Page 41 of Dark Stars
"I love tres leche cake. I wheedle my motherto make it as often as I can get away with. Wonder if she'll makeme one if I bring home my nice new boyfriend."
Bobby snorted. "I'm pretty sure I'm the kindof boy you're supposed to steer clear of."
"Well, Michael should have been the niceboy, so…" Alejo shrugged. "I'll take the bad boy, thanks." Hefinished his snack and brushed off his hands, then returned theremaining trail mix to Bobby. "He said it was nine miles in? Howfar have we gone?"
"About halfway. Couple more hours and weshould be there."
"I swear it doesn't normally take me thislong to walk nine miles."
"I doubt you're usually hiking throughdense, dangerous woods in the dead hours of the morning."
"Fair. Let's go, then. The sooner we finish,the sooner I can go back to sleeping in your awesomely comfortablebed."
Bobby laughed as he swung his bag onto hisshoulders and headed off, leading the way through a forest thatgrew increasingly dense and treacherous. Severely uneven ground,thorny vines, strange little hollows where it was like entireboulders had simply been lifted out of the ground.
"Just me or has this forest gottenweird?"
"And weirder with every passing minute. Anyof your relatives known for this?"
"Only about most of them," Bobby muttered."Those thorns with the red tips, the missing boulders, that mossthat will glow in the dark… so many bits and pieces of my familyhere. I never sensed any of this, not once, and Ishouldhave." He stopped talking as they climbed up and over a pile ofriver rocks, and wiped sweat from his brow as he crested the top.Unfortunately, the journey was going to get no easier fromhere.
"I thought we were supposed to be going downinto a hollow," Alejo groused as he joined him. "This sucks. I'drather be back in the stupid creepy cave with gentle slopes andlighted paths."
Bobby snorted. "I'll remind you of that thenext time we wind up in a creepy cult's secret cave lair."
"I'd really rather you not repeat dates,thanks."
Laughing louder, Bobby bent and kissed him."How about the bottom of the ocean?"
"Hell to the fuck that."
They resumed walking, and Alejo grumbled, "Iam really sick of walking up a sharp incline."
"Can't have a hollow without high edges, thewhole mountain/valley thing. Highs and lows."
"Well the highs need to finish up, becausethis fucking sucks."
They climbed for another hour, whichextended their journey quite a bit, because he hadn't beenexpecting such a steep rise. That didn't seem right to him. Thereweren't any foothills or mountains in this area.
He had the sinking feeling that if theytried to leave, they wouldn't be able to, even though they wereheaded explicitly for the altar.
"How do we even know where this stupid thingis, oh lord?"
"We seek it, we will come to it. I'm moreconcerned about all this mountain climbing in a place that doesn'thave mountains."
Alejo drew to a stop at that, blinkingslowly as he stared at Bobby. "That's…concerning."
"It's theleastof our concerns,sadly. But one problem at a time. Find the altar, go fromthere."
Finally,finally, they began to godown, which was almost more difficult than going up, way morelikely to lead to slipping and falling. More than once, he had tolean on his primordial powers to keep something tragic fromhappening, especially when a drizzly rain began to fall. Not enoughto get anything soaking wet, but enough to coat everything and makeit a hundred times more treacherous.
"I can't wait to never be in this forestever again."
"Same, my sweet, same."
Alejo sputtered and flushed at theendearment, but before Bobby could tease him further, they abruptlycame to what they'd been seeking:
Down at the bottom of a hollow, aseverything smoothed out and faded off, save for twisting black andgreen vines with vibrant yellowish-white thorns that spread all theway across the hollow, stopping short by a few paces to form aperfect circle around an altar.
