Page 28 of Light Locked #1

Into the Shadows

I N HER DREAMS, Clea traveled again. Through the roots of the forest, she was formless and free. A message reached into the expanse.

I’m here , the roots said.

Clea awoke with a jolt, her breath white in the moonlight, the coals slumbering dimly under the ashes of the campfire nearby.

“Find me,” she finished the phrase from her dream, hand clasping for the medallion under the fabric of her shirt and the weighty confirmation she’d awoken with.

The medallion had invited the beast to the Kalex village.

The dream had been the same when she’d fallen asleep in Althala’s tent. It had been a clue of things to come, one that she’d forgotten in all the chaos. Now, it repeated itself.

Gripping the medallion tight against her chest, she scanned the campsite.

They’d camped at the edge of a large clearing, and the snowy landscape was vacant beyond a massive totem at the other side of the clearing.

It was a wall of twisted steel with several holes blown through it and looked unnervingly like a beast in the dead of night.

Ryson was gone .

She replayed last night’s argument, wondering if she was still dreaming. Maybe this was just some taunt of the forest, confronting her with the fear that the medallion was drawing in the worst of the world.

Maybe it wasn’t just her fears.

Maybe the lesser beasts were keeping their distance out of self-preservation. Maybe the worst was still yet to come. Maybe she was realizing all this too late.

Her thoughts buzzed, each new worrying possibility mimicking the racing pace of her heart.

“Ryson?” she whispered in alarm, and noticed one of his daggers protruding from the ground next to her, the intricate silver hilt reflecting the hue of the coals. She tugged it out of the frozen earth as she slid her bag over her back, easing up onto her knees.

“Ryson?” she whispered louder into the night.

Silence.

She jolted up as he walked from the darkness, silver eyes flashing with every blink. His expression sent an immediate surge through her.

“What’s going on?” she asked, searching the clearing again as she scrambled to her feet. “Forest beasts?”

He didn’t rush to speak, cinching his cloak tightly around her and pulling the hood over her head. “I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” he whispered but didn’t elaborate, immersed in his own thoughts in a way she’d never seen before.

Kalex? she thought, but even that answer seemed unsatisfying in the wake of the stillness that captured Ryson’s urgency. Before she could ask, he spoke up again.

“Without any reason, they’re headed straight for us and from miles away,” he explained.

“The medallion,” Clea rushed the words in sharp contrast to his measured dialogue, trying to form the full explanation from her dream. “Ryson, the medallion.”

“I think so,” he agreed grimly without her having to explain further. He took a measured step away from her. There was a strange sense of reserve in his posture as he examined her. She waited for the words that might give her some understanding of their impending fates.

What was worse than forest beasts? Worse than what they’d encountered in the Kalex village? Ryson wasn’t even pushing them to escape.

“Ryson?” she questioned, trying to prompt something from his stoic exterior. “What is it?”

“The forest is about to turn on us. Hide. I’m going to try and draw them away, but if I can’t,” he paused.

His next words gave her chills.

“Don’t let them take you. There are worse fates than dying in battle. You understand? ”

She didn’t understand. She didn’t want to.

“What are you talking about?” she breathed.

This had to be a nightmare. It was all happening too quickly.

“Venennin,” Ryson said as he took another step back, eyes lingering on her as he turned into the woods.

His body floated into the darkness and his hand moved to his back, drawing his scythe smoothly from his back as the bindings around it seemed to dissolve into the air.

Before his form vanished, she heard the steely reminder.

“Hide.”

Though she struggled to make sense of the impending threat, she made disorganized patterns in the snow and searched for a cubby among the dead bushes and limbs. The night unveiled the forest’s skeleton, and little in its bones could conceal her.

Hide. Had he issued that command because it was helpful or because it gave her something to do? Something to stave off the anxieties of waiting in the clearing alone?

She scrambled into a nest of trees, scattering ash and bark as she hugged a large limb peeking out over the clearing. Seconds seemed to count down to an unknown danger that sent her mind reeling.

Venennin? She tried to process Ryson’s warnings. Her fingers coiled against the tree, legs hugging it as her face nestled close to the limbs, smudging her face in ash. Ryson’s dagger rested heavy in her boot.

What was worse than forest beasts? And the medallion was drawing them in?

Ryson had said the word Venennin like it should mean something.

Clea tried to wrestle her mind into focus.

No matter the truth behind it all, she and Ryson were now in a crisis she didn’t understand.

She waited for clues that defined it, holding the medallion in her fist under her shirt as if that might somehow stop it from sending out more signs of her location.

The cloud of dead branches concealed her better than any bush, but she depended on the fragile veils of darkness and silence to do the rest. Both of those veils became more fragile with each passing second.

Clea hoped that at any moment Ryson might walk back through those trees so she could breathe again.

Snowy footfalls announced some impending visitation. Clea was relieved to hear only one pair of feet. As the steps drew nearer to the campsite, she receded into the branches, searching for silver eyes in the dark.

Instead, they were yellow. Two bright, yellow eyes glimmered and bobbed in the darkness, until the moonlight caught the rest of him. He looked human, with a gray cloak and long, blond hair that streamed over his shoulders in waves that appeared almost white in the moonlight.

The stranger bent, inhaled loudly, and released something like a snort or a sneeze.

His eyes scanned the footprints Clea had left in every direction, his gaze easy to follow as it flickered and bobbed across the clearing.

His mouth hung open, elongating an already narrow face and releasing white puffs into the cold.

Clea reached with her senses, tapping into her ansra to find it buzzing quietly through her. It reacted to adrenaline, but beyond that she couldn’t read anything from it, no distinct darkness.

This hunter had to be a Kalex. Despite this, Clea clutched the branch beneath her with vigor.

The man reached his hands into the snow, clawing into it and gathering two fistfuls. He lifted them to his face and inhaled again. Only against the snow did she notice the black tips of his fingers. It was as if they’d been dipped in dark paint.

Another snort startled her. The Kalex cast the snow back into the ground as he threw a glance in the direction where Ryson had gone. She half expected Ryson to leap from the darkness. The Kalex’s tensed claws and savage hunch made her think battle was only a moment away.

She held her breath, heart drumming in her ears so that it was hard to hear beyond it.

The Kalex relaxed again, straightening with its back to her like a single gray rod at the edge of the field.

Clea exhaled, and the Kalex’s head turned on an abrupt swivel, eyes locked directly on her tree. It was like they were staring right at each other, Clea holding her breath captive in her beating chest for what felt like an eternity.

Her lungs burned. She blinked. The Kalex was gone.

Seconds drew out in long, tense beats.

A hand snatched her foot as someone ripped her from the branches and threw her onto the ground.

Clea crashed through the snow and slammed into the brush, only to be ripped right back up by two hands hurling her into the air with an unnatural force.

She hurtled near the campfire and rolled past it, stopping on her stomach.

She didn’t have time to catch her breath before a boot slammed down hard on her spine.

This invisible, pummeling force hoisted her up, extending her arms beyond their flexibility behind her back. Her shoulders screamed, opening up her chest as fingers clawed over her scalp and yanked her hair back.

There was no room to flinch or struggle without causing pain somewhere in her body. Clea forced her eyes upward as she gasped silently against the air locked inside her lungs, knees buried in the snow as a figure walked into view. This one did not have yellow eyes.

She struggled to inhale, her lungs finally allowing small, wheezing breaths as she tried to train her dizzied vision on this new presence. His hair was black, the shoulder-length strands combed across his head. His catlike eyes were a chilling maroon, dark and yet still alight in the night.

“She’s nothing but a girl!” hissed the Kalex who held her, yanking her head back again and causing her to strain against his grip.

“Good. Maybe youth means she’ll last longer. Let her go,” the one with red eyes replied in a low, demanding voice. She was released all at once, falling forward on her hands and knees before scrambling away from both of them and taking in a life-giving gulp of air.

They stood in a triangle now, Clea edging back with her hands out, as she glanced between the two men.

The yellow-eyed one was lanky and thin with a light complexion that made him blend with the snow.

He had a nervous, restless energy, and just across from him stood his counterpart.

With dark eyes, and a poised, relaxed figure, he wore black that carved his broad shoulders against the backdrop of winter.