Then I saw Ash, slumped to the floor, a strange wound in his side and his blood flowing.
The wound in his side, that place where the light shined through, revealing that he wasn’t human.
Ash was the Darkling in the Legend. And he was the creature who had protected me in the woods when I was a little girl. All of my feelings changed in an instant. I was no longer afraid or curious, I was no longer searching for a story.
A friend of mine was wounded, possibly dying, right in front of me.
I leaped from my chair to kneel beside him, pulling Tucker with me, making sure my son was still safe. Then I ripped Ash’s shirt open so I could see the wound better.
“Get some bandages!” I cried to Joe. Meanwhile, I tried to stop the flow of blood with part of Ash’s shirt.
“Don’t let him go, Mr. Ash, please—” Joe said, shaking his head.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re babbling about,” I said, “but he needs help. Now! Tucker run to the bathroom, grab a couple of clean towels!”
Tucker dashed off. I wadded the shirt fabric into a lumpy ball and pressed it against Ash’s flesh, his pulse racing beneath my fingertips. A scorching heat poured from him, almost too hot to bear, but I forced myself to remain, despite blistering fingers.
“Don’t you see, you just can’t let Driscoll leave,” Joe pleaded as he sank to a weary kneeling position beside Ash. “The magic’s ripping apart, we won’t have no more protection from the wild ones—”
“You can’t stop it,” Ash said with a rough gasp.
Then Tucker came back with an armful of towels. I pushed the linens against the wound, tried to stop the blood flow, but they just soaked it up, turned scarlet, fabric singeing at the edges, smoke mixing with the coppery smell of blood.
Ash moaned and writhed from the pain. He glanced up at me, eyes like those of a trapped animal. Then I saw something else in their depths. A hidden emotion, finally revealed. Something I hadn’t seen in a man’s eyes for so long that I almost didn’t recognize it.
He turned his face aside and pushed himself to a sitting position, then leaned against one of the chairs, the flow from his wound finally slowing. He lifted his head and roared, his voice echoing through the treetops, soaring all the way to Cedarpine Peak and then falling off the precipice into the blue-black valley below.
“I release you!” he cried.
And a still emptiness echoed back, with just as much power as the magic. It slivered through the room, pierced every chest, made every one of us stop and be still.
At that same moment, the hole in Ash’s side began to miraculously mend, knitting together, silver threads of light stitching the edges of flesh and bone in a hundred lightning-quick sutures. It must have been unbearable, for he cried out again, then gasped for air, his face contorted in pain. Finally, with a shudder, he fell into a heap on the floor.
Outside the clouds whirled about the moon and the heavens roiled.
And somehow I knew that yet another chapter in this dark mountain legend was about to unfold.
Chapter 72
Until Now
Elspeth:
Magic sizzled through the air. It bristled across my arms and made the base of my hidden wings ache. I held hands with Jake as we joined the rest of the trick-or-treaters, and the touch of his flesh made me lightheaded. The laughter of a large crowd filled the junkyard as I shimmied through the broken gate. A chain-link fence surrounded the area, guarded by a few deserted buildings, windows boarded over, doors hanging limp on broken hinges. Everything was broken here and the trees were set back, so far away I could barely smell them. Part of me wanted to leave. I didn’t like being separated from the woods. They’d always provided protection, a place to run and hide when I felt like I didn’t fit in.
The way I’d felt my entire childhood.
Until now.
Jake smiled as he led me down the narrow path between yesterday’s cast-offs: past towering heaps of fenders and hubcaps and the rusted-out shells of old battered cars, past wire box springs and a ripped-up sofa, past heaps of toasters and blenders and microwaves. And underneath it all cracked a broken sea of cement, tufts of wild grass peeking through.
I’d never been anyplace like this before. No dirt or water nearby. Even the wind seemed to have abandoned this corner of the universe. Still, there was one who never left me, whether I wanted her to or not.
The moon.
Slipping from behind thick clouds to taunt me, to whisper and remind me of the Hunt. As if I had forgotten, as if I could think about anything else when Jake walked so close, his leg brushing against mine as we continued to wind through the rubble, fire rushing through my limbs the longer I denied the call to harvest.