It’d all worked out in the end.
Sighing, Lilith grabbed some smooth soapstone off the bottom and rubbed it down her body, causing the water to burst with shiny bubbles. She should have known that a little bit of food and music and a couple days of near silence wouldn’t have been enough to make him let it go.
“Stubborn man.” She scrubbed her leg vehemently.
The demone made her think so much of her father and their old-world mentality about what a woman could and couldn’t do and his constant need to stress that he meant to see her safe. She might be young compared to him, but she was no fool. She rolled her eyes. She was an equal and he needed to realize that.
“That demone could vex even a saint,” she spat and then stilled as she finally noticed what her anger had shrouded from her.
The woods were quiet.
Unnaturally so.
The sudden stillness of sound wormed its way through her brain, causing her to twirl in the water. Where were the croaking frogs, the humming cicadas? It wasn’t that she sensed anyone present—more that there was such an obvious void of noise that it caused the fine hairs on her arms to stand on end.
A stiff northern breeze brushed against her nipples, causing her to shiver as the leaves rattled in the trees. And then there were eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of red beady, glowing eyes that seemed to come out of nowhere, appearing like a field of ghosts come to life.
A flash of white fur scampered off and the feeling that those mice at the pub hadn’t been just some strange fluke after all gripped her by the throat.
And then the mice began jumping into the water. One dive-bombing in and then another and then another, all swimming toward her.
Realizing she needed to get back to camp immediately she rushed toward the bank, but a wall of rats appeared and they were clicking their teeth at her, hissing and waving their little rodent palms at her.
One rat wasn’t a problem; two or three wasn’t even that bad. But when the numbers got into the hundreds, as it now was, they could easily strip the flesh off of someone.
Jerking away from their sharp teeth, she noticed that if she moved in the opposite direction they grew calm.
Maybe if she could just maneuver around the wall and backtrack she could get back to camp and tell Giles they needed to leave immediately.
But every time she attempted to backtrack, the chattering and nipping picked up again. Scanning the ground, she saw the mice from before now joining the rats, and they were both moving in an unified stream, calm only when she moved in the direction it seemed they wanted her to.
Mice didn’t bother her. Their naked little tails and beady eyes had never fazed her much. But there was something unnatural about the way they gathered like this.
Almost as though they were being…controlled.
And with that thought came another: why did it seem like they were herding her? Back of her neck prickling with a spot of fear, she tried once again to backtrack, but the rodents crawled up her leg and one of them took a plug out of her, making her yowl in response. She slapped it off her thigh, feeling a warm trickle of blood slide down her leg.
“Giles,” she cried, feeling a fool because she was sure he wouldn’t hear her from this distance, but it didn’t stop her from trying again. “Giles, come quick.”
Hunched over to avoid the branches of low-hanging pines, Lilith never saw the blow coming.
She came to she wasn’t sure how much later. All she knew was that her head was throbbing, she tasted blood on her tongue, and her vision was woozy.
Grunting, she tried to move, but her body was frozen.
An irritating annoying sound, like a buzzing mosquito rang in her sensitive ears.
“Good, she’s awake, sisters,” a female voice sneered and then a bucket of water was splashed onto Lilith’s face.
Coughing, sputtering out the water, she blinked through the haze trying to make out who was attacking her and why.
“Karis, was that really necessary?” one of the voices asked.
Karis?
Lilith sucked in a sharp breath because the mention of that name jogged a long-forgotten memory. It was foggy and only half-formed, but she remembered that it’d involved her brother, Lleweyn, and possibly even her, but the details were extremely sketchy at the moment.