I wanted to snap at him and tell him that it was none of his business. For all he knew I was going to kill him and bury him in the snow.
“Nothing. I’m meeting a friend,” I said. “My boyfriend,” I added.
“Party, or…?”
“Party.”
“Ah good, ‘tis the season huh?”
I shot him angry eyes in the rear-view. In retrospect, I maybe shouldn’t have. But the frustration building within me was starting to claw at my skin. A trickle of Power escaped my containment and the mirror cracked, splitting my reflection into pieces.
The cabbie cursed. “Shit!”
He struggled with the wheel and the car spun wild. I held on to the head rest in front of me for dear life; I thought I was going to die! But the car skidded to a slow halt in the middle of the road, and I was left panting. Alive, but panting.
“Fuck!” the cabbie said, “Fuck, fuck. Are you okay, Miss?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, brushing crazy hair out of my face.
“That was close.”
He was breathing through the nerves, and I wanted to help him. After all, I had caused this whole thing. But a slight chill raced down my spine before I could speak again, and I recognized the feeling.
“I’m going to get out here,” I said.
“What? But it’s just down that road.”
I rummaged around for a twenty and handed it to the cab driver.
“This is too much,” he said, but I was already gone.
I pulled the coat around myself and hugged it shut as I made my way into the snow covered woods. There were no tracks in the snow, no visible signs I could follow. Nothing that would help bring me to my destination—not that I even knew where exactly that was. But I had made it here in only twenty minutes. Aaron, on foot, would take way longer than that… wouldn’t he? I had time. Time to get to where I was going to go and stop Aaron from getting himself killed.
The forest was dark; too dark to see the features in front of me with any clarity. So I decided to use the flashlight on my phone to light my way, but the brilliant light barely illuminated more than a few yards in front of me. Somehow I had a signal, so I dialed Frank’s number but he didn’t pick up. No messages either. By now he should have arrived at the address I had given him and noticed I wasn’t there. He would have called. Why hadn’t he called? And why wasn’t he answering his phone?
The night’s icy chill bit at my face like a harpy, zipping in and out in quick, sharp attacks. Worse, my fingers were starting to go numb and the phone felt like an ice cube in my hand. I didn’t know how long I would be able to keep it up and cursed myself for not wearing gloves out tonight. But then I had an idea.
“Horned God of the sun,” I said, starting to chatter, “Send me your radiance.”
A single pulse of Power emanated from my chest and filled me as the words left my lips. Welcome warmth came with the Magick and my body started to thaw. It was like being submerged in perfectly warmed water and then stepping out into the cold air, watching the fingers of steam rise from off the skin.
At least the cold wouldn’t bother me anymore, but what about Aaron? How could anyone survive this kind of cold, this alien cold? It was unreal for the temperature to have dipped so low; unreal and unfortunate. Of course, it was just my luck that I would have to go into the woods on one of the coldest nights of the year. But I couldn’t remember Aaron even putting shoes or a shirt on before leaving. I was sure he did, but the memory eluded me.
A twig snapped nearby and I spun to see what had caused the noise. I expected hooded men, waiting for me, but saw no one. I wanted to call out into the darkness but I didn’t. I couldn’t. If the light from my phone wasn’t already giving away my position a loud shout into the darkness certainly would have.
Fuck it.
“Aaron?” I said, but the woods swallowed my voice. “Aaron!”
If the hooded men came, they would have my Power to contend with. This time I wouldn’t hold back. The other night I wanted answers. Tonight I wanted to end this, and I could feel the Power pulsating between my fingertips.
Another twig snapped. This time there were two consecutive cracks. I stopped in my tracks and raised my phone. The copse of trees before me was like a tunnel. The trees towered over me and arched into each other creating a kind of blackened rib cage of crooked bones. There was no one there, no man nor animal, of course, but it felt like there was. I was either going crazy, or something was messing with me; and for the first time in my life, I hoped for the former.
The simple fact remained that the woods were coming alive. Either that or my senses were becoming hyper sensitive. But every flutter of a bird’s wings reached my ears, each trod of a hoofed animal slushing on the snow, every creak of the withered old bark. I wasn’t sure where this alertness was coming from, but I was thankful for it. Nowhere in my immediate vicinity was there any real danger; only wildlife, living, surviving. Dealing with the snow.
I could almost picture families of deer or birds, searching for any morsel of food they could eat before heading back to their warm homes. I wished I was one of them. A warm home seemed like a pretty good deal right about now.
Many times I fought the urge to call out again and draw attention to myself so that someone—anyone—would come and break me away from the silence of my lonely trek, but attracting the wrong kind of attention would be a mistake. Again Aaron crossed my mind, though this time he was naked and running on all fours through the snow. On his back, a tiny devil was riding him like a mount.
No.
I shook the thought away.
Aaron hadn’t been possessed. The entity had not gotten that close. When he sped out of his apartment he did so of his own volition. I had seen that look of determination on his face before. It wasn’t foreign to me. Maybe he was half-possessed at that point, but the decision was still Aaron’s. Fool. To think he could come out here on his own and square off against those inhumanly strong, hooded men. I had to find him, and I had to find him fast.
I took a turn beneath a set of low hanging brambles I thought I remembered from earlier and emerged at the mouth of a familiar stretch. Bare black trees crawled out of the snow like bony, dead hands and stretched into the sky. The ground seemed firmer here, as if the snow were thinner or more tightly packed. I had been here with Damien and Frank the other night. I was sure I was on the right track.
My pace quickened to the point where it almost crossed into a jog. I no longer needed the light from my phone to guide me. I was running on instinct alone, following my own internal compass and the vivid memory of that fateful place that still lingered at the forefront of my mind.
Then I saw it, and everything shattered.
“No,” I said. “No! Fuck!”
Before me, a tunnel made of arching black trees beckoned and heaved with the wind. I hadn’t seen this part of the woods the other night with Damien and Frank; this was vivid because I had been here not a few minutes ago. Somehow I had circled around, and I was totally lost.
Hello little piggy.
That’s what the voice had said to me from within the dark depths of Aaron’s bedroom. It had just said the words in reverse. Funny how the weirdest thoughts come to the front of one’s mind at the strangest possible moment.
Chapter Twenty Eight
I had never been lost in the woods before. Raven’s Glen was small, and while the wilderness around it was vast, the trails were well marked. One would have a hard time losing their way under normal conditions, but these weren’t normal conditions. For starters, I wasn’t on a trail. And so much snow had fallen I wouldn’t have been able to spot one even if I had been standing on it.
Fucked, I thought, I’m fucked.
My breathing quickened as I stared at the black ribcage of trees, heaving like a dead man’s chest as a gust of cold wind rushed through them. I spun around in a three hundred and sixty degree arc to try and gain my bearings, but I couldn’t make head or tails of exactly where
I was in relation to the road. How could I have left no footprints in the snow?
The time on my phone told me it had been almost a full half hour since I stepped out of the taxi and into the woods, so how had I managed to lose myself and get turned around? It didn’t make any sense! I thought for sure I would have found Aaron by now; that I would have run into him in the woods or heard him crunching around on the snow like I did those animals earlier. But I couldn’t find any trace of him or anyone else.
Even the animals seemed to have gone back into their holes.
I reached into my shirt and produced a silver pentacle necklace, which I unclasped from my neck and held in my right hand. Then I slipped my phone into my pocket and let the pendant dangle in midair like a pendulum. Focusing a trickle of Power into the pendant, which gently was gently with the biting breeze, I said “Show me no,” and the necklace began to sway from right to left. “Show me yes,” I said, after letting the necklace settle for a moment, and the pendant moved across and swung from front to back.
Satisfied, I said, “Have I been turned around naturally?”
No.
“Am I being followed?”
Yes.
I swallowed hard. “Show me the way back to the road.”
The pendulum swayed from left to right. When it reached the apex of its swing, however it stayed fixed, pointing to my right. I twisted my body around the pendulum to align with the direction in which it was pointing, watching as it oddly remained fixed to the same point in space. This was the way to the road. I was sure the Magick wasn’t lying.
“Now… show me Aaron,” I said.
The pendant relaxed and fell to the center again, swinging with inertia. Then it started a light sway before fixing itself to a different direction. It was pointing North West now, exactly opposite from the way to the road. The pendant was telling me to go deeper into the woods if I wanted to find Aaron, through the black ribcage and beyond it. But before I could take a step, a thought entered my mind unbidden: what if Aaron is already dead?
Aaron, dead.
My mind conjured an image of his body lying stiff on the cold snow, dead and purple. It made my head spin. I willed the image to disappear for fear that it would destroy my concentration, and replaced it instead with an image of the two of us at my place. It was the night of my attack a few months ago; the first time the old Sheriff had tried to kill me.
Damien wasn’t the only person who had saved my life. Aaron did too that night. If he hadn’t come, Gods only know what would have happened to me. Maybe the Sheriff would have kept hitting me until I fell dead, or he may have taken me away. No one would have suspected a thing, then, and I would be dead now.
But that wasn’t all.
Aaron looked after me that night. Helped me with my wounds, spent the night at my place. He protected me. I so desperately wanted to go back to that moment and wrap myself in it. Life wasn’t easy then, what with all the secrets, but it was easier than it was now. I had never been the kind of girl to yoyo between guys, but Damien had made it real easy for me to remember the good times with Aaron; time would tell if I would be grateful or royally pissed off at him for that.
I turned South West, toward the road, fingers stiffening from the cold. I could use the pendant to take me back to the road. The road represented civilization. Safety. Maybe even help? I couldn’t get lost on a road, couldn’t get turned around. Plus, the road was still there, but the paths through the forest weren’t.
But, then again, if the pendant was pointing me toward Aaron it meant… he was alive! He must have been alive. The pendant wouldn’t be leading me toward a corpse, would it? I had to follow. I had to go, and now. So I ran into the tunnel of trees, following the line of my stiffened pendant without faltering, without stopping. Running. Always running. Magick or not, the cold was no longer a factor I had to account for. I was doing the right thing. Magick was showing me the way to Aaron, and I was right to heed the call.
My feet were light on the snow. It wasn’t at all like wading through water, but more like gliding over ice. With my strangely heightened senses I could see branches coming long before they became an obstacle allowing me to duck under them with ease. I was like a hound following a scent, racing through the dark toward my prey when—whoosh!
It came at me from out of nowhere. Solid as a rock and yet as invisible as the air, the thing slammed into my chest and sent me my body one way and the necklace the other. I could feel the entity floating around me but I couldn’t see it. I didn’t know how it had found me or why it wasn’t with Aaron, but if it was with me then it meant Aaron hadn’t yet been possessed after all.
I had to find him, and fast.
But a hand grabbed me by the throat and lifted me from off the ground in a single movement. I struggle, grasping at the air in front of my neck for hands I couldn’t touch as the phantom fingers started to close around me. An image of a blackened mass with no eyes and a mouth full of bloodied, shark’s teeth forced its way into my mind like a shard of glass into skin.
“Hello little piggy,” it said, forcing its deep voice into my mind, and I screamed.
Almost as if by some kind of miracle, the entity let me go and I dropped to the ground clutching my throat, coughing. But each cough sent shooting pain through my throat that almost encouraged me to not breathe. Gasping, fighting through the pain, I rose to my feet and dashed deeper into the woods but I had lost my Magick compass and was flying blind. The forest wanted to confuse me, like a labyrinth eager to accept a new victim, and without a guide I would be quick to get lost.
I wondered whether I would ever find Aaron, if the demon was still following me, and why it had released me. Maybe it was responsible for turning me around and playing tricks on my mind. But how could it be in two places at once? If it was trying to possess Aaron then why—and how—was it following me, too?
That’s when I heard it.
The sound was faint, but recognizable. A struggle. Men were fighting nearby, their grunts like music to my ears. I approached, and as they started to come into view I saw the silhouettes of three people tussling on the snow through the trees. One of them was unmistakably, tall and strong and shirtless. He was holding his own against the two men trying to drop him, but they were hooded men, and I knew what they could do.
Ever one to leap without looking, I entered the fray. A telekinetic bolt flew off my fingers and went square into the back of one of the hooded men, catching him with a loud thump and sending him face first into the snow a few feet ahead. The other man turned to the dark spot in the woods where I was and yelled something in Latin before speeding in my direction, but Aaron caught him by the arm, twisted him round, and slammed a fist into his face.
The man lurched back a few steps and shook the blow off, snow falling off his hood, and put his dukes up again. How could he have taken such a hit so easily! Was he made of stone?
“Aaron!” I yelled.
Aaron turned to me and for a moment I thought I saw him smile—or grin—but the man I had felled with my telekinetic strike had gotten up, and he was already at Aaron’s back. An instant later both men were on him, tugging at his arms and legs to bring him to the snow. But he was like a bear, attacking and blocking with a kind of ferocity I had never seen in a human being. I observed the confrontation in the same way one watches a lion fight off a pack of hyenas: dumbfounded and in awe.
For a moment my body went numb and unresponsive, but not out of fear. I wasn’t seeing the Aaron that I knew out there. This man was a gladiator. He belonged in a ring; a Coliseum. Bared and scarred, bleeding yet caught up in the frenzy of bloodlust. Before now I had never seen a man engaged in a bare knuckle fight, not in real life anyway. And I had never seen Aaron fight either. Not really.
But this… this was something else.
The presence came at me fast; too fast for me to react. I spun on my heel but the same invisible force that had attacked me moments ago hit me again and sent me flying through the woods and
sprawling to the ground a mere few feet away from the combatants. I struggled to sit up but my chest throbbing and hot with pain, and my throat was faring no better.
When I looked up, I saw it. The entity had taken physical form—a black mass, blacker than night—and it was approaching from within the darkness of the forest. I raised my hand and conjured an image of bright silver light flowing down from the sky and toward the entity, but the Power didn’t come. Fuck! It was just like last time. Losing my ability to call forth the Power was like trying to reach for a book on a shelf only to realize that your arm had been amputated without your knowledge.
I could do nothing but stare, doe eyed, like a deer caught in headlights, as the thing approached. This was it. Aaron was distracted and I was powerless. It would make its move now and take one of us. Whether it took me or Aaron, I didn’t think it mattered now. What mattered was that I was done.
But then another figure emerged from the woods. Damien? Frank? Did they know I was here? Had they followed me with magick? I perked up and focused on the newcomer, but he was wearing a hood… and holding a gun! He raised the weapon, cocked the gun, and aimed it at me.
“Aaron!” I screamed.
Three gunshots went off, echoing into the woods. Then silence, and then Aaron’s body fell beside me with a thump. I gaped at Aaron’s face, his brilliant blue eyes blinking wildly as the shock filled him. I tried to swallow, but nothing happened. My body went numb, my heart stopped beating. I reached for the side of his face to caress his skin and heal him, but I was yanked away by the hood of my coat before I could even register the warmth of Aaron’s skin.
“No!” I said, “Aaron, no!”
My steely resolve melted, and then the tears came. I didn’t care that I was being dragged to the foot of the shooter, only that Aaron was lying in the snow, dying.
“Take him too,” said the man with the gun, “And burn the body. We don’t want anybody finding it.”
“Murderer!” I said.
The man squatted before me. His hood shrouded most of his face in a mantle too dark to see through; all I could get from him, or any of the other men, were their white jaws and blue lips. This man had ghostly white skin and near purple lips. He reminded me of a corpse, and the lack of heat in his breath when he spoke only made him seem deader.