Page 55 of Sins of the Fathers
I’ve got to get my shit together. I need to pick the locks and run away. I can’t let her win this easily.
A faint song filled his thoughts, sweet and distant. The familiar strain wrapped around Grady, soothing the mental wounds of the witch’s power. It brought comfort and a sliver of hope.
The mountains are singing me home.
Grady woke just before sunset. He remained still, listening. No voices came from the kitchen, only muted snoring from what he guessed was the couch in the living room. After a few moments, Grady began to move slowly, trying to avoid the clink and drag of his chain against the floor as he strained to reach his wallet, wriggling it loose from his back pocket.
He worked the hidden lock pick against the tumblers in his cuffs. It took concentration due to the odd angle required to use the tool, but finally the cuffs dropped into his lap with just the slightest jangle.
Grady pulled a long, thin, iron nail from the spine of his wallet and put his billfold back in his pocket. This was a weapon of last resort, which pretty much described his situation.
He rose to his feet, wary and hyper-alert, expecting to be caught at any moment. Grady maneuvered around the sleeping man on the couch, surprised and relieved to find no other sentry between him and the door.
Outside, the cool air smelled of moss and ozone. Grady froze and listened, wondering if Ophelia had hired muscle patrolling the territory. When he heard nothing amiss, Grady moved swiftly and silently, trying to put as much distance between himself and the cabin as he could.
The woods were quiet, but Grady couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. He quickened his pace, worried that he might be stopped by a magical barrier that would sound an alarm.
Where the break in the tree canopy revealed the sky, Grady navigated by the position of the setting sun. In the growing darkness, he listened to the songs of the mountains as his guide.
“Grady—I know you’re out there,” a man’s voice called. Daelin’s honeyed tones were as beguiling as his glamoured beauty and just as false, Grady suspected. An inhuman shriek broke through the illusion for a few seconds at a time, reminding him of Daelin’s true form.
Grady ran faster, focused only on getting away. He felt the toll of Ophelia’s energy drain, not fully restored by uneasy rest, and wondered how long he could run.Can a human outrun a fae?He doubted it since his pursuer was immortal.
If I can’t get away, can I cheat Ophelia of her victory and buy time for Denny and the others to find a way to stop her?Grady recalled the ledges that claimed the two hikers and that nearly added him to the body count.
She can’t drain my energy if I’m already dead.
He recoiled from the idea as soon as it formed, knowing that if Dawson was still alive, he would never recover from such a loss.I want to live. I want to escape. But if the only way to stop her from opening the mound and unleashing the dark fae is for me to die first, then what I want doesn’t compare to saving the world—and the people I love.
“Oh, Grady,” Daelin called, taunting him like this was a sick, fucked-up game of hide-and-seek. “Come out, come out. The party hasn’t begun yet.”
Grady thought he saw the silhouette of a slim man dressed all in gray to his left, and then up ahead, before he vanished and appeared on his right.
Fae move between our realm and theirs. How do I outrun that?
He resolved to keep running until he dropped in his tracks or dove from a ledge if it was impossible to get away. The cool air burned in his lungs, and he gave up on stealth, crashing through the underbrush in a desperate bid for escape.
A row of white mushrooms gleaming in the moonlight brought him up short. Grady looked from one side to the other and realized from the curve of the line that he was in even more trouble than he thought.
Holy shit. I’m on the inside of a huge faerie ring. The whole damn cabin is inside the ring—and probably the mound too.
Grady ran for the boundary, only to be brought up short just as his boots were about to cross when a glowing white lash snapped out to circle his wrist and yank him back.
Daelin appeared to his right with a smile that exposed a mouthful of pointed, shark-like teeth. With horror, Grady realized that the whip looked like a human spine.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Daelin assured him, yanking on the lash so that it cut into Grady’s wrist, burning cold like frostbite.
“But in case anyone is foolish enough to venture out looking for you, I’ll make sure they have a merry chase,” the dark fae added.
Daelin muttered a few words, and a ghostly figure appeared beside him. Grady gasped as he realized the image was an exact duplicate of himself.
“Like my creation?” Daelin asked. “It’s a fetch. Your spectral double. And, oh yes—a death omen. But you know your fate already.”
Daelin waved his hand, and Grady’s doppelgänger walked off, easily crossing the mushroom circle, to disappear into the shadows. His heart sank, knowing that anyone searching for him would take that apparition to be his ghost.
“Fuck you!” Grady threw himself toward the mushroom line, but the bone-white leash held firm, jerking him back hard enough that he sprawled, face-down on the loamy ground, blood dripping from his wrist where the vertebrae whip had cut into his skin.
He had one small gambit left, more an act of defiance than anything he truly thought might win his release. But Grady resolved not to go down without a fight. He lay still, waiting for Daelin to approach, with the iron nail gripped in his free hand like a dagger.
