Ghost (The Halloween Boys #1) (76)
Stomps sounded on the bridge, stopping right above me before seeming to turn and walk back the way it came. The willow spirit took my hand in its long, delicate grip, urging me out the opposite side. I followed its lead and tried to quietly climb the bank, my heels sinking into the mud. I could only hope that darkness and shadow covered me enough to escape. The fog had evaporated.
Where was Ghost?
I cast a nervous glance over my shoulder as the spirit nudged me wordlessly to the woods. I saw nothing, and a small glimmer of relief bloomed in my belly.
But then I stopped in my tracks. There he was. On wobbly knees, he swayed, one hand bracing himself on a tree. I swallowed, panic freezing me in place. “You look worse than when I last saw you on the kitchen floor,” I said, shocking myself with the strength and challenge in my words. I had no fight against him, no advantage but to stall for time and hope my Archdemon chased after me.
A raspy chuckle gurgled from his throat. “You, Blythe Pearl, are indeed a ruthless little human.”
He wobbled forward, and I noticed his eyes were black and unfocused, searching, like someone who’d lost their glasses. I could run.
Without a second though, I kicked off my heel, a rock clattering beneath me. Something like an invisible grip seized me and I froze, paralyzed. “Got you. There we go. Master will be most pleased.”
The force pressed in like a boa constrictor, pulling the air from my lungs. A terror-filled scream lodged in my throat, and tears pricked my eyes. I felt my bones crushing inward as breaths were harder to grab hold of. “But he won’t notice if I have a little fun with you first. You smell like you’ve already been had by another of my kind, haven’t you? You Devil-fucking slut.” His tone turned deeper and magnified, something I didn’t recognize and didn’t belong to my dead stepfather.
This was how I’d die.
I should feel at peace with that. I’d gotten everything I’d wanted to find before death: a dance with a stranger, a festival where no one judged me, friends to joke with, and a town that took me in as its own. And a man . . . or something like a man . . . to give myself to.
It was what I had been searching for when I came here, shaking and afraid. But now . . . it wasn’t enough to have and leave behind. I wanted it now. I wanted more of it, of living.
I couldn’t go out like this. Not now. Not when life and other worlds just opened up before me. “No,” I pushed out, shoving with all my feeble, human might against the indiscernible pressure caving me in. My vision started to go blurry, and I knew I was moments from a rib cracking.
A crow cawed.
And then a flash of white light rendered me sightless. I fell to the ground with a thud as white enveloped me. “Run, Tree Talker. It’s your turn to hide; I’ll seek.”
The willow spirit had grown into a veil of vast white light as bright as sunshine. I looked to the body of my stepfather to see his face contort . . . and then drop to the ground.
And then the most terrifying sight.
One at a time, then a dozen, and then four dozen more, shoots of black screamed as they wrenched out of his lifeless body like a geyser, one after the other. A sharp and dreadful voice of hundred screamed. Then a shoot coiled and struck like a snake. The willow spirit hissed a soft and tender sigh. “Go, little one,” it urged.
Hot tears burned my eyes. “No,” I pleaded, helpless to aid in what I was seeing. Another strike tore through the translucent white. And another. And then twenty more. It screamed like a clear bell being struck as I lay debilitated.
Black flashed before me as wings surrounded me. “We must go, now,” the bird said.
Sniffling tears, my ears ringing with the willow spirit’s agonizing cries, I pulled myself up, struggling into a run. To watch something so pure, so beautiful and innocent, be pierced and tortured . . . all because of me . . . The crow flapped its wings before me, flying at my height, leading me out of the forest. The hissing and screams faded in the background, along with the melodic rings of the spirit’s last screams.
And then they stopped.
I sobbed into the night air, keeping my eyes on my bird until my feet hit familiar gravel.
Suddenly the bird jerked upwards, and I didn’t see the man in front of me until it was too late. I crashed into a hard chest, trembling and soaked in mud and sweat. “Blythe, what the fuck?” Onyx’s hands gripped my face frantically. A surge of clarity and calm poured over me like a waterfall and my tears stopped; my fear vanished. “Did someone hurt you—” He stopped and breathed in deeply, looking down at my black stained thighs. “He didn’t. Ghost, that bastard. I’m going to kill him.”
“No.” I spoke up way too calmly. “My stepfather’s body is filled with . . . There’s so many of them. They’re after me. You need to run, Onyx.” What if they got here and did to him what they did to the willow spirit?
Onyx’s dark brows furrowed, and his emerald-green eyes began to glow. The middle of his irises slitted like a snake. I would have screamed if it wasn’t for the disconcerting calm I felt, so unmatched for my circumstance. “Get behind me,” he ordered, pushing himself between me and the tree line.
“We need to run,” I said softly. I may have been calm, but I sorted through the pieces in my head. Safety, we had to find shelter somewhere . . .
Onyx shot me a cocky glance over his shoulder. “I never run.”