Page 100 of The Girl in the Forest

The fog was a roiling cloud, white and black, churning into a malignant gray. Did Brin have enough control to take over if I failed? She would try. But if her efforts backfired, she’d shatter the energy. The shield would disintegrate, and the fog would overwhelm us.

“You’re trembling,” she hissed.

“I’m weakening.”

“How can I help?”

“Laura.” I turned to her. “Hold my arm the way Brin is doing. Let me pull energy from you.”

She did it without question, and I turned to Brin. The tendrils were licking at the top of our shield. A few more seconds, and they’d be over the edge, sweeping down on us.

The fumes burned the back of my throat. Levi coughed. His eyes were wide, but with determination and not fear. He reached out and shoved his hand against my leg. Gripped hard.

“Use… me, too, Noa.”

The pain in his voice undid me. I had the terrible impulse to step off the edge. End it. If this was magic from the witches’ cave, sent to find me, then perhaps the queen had known all along where I’d be.

If I was the one she wanted to destroy—why keep fighting? Why let her destroy those I loved because I refused to face the inevitable?

Defeatist thoughts, I realized. Like the thoughts in the witches’ illusion. Only this time, I wouldn’t give in. If I dropped the shield, I wouldn’t be sacrificing myself. I’d be sacrificing all of us, and I wasn’t ready to give up so easily.

I forced the weakening down and told Brin, “Push the energy out through your hands. Aim toward the top edge of the shield. At the first sign of wavering, stop.”

Tears streamed down her face, but her hands were outstretched, and she said, “If this works, I’ll know how to zap spiders.”

The shadows warped into unnatural shapes.

“It’s the mist from the witches’ cave,” I said. “It’s her. The queen, looking for us.”

I was giving away information not everyone understood, and there would be questions to follow. But we had no way out. With our backs to a stone wall, pouring energy into the wavering shield, the threatening fog trapped us. And what I syphoned became a white-water current eroding my veins, my skin and bones. Flowing with disorienting speed. My vision narrowed. Black spots danced, distorting everything I looked at. Bits of me were dissolving. When I looked at my splayed fingertips, I thought I could see the particles pulling apart…

Soon, I would be nothing.

My eyes ached as I stared into the shadows, but hope flared when the tendrils crowded, then folded back on themselves, as if they no longer held enough energy to rise. Gravity took control, and the mist fell away, retreating… emptying into the dry well in the corridor, disappearing like water down a drain.

I had the insane need to generate flames and send them into the well, burn the entity controlling the mist.

Beside me, Brin was sobbing. Levi stretched out a hand, testing the energy shield. It was gone.

Laura tried to pull me from the corner. My legs were trembling. I pushed myself upright, then crashed back to the straw. I needed to be strong, but I’d dangerously weakened myself. So had Brin. Laura hovered, trying to heal. Only rest would help.

Time.

But I couldn’t sleep. Fear invaded the dark every time I closed my eyes. Bringing with it the uncanny awareness that the queen still searched, looking for some other crack to slither through.

CHAPTER 31

Noa

The vampires brought three meals—the same bland soup and bottled water we’d had since arriving, but I used the meals to count the days. Then, instead of a meal, the female vampire appeared. She wasn’t alone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Five males accompanied her, surrounding us as we shuffled out of our cells. Levi leaned heavily on Laura while I held Brin’s hand.

They marched us down the stone corridor, then up steep, narrow stairs. Another corridor followed, more stairs, until we entered a monstrous gathering hall with a vaulted ceiling. Narrow windows glittered with stained glass—ruby, indigo, gold. I couldn’t see more than the glare through abstract patterns of color. The floor was polished gray stone, great slabs laid with both squares and rectangles. At the far end, a raised stone dais held two rows of chairs. Vampires milled around, men, women, some bored or restless, others distracted by their conversations. None of them actually sitting.

I took a moment to study the lavish clothing. The women wore colorful satins, plunging necklines. Jewels glittered at pale throats. Hair styles reflected popular trends from centuries ago. The men matched the women in glamour. Some wore court costumes—what I imagined to be high fashion in the old courts of Europe. Then there were the others, ordinary. If I’d passed them on the streets in Seattle, I wouldn’t have looked twice.

Light came from modern chandeliers with electric bulbs and not candles. Tables groaned beneath a selection of foods I doubted vampires would eat. But the display mimicked a time when they’d been mortal, preening in a human world.

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