Page 78 of Backwoods
“It’shim,” she said.
Ossie seized Amiya’s arm and pulled her off the road. She was so surprised by the fear that had come over both of them that she didn’t resist. All three of them scrambled into the forest that bordered the path, plunging into veils of concealing darkness.
From what they hoped was a safe distance, they crouched in the undergrowth, and watched the road.
“I don’t understand,” Amiya said in a whisper. “Nick said he was going tostopthe Overseer.”
“He couldn’t do it,” Ossie said. “Nobody can.”
“Be quiet,” Raven said in a tight voice. “He’s close.”
The sound of hooves striking dirt grew louder. Through the trees, Amiya saw the animal and its rider draw into view. The figure wore a wide-brimmed hat that kept his facial features hidden in shadow, but he carried something that glowed bright orange with latent heat.
Branding iron, Amiya realized, fear clamping over her gut like a vise.
The Overseer brought his horse to a halt in the section of the road that Amiya and her group had just vacated. His head swiveled back and forth slowly.
He knows we’re here, Amiya thought.
Beside her, Raven whimpered.
In one smooth motion, the Overseer dismounted. In one hand, he carried the glowing iron. In the other, he unfurled what looked like a whip.
He strode to the edge of the forest.
Raven screamed, and fled. Ossie shot to his feet. He tugged Amiya’s arm.
“We gotta go!” he said.
Amiya was terrified, but intuition had frozen her in place. There was something frighteningly familiar about the Overseer, how he carried himself. She knew this man, as unlikely as it seemed, and she knew him intimately.
Alerted by Raven’s scream, the Overseer had spun in their direction. He snapped the whip, and it was as if he were a mythical god wielding a jagged bolt of blue lightning. Sizzling, the whip crackled against a tree. The tree snapped in half as if formed of balsa wood, and the woods suddenly seethed with acrid smoke.
“Come on!” Ossie shouted.
Amiya tore her gaze away from the Overseer and took off running.
55
The Overseer stalked his quarry through the woods. Two of them were runaways. The other was a woman, not yet marked, who needed to be added to his stable.
All of them deserved punishment. Pain was the most effective teacher, the surest way to instill discipline and everlasting fear.
He snapped the whip through the trees. Trunks split and toppled in his wake. He strode through the wreckage, wood chips flying and smoke curling and twisting about him.
He heard his quarry screaming, and their cries of terror invigorated him. He drank deeply of their fear.
Run, run, run. Run for your very lives. I will capture you and punish you for your disobedience, and in your nightmares you’ll still be running from me.
They had a lead on him, but it mattered not at all. Westbrook and all of the land around it belonged to him, and it was night, his time.
There was nowhere to run.
Nowhere to hide.
56
They were running blindly through the woods. It was so dark Amiya could barely see her hands in front of her face. The only notable light came from behind them: the flashes of crackling blue lightning when the Overseer lashed his otherworldly whip. Each pulse of bluish light brightened the woods for a heartbeat, created leaping images that lingered in Amiya’s vision like aftereffects of flashes from a camera.
