I jumped next, landing on the right side of Tyler. He grabbed my wrist and steadied me. We started to move immediately, which meant we bounded from one tree to the next, balancing on top of the roots. Marcy was right behind me, and when she started to fall behind, I tugged her along. I was directly behind Tyler, who was taking the clearest route around the snakes and doing a pretty decent job. But it wasn’t going to last. The snakes would figure out where I was soon enough and start to converge, but I’d take it for the moment.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Marcy muttered. “I don’t need any more incentive to get away from this house of horrors.”
“Keep trying to use your spells,” I said. “Maybe if we get farther away, they’ll work—”
Tyler blipped out of existence in front of us. One second he was there, the next gone.
Before I could yell for him, Marcy and I tumbled across some kind of warded boundary line. As we passed through, my body pulsed with strange magic. My wolf growled fiercely, snapping her jaws as the evil energy of the place raced along our skin. The ward tasted stale and very old.
The world in front of us slowly morphed into view.
Our environment before had been filled with healthy trees, interspersed with water. But now, like a watercolor being washed away, the space in front of us revealed another land entirely. What was left in its place was barren soil and dead trees. All the water was gone. We were standing along a ring of trees, a large circle of dead earth in the middle. The trunks were withered and gnarled, like old crones who had been forced to stand sentinel for their master. The sun had been cast into dark shadows, appearing like only a pale orange globe in the sky.
This was her land.
I could feel it as clearly as if she stood next to us. She was beckoning us, taunting us, daring us to move forward.
“Holy crap,” Marcy said as my mate burst through the ward behind us.
“Thank gods,” he roared as he made his way over. “When you disappeared, I thought it might have been through another goddamn portal.” Danny was close on his heels. Rourke stalked through the tress, taking in his surroundings like the rest of us. He stopped next to me, reaching for my hand, his eyes alert.
“Well, this is a bit strange, isn’t it?” Danny said, peering into the barren circle. “But the bloody snakes didn’t follow us in, so maybe we’ve been given a short reprieve by finding this place?”
“I don’t think a reprieve is what she has in mind,” I murmured. “I’m pretty certain her snakes can enter, but I think she used them to chase us here. She gave us the only clear path to run, so we used it. She wanted us to find her.”
“Well, she’s not getting what she wants,” Tyler said. He was twenty feet to the left of where I stood. “We’re going back to the boat. The four of us will shift, and we can fight the snakes in our true forms. Our claws and fangs should be enough to hold them back until the vamps get back. Marcy, you send up flares. We should’ve done something like that from the beginning. Once the vamps arrive, they can take two of us out at a time.”
“I can light up the sky like the Fourth of July,” Marcy agreed, turning to follow Tyler without question. “I can also kindle a fire around us. That might keep them back. I know I have to start thinking better on my feet, but honestly, anyone in their right mind would freak out in the face of one of those monsters, much less hordes of them. I’ve never seen pythons that big in my entire life. And those red eyes. So hateful.”
I didn’t have a better plan, and fighting the priestess or whoever she was right now wouldn’t be optimal. We all turned and started back the way we’d come.
After about ten feet, Rourke said, “We should’ve hit the boundary line by now. We all came through right around here.” He turned in a circle. “But, honestly, I’m not sure if this place is an illusion or some kind of an alternate reality. If it’s an illusion, we might be screwed.”
I took in the scenery again. “The ground seems firm and real,” I said, stomping on a tree root. “But I agree. This area gives off some weird, unnatural vibes. It’s hard to know if what we’re seeing is reality or not.”
“It could be a place in between,” Marcy said. “Not reality and not illusion.”
“Like between dimensions?” Tyler asked. “I’ve heard those exist but never believed it.”
“I would think the voudoun would seek out those kinds of places.” Marcy nodded. “So I believe it. Maybe that’s why she chose this location in the first place, because it was close to the in between.”
“I visited a place kind of like this in the Underworld,” I said. “The Scholls. Ardat Lili called it exactly that—a place in between. It was a spirit world for their half-dead, the demons who came back as wyvern. It was different than this but had the same thick air and menace.” The air wasn’t wavy like it had been in the Scholls, but it was similar enough. “I don’t know anything about voudoun, but if the priestess who lives here communes with specific spirits, I think you might be right, Marcy. She could’ve come here to be closer to them.” That seemed like the most logical. If a demon in the Underworld specialized in communing with the wyvern, they’d move to the Scholls.