“Just stay the fuck away!” Zoe yelled, voice low and ripped with emotion.
Over there. A rising bramble blocked Layla’s path, and she forced her way through. She could see Zoe and Abigail inside a small, squared-off clearing beyond, not unlike the dimensions of Abigail’s bedroom. Zoe, dressed in Segue sweatpants and a T-shirt a couple days past clean, her black hair ratty, stood in front of her sister. Her face was blotchy pale, her eyes were wild, and her expression was equal parts grief and horror. She was braced to fight.
Abigail stood directly behind her in a faded green housedress. Her eyes were hollow, jaw was slack with exhaustion. Her posture listed to the side. The only clue that she was still alert was the whimper that escaped when a swarming cloud of Shadow skimmed her skin, as if seeking a point of entry. A second flitted around her shoulder. A third patch of darkness webbed up her calves.
But Zoe didn’t strike at these. She fought the air as if someone or something was in front of her, preparing to attack.
“Get back!” Zoe screamed, swatting at nothing.
Had madness already set in? That quick?
“Shit!” Zoe darted to the side in front of Abigail, who was now overcome with visible shivers. She jabbed. She flailed. But at what?
“Zoe!” Layla called.
Zoe’s attention snapped in her direction, but she didn’t look as if she believed her eyes.
“I’m coming,” Layla said. The thorns on the small branches snagged her clothes and scraped her arms as she pushed forward.
“They’re everywhere!” Zoe hollered back. She circled around her sister, grabbing her arm to keep her close, to pull her back from the invisible dangers.
Layla peered into the surrounding trees as she trampled forward.
Coming, coming, coming, soft voices whispered around her. But she couldn’t see who spoke.
At the edge of the overgrowth, she felt a wet brush on her neck. A lick. She whipped back to find a creature craning over her shoulder, tall and thin, with backward limbs like a praying mantis’s. He was naked, gray, with wagging human genitalia.
“Kiss me,” he said, voice reedy.
Layla stumbled and fell into the clearing. The impact jarred her senses, and in the hard blink of the fall, a dozen . . . things sprang up around her.
“What the fuck are they?!” Zoe screamed.
Layla skittered back from the insect man, bumped into another. Blue. With sketchy human features on a humping shell of a head. Its eyes lit.
Coming, coming, coming, it said to her.
Layla lurched upright, but now she was surrounded, too. “No idea.”
They were queer, deformed creatures, each with some attempt at a human feature on a misshapen body. Their curiosity had a predatory quality, a wow in their eyes, like they’d found shiny toys or treats, and even better, ones that talked. Their wonder kept them from leaping en masse. They weren’t fae. Then what? And so many of them.
Layla’s breath came quick, heart drumming so loud in her ears she almost wished it would stop so she could hear and think. But then she’d be dead, so maybe not.
“Shadowman!” she screamed.
The creatures recoiled slightly, and Layla took advantage of the brief thinning to join Zoe and Abigail. They stood back to back, though Abigail was all but useless.
Zoe grabbed Layla’s wrist with her free hand. “Are you here?”
Layla knew what she meant. “Yeah, it’s really me. We just have to hang on. Shadowman will save us.”
Any minute now. These creatures had picked on the wrong people.
Coming, coming, coming, they chanted at them, inching closer.
“Abigail—” Zoe began helplessly.
“Don’t worry,” Layla said. Her chest hitched with the sound of Zoe’s pain. “He’ll take care of her, too.”
Except there was no way out for Abigail. Her body was utterly wasted, eaten away by her tremendous gift. Segue had been her hospice while she declined toward the inevitable. If there’d been any medical recourse, Adam would have pursued it long ago. They were all here because Abigail, so full of Shadow in life, had died and Twilight had come to claim her.
Zoe’s labored breaths dissolved into a sob. “It’s not fair!”
“Shhhhh,” Abigail whispered. “Let me go, Zee-baby.”
Zoe swiped tears from her face. “Nope. We’re in this together. You and me to the end.”
One of the creatures made a fast click with his teeth. Reached bony hands toward Layla. She slapped him back, but the contact blasted her senses. She struggled to keep her balance, blinking away stars.
This could get worse before it got better. Zoe needed to get out. And now. Layla had to convince her to leave while she still could.
“I’ll take care of Abigail,” Layla offered. “It’s my time to go, too.”
“I can’t. She’s all I’ve got.”
“No, you’ve got a whole life to lead. When Shadowman comes, you need to go with him. This place will mess with your head.”