Driscoll:
Dr. Ross Madera stood on the wraparound porch, one hand on the carved brass doorknob, as if dreading what waited on the other side. I could see him through the leaded-glass panels on the door, watched him shiver, as if pushing his ghosts behind him, as if shouldering his way through a large crowd.
Sometimes the price of friendship is too heavy to bear.
But I have no empathy for his choice of friends.
The knob turned, almost on its own, as if the door itself willed him to enter. They waited inside—like a pride of lions: Ash’s clan, here for the Hunt. They had spread across the parlor and I was doing my best to crouch behind the desk and stay hidden.
Ross stood in the doorway, now, fear on his weathered features. I knew that he barely made it from one day to the next and that thought alone made me smile.
None of the Darklings bothered to hide behind human flesh when the door opened—they all kept their glowing eyes, papery skin, the wings that rustled and sang. Meanwhile, a single-note chant, poetic and hypnotic, circled the room, haunting and eerie in both simplicity and depth. I felt like I could listen to it for a thousand years and never hear it repeat, never grow weary of it. Sparks hung in the air, liquid, and fragrant.
They were probably testing enchantments, holding time still.
Ross took a timid step across the threshold. One of the females, wild and beautiful, smiled at him with silver-gray lips. It was Sienna, Ash’s cousin and one of Sage’s handmaidens. She walked closer, touched webbed fingers to the intruder’s brow.
She was probing, looking for his secrets.
I knew that Ross had enough secrets to satisfy even the most wanton Darkling. Tales of war in faraway jungles, short men with almond eyes, children who had banded together to carry death. Burning villages and rice paddies and protesters back home who hadn’t cared about the war. Helicopter blades that had sliced blue-black sky, a foreign language on the radio. Men who had tumbled down to the ground, far below—the imprint of Ross’s hand on their backs. Always and forever, falling. Always and forever, dying. The secret desire Ross had: to be shoved out of the door next, sucking night sky, praying to the god of gravity to be merciful and swift.
Sienna smiled now, as if she had joined him in the Land of Nightmares. She drank in all of his pain and seemed to beg for more.
“Sienna. That’s enough.” Ash’s voice sounded, somewhere up above. On the landing, perhaps.
I flinched and huddled closer to the floor, peered from the side of the desk.
But she ignored Ash. She traced a finger from Ross’s temple to his lips. There, she let it rest, eyes focused on his mouth, as if willing him to speak of it, out loud, the horrors of war, the sleepless nights.
“What does it mean to not be able to sleep?” she asked, head cocked as if gazing down a microscope at some new form of bacteria.
“Stop!” Ash was beside them both now. “This one belongs to me. He bears my mark.” He took Ross’s arm, lifted it, pulled back the sleeve to reveal a six-inch scar on the human’s forearm. “The Hunt does not begin until I say.”
Then he pushed Sienna back, fire in his touch. Yellow flames licked her shoulder; they traveled the full length of her arm before disappearing.
She cried out and shrank away from Ross. A hiss slithered from her lips, but she didn’t fight back.
No one challenged Ash. No human. No Darkling.
Ever.
“Come.”
Ash led Ross away from the flock of Darklings, up a stairway, to a room where they could talk. They turned their backs on the whir of leathery wings, retreating into the safety of friendship.
And at the same time I retreated as well, through the kitchen and up the back stairs to my room. Maybe, if they couldn’t see me, I could be forgotten. I needed to hide. For there would be no safe place in all of Ticonderoga Falls once the Hunt began.
Chapter 25
Dancing Burning Beast
Thane:
The stench of fire and scorched flesh filled the room. Thin trails of smoke followed after Ash as he ascended the stairs, venom in his gaze when he looked back at us from the landing. Meanwhile, flames sizzled on my sister Sienna’s skin, bright and burning—a gentle, flickering, liquid heat. I watched her, my heart fascination growing.
I hated the sun; her light blinded me.
But this dancing, burning beast was different, this thing called fire, this smell of charred flesh.
The Hunt does not begin until I say.
But it had already begun, yesterday in the green shadowed wood, when my brother had killed that human male. The creature had died with a pleading whimper, all because River hadn’t been able to control his appetite. And now his body lay cold and alone beneath a shallow pyre of leaves.