The Veil hung between the trees like razor wire now, biting my flesh. Still, I continued to sing, like a man leaning into a blizzard, hunching my shoulders, squinting my eyes, a low chant warming my chest as I walked with my head tucked down. I ignored the many cuts that slivered my flesh, my poems raising the temperature, making the earth hiss. With a lungful of damp air, I lifted my voice, louder and then louder still.
I wasn’t going to give up, no matter how long it took me to break through. For I knew now that it was Maddie who had been captured in my cousin’s Veil. I heard her voice slip through as she fought Thane, verse against verse. Then the clouds rolled thick and heavy across the path.
And after that, no more sounds escaped.
Chapter 32
Gnarled Fingers
Thane:
Fog drifted around us, a thick, black haze with gnarled fingers. It teased the trees and blocked out blue sky, turned the forest into a nightmarish vista. She fought me, this woman named Maddie that I had followed through the wood only last night, and as she did, I could see why my cousin had been so intrigued by her. Bits of poems and snippets of stories dripped from her lips, sweet as honey wine, each one of them more lovely than the one before. Meanwhile, my concentration was failing. This human woman was slicing through my Veil and confusing me with her own magic incantations. Then with a mere whisper of words, she knocked me on my back, drove the wind from my lungs, her poem strong as a warrior’s blow.
I rolled away from her and she bounded to her feet, ready to run away.
“No!” I bellowed, then I leaped, tackled her and drove her to the ground again. River chanted at my side the whole while, holding the Veil fast, for my strength was waning. “Sleep, my love, rest now,” I said, my voice soft and soothing.
Her limbs relaxed and her eyelids fluttered.
I slid one arm beneath her neck, pulled her to my chest. This human was not meant for a quick glutted death; she carried the dreams of a lifetime and should be kept in a cage, given robes of velvet. She could keep an entire village alive with her dreams.
With a swipe of rough tongue against her forearm, I claimed her with my mark.
Promising death to any who took her from this moment on.
Then I sang to her, the words so quick that she couldn’t understand them, and I began to sift through her dreams, rooting about like a child through a chest of toys. Webbed fingers spread wide, yellow claws gleaming, I stirred them and watched: First I saw an image of her son falling in love; then another of her grandchildren playing in the yard; then a vision of someone standing beside her—a man, her true love, though his features were masked in shadow.
And finally, I saw a picture of her dog, Samwise. He was running through the house, chasing a black-winged beast, another Darkling, and suddenly, in an instant, he changed, grew until he was as large as the room itself with wings of his own—
’Twas a werebeast she was dreaming about.
Terrified, I sat back on my haunches. No, couldn’t be real.
Then, somehow, Maddie found the magic beat that sang in the silent spaces between the letters. She rose up from the ground and forced words to the surface in one final scream.
“Samwise!” she shouted. “Come!”
River and I clamped our hands over her mouth, pushed her back to the ground, but we both knew that it was already too late. We could feel it. Reality was shifting, something horrid was being summoned by this human, something we couldn’t stop.
A shiver raced over me and I heard it beginning; far away a dog pawed frantically at a front door, until finally, someone opened it. But the door swung open too fast and the dog slipped away.
Now it was running. I could hear it, galloping through the forest toward me, blood pumping through its body. New blood with a new purpose soared through the dog’s limbs like fire, tangled through every organ and changed the beast with every beat of its heart. It was running faster than ever before; it was bigger than the sky and darker than the night, a shadow with teeth and claws, taller than the trees—
“The woman has summoned a werebeast,” I said, astonished and afraid.
“Run!” River cried and he spread his wings.
At that moment I saw Cousin Sage, rising up out of the river, one hand raised, ready to cast an enchantment. But even she was too late.
For the ground thundered and the valley echoed with an unholy growl. A mythic beast was charging up the trail, shredding the Veil that should have protected us. I could hear the Veil ripping, the sound shocking through the fog. A werebeast would be here in a moment and the monster would have the power to kill all three of us with a single blow.
Chapter 33
Wild Thundering
Thane:
The trees cracked and thrashed, branches were breaking and the beast was coming toward us on the trail. I was still holding Maddie in my arms when the werebeast appeared, towering above the treetops, part dog, part monster; it skidded to a halt beside me, ripped down two fifty-foot pines with its front paws. Before I could move, it swung a meaty paw and knocked my brother on the chin, sent him bleeding and tumbling into the bramble.
It glared down at me, jaws spread wide, revealing a guillotine of teeth.