I felt sure that Adrianna would punch his teeth down his throat, but she just considered him for a moment. “Unlike everyone else here, I’m not ready to bear my heart.” Her voice was unyielding. “If you want to work with me, you have to accept that. Now, I really am going to sleep. Serena, you can wake me in a few hours for the next shift.”
“No, wake me,” Frazer said. “I’ll take her shift.”
My eyes flashed to him. What—
His thoughts were echoing before I could finish mine. You might feel awake now, but you’re still mentally exhausted after sharing your memories. You need to rest.
I was about to protest but I got interrupted by Adrianna. “Fine. You wake me then.” She tucked her wings in tighter, lay down, and turned away from us. Cai didn’t stop staring at her back for a good long while.
Chapter 17
The Eerie
I woke suddenly, violently, to find Frazer suspended over me, his hand clamped over my mouth. Don’t struggle.
What’s wrong?
Frazer pulled me up to a sitting position. The fire still blazed, and dawn hadn’t broken. Something’s not right. I’m going to wake Adrianna—you do the same for Cai and Liora.
Wait. I went to grab his hand. Tell me.
He gave me a look. One that confirmed my worst fears. I can smell something.
A spider-tingle pricked my spine. What?
An eerie might be close.
I’d no idea what that was, but it definitely didn’t sound good.
I’ll be back. He moved away, barely disturbing the surrounding air. I watched as he bent over and shook Adrianna. She was wide awake and standing in moments. Their lips moved, but I heard nothing. Not even a whisper.
My throat bobbed. Turning first to Liora, a touch was all it took for her to stir. I doubled over, whispering in her ear, “Frazer thinks something’s wrong.”
Alarm swept across her face, and her eyes went straight to her brother sleeping on the other side of me. I shuffled over and repeated the same warning in his ear. He instantly rolled into a sitting position. His gaze swept the clearing, coming to rest on Adrianna and Frazer who still talked outside the range of human hearing. Cai looked to me for information, demanding it.
“Frazer thinks he smelled an eerie,” I breathed.
Cai’s nostrils flared, and he leaned in close. “What did you say?” he asked in a violent whisper.
“An eerie.”
Cai jumped up, his arm sweeping the air in front of him. A sound barrier erupted. Adrianna and Frazer stopped and stared.
“Is it really an eerie?” he hissed.
Frazer gave a nod.
Liora’s mouth popped open in a soundless gasp of horror. “That’s what’s out there? Aren’t they meant to be impossible to kill?”
Adrianna answered. “Everything can be killed.”
She was too still, too quiet: Adrianna was terrified.
Liora clambered up. I followed her. Cai waved a hand wildly. “What the fuck are we doing? We need to be running.”
Adrianna raised her head higher. Her eyes flashed dangerously. “The eerie’s got our scents. We can’t go charging off into the night. We need a plan.”
Cai cut in. “I’ll move our scents away—”
“That won’t work,” Adrianna vetoed. “Eeries are air incarnate; you can’t trick them like that.”
My knees knocked together. “What happens if it catches us?”
Liora and Cai exchanged a dark look. And Frazer blurred, stuffing his bedroll into his rucksack, shouldering it, and moving to my side to do the same for me. Since he’d been acting as a lookout, he hadn’t removed his bow or quiver. Cai and Liora immediately copied his example and started packing, strapping their swords to their sides.
Not exactly reassuring.
Only Adrianna answered my plea for information. “Eeries suck the air from the lungs of their prey. What they do afterwards, you’re better off not knowing.”
My heart sputtered. The fear permeating the air seeped into my very bones—the necklace began to burn. “So, what do we do?”
Frazer was fastening my Utem? onto my hip while Adrianna replied, “We can’t run forever, and our weapons won’t work against it. We need to keep it at bay long enough to trap it.” She stared out into the shadow of the forest, fists on hips. Something told me she placed them there to hide her trembling hands.
“How?” Cai asked, standing with his bag now secure on his back.
“It’s not keen on fire,” Adrianna’s eyes shifted to her own belongings. She moved and in two blinks had her rucksack, quiver and bow nestled between her wings.
A bloom of light flared into existence. Cai had stuck a fallen branch into the fire. Adrianna pointed and scowled at the makeshift torch. “That little pig sticker won’t do anything but annoy it.”
“I’m a witch and air-blessed,” Cai retorted, raising his tattooed hand to his chest. “I’ll blow the flames into a fury.”
I was the only one to see doubt fill Liora’s eyes.
“The fire will only keep it from killing us quick,” Frazer said as he strapped my rucksack onto my back. I didn’t even bother to fight him. “Only earth can neutralize an air sprite. A sealed well or cave would work.”
Liora’s face had drained of all color, but her voice was steady. “Adi, you know the terrain. Can we get to either of those things in time?”
“There aren’t any mountains for miles,” Adrianna rushed. “But we’re close to a fae village—”
A howling, groaning wind cut her off. Frazer grabbed the back of my neck and forced me to the ground. He kept my head pressed into the dirt, hovering over me, shielding my body. I tried to move, to see something, but his grip was too tight.
“Adrianna, take my sister. Go!” Cai roared.
The sound of wings stirring told me Adrianna had taken flight.
Liora screeched, “Let me down!”
The murmur of wingbeats continued. From Liora came a throat-tearing scream. “Cai!”
Her desperation spurned me to fight Frazer. “Let me up.”
“No.” His voice wobbled slightly.
“Frazer,” I spat through gritted teeth. “This isn’t your choice.”
A moment of hesitation. He relaxed his grip and pulled me up, but he angled his body in front of mine. The eerie was floating not ten paces away. I muffled a scream.
The eerie had lodged itself into a meat suit—a faeling female. Just a child. Empty, rotting pits, which used to contain eyes, stared back. A blood splattered smock hung loose over gray skin that had withered and sagged. Shards of bone jutted out at awkward angles. Nothing remained of her wings except the joints, visible above her shoulders. Like the broken spokes of a wheel. And pitch-black hair fanned out behind her, rippling in invisible wind currents.
My bowels turned watery as the eerie forced the faeling’s broken wrist into a wave. Pulling on her strings like a doll. The grating sounds of bones crunching against one another made me double over and vomit.
I quickly wiped my hand on the back of my mouth, straightened, and stared at Cai. He held his torch aloft, swiping it back and forth. The flames burned higher, directed by a dancing zephyr that he was summoning and sustaining. His face was contorted; sweat beaded on his brow. He couldn’t keep this up for long.
We were nothing more than prey now. Mice to a hawk.
The eerie forced its shell into a manic grin. “Pretty little things—want to play?”
That was no faeling voice, but a grating rasp.
Frazer hissed. “Leave now, gutless demon.”
A snickering, high-pitched sound answered back. The stench of its rotting flesh wafted toward me. Clamping a hand over my mouth, I desperately fought the urge to dry retch.
“Leave now, and we’ll let you live,” Frazer said, his eyes shifting between the creature and Cai.
“Let me live?” It giggled, delighted.
“Fluff and flies. Such lovely lies.
That’s all you’ve got before you die.”
The eerie sang, conducting with its mangled arms.
My mind was in chaos. We had to get to Cai. We had to run.
The eerie twisted in a breeze of its own making to stare at me. “I like you best.” It sucked in a rattling breath through jagged teeth and riven lungs.
“You smell like spice and everything nice,
Like snowflakes and frozen lakes.”