I was hoping that if Liam’s dad had possibly used the sword to control the creature and gain entry to the portal, he’d killed it. But this dark creature I was feeling was definitely not dead. The closer we crept, the quieter the car became. Liam was sitting in the backseat next to Elle and me, eyes closed.
“Pull over,” he suddenly commanded, eyes springing open, and we stopped the car. Trissa pulled it into a canopy of trees where there was some parking for a hiking trail. The other cars in our caravan pulled over too, and we filled the last two spaces. It was dusk, just getting dark out, and hikers were coming in off the trail and to their cars.
“It feels very dark here,” Jasper observed.
We all knew he wasn’t talking about the setting sun.
Liam frowned. “I regained consciousness coming out of these woods; I didn’t know where we were exactly, but I touched a tree to catch my breath, and then they knocked me out again. I’m going to seek that tree now.”
“Seek a tree? Can you do that?” Elle looked impressed.
Liam simply nodded.
Seeking was hard to explain. Every object or person had an energy. We were all made up of energy. Once we experienced that energy, we could find it again.
I’d healed the final remaining crystals from Montana in the car ride, and now all nine of them were clean and ready to be placed at the base of the tree in Faerie.
We were in the home stretch.
“I’ll hold these. You lead us,” I told Liam, shouldering the backpack with the crystals as we got out of the car.
He nodded, nostrils flaring as he surveyed the woods around us. No one spoke; we didn’t dare mess up his concentration. Instead, we just followed him down the path, past a few human hikers and then off the trail and into the woods. Some heads turned, eyebrows narrowed at our little band of over twenty-five people stalking off into the woods, but no one said anything.
That dark feeling I was seeking got closer, and when I stepped on something hard, I glanced down to see that it was a piece of bone. Not a full bone, a piece. The ivory shard was attached to a ball joint, and it made my stomach roil.
“Getting creeped out,” Elle bellowed in a sing-song voice as we were plunged into darkness. Just like that, we’d walked into a thicket of trees, and the sunlight was so minimal it made it hard to make out the shadows before us.
“Screw this. I’m shifting,” Cam exclaimed, pulling off his shirt, which caused Elle to stare lustfully at his bare chest.
I grinned. Even in these dire times, my bestie’s mind was in the gutter.
Another one of Liam’s men pulled off his shirt, and he started to shift too. It was nice to have two beast shifters in our group so that if this evil creature was as bad as I feared, we had some fighting power. Now, not only were we plunging into darkness, but we were surrounded by the sound of cracking bones from their shifting forms.
Liam stopped dead and clutched his chest. At the same time, Jasper grabbed his head in pain.
“What’s wrong?” I pulled my sword and looked left and right, expecting a monster to jump from the trees at any moment.
“Oh, shit,” Jasper muttered as he waved his hands in front of him. Wisps of green and purple magical light flared from his palms, lighting up the woods.
“Jasper,” I growled.
He turned to face me, terrified. “Lily, fly away. Give me the crystals—”
“Jasper, fucking tell me!” I roared.
He looked around the forest as our group crowded into a tight circle and then swallowed hard. “You know the humans’ story of Satan in the bible?”
Okay… this could not be good. Whatever was going to come out of his mouth next was going to be very bad.
I nodded.
“We’re being hunted. By the creature whom Satan was inspired by.”
Okay, that was worse than I thought.
“Hunted? The HUNT!” I screamed; everything he said now made sense. In the dark times there was a hunt with a creature so dark and scary that all he could survive on were souls.
Souls. He ate fucking souls.
“Elle, take her away! I can lay the crystals at the tree,” Liam barked, still rubbing at his chest in pain. Why was he doing that? Why did his chest hurt?
My bestie and Trissa moved in to grab me, and I threw my hands out. “Touch me, and I’ll never speak to you again!”
They froze.
“We are a team, Liam. All of us.” Then, I looked at Jasper. “I’m just not that kind of Queen, okay?”
Jasper nodded reluctantly. “Then prepare to fight. He’s almost here.”
Chills broke out onto my arms at his words, and I moved closer to Liam, looking at his chest. “Why does it hurt?”
He shook his head. “I think… he is seeking me.”
Shit.
Trissa pulled out two swords and jerked her head at Liam’s men while Elle pulled her gun. “Form a circle around Lily,” Trissa said. “Get her through the portal with the crystals so she can save Faerie. That’s the goal.”
Without question, they started to form a circle around me, and I shook my head. “We all go through the portal together. That’s the goal.”
But no one listened, they tightened a circle around me as the temperature dropped in the air. A chill plunged us suddenly into freezing temps.
“What are we looking for?
