of this town, this state. I’d keep going until I was back in California, or hell, I’d pack up and join my parents in Spain.
I didn’t understand what it meant, but finding a trinket with a fish eyeball tied to my porch couldn’t possibly be anything good.
“Hey, girl — oh, oh my God, are you okay?” Inaya’s face fell the moment she saw me.
“I’m fine, I’m good, just a little...uh…” I gulped, shaking as I stomped the rain from my boots. “I brought Cheesecake, sorry, I just, uh…”
I was scared. I was so goddamn scared.
“Woah, woah, yeah, you should sit down.” I let Cheesecake hop to the floor and Inaya led me to the couch and got me to sit. For a few minutes, all I could do was take deep breaths to fend off the panic as she rubbed my back. Cheesecake, eager for attention, hopped up next to her and began head-butting her side in hopes of chin scratches.
When I raised my head to see Inaya with one hand rubbing my back and the other petting my cat, I nearly sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to come over such a mess.”
“Rae, please, stop apologizing,” Inaya said gently. “You know you could come over here with a body in your trunk and I’d go grab a shovel.” She gave me a little smirk and side-eye. “But I do hope that’s not what’s wrong.”
I giggled, snorting grossly as I wiped tears from my face. “No bodies in the trunk this time, babe. Just some creeps leaving Blair Witch shit in my yard.”
I told her about the trinket, the feeling of being watched, even my trip out to St. Thaddeus and my fears that it may have attracted some attention to me — although I didn’t specify attention from what. She listened quietly, Cheesecake happily curled up on her pink sweatpants as she stroked him. When I finally took a breath after describing the horror of the fish eyeball, she said, “Well, that’s weird as hell. Rae, seriously, you need to stop going to those creepy places alone. What if someone had snatched you? What if you’d gotten hurt? What —”
“Yes, yes, Mom, okay, next time I’ll drag you with me!” We both giggled as she rubbed her face in exasperation.
“Look, we both know how weird people can be around here,” she said. “Honestly, someone probably saw you go to the church and wanted to freak you out. Or maybe Mrs. Kathy thought she was being neighborly.” She rolled her eyes. “Or, if you really think about it, it’s October. It was probably someone pulling a Halloween prank.”
“Yeah, you’re...you’re probably right…”
“Stay here a few nights,” she said. “Trent is in San Francisco for the week; we’ll go pack a bag for you tomorrow, and we’ll just hang out. It’ll be good for you to get out of the woods for a while.”
My shoulders sagged with relief. Getting some time away from the cabin was desperately needed. The longer I stayed there, the more trapped I felt: netted in by trees, wrapped up in darkness, the rain and fog making it seem as if I was alone in a gray, wet world.
I got better sleep that night at Inaya’s than I had in weeks. Cuddled on the couch with Cheesecake, I didn’t even stir until I began to hear the soft sounds of her moving around in the kitchen in the morning, putting on the kettle for tea.
No weird dreams. No fears of what lurked in the night. Just sleep.
Of course, Cheesecake simply didn’t understand why I didn’t have his breakfast immediately ready for him. I decided to head back to the cabin and get what I’d need for the week before he started screaming in protest of his imminent starvation.
I was feeling lighter. Happier. Despite the gloomy skies and the clouds rumbling with thunder, I felt like I had some hope.
I could survive this. I’d find a way.
Inaya’s apartment was near the bay, a five-minute drive from my house. Abelaum’s downtown streets glowed warmly, even in the rain. By evening, the bars would be full of students eager to start celebrating their Halloween weekend. I couldn’t help wondering if Leon would be among them, mingling among the unsuspecting, hunting for another soul.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. He’d spoke of feeling something for me, something that made him want my soul for eternity. Yet he left. He left.
I sighed heavily. He didn’t owe me protection. After all he’d been through, why would I expect him to stay? He’d been a captive here so long, why would he choose to spend his freedom chasing after one disastrous human girl?
He was probably long gone. He’d probably found the grimoire and gone straight back to Hell where he belonged. Good riddance. I didn’t need —
I slammed on the brakes as something darted in front of my car. My head was thrown forward and my entire upper body tensed with the effort not to bang my head against the steering wheel. Panting, I raised my head and pushed my glasses up my nose. My headlights lit the wet road before me, pools of yellow light that glistened with the soft, drizzling rain.
What the hell had I just seen?
The road was empty, but I could have sworn I’d seen something. Something pale as moonlight, humanoid but naked. Long, too long in all the wrong places. Horned — horned like a stag.
But there was nothing there.
I eased off the brake, driving slower now. It must have just been a deer. The illusion that it had a human form was just that: an illusion, my paranoid brain making up frightening things in the woods. Maybe I needed to see a doctor and start taking something for this anxiety. I’d already seen it start to affect my grades —
I stopped again. Something was on the road. Not just one something, but three.
Three tall, pale white figures.
Their necks were too long. Their shoulders drooped and their arms — too long, too thin — hung slack. I couldn’t be sure if they were draped in rags, or if their skin was drooping and wrinkled. Their long legs ended in bizarre, two-pronged hooves, as if they were wearing massive heeled shoes backward on their feet. They stood in the middle of the road, scattered, as if they’d been wandering and my approach had made them pause.
They were all staring at me with milky white eyes, their massive sets of pale antlers strewn with strange, dark, leafy plants — seaweed?
With trembling fingers, I managed to find the button to lock my doors and click it. The sound made them twitch, but otherwise they were completely still. They didn’t sway. Their chests didn’t move with their breath. They could have been stone, if it weren’t for those eyes, staring into my soul.
I couldn’t drive forward without hitting them. They were spread out across the road so I couldn’t pass. I kept hoping to see headlights behind me, or ahead, but the road was empty except for us. My logical
brain demanded that I consider them to be just early Halloween revelers, dressed up in really good costumes. Not real. They couldn’t possibly be real.
Then, the one closest to the car moved.
It came slowly, every movement accompanied by a crackling of its joints that I could hear even with my windows rolled up. My knuckles turned white on the wheel. If I didn’t move, maybe I wouldn’t incite it. If I didn’t move, maybe those milky white eyes wouldn’t see me.
It stood right outside my driver door. I stared straight ahead, eyes stinging, whimpers coming with every breath.
What the hell was I supposed to do?
The creature leaned forward, and placed its boney, pale hand against my window. Wetness seeped around its thin fingers, as if it was waterlogged, weeping down the window pane.
Then, from behind the stag skull, it spoke in a harsh whisper that hissed right through the glass, “It waits for you, Raelynn. It waits in the deep dark place.”
I slammed on the gas. I didn’t care if I crunched their boney bodies under my tires, but as my car sped toward them, they leapt out of the way, their speed nothing like the slow, hobbling gait I’d witnessed from the first one. I was swerving, the steering wheel wobbling as my tires struggled with my speed and the wet road. The car bottomed out as I hit the dirt driveway toward the cabin, jostling me as I sped over the bumps and potholes.
I didn’t say a word to Inaya about it when I got back. I explained away my trembling hands with continual complaints of how cold it was. I claimed I was just celebrating the weekend when I poured myself another glass of wine before noon. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hide.
But I had to figure out how to fight.
I wasn’t going to die a sacrifice. I wasn’t going to disappear, forgotten into these godforsaken woods.
I couldn’t leave her. I’d resigned myself to it.
By day, I searched for the grimoire and the witch who’d stolen it. But I returned at night, watching Rae’s cabin in the dark, to make sure the beasts didn’t get too close. They were hungry. So damn hungry, they were crawling out of the ground like maggots the colder and wetter it got. The radio began to crackle with reports of missing hikers, and I knew the beasts were feeding but it wouldn’t keep them occupied for long.
Things were getting worse.
The Gollums had woken up. The whole forest smelled like their rot. Mushrooms were sprouting up like mad. If the God’s human servants weren’t giving It what It wanted, then It would send the Gollums to do it instead: pale white beings that stalked the forest in silence, their intelligence far beyond that of the Eld.
I could only hope they didn’t find her.
I’d park my truck at the road and stand back in the darkness of the trees. I’d watch her shadow move past the lit windows, I’d listen to her hum as she cooked dinner and the way her socked feet shuffled across the wooden floor when she danced.
I knew better than to fall for a human. Humans were meant to be toys, not treasures. But it ached. Fuck, it ached.
Not even monsters could convince her to accept eternity. Perhaps I was simply too inhuman to understand the terror of forever, the dread that gripped mankind when faced with making decisions for the afterlife.
Demons swore bonds to each other at a mere glance sometimes, yet she couldn’t just…
She couldn’t. There was no use in dwelling on it. She couldn’t, and I would have been wise to stay away from her.
But I couldn’t.
Just a fucking fantastic predicament all around.
The skulls I’d placed to scare the Eld had rotted away, so I left the only other thing I knew of that could deter them: one of the vile little trinkets the Libiri so loved. Sticks, bones, string — and a fish eye, symbolizing the eye of the Deep One, would usually get the Eld spooked.
It spooked Raelynn too, but at least it made her vacate the house for a few days. With her hidden away at an apartment in town, she’d be harder to find. Safer, at least for a little while. Which meant I could hunt for the witch in earnest.
Everly was proving hard to find. She wasn’t with the Hadleighs anymore, having somehow managed to escape Kent’s careful watch over her. Every whiff I’d get of her would blow away as quickly as the wind, and I’d never been very good at the slow, steady art of tracking. I’d never had the patience, and now that I needed it, I simply didn’t have the skill.
But I knew someone who did.
It was near one in the morning when I met Zane by the bay. The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle, like static through the fog slowly rolling in off the water. The world was soft and pale, and the cherry on Zane’s joint flared in the dark.
“I’m surprised you’re still here.” Zane let the smoke curl from his lips as he spoke. “I thought you’d bail out the moment you got the grimoire.”
“I’d planned to. Problem is, I don’t have the damn thing. It was stolen from her, from Raelynn.” Zane glanced over at me, wide-eyed. He knew how important that wretched book was, how all my freedom hinged on destroying my name from its pages. “But I know who’s got it, and I’m hoping you can help me find her. Something is hiding her scent.” I frowned. I didn’t like to admit I wasn’t the best hunter, but Zane already knew it. It wasn’t shame that made me avoid placing all the blame on myself.
Something was hiding the witch’s scent, making her harder to track, throwing it in all directions so I’d never know if it was east or west.
Zane shrugged, passing me the joint. “I’ll do what I can. Who has it? You got a name?”
“Everly Hadleigh. The young witch.”
“Aaahh.” Zane gave a slow groan. “The damn witch? No shit?”
“No shit.” I took a drag, wishing once again that the weed they had on Earth was anywhere close to the herb in Hell. Their stock had gotten better in recent years, but it was still nothing in comparison. And damn, I needed the high.
I was getting frustrated. And when I was frustrated, I got reckless.
I couldn’t afford to be reckless now. Not with the grimoire, and not with Rae.
Zane was shaking his head. “Leave it alone, Leon. Forget the grimoire, go back to Hell.” I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Zane, telling me to give up? “The witch won’t summon you, trust me.”
I frowned. “And why wouldn’t she? Why should I risk it?”
“She won’t,” he insisted, taking back the joint. “She’s already got an Archdemon.”
I nearly choked on the last of my exhale. Goosebumps prickled all the way down my arms and left my fingers cold. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Because he almost killed my girl,” Zane said grimly. “That’s how.”
I paused. “An Archdemon almost killed your...have you made a deal with a human?”
“Yeah.” Zane grinned proudly, but the expression soured. “And this woman has got one damn big bone to pick.” He gave me a quick look up and down. “I’ll do my best not to let her see you.”
“Why is that?”
“Because she’ll remember you.” He tapped a finger against the side of his head. “She can really hold a grudge.” Seeing the question on my face, he leaned over and said softly, “Juniper Kynes. Can’t say the whole situation of nearly being a sacrifice left her feeling very forgiving.”
“Ah, shit.”
“She’s out for the blood of anyone who’s wronged her. It’s been a fun ride but fuck.” He flicked away the joint, and it disappeared into the waters of the bay. “She might get me killed.”
“Juniper,” I murmured. There were few things I’d done for Kent that I could attach any kind of moralistic regret to. But the night Juniper had fled through the woods, high on acid and covered with sacrificial runes, counted among things I wished I hadn’t been involved in. “Of all the humans for you to take a fascination with, it had to be her. She gave you her soul?”
“She offered it,” he said. “I was already hunting her, but the deal was her idea.”
I wasn’t about to admit
how jealous I was. “So now she’s your girl, eh? What happened to not falling for humans?”
“Never said I fell for her.” Zane frowned, shifting his stance. He was such an obvious liar. “But of course she’s mine. I claimed her.”
I chuckled, although I was a fucking hypocrite to taunt him for it while I was still pining over an absolutely hopeless situation.
“So, Everly,” I said. “You know where she is? And this Archdemon of hers, how strong is he?”
Zane sighed heavily. “In a fight to the death, the two of us together, against him…” He shrugged. “We’d hold out for a few minutes. Maybe.”
“Fuck.”
“I’m telling you not to go after her, Leon.”
“Noted. Where is she?”
“Goddamn stubborn bastard,” Zane scowled, hands shoved in his pockets. “There’s an old coven house, northwest of here. I’ll text you the coordinates, as close as I can estimate them. Juni and I went there looking for —”
“Juni?” I snorted. “Fucking hell.”
“Oh, shut up.” He shoved me, and reached into his jacket for another joint. “I think we both know you’re goddamn bleeding romantic, Leon, so don’t taunt me for it.” He put the joint to his lips and lit up, the sour smell wafting around us. “Anyway. We were looking for the elder witch, Heidi. Didn’t find her.”
“I could’ve told you she died years ago.” Zane tweaked an eyebrow at me, and I shook my head. “Suicide. I didn’t do it, though Kent likely would have set me on her sooner or later.”
“Ah, well...we got another nasty surprise instead. I thought he was going to rip us to shreds before Everly gentled him like a lamb. We were lucky the witch was willing to talk with us. If she hadn’t been, well...” He shuddered. “I wouldn’t be standing here right now. That Archdemon would have killed us both.”
“You get a name?”
“Callum.” Zane flicked his ash to the wind. “Never heard of him. He’s ancient. He’s been out of Hell a long time, if I had to guess.”
Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy) Page 21
