I gave him a sidelong glance. Welcome to Mayberry. “What about your local legends? Somebody at the vet’s office told me he’d seen a chupacabras.”
“Chupacabras, huh?” He let out a short laugh. “You must have been talking to Joe Wimbledon. His family’s been seeing and talking about those damn things for almost a hundred years.”
“I thought chupacabras have only been around for about twenty years.”
“The Wimbledons used to call ’em something else.” He focused a white-hot shaft of light across the thicket, through trees that wavered and shadows that danced. “Can’t remember what. Not vampires or werewolves—”
“Shape-shifters?”
He scratched his chin, inadvertently tossing the light into the branches above us, making it look like we were in a cavern of interlocking branches. “Yeah. That’s it.”
“But nobody else has ever seen one.”
He grinned. Even in the darkness I could feel it. “You mean besides you? Every couple of years somebody claims they see something ‘funny’ in the woods or outside their house. Pretty standard for a mountain community surrounded by thousands of acres of forest. Usually happens about this time of year. Right around Halloween, when everybody’s already looking for ghosts and goblins. But nobody’s ever gotten hurt. I take it back—there was that time when a group of Joe’s poker buddies decided to play a practical joke on him, so they tied a big bat-like dummy outside his bedroom window. Joe’s wife nearly had a heart attack when she saw it. But that’s the only time. Honest. It’s possible your guy fell and hit his head, then died from exposure.”
“Yeah, and then a steamroller ran over him.”
I stopped, swung my light over the ground. There, to the left of the trail was a lumpy, misshapen pile of leaves, dusted with snow. I bent down, picked up a long stick, maybe even the same one I had used before, then swept it through the leaves.
A haze of flies and gnats rose up.
I froze. This was it, I was sure of it. A quick flash of light revealed all the landmarks I remembered.
But it couldn’t be the right place.
Because the body was gone.
Chapter 38
Skin Like Chameleons
Ash:
I watched Thane and River spin through October skies until they finally landed on the lawn before the Driscoll mansion. They would be gone soon, though not soon enough. Pain surged through my gut, stubborn and incessant, horrid beyond bearing.
“We must hide the dead human,” Sage warned.
At least, I thought she said something like that. I wasn’t sure. The knife blade had gone in a hundred years ago, but the pain had never left. My wings curled in spasms of agony.
I tried to latch one hand around a nearby tree trunk, but failed.
“Ash!” my sister cried.
One feeble gasp and then, suddenly I was tumbling to the ground, weakly grasping at branches as I fell, a rustling thunder of pine needles and leaves, and the cracking of bone against wood. Sage tried to catch me, tried to soar faster than my descent, but couldn’t reach me in time.
The forest walls became a rushing tunnel of pain. I instinctively tucked my wings around myself, but couldn’t stop the jagged rips or brutal blows, each delivered with purpose and intent.
I could feel it—even the forest was angry with me.
With a wicked thump that echoed and reverberated, I hit the ground. Crumpled in a ball. Spine striking earth. A cloud of dirt and fallen leaves exploded around me.
For a second, I thought I might never breathe again.
Then oxygen came rushing back and with it, every pain and every blow the forest had given. Still, the worst was the ache in my side, that damnable hole that would never heal. I masked it with a Veil when around other Darklings, I couldn’t have them know how easily I could be defeated in battle.
And yet, somehow Thane had found it.
The world around me wavered and faded, turned into a ghost horizon.
My sister was holding me in her arms, but she was as transparent as the fog.
“Can’t have them run away,” I murmured. “The humans always run away when they see my wound—”
“Lie still,” Sage said. “Your old wound is ripped and torn.”
Leaves and evergreen needles still fell in a rain, blanketing me, burying me just like the dead human who lay a mere wingspan away. I tried to straighten my limbs. Unable to stand, unable to move, and yet, through it all, I could hear the song of the moon, somewhere overhead, a song like ambrosia—fragrant, healing, powerful. But not strong enough.
“Drink this.”
I shuddered, then realized that my eyes had opened and Sage had lifted a vial to my lips. A thick, rich liquid flowed down my throat—a fresh harvest. I could taste the tang of wild berry and russet leaves, could hear the song of summer wind through green branches. Could feel strength returning to weak limbs.