loved to sit and listen to the Wood breathe, but today she didn’t have that luxury.
“Careful,” Rose called out, when Declan paused by a patch of bright pink grass that had broken through the carpet of pine straw and dirt-hugging creepers. “Very poisonous.”
She reached to the nearest vine, snagged a handful of pale yellow berries, and handed some to him. “False cherries,” she said.
He popped one into his mouth. “Tastes like the real thing.”
She could find no fault with the way Declan moved through the woods—like a wolf, soundless and light on his feet. His face had closed in again. The hardness around his mouth was back and so was the cold, distant stare.
She had insisted on coming with him against Éléonore’s wishes.
Her grandmother had been beside herself. “Why do you have to take him there?”
“Somebody has to. He doesn’t know the Wood.”
“Let Tom or Jeremiah do it.”
“We might have to run out of there like a bat out of hell, and I can run much faster than either Tom or Jeremiah, and I flash hotter. Besides, he trusts me. He’ll be comfortable with me.”
Éléonore had pursed her lips. “I wish you wouldn’t. I only have one granddaughter.”
Looking at Declan, Rose got a feeling that he also wished she hadn’t come. “My helping you bothers you that much, huh?” she asked finally.
“I wish I didn’t have to rely on you.”
“You didn’t twist my arm. It’s my home that’s invaded and my family who is the target.”
“I understand that.” He shook his head. “The point of being a professional soldier is so civilians don’t have to fight. We do the things we do so people like you can go to sleep safe. And here I am, relying on a civilian woman and a child’s talent. Yes, it bothers me. As well it should.”
“If I go away with you—” she started.
His head came up sharply. He looked at her.
“If I go away with you and if we decide to be together, eventually you’ll go away on some mission and I’ll be left at home, pacing and biting my nails, hoping you’ll come back alive.”
“It’s not always quite that dramatic,” he said quietly.
“But it’s often dangerous.”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“What would I have to do to come with you?” she asked.
He gave her a frosty stare. “You would have to pass some security examinations and competency tests to be registered as one of my operatives. It’s a bad idea. I would be more worried about you than about the mission.”
She smiled. He didn’t say no. “I suppose I’ll just have to learn to be good enough so you don’t worry so much. I hope you’re a good teacher.”
“You’re an impossible woman,” he growled.
“Hey, I didn’t show up at your house demanding you challenge me. You were the knucklehead who picked me, so you only have yourself to blame.”
They halted in unison. They stood at the edge of a narrow meadow. The Wood beyond it had lost its vibrant color. The trunks stood bare and grim, and the underbrush had shriveled to a limp tangle of wilted leaves. The magic was gone. The forest lay dead and oddly preserved, as if mummified. A taint of foul magic, alien and sharp, stained the dead trunks and withered grass. If it had color, it would drip from the Wood like purple putrid slime. The evidence of the hounds’ presence.
“It’s frightening what they do,” Rose said.
Declan’s arms closed about her for a brief moment and crushed her to him. He let her go almost immediately, but he’d packed so much into that one fierce hug: want, need, worry, reassurance . . . He’d protect her with his life. Strangely, it made her indignant. Nobody should have to be in the position of having another person give up their life for them. She didn’t want the weight of Declan’s death. The fear took a backseat, and cold anger started driving. Casshorn. If she had any hope for the future with Declan, or even without him, she had to destroy Casshorn and the hounds. That was the only way.
Declan would be there, fighting to the last. She had to do the same.
Together they walked into the blighted Wood.
TWENTY minutes later, Rose lay next to Declan on the edge of a ravine. Below them, the ground dropped off sharply. A strange contraption sat in the center of the ravine’s floor, a tangled mess of gears and moving parts, as if an enormous clock had gotten violently sick and vomited all of its insides before turning inside out. In the center of the device hung an oblong cluster of pale silvery glow, like a large batch of cotton candy woven of luminescent fog.
Around the device, hounds lay side by side, packed tight like matches into a box. Rose tried to count them. Hundred and twelve. Hundred and thirteen. Hundred and . . . too many.
The magic rising from the ravine nearly made her gag. It filled the gap, crawling along the ground and up the slope, as if it were too heavy to dissipate. She felt the mere traces of it, but when they slithered past, her whole body recoiled from the contact. She wanted to jump to her feet and run back into the Wood, to jump into a lake or to grab a handful of mud and scrub herself just to scrape the slimy patina off.
She clenched her teeth and lay absolutely still, afraid to breathe. Her mind painted a horde of hounds streaming up the wall of the ravine. She imagined wicked dagger teeth ripping into Declan, tearing flesh off his bones. All of what they were, all their fears, worries, happiness, all that made them human, didn’t matter. To hounds, they were just magic-infused meat. Cold descended on her, locking her muscles. Her heart hammered.
Declan’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. She looked at him, wide-eyed, and saw calm, steadying strength in his eyes. He didn’t lose his head. He didn’t seem afraid. She held on to his courage like a crutch and exhaled her panic in tiny, silent breaths.
Something stirred on the floor of the ravine.
Declan focused on the movement. His eyes turned gla cially cold.
A clump of the hounds parted, and a tall figure rose, swaddled in a long cloak.
There he was. They finally found the sonovabitch. Triumph filled her. Thought he could hide, did he?
Casshorn swayed, as if woozy, but righted himself. He flicked his fingers, and the hounds parted before him, clearing a path. Slowly he dragged himself to the device.
She stared at his back and wished him dead. If they were within flashing distance, she might have tried frying him.
The device emitted a screech of metal rubbing against metal. Gears whirled.
Casshorn crouched down and picked something off the ground.
The glowing cone in the center of the device split open. A dark object slid out, wrapped in a membrane laced with thick purple and yellow veins. The object fell to the ground with a wet thump and squirmed, stretching the membrane.
Casshorn approached it and pulled a large, wicked-looking hook into the light. A thick chain stretched from the hook, disappearing into a dead tree to the left.
The thing in the membrane wriggled. With a brutal strike, Casshorn stabbed the hook into the membrane and kicked a lever protruding from the wooden block next to him. The chain snapped taut, dragging the membrane sack across the ground and jerking it in the air, to the tree, where it hung suspended three feet from the ground.
Casshorn scratched at the membrane, brushing it away, revealing a fully formed hound writhing upside down on the hook. He grasped the beast by the head, and she saw Casshorn’s hand. His fingers had grown very long, and on top of each one sat a two-inch black claw. Those claws dug into the beast’s neck, but the hound did nothing to resist.
Casshorn struck. His claws sliced the hound’s throat. A stream of gray spilled from the wound. Casshorn picked up a cup from the ground and held it under the stream. The liquid splashed into the cup and onto his hands.
