I leaned against the sheer rock face. Ivy cushioned my back and protected me from the sharp, frigid stone. It wasn't the wind, cruel and unpleasant, that had me shivering, it was what I was forced to do to protect everyone from what lived inside my aunt when it was drawn out every full moon to take possession of her body and mind entirely.
My aunt and I had been coming up here since I was a child and had been given into her care. Before I'd encountered it, the evenings leading up to the full moon it had revealed itself, not physically, but as a sinister mental presence that hissed and whispered in my ear while I pretended to sleep, confused and terrified of its strange, cruel voice.
When the first full moon had climbed high into the night sky, I'd been roused by a low guttural moan and a crack of bones. It sounded as if it was coming from beneath my bed. Across the small room, my aunt's bed was empty. My heart beating as fast as sparrow wings, I'd peered over the side and under, my hair dangling long. Spine-chilling horror pricked my skin and froze the air in my lungs.
My aunt had peered up at me from under my bed with unblinking pin-prick pupils. My aunt and yet not my aunt. I'd watched in paralyzing terror as she'd transformed into something truly horrifying. Something that laughed low and wicked.
I'd leaped out of bed and ran.
My feet had slapped upon the worn floor of the Servants' Quarters, darting down hallways, still unsure of the layout of the Deniauds' home and too panic-stricken to scream. It had chased me. Not on the floor, and not with two legs, but many and high above. It scuttled along the ceiling like a spider.
I'd lost myself in the twists and turns of the lower levels until I found myself tripping down a winding staircase with pitted-stone steps to a place where there was little light and no warmth. The dungeons and its many cells were empty, not even a single guard present because the Deniauds worked for Upper House Battagli in their money laundry schemes. They had no use for dungeons, yet every House had one beneath their modern mansions. I'd run in a mindless panic, across a small manhole with a rotting wooden covering that broke beneath my weight.
I shrieked as I'd fallen into a deep pit, my fall broken by a thick weaving of webbing spanning wall to wall, that had slowed my descent enough that I'd landed with merely the air punched from my lungs at the very bottom of the dark, cold pit.
The webbing had been spun by a small swarm of krekenns that had built a nest within the narrow hole and fed off the rats that scampered in the connecting pipes and tunnels that led from the mansion to the outside.
The creature pounced, and leaped down into the pit, crawling down the damp walls. But sticky, silver threads trapped its many limbs like an insect in a spider's web, and the krekenns, hungry and chittering, couldn't resist swarming to bind and trap it.
I'd lain there in the darkness with the thing struggling against the silver threads, hissing and roaring, terrified that it was going to find itself free and eat me, or the krekenns would turn on me too.
But neither did.
And hours later, in between my heavy eyelids closing and then sluggishly opening, I saw my aunt hanging in the middle of the pit, naked and fearful and confused. She hadn't known what had happened, or how she'd come to be hanging upside down, trussed up with krekenn webbing that was slowly turning to dust to scatter upon my limp, prone form like clumps of ash.
Afterward, I'd had a month to plan before it started whispering to me as the moon fattened once more. Sitting quietly in the Deniauds' library, searching through old tombs, I'd stumbled across a name—the Purveyor of Rarities—and a clue as to where to find the reclusive creature.
Entering the Purveyor of Rarities' lair and stealing from him was both stupid and foolhardy, but I was seven years old and too young to understand the risk I was taking. Nor did I know what the Purveyor of Rarities was exactly. I'd slunk in and scuttled about his wares quiet as a mouse for many hours, rifling through all his strange and wonderful possessions, until I found what I needed and dashed out the door. But before I'd made it to freedom his cold talons had wrapped around the back of my neck and snagged me—Caught you, little thief.
He'd dragged me back into his lair, squawking and thrashing, and emptied my pockets. He'd reclaimed what I'd stolen, a vial of magic that could temporarily paralyze small otherworldly creatures, but he hadn't found the second item I'd stashed inside the tips of my shoes—the magical stones I later used to keep the swarm of krekenns trapped inside the cave within the Hemmlok Forest.
And now here I was, fourteen years later, with a strange friend assisting me in a distant kind of way, to help save my aunt from a dark curse.
I crouched down beside my rucksack, taking a moment to rub my palms over my thighs as I collected myself once more. I opened up my rucksack and pulled out everything that would bring me some small comfort as I kept vigil throughout the long night.
Adjusting the headphones on the crown of my head, the soft earpieces over my ears, I pushed play on the tape before I tucked the walkman into my pocket. Billy Idol's 'Rebel Yell' blared in my ears. Though it was a furious upbeat tempo, there was an air of melancholy to Billy's songs that suited these nights. And of course, Billy was loud, really loud, and he helped mask the muffled shrieks of outrage coming from inside the cavern, and that strange softly whispering voice I could never quite make out, but still was vaguely aware of spiraling through my head.
The beat of Billy's songs kept my heart pumping faster and encouraged my mind to remain alert. I spread a rug on the cool earth and sat upon it. Pulling the hoodie up over my head, I drew a tartan blanket around my shoulders. The thermos flask was a welcome warmth for my chilled fingers. I unscrewed the cap and poured hot, steaming black coffee into the makeshift cup, its rich aroma filtering through the biting-cold air. I sipped coffee, the tang of bitterness and heat sliding down my throat and thawing my belly.
Billy Idol kept singing and I kept refilling my coffee cup and flipping the tape over from side to side throughout the night. As the night wore on, I leaned my back against the sheer rock face, my fingers bunched into the blanket's fabric to keep it pulled tight around my body, and Zrenyth's blade with its wavering strands of mist and shadow lay right beside my thigh.
Everything that had occurred with Jurgana, the utter panic and terror and pandemonium she'd inspired, the sound of her beasts tearing through soft flesh and screams of agony, the silence of death, and heart-wrenching keening—so much useless wasteful death—was all too much to bear. I'd kept myself busy throughout the day, focusing on the next task, and then the next, much like moving one foot in front of the other. Finally, the enormity of everything I'd survived crashed upon me in thunderous waves, hammering me under into sorrow and guilt and loss.
I burst into tears. Awful heaving, choking sobs wracked my chest and sounded guttural and distorted in the strange eerie forest. I cried for so many things. Grief at losing people I knew, and someone I wanted to know—Varen. For the fight and struggle every single month to contain the thing that cursed my aunt. I cried until I had no more tears to give. Exhaustion ran rife through my body and made my limb as heavy as lead. I'd been awake and on my feet for almost 48 hours without any sleep. My eyelids began to droop and grow heavier and heavier. Every so often my head would jerk as if I were on the cusp of sleep. I shook myself awake and consumed more coffee, tepid now, as with every hour that passed slowly it cooled inside the thermos.
But the pull, the drag, the tug was too hard to resist, and without wanting to, without intending to, my head lolled against the wall behind me and I fell into the welcome arms of sleep, drifting in its murky depths. The inky darkness of slumber dragged me down deeper and deeper and lulled me with a gentle lullaby to keep me under.
Slowly, awareness crept up on me and poked at me like a distant voice ...tabby-cat... tabby-cat...you need to wake up...right now...
It was the deafening sound of the dawn chorus, the birds chirping and singing to one another before sunrise that woke me up. I blinked, groggy, realizing that my coffee had tipped over, soaking the blanket beneath me, and the side of my face was pressed onto cold rough dirt and flattened grass.
The sun was just below the horizon, judging by how the forest had shifted from pitch-black darkness to a gloomy dark green. The crisp autumn air feathered my skin and left a residual moist sensation.
I rolled my tongue around in my dry mouth and pushed upward onto my knees, glancing around. I didn't feel right, like something off-kilter was scraping at the edge of my awareness.
Rising, I swiped the dirt and grass sticking to my face, snatched up my flashlight, and ducked inside the cave.
Flicking on the switch, I panned my flashlight slowly wide. The yellow-gold light lit up silver strands hanging limply from the cavern's ceiling, drifting in the gentle current of air slinking through the ivy.
My heart burst into a racing gait—faster, faster, faster.
I swayed as my knees weakened beneath me, almost delirious with the utter shock of what was before me. The krekenns were nowhere to be seen. I could hear them, scrambling around in the darkness at the back of the cave. Perhaps it was my presence that gave them the courage to inch forward. Their roiling mess tumbled and crawled on top of one another as they crept into the faint rounded edge of my flashlight, skimming the piles of webbing littering the stone floor like scudded clouds.
My mind was a whirlwind of chaos and panic—the nest of webbing was destroyed.
The cavern was empty, but for the krekenns and myself.
My aunt was gone.
***
Birds took to the sky in an eruption of whooshing branches and snapping wings. I half-crouched to slip and slither down the steep incline. Dew-sodden leaves, stones, and loosened dirt rattled down the slope like a dirty avalanche before me, while my shoes scoring through the forest litter left a track of scuffed earth behind me.
Where is she, where is she, where is she...
It was gloomy within the ancient forest, but high above, a wind stirred the dense canopy, and its leafy layers were burnished with silver as the sunrise crept closer.
I'd been forced to reorder my mind around the fact that my aunt, that the thing she'd turned into every full moon, was gone from the cavern. I had no idea when it had escaped, nor how long had it been out there free and hunting within the forest. Could it have gone straight to the Deniauds'? Was it stalking not animals or beasts but humans—my extended family of friends and those I loved?
In the endless shadows of my mind, I'd always feared this would happen, and now it had, again.
I'd shoved through the thick coils of ivy and burst from the cavern. Stuffing everything into my rucksack, I'd hefted it onto my shoulders and snatched up my dagger to slip and stumble my way down the steep slope.
With the ground leveling out, I straightened and ran.
My heavy rucksack bounced against my spine as I sprinted through the mist that shrouded the underworld of the Hemmlok Forest in a smokey-white haze. I barely kept my balance over slippery moss-covered earth, pushing through fern fronds and grasses and avoiding foot-tripping roots and rocks.
Pumping my arms, I pushed myself faster and faster. My throat burned as I gasped panting, jagged breaths of damp, rot-tainted air. Clammy sweat beaded at my hairline, and trails of moisture ran down the side of my face and over the swell of my flushed cheeks. I just needed to expel the nervous energy and pulverizing panic running rampant through my body like ungrounded electricity. My senses were cast far and wide, but neither myself nor the bloodhound could find the faintest hint of the beast that was my aunt. I was simply freaking panic-running with absolutely no idea where to go.
A blood-curdling screech exploded within the ancient forest nearby.
Mildew leaves sprayed wide as I skidded to a halt. My stomach lurched and my muscles locked up tight.
Was the screech human? An animal? A lesser creature?
I listened keenly, trying to source the location, trying to hear any other sound that might have followed that spine-chilling noise over the thunderous boom of my heartbeat.
Six months ago that thing had escaped the bindings of the krekenns. Its ability to take possession of my aunt fully was tied to the moon, and that night, one of the most powerful moons sat high in the sky—a Blood Moon.
I'd taken vigil as I'd always done, wrapped up in a light blanket and listening to music. I'd jolted to my feet as a sudden swell of chittering alarm coming from within the cavern grew into a crescendo much louder than the singing of Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics playing on my Walkman. Moonlight slipped through slender gaps in the forest's canopy and stained my bare skin with a blood-red hue as I pulled the headset off my ears. Wisps of stray tendrils that had come loose from my bun wavered, not in a gentle breeze, but a sticky foul breath that washed over my head as I slowly turned around, my terrified heartbeat drumming faster and faster.
A shadow blacker than midnight had loomed over me and I raised my head to look up, up, up, until I had stared, wide-eyed at the thing with shameless terror. My sweaty, trembling fingers had tightened around my dagger in a death grip.
It had viciously cursed me for binding it, trapping it with the krekenns. But now it was free.
Perhaps—it had snarled—I should teach you a lesson, Tabitha.
It had chuckled as I'd positioned my feet wider and lowered my body into a fighting stance which, as a Between Maid, I had no right to know nor assume. The only weapon I'd wielded in my life was my freaking wooden spoon. The only things I'd hunted in the forest were small forest animals caught in my snares.
Nothing like the beast that had towered over me with strands of gummy drool that spattered my face as it snapped its maw wide and laughed.
The cruel sound of its amusement had become twisted with anger as it jeered at me. Then it threatened those I loved.
I'll devour that pretty friend of yours, it hissed. The one with the big blue eyes and vacuous mind. I'll bite her head right off and swallow down her sickly sweet blood like a babe suckling from its mother's teat.
I want that crown, Tabitha. The moonlight, and blood too.
I had been prepared to fight that thing because I was terrified it would head straight for the Deniauds'. Straight for Marissa. I'd placed myself between it and those I loved and raised Zrenyth's dagger, mist curling around the deadly blade.
It lowered its head to stare me in the eyes. Its hot breath blustered over my drool-splattered face and pinched my nostrils tight with the foul stink. Those many eyes were fixed on mine when it hissed something that froze the blood in my veins.
You hurt me, stick your God's blade in my gut, it had sneered. You'll be the one to kill your beloved aunt, Tabitha. If I die, she dies.
It had laughed and scorned my hopelessness as tears pricked the corner of my eyes while I lowered my shaking dagger. In a blast of wind and leaves, it had sprung from the ground into the tall trees. I'd thrown my senses upward, trying to track it, but it moved too swiftly and I soon lost all trace.
I'd sprinted for the edge of the forest where the back lawns of the Deniaud mansion met the treeline and lingered there all night. Maybe it had been my mind playing tricks on me, but I'd sworn I'd seen a large shadow darting through the trees and caught the faint sound of a wicked laugh whipped away on the wind.
For hours, with anxious energy holding my body hostage, I'd watched and waited for that thing to emerge and do as it had threatened—hunt those I loved. And in truth, I had no idea what I would do if it did. I couldn't hurt it, I didn't dare. Not if what it said was true, and I knew it was. My aunt and that thing were connected. If I hurt it, I hurt her.
Thankfully it never followed through with its threat against Marissa. And an hour before dawn my aunt had staggered from the forest's murky depths, disorientated, covered in a dark substance. The sight of it had dread, awful and heavy, turning my limbs to lead, as she collapsed before me.
Exhausted, Aunt Ellena had barely been aware of my presence while I'd cleaned what was stuck to her naked body. Animal blood, I'd convinced myself ...it had to be...had to be... I'd held onto that thin, insubstantial hope that it couldn't possibly be human. I'd refused to believe it. Instead, I'd convinced myself that the tacky wetness on her flesh, staining her white teeth crimson, was animal blood. And yet I still couldn't quite rid myself of the guilt festering within my conscience, that I was lying to myself.
I'd spent the following days precariously balanced on the edge of sanity, about to lose my balance and fall into full-blown paranoia. I'd not slept and was barely able to keep anything down. I was terrified that someone was going to point an accusing finger at my aunt and claim they'd spotted her in the forest as that thing. That Aunt Ellena's death would be ordered as well as my own. That perhaps my darkest fear I couldn't bare to acknowledge had come true—I'd discover that someone within the Deniauds' household had gone missing.
I'd been distantly aware of Gratian's death—a hunting accident—at the Szarvas estate, but it had been too far away from our estate for me to even consider that the unfortunate death of the heir to House Crowther had anything to do with it. And I hadn't properly heard the whispered conversations. My mind had been sharpened on every nuanced look that was cast my way, especially Mr. Volkov's sly gazes. I'd dissected and weighed up every single word that was spoken to me or my aunt and turned over every single small and insignificant aspect of what had happened that night the Blood Moon had freed it.
After a few days, a week, then two had passed, with no one pointing a finger at me or my aunt and no sign of a missing person, I had relaxed and assumed we'd not been caught, and that indeed it had been a beast or animal that thing had hunted and killed out in the forest.
But now, as I stood in the Hemmlok Forest six months later, a terrible, vile feeling evaded every single inch of my body and turned my stomach queasy. Perhaps it hadn't been animal blood after all. Maybe, somehow, it had reached the Szarvas estate...
What if... What if it had been Gratian's blood that coated my aunt's flesh? What if Varen's brother had been caught by the thing?
Eaten by the thing...
Tension thrummed through my body like the slip of a cello bow, the wrong angle of fine horsehair meeting catgut, skipping and staggering, a jagged dark note that raked terrifying foreboding down my spine.
What if it happened again?
What if tonight that thing ate something else...someone human?