"It’s okay, you’re safe," I told her gently. She hated having nightmares, as she thought they might be a sign of weakness. I disagreed completely. After Lanzon's death, I’d dreamt of nothing but the fiery rubble of Vanim and my brother's face for months. Now, when I dreamed, they were merely shadows dancing in the distance. These shadows were always too far away for me to catch, but Lyra was real and beautiful. She dropped her gaze with a tiny, frustrated pout.
"I'm always having nightmares," she admitted and rubbed her eyes. "It might have something to do with… well, everything we've ever done. I dreamt the survivor was out in the forest with something terrible." She shivered and hunched closer to me. I pulled her tight against my chest, enjoying the way she smelled. I wanted her to feel safe.
Lyra wanted to find the survivor who had apparently barricaded himself in the remains of the Black Rock Bureau Office at one time, but I suspected that the human was long gone. We had found a large amount of blood. If he hadn't managed to return to his safe room, then I didn't have much hope for the guy. In my experience, humans often thought of themselves as invincible even if they didn't admit it, but their optimism was often misplaced.
"We'll look today," I assured her, and pressed my lips against her forehead.
She fidgeted against me and glanced up with a hopeful look. "We could go now, so we have a full day to follow the creature's trail."
This was why I loved Lyra. She never gave up or stopped caring, and her dedication fueled my own motivation. The early morning light was coming through the windows of the plane. I kissed her quickly before we pulled ourselves up to get ready. When in love and working on dangerous missions, I had to sneak in the romance when I could.
The carrier plane sparked to life as soon as Cam's alarm went off a minute later. He sprang out of his bedroll with such speed that I nearly laughed. Sike and I prepped for the day as Bryce went over communications from the outside world, while the other humans dined on oatmeal. For people who once gasped at my kind feeding on blood, they sure liked to eat gross-looking food. Charles, the pilot, still needed to be relieved from his late-night watch. Since he’d stayed with the plane yesterday and rested, he insisted on taking the last watch alone so the rest of us could sleep before going out again.
"Let's get going," Lyra pressed. She was already undoing the locks on the door. "We might still be able to find him." She glanced outside to survey the immediate area, and Bryce shot me a wary look, one that said he also believed our survivor was long gone. Still, we needed to investigate. If the survivor was dead, then we needed to look for clues about what had killed him.
Odd. Charles wasn’t where I would have expected him to sit on watch.
Lyra sucked in a sharp breath as she stalked toward the Leftovers. I was behind her by several yards, but I saw what made her react. The forest had changed… Overnight, the trees had rearranged themselves around the Black Rock office building. I stared at the branches, which still moved without the aid of any breeze. Cam hurried behind us, furiously documenting everything with a small camera.
Last night before I entered the plane, I’d noticed movements in the trees, large and small. The creatures had mostly stayed out of the lights from the carrier plane. The big signature didn't appear during our watch, nor did it show up for Bryce or Sike. I stared at the trees more carefully than I had the day before. They were livelier than we’d anticipated.
"The forest moved, just like in the reports," Cam said as he knelt to photograph a set of prints leading to the office. The soldiers who had gone into these woods hadn't managed to stay long, since they weren't used to fighting supernatural monsters, but moving trees were mentioned. I hadn't thought that an entire forest was capable of changing overnight, though. Even in the Immortal Plane, this was unheard of.
Lyra looked at me with concern. "Do you think this means our trail is gone?" The front door of the office building was rigged and locked just as we’d left it. She suddenly jerked her head to the side. “Wait, where is Charles?”
Everything had changed. The pilot was gone. The trail was gone. Lyra's shoulders slumped, and she cursed under her breath. I looked around the area. Had Charles gone inside the building and gotten lost, trapped by the forest?
"This shouldn't be possible," I noted, and ran a hand over the bark of the closest tree. The surface was leathery and soft, but the angles of the tree were unnatural. It was like the forest had rushed to rearrange itself, damaging itself in the process.
Sike let out a sigh. "It's reacting to our external presence like we're a human virus or something. The trees only seem to be reacting when we enter the area, unlike the little rodents.”
I nodded, mulling his words over. These trees were alive in some attached network that allowed them to work together. I crouched to the ground to see if I could find any clues at their roots. If we dug deep enough, could we find how they all linked together? My mind raced as I considered the implications of a living, breathing forest, a mix between mortal and immortal, surrounding us. Could it swallow us up if it wanted to? Had it gotten Charles?
All around the plane, there had been tracks of varying sizes leading to and away from our craft. The tracks here, small and pointy like stars, ran across the dirt in every
