The world righted itself as Rowan swung Lily around and looked in her eyes. “There you are,” he said, relieved. He was still running and he suddenly ducked, careening to his knees as he clasped Lily painfully to his chest. “Everyone down,” he ordered.
The little group huddled together against the rocky side of a cliff. The trees were bigger here, and the air crisper, but even with these differences Lily recognized this cliff. They were at the Witch Caves—they just weren’t at the Witch Caves in Lily’s world. It always stunned Lily how quickly a memory exchange could happen when the memory itself seemed to last ages. She felt like she had been inside Lillian’s memory for at least half an hour, but only minutes had passed.
“Shh,” Rowan breathed. His eyes went up to the treetops. Lily huddled close to his chest and looked at the faces of her coven, wild-eyed and bleached white with cold and terror. Rowan’s head snapped around, and then Lily heard it—a hooting, bellowing sound echoed through the forest. “Woven,” he whispered. “Simians.”
Lily saw the trees shake. She heard the crack of brittle branches as the animal calls rose to a frenzied chorus. They were surrounded.
“Breakfast, get a fire going,” Rowan said. There was no point in whispering now. “Lily, we need your strength. Can you handle this?”
“I’m okay,” she lied. “Light the fire.”
Rowan nodded once and looked at Tristan and Una. “Take off whatever clothes you don’t want torn to shreds,” he said, shucking off his jacket and shirt. Too confused and frightened to question him, Tristan and Una did as he said.
Breakfast led Lily back into the boulders strewn about the bottom of the cliff. He tucked her among the stones as deeply as he dared, trying to provide as much cover as he could without hemming Lily in with so much granite that it would block her connection to her mechanics. Tristan, Una, and Rowan took position between them and the Woven. Breakfast kicked the snow aside with the edge of his boot and gathered what leaves and twigs he could and put them in a pile. He cussed a blue streak as match after match fizzled in the icy tinder.
“Breakfast?” Tristan said uncertainly over his shoulder as he watched the shadows in the treetops loom nearer.
Breakfast’s f-bombs rained down on the tinder with more fervor, and somewhere between the matches and his explosive language a spark managed to catch as a dark body dropped from the trees and swung on huge knuckles toward Lily’s three warriors.
“Sweet jeezus,” Tristan whispered, his mind struggling to come to grips with the monster in front of him.
Lily had never seen a simian Woven before, either. It looked mostly ape-like with its hulking shoulders, long arms, and short legs, but snake scales flashed between the clumps of longhaired fur and a forked tongue spilled out of its fanged mouth as it roared. Two more dark shapes thudded to the ground and barreled up behind their leader, hooting with excitement.
“Oh, please,” Lily begged, staring at the tiny flame Breakfast was nurturing, wishing she could make it grow faster. It still wasn’t large enough for her to harvest any strength from it.
The simian Woven roared again, and Rowan charged out, howling like a wild animal himself, to meet it. The Woven balked. Lily felt intelligence inside of it as it knuckled around Rowan in a circle, sizing up this smaller but fiercer opponent. Rowan didn’t back down or show even a flash of fear, although Lily could feel how terrified he was. Four more Woven dropped from the trees and crashed forward through the snow and underbrush to flank Lily’s pitifully outnumbered coven.
Tristan and Una managed to gather themselves after the initial shock of seeing their first Woven and charged forward, trying to mimic Rowan’s battle cry as bravely as they could. Rowan never took his eyes off the leader.