11

You don’t think. You react, you move, you run. But you don’t stop to think, “Hey, I just ran into the deep dark woods full of man-eating whatsits and gorilla yeti demons.” Because that’s your friend out there. Your best friend.

I lost Duke almost immediately, the mammoth mutt outdistancing me in huge bounds, but I kept running, trying to follow the crashing ahead despite the fact that I could barely see the trees in front of me.

The branches and bushes lashed out almost like they had minds of their own, catching me across the face, and I could spare only one arm to protect my eyes. My other hand held my sword, and if running into the woods was stupid, then losing my weapon would be insane.

The cabin and its light and safety were long out of sight when I jerked to a halt, straining to hear anything that wasn’t my own heaving breath. The voices had stopped, and the freight train that was Duke had fallen silent.

The night rendered all things in shades of gray. Shapes were meaningless. That tree over there could have been one of the creatures, standing still. That reaching, grasping arm in front of me could be the limb of an old oak, knocked loose by simple age and weather, or it could have been a filthy, grimy claw, just waiting for me to walk within reach.

I relaxed my vision, let my senses search for movement instead of shape. There was nothing. Not even a night breeze coming down off the mountain. The only thing living out here was me and my heartbeat, thundering too loudly in my ears.

That wasn’t true. Duke was out here, and Marty. If I could just find them.

The screams, when they started, sent ice stabbing through my heart, and I was off again before I truly registered what they meant. That was Marty out there, screaming, and over that, the big mastiff’s bellow rang out. Duke had him, and I thanked whatever deity might be listening.

I dodged trees more by sense than sight, hurtled deadfalls without thought for what might be waiting on the other side. I know I ran a hundred yards over rough terrain before I was forced to stop again. Forced, because the screams had stopped, and silence reigned again.

Dammit, Marty, don’t do this . . . I couldn’t go back. Even if I knew where the hell the cabin was and how to turn my ass around to get there, I couldn’t go back without him. I couldn’t leave him out here if there was any chance at all.

“Marty, answer me!” That was Cole, tracking somewhere off to my left. “Jesse!” Through the trees, I could see a white circle of light bobbing as Cole searched with his flashlight. He’d gone back for it, genius that he was.

Marty wasn’t answering us for whatever reason, but Duke . . . maybe Duke would. “Duke! Here, boy! Duke, come!”

Immediately, there was a whine to my right. Cole heard it too, because the flashlight came bobbing in my direction. Ten yards through the trees, and we found them.

Marty was sprawled on the ground, Duke planted firmly on his legs, and for a gut-churning moment, I thought they’d gotten to him. Then he moved, shoving vainly at his dog with one hand. “Gah, get off, you big dork.”

I’d never admit it to the guys, but I actually felt a bit weak in the knees for a second. Relief, I guess. “Good boy, Duke.” The mastiff grumbled and finally got up.

Cole arrived with his flashlight, playing the beam across our friend’s face. My blacksmith looked pale and sweaty under his beard. “You all right, Marty?”

“Yeah, just messed up my ankle. Tripped over a goddamn tree branch in the dark, trying to get away from this big doofus.” He roughed Duke’s short fur to show he wasn’t angry with the dog. “Thought he was a bear.” Only then did Marty glance around with a frown. “How the hell did I get out here?”

“Still working on that.” They were out there. I knew they were. Why hadn’t they pounced on Marty the second he crossed that barrier? The way they’d gone after Zane, the way they’d massed to my presence earlier, I figured fresh meat would be too much to resist. But there wasn’t a peep, not a rustle. Nothing to betray their location. “Where are you?” I muttered.

“Come on, we’ll get you to Will. He can patch you up.” Cole reached for him when the voices came again.

“Mom, have you seen my sneakers?” It was right behind me, and I whirled, sword at the ready. Nothing. Not even a twitch of movement. Cole’s light shone over the brush without revealing anything.

Duke growled softly. “Cole, grab him before he runs off. Get Marty on his feet.” There was motion behind me as they followed my orders. I kept my attention on the trees around us, waiting for whatever came next.

“Hey, take the trash out when you go!”

My head snapped around hard enough that I saw spots for a second. The voice, a woman’s, came from my left, only a few yards away. And for a heartbeat, one second of eternity, it sounded like Mira.

It wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. After a moment to think about it, I could hear the differences, the slight change in tone and pitch that said it was some other woman, some nameless, faceless voice in the night. But there for a second . . . for a second, my world was over, and I realized belatedly that I’d shifted my weight, ready to run into the trees like a madman. Not good.

Cole’s voice was uneasy when he spoke. “We have to get out of here before they get us surrounded.”

“Pretty sure we’re already too late for that, little brother. Marty, you ready to make a run for it?”

“Yeah. I’m good.”

Mockingly, the random phrases echoed around us. “And it’s fourth and goal!”

“So I said she could just stuff it, if that’s how she was gonna be.”

“Daaaaadeeeeeee! I’m scared!”

Cole cursed softly under his breath. “Christ . . . that’s a child.” Even Marty winced, and I don’t think it was his ankle. It was the father in all of us, that place that responded to a frightened child even if it wasn’t ours.

“No. No, it’s not. It’s them, somehow.” Somehow, those things that weren’t supposed to have voices were having quite a nice chat out there. I couldn’t even count them all and if I listened too hard, my head started swimming again, my senses drifting. “Marty, take Duke. Cole, take Marty. Let’s get this circus on the road.” I wanted my hands free, my sword free.

“You wanna take point?”

I snorted. “Are you kidding? I have no freakin’ clue where we are. It’s all you, little brother.” I couldn’t be sure in the darkness, but I think Cole rolled his eyes at me.

Making our way back to the cabin was easier said than done, even with Cole’s uncanny directional sense to guide us. Marty was limping worse than I’d realized, and face it, the guy was short but he sure wasn’t light. It was a struggle for him to hold on to Duke and lean heavily on my brother at the same time. Cole kept his flashlight trained ahead of us, and I brought up the rear, watching for the ambush I just knew had to come.

Why haven’t they attacked yet? The eerie, nonsensical calls came from all around us, and every one of them tugged at some place just in front of my spine, a place in my gut that churned with nausea. The worst ones were the children’s voices, and one of them kept wailing out “I’m a little teapot” over and over and over again. It might have been funny, in another time, another place, but here in the near pitch darkness, there was a wheedle to it that was simply horrifying. It was a tiny urge, a subtle entreaty to go galloping off into the wilderness, just like Marty had. I bit my lip as hard as I could without drawing blood and kept moving.

Now, I was no navigational expert, but it seemed to me that we were drifting conspicuously uphill in our path, and I didn’t recall coming that way on my blind rush into the trees. The more I thought about it, the less certain I was that Cole was leading us in the right direction. Before I could comment on it, I nearly stumbled into the trio when they stopped abruptly. “What’s up, guys?”

Since I’d been walking pretty much backward, I dared a glance back to see Cole shaking his head, trying to clear it. “It’s like they’re in there, in my head. I’m getting a little muzzy.”

“How muzzy, little brother?” Face it, I was never a Boy Scout. If Cole couldn’t find our way back, we were well and truly humped.

He hesitated a moment, then said, “I think we’re good.”

About ten yards and an eternity later as we worked our way around deadfalls and thorny vines, Cole brought them to a stop again. “No, no, we’re not good. Shit, I have no idea which way we’re headed. My head’s reeling.”

Oh hell no. I was not gonna die out here, probably within yelling distance of safety. More importantly, I wasn’t going to let either of those two idiots die either. I couldn’t.

I moved to grab a handful of Cole’s short hair and yanked his head up to make him look me in the eyes. The flashlight beam cast his face in dark shadows, hollowing out his eyes and cheeks into a skeletal mockery of his actual face. My face, too, we looked that much alike.

Up close like that, he reeked of fear sweat, that particularly pungent aroma brought on by massive doses of adrenaline. We all did. Except maybe Duke. He just smelled like dog. “Listen, little brother. You are gonna get your shit together, and you’re gonna get us out of here. And you’re gonna do it with a smile on your face and a spring in your step, you got me?” It took him a moment, but he finally swallowed and nodded. “That’s my boy.” I butted our foreheads together lightly, just enough to give us both a good thump.

Only then did I realize the voices had fallen silent, and I had approximately two seconds to wonder why. That was the moment they chose to spring, of course, with all of us sufficiently distracted. And they took out the most dangerous of us first.

The thing must have been just above our heads the whole time, waiting in the branches like some kind of gruesome spider, and it dropped down onto Duke’s back like one of those monkeys at the rodeo. The dog whirled with a savage snarl, trying to get at the tormentor clinging to his shoulders, and nearly knocked Marty sprawling in the process. Mastiff and minion went brawling into the brush and out of sight.

“Duke!” Marty lunged to go after his pet, and Cole and I both grabbed for his shoulders to stop him.

“Duke can take care of himself. We have to get out of here.” Even as Cole said it, another of the creatures darted out of the bushes, slamming into my brother’s right arm. The flashlight strobed as it went spinning into the darkness, and the creature vanished into the night again. The third one clipped Marty in the back of the knees, but the solid bastard was just too stubborn to fall. The minion bounced off those tree trunk legs and into the bushes again in a crackle of brush. Somewhere a few yards distant, Duke was still going at it with his new special friend. From the sounds of the snarling, the dog was winning.

“Shit . . . Backs together, boys.” The three of us took up positions, shoulders pressed together as we waited to see where they’d come from next. But really, what were we going to do? I was the only one armed, and Marty was half gimped.

One darted forward, almost at Cole’s feet, then retreated when my brother lashed out with a vicious kick. “What they hell are they doing? Why aren’t they just attacking?”

The next one dropped out of the branches above us again, and only the snapping of twigs warned us in time for Marty to lurch to the side. The thing landed on all fours on the forest floor and paused to hiss at us before leaping back into the brush. Damn, it was fast. I couldn’t even get a decent swipe at it with my katana.

“Pack tactics.” Marty got back into position, closing the gap in our circle. “Like a wolf pack harrying an elk. They’re trying to wear us down.”

“They’re smarter . . . unh! . . . than they look!” Cole paused in midsentence to kick at another one that darted in and out of the trees in front of him, taunting.

“They’re not. It’s him.” The Yeti was dancing his little puppets on their strings, trying to scare us into recklessness, trying to tire us out. And it wasn’t lost on me that the nasty things hadn’t made a single lunge toward me. That pretty much told me all I needed to know. The Yeti didn’t want me dead. He wanted something much worse.

What he wanted, I could use against him.

“Hey! Hey, ugly!” My voice bounced up and down the hillside, echoing. Ugly! Ugly! Ugly! The forest fell silent, even Duke’s unseen battle dying down. After a moment, the mastiff’s big square head poked out of the bushes, and he limped back to Marty, favoring his right hind leg but otherwise all right. “C’mon, stinky! Show yourself!”

“Jess, what are you doing?” I shushed Cole with a wave of my hand. Believe it or not, I knew what I was doing. Pretty sure. Maybe.

After a long moment of waiting, a branch above us creaked, and we looked up to find one of the minions hanging upside down from it, like a wingless bat. It was the female, the one with the missing hand. Her clawed toes and remaining fingers sunk into the bark to give her purchase, and her head twisted at a bizarre angle to look at us right side up, the blackness of her eyes glowing from within. Tendons in her neck creaked audibly in protest at the unnatural position.

“Hey there, ugly. You in there?” He was. I could feel him watching.

The thing’s mouth opened, but her lips didn’t move. Instead, the voice emerged from her throat, like through a loudspeaker. “I see you.” It was his voice, the Yeti’s voice. I would never forget that guttural rumble, coated with oil-slick taint.

“I just bet you do.” I stepped forward, separating myself from the guys, ignoring Cole and Marty’s whispered protests. “Shame on you, skirting around the rules like this. You’ll never get what you want this way.”

The minion’s head twisted almost full circle the other direction, still focusing those eerie black eyes on me. “And what do I want?”

“You’re too big and ugly to be coy. Let us go. Or you’ll never have it.”

Behind me, Cole whispered, “Never have what?” and I swatted at him without looking.

The Yeti chuckled, but his speaker never moved. “And just how do you propose to stop me?”

“Because if you don’t let all of us go, right now, when I get back to that cabin, I’ll blow my own fucking brains out, and that’ll be the end of that.”

“Jesse!”

“Shut up, Cole!” I smacked at him again, and kept my eyes on the Yeti’s little pet. “You know me. You know the samurai believed in ritual suicide. Don’t push me.” I wouldn’t, of course. The samurai may have believed in ritual suicide, but I believed very strongly in me-not-being-dead. But I was hoping the Yeti wouldn’t call my bluff. Really, really hoping.

Suddenly, the Yeti was no longer amused. The handless female’s claws shifted on her branch, unsettled in her master’s anger. “You will not. I will devour them all.”

“Then it seems we’re at an impasse, aren’t we?” And this was the tricky part. How to deal with a demon, without really dealing with a demon. Take lessons, kiddies. “How about we talk this out, once everyone’s back on safe ground? Say, tomorrow?”

She scuttled closer, the branch dipping under even her slight weight until her gaunt and filthy face was level with mine. “You will swear this. To willingly present yourself.”

“If you let us go now. All four of us. Let us get back to the cabin untouched, and without any of your choir boys singing out.”

A low growl uttered from the skeletal creature’s chest, but in the end the Yeti agreed. “I will see you on the morrow, champion.” The light in the minion’s eyes went out like a snuffed candle, but she didn’t move. Her head slowly rotated back the other direction, keeping us in her hungry black gaze.

“Guys . . . start walking. Slowly.” I didn’t know if those things were like most predators, but I didn’t want to take the chance that running would trigger them into pouncing. I didn’t believe the Yeti’s promise of safe passage for a moment. I just hoped it would buy us a bit of time.

“Jess . . . what have you done?”

“Just walk, little brother. Keep walking, and don’t stop for anything.”

Cole got us pointed in the right direction—I’d been right, they’d been luring us the wrong way—and we started picking our way through the thick underbrush.

The creatures shadowed us all the way back. Duke’s constant rumbling growl was indicator enough, even if we hadn’t been able to see them slipping through the branches like demonic spider monkeys. Every once in a while, we’d round a fallen tree or a pile of dead limbs to catch one of them leaping silently out of our path. They kept their distance, and there were no more eerie calls to scramble our brains.

It was hard, once we could see the clearing through the trees, not to just bolt for safe ground, but I had Cole’s shirt knotted in my fist, and he held Marty’s, and the three of us calmly and slowly crossed those last few yards. “Walk,” I kept murmuring to them. “Just walk.”

The tingle of Cam’s consecration spell never felt so good, as we crossed that invisible line of safety.

I could breathe again.