Page 41 of The Bleeding Woods

This part of the forest is darker than the rest. It bends in a downward slope toward depths that even the sun’s rays do not dare caress.

The descent into its cold, unfeeling shadows is reminiscent of drifting into the twilight zone of the ocean.

There is pressure here too. There is an unseen force pleading with every sane piece of me to turn back.

I pay it no mind.

The trees here are wide and sturdy, like those of a redwood.

Their coloration varies from a soulless black to the deepest brown, and there is not a leaf in sight.

Here, there is only death. Death, and the otherworldly glow that slithers between the bends and ripples in the bark.

It pulses with scarlet light. This light, this bloodstained firework of color, unifies the endless landscape one heartbeat at a time.

Gravity and willpower alone pull me down, stronger than the tingle of fear at the back of my neck.

I don’t want to do this.

I have to do this.

Grayson and I lose track of time and of our steps. We walk for hours. No, days. No, weeks. No, minutes. There is no way of grasping a system of awareness. We’re simply walking, the world growing ever darker.

Then a pulse of Jasper’s light erupts from every tree, branch, and grain of dirt on the ground.

It is blinding to my unadjusted pupils, but regardless, I use the surge of bioluminescence to my advantage.

I scour the landscape for him, but he is still nowhere to be found.

As the light fades, a chill scales my spine.

We cannot see him, but he most definitely sees us.

Tendrils of his presence touch my body and my mind, each coming closer and lingering longer than the last.

“Can you feel him?” Grayson must have read my expression.

I nod, afraid to speak.

In the distance, treetops move. Something is coming toward us, as though summoned by Grayson’s voice.

It is large enough to rattle the trunks.

Camouflaged between them, Jasper suddenly appears in his narrow, cadaverous, thoroughly demonic form.

He seems to consist of bark, bones, and blood, an unfinished, incomplete human that mutated into something more.

Something wicked. The breath I’d been taking freezes as my throat muscles constrict.

We stare at each other for a moment or two before he silently steps to the side.

This motion hides him behind a tree, and when he peeks out again, it is from behind a new tree.

Slightly closer.

All I can do is stare. My legs have stopped themselves from progressing forward, melting into the ground below. He repeats the motion.

Behind a tree. Out from a new tree. Closer.

“Jasper,” I whisper, making my voice as sweet as it can be between each shudder of fear, “I need to speak with you.”

Behind a tree. Out from a new one. Closer.

From this distance, I can see more of him.

He wears a smile that stretches from the tip of one nonexistent brow to the other.

It is the widest he’s ever worn, cartoonishly horrifying, and filled with those limb-shredding rows of teeth.

I touch a hand to my lips, feeling the pill as it drains from my system, the mysterious concoction that keeps me from growing fangs of my own.

“I want to speak with you.” I feign deception by darting my eyes to Grayson, trying to communicate that he had not let me come here alone. That he is yet another nuisance to be taken care of.

Without warning, Jasper charges forward with a speed I was not ready for.

He moves along the forest floor like a centipede, limbs spasming out of sync.

Though his torso points upward, his neck has twisted in an unnatural circle that keeps his chin pointing at the earth.

My instincts tell me to cry out and back away, but I stand my ground.

On arrival, he restacks himself in a crouch, and I stare into that skeletal face, those sunken black voids.

I place my hands on his cheeks to bring him to eye level.

“I want you,” I lie. “Only you.”

I lean forward and press my lips to his.

This caliber of sincerity is my greatest performance yet.

In this moment of ecstasy, I pray his defenses will drop, allowing me a telepathic entryway back into his mind.

I can feel the doorway as it hinges open.

The darkness beyond it is a blanket over every thought and memory, and if I can lift it, I can bend them beneath.

I can make him obey, or at least keep him still long enough to be handled by someone with a better plan.

I reach for the doorway. I leave the confines of my physiology behind, letting our brain waves tango telepathically.

The distinct frequency that is his dreamscape hits me like a blast of winter air.

I slam against the blockade dropped in front of it like a crystal vase against steel.

The sheer act of shattering brings me back to my body.

His smile hasn’t budged.

Before I can pull away, I feel an unmistakable sensation in my chest. His hand has plunged through it, fingers encircling my heart.

A cage. I shakily move to rip myself from his grasp, but I cannot go far.

To my absolute horror, he begins to stand, limbs thinning and twisting as he towers over Grayson, and hauls me by the heart upward of twenty feet into the air.

“Liar,” he hisses.

I grab at his wrist, struggling against the strangest pain I’ve ever felt as he twirls his fingers through my tendons.

“I’m not lying—” I lie again. It takes every bit of strength to choke out reasons for him to release me.

My heart beats against his cold palm, sending lightning strikes of agony through nerves I didn’t know existed.

“Y-you were right. I’ve felt alone all my life because no one ever understood.

I-I wanted to kill my parents. I loved it, every second of it.

I don’t care that you massacred that lab.

Th-Those people deserved it. I don’t care about what you did to Joey and Jade either. He was a nuisance. Th-They both were.”

He tilts his head, considering my words.

“Maybe that makes me a monster. Maybe a monster is exactly what I am, what I choose to be. I’m not human, and I’m so tired of pretending to be.

” My hands shake terribly as I reach for his rawboned cheeks once more.

“Jasper, you are the only one who’s ever given me the permission to be me, all of me.

I want you, because I’d rather be a real monster than half a human.

I want you because, with you, I can be free.

I want you because . . . because if we’re together, neither of us ever has to be alone again. ”

My performance must have been convincing, because Grayson takes a few audible staggering steps back.

It must have been convincing, because even now, with Jasper’s fist in my sternum, the scent of anarchic freedom tempts me.

I could swap the betrayals. I could let Jasper show me how to kill Grayson, then tear anyone they send in after him to flesh ribbons.

He did say I was their only hope. They don’t have the artillery or the capacity to end whatever we are.

We have the upper hand.

I have the upper hand.

A glance down to Grayson steals it from me.

The humanity lingering in my veins steals it from me, because humans can and do love.

For all his deception, for all his manipulation, and against my better judgment, he is much more to me than Agent Grayson Warner.

His legs are shaky, his lips are white, and his eyes are lined with salt water.

A comically futile gun trembles metallically in his hands.

He is Grayson, my Grayson, and alongside Jade and Joey, he is one of the reasons why I’ve never felt alone.

“Let. Her. Go,” he demands.

He could have run. He could have assessed the situation, realized I’d failed, and barreled for his truck parked on the edge of the road. He could have abandoned me. However, there he stands, aiming a pistol he knows is useless at Jasper’s chest, crying.

“Poor choice of words,” Jasper simpers.

He kisses me, then starts to rip his hand from my torso, threatening to crack my ribs on the way out.

Grayson takes a shot, his aim remarkably perfect, and the bullet goes straight through Jasper’s wrist, detaching his hand from the rest of his arm.

I fall to the ground and then to my knees, coughing, wheezing, and throwing up crimson.

My heart beats weakly, a messy bundle of muscle and severed veins, but it still beats.

Grayson is at my side in an instant, his hands hovering over my gaping wound.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he sputters. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want this, and I . . . I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t lose you. Clara, come on, I can’t lose you.”

“Grayson,” I gasp. “Go, please, g-go.”

“No! There will be an after, there has to be an after! To hell with the plan, I’m getting you out of here right now!”

‘“I’m not worth it, Grayson. P-please just go.”

He snakes one arm beneath my legs and another under my lower back. When he hoists me off the ground, the pain is next to unbearable. It reminds me that I am still alive. He reminds me that I am still alive.

“Never,” he promises with a kiss to the crown of my head.

Suddenly, I’m soaring.

We take off in a sprint toward the surface of the forest, and each branch rips at Grayson’s legs as he struggles against the uphill slope.

The trees rattle, and when my attention shifts to them, ravenous locusts gnaw at my insides.

Jasper stands behind a faraway tree, his hollow eyes staring silently across the space.

Though he is clutching his injury, the tip of his widespread grin is still there, visible and taunting.

It says I’ll play in a language beyond articulated words.

Warped, twisted, omnidirectional laughter rises from the ground and falls from the sky.

Raindrops of sound pour with torrential amusement.

“Clara,” he croons in the voice that once stole me away.

Grayson’s steps stay focused, but I do not.

The moment my name slips from Jasper’s lips, I can’t help but lose my neural footing.

The world starts to spin, and red fireflies return to encircle us.

Their rhythmic flickers are like a sea of swinging stopwatches persuading me to sleep.

The eerie maze of emaciated branches is suddenly swallowed by vermilion mist. Thorns once precise and defined are clipped and smoothed over.

Every attribute softens, insistent on becoming works of temptation.

“Clara, stay with me,” Grayson begs, his face wrought with panic. “Wake up. You’re stronger than him. You’re so strong.”

“What’s the matter, love?” Jasper’s whisper slithers through my subconscious. “I thought you wanted to stay with me.”

It is now that I notice the strange patterns in the bark down here, in the depths.

Nausea races through me. How did I miss it?

Human visages are carved into each trunk, faces frozen in their last moments of terror.

Jade. Joey. A sea of scientists I recognize only from Jasper’s memories.

This deep, dark part of the forest is not a bend in Earth’s geography, but an ever-growing graveyard built over the heart of the burned laboratory.

He hinges overhead, snapping his body at the waist to do so, and drowning Grayson and me in his shadow. Grayson pulls me closer to his chest, his heartbeat racing. There is still fire in his eyes, though, and they are sending out daggers of defiance.

He is being brave, for me.

He is brave, too brave for all we’re up against.