Page 20 of Fires of the Forsaken
It didn’t hurt. Even as flame devoured my hands and singed the sleeves of my tunic, my skin remained unscathed. But I couldn’t extinguish it, and everything I touched burned.
“Help!” I flailed my hands through the air, sparks flying from my fingertips. “Help!”
But I was alone and too deep into the woods for my pleas to be answered.
7
Pulling Names Out Of Your Cherry-Anus
Kaelan and I walked for another ten minutes. Maybe more. I was so focused on breathing and, y’know, not face-planting into the mud, I almost didn’t notice the babble of voices filling the air. Not until someone bellowed,“Oi! Yer a right bastard. ‘I need a headcount,’ ye said. ‘No one is allowed to leave,’ ye said. And then ye and Kaelan disappear. That’s two hundred and sixty-three now that ye’ve returned. It’ll be two-sixty-four when Kaelan gets back.”
Yikes. Someone was seriously P.O.’d.
We broke through the trees as the speaker shouted again, “Fitzroy, ye bloody moron. How many times did I tell ye to check that mare’s shoe?” A woman stood between two towering oaks, her back toward us. She wore the same get-up as Viking Viktor and Kaelan (although her uniform came with a bow and arrows). Her red hair was twisted into a sloppy braid…
A lock of neon red hair had been the last thing I’d seen before my abduction.
My chest did a weird, fluttery thing. I didn’t know if I was pissed, or hopeful, or both.
Was this my abductor?
But…no. This woman didn’t fit the bill. Her wild curls were too carroty to match what I’d seen in my car window.
Drat.
As we moved toward her, I drew my eyes away from the back of her head and blinked in shock. She stood atop a gentle slope that led to a small clearing wherehundredsof people were gathered (two-sixty-three, per her count). My jaw almost hit the ground.
This was like a fullconventionof Viking LARPers. They all wore the same type of clothing. They were all scruffy, dingy, and stinky (holy Christ, the stench wasawful). And they all had weapons. Swords. Knives. Bows. Axes. Long pole thingys. And horses. Living, breathing, massive-shit-laying horses.
What the frick?
“Eh?” The woman whirled to face us. “What’s that ye said?”
“Huh?” I gaped at her.
“That word ye—” The woman trailed off, her eyes narrowing as she scanned my face. She took a step back, freeing an arrow from its quiver.
Was she going toshoot me?
But she didn’t grab her bow. She held the arrow in her hand and waved it in front of my face. “Oi, Kaelan! What’s that?”
“A hybrid. Ithink.” Kaelan’s brow furrowed even as he gave me a small smile.
“My name’s Addie,” I said, but my mind got stuck on that word.Hybrid.That was the second (or third) time I’d heard the term. I hadn’t thought much of it at first (too busy having panic attacks) but now… “You keep sayinghybrid. Is that, like, the car?” I asked.
Kaelan shrugged, looking flummoxed.
The woman laughed and twirled her arrow through the air. “Car,” she said, almost wistfully. “I haven’t heard that word since I was a babe.”
“So you know what a car is?” Hope surged in my chest.
“Only vaguely, I’m afraid,” she said. “I remember me mam saying that word. She must’ve had one. They’re horseless carriages, are they not?”
Pffft.My hope deflated. Like a balloon getting jabbed with a needle. Horseless carriages? Cars hadn’t been called that in at least acentury.
But sheknewthe word. So maybe she wasn’t as coo-coo as the rest of them? “Hey, do you have a—” I started, but Viking Viktor (the heartless bastard) chose that moment to make a reappearance.
“Did Braxton ride back to the city?” he murmured as he strolled up the hill to the woman’s side.
