Page 4 of The Zagorath (Shadowed Dreams #3)

Chapter

Four

L iv drew back the blanket covering the window ever so slightly, leaving just the smallest of gaps, and peered outside.

Her heart had been beating a rapid tempo for a while yet, but it had at least slowed down from its earlier racing.

At least no one was screaming in a blind panic anymore, though there were quiet sobs coming from at least a couple individuals among those who were huddled within the cabin.

“Do you think Gray is really dead?” Jessie whispered, and Liv nodded mutely.

There was nothing to wonder over there. They had both seen the way the truck had dropped into the ravine.

Even obscured as it was amid its numerous trees, its fall had been hard to miss.

So had the bat monsters that had immediately converged on it like vultures on a fallen calf.

There wasn’t a chance that he had survived that.

“Are you really that worried about him when he straight up went and left you?” she murmured instead and felt an immediate pinch of guilt at the look of humiliation that rushed to her friend’s face.

“No, I mean… maybe? Shouldn’t we be worried about him? He is one of us, after all,”

Jessie quietly replied. “Besides, it was a scary situation. He probably wasn’t thinking straight.”

Liv shook her head but kept her opinion to herself.

It wasn’t just panic. Gray had looked right at Jessie and had made the conscious decision to leave her there because he had been unwilling to wait for the two minutes it would have taken her friend to cross the short distance between them.

And what did it get him? He was deader than a doorknob and currently probably being shitted on by those giant bat things.

Or being shitted out of them depending on whether they ate their kill or just killed for the pleasure of it.

Either way, at least that visual made her feel a little better, though she had a sneaking suspicion that Jessie wouldn’t see it quite the same way.

In any case, they weren’t the only ones that he had abandoned.

Her gaze moved over the room, taking stock of the survivors.

There was a couple she hadn’t yet met seated nearby, the woman on the verge of a full-blown panic attack by the looks of it.

A chick called Tracy was at her side, whispering quietly to her in an attempt to calm her as her partner crouched in front of her, holding her hands tightly in his.

Just a short distance from them stood a couple of guys she’d only glimpsed from a distance who had their phones out and talking to each other in quiet voices as they, their brows furrowed in frustration.

Signal must be down. That fucking figured.

Her gaze drifted from them to a small group of guys seated awkwardly in the chairs that they had dragged from the dining room into the living room so as to remain close to the group.

She recognized them immediately. They had spent much of the afternoon hovering over the grills, drinking and laughing among the large group of guys that had congregated there.

They had been too loud to forget. Of that group, only three of them made it back to the cabin.

If she remembered correctly, they were Tyler, Zane, and Bobby.

Then there was the girl seated in a lone recliner by the corner.

She was huddled on herself as she rocked in place—going into shock, no doubt. Chastity… or Charity, maybe?

Out of thirty-two people, coven members and their guests for the solstice celebration, in addition to a few unaffiliated individuals who apparently showed up for the festivals according to Jessie, they were all that was left.

Eleven people huddled inside the cabin while the majority of their belongings, tents, and gear were trampled in the dirt outside.

“What were those things anyway?” Jessie crept forward, pressing close to Liv’s side so that she could also peer around the blanket.

Liv shrugged and shifted a little to the side to give her room as she turned her attention back to the window. “Mutant bats? Maybe there’s some secret radioactive wasteland around here that made them grow to monstrous proportions.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Jessie squint up at her. “Seriously?”

“Why not? It’s as good an answer as any,” Liv replied, her eyes scanning the yard and the forest just beyond it.

“Isn’t that what they always said in movies and old comic books?

Some sort of mutagen carried within toxic waste or that it’s caused by a burst of radioactivity following some sort of nuclear disaster. ”

“I’m not going to even remind you that your obsession with media from the 80s and 90s flies right past retro and straight into weird—but giant, man-sized bats?” Jessie hissed.

“It worked for Master Splinter,” Liv joked. She bit back a sigh when Jessie glanced up at her blankly. No one appreciated the classic cartoons. “I guess not everyone can have the coolest dad on Earth,” she muttered to herself.

“If that’s what you call it.” Jessie’s lips thinned as she leaned closer to the window in an effort to get a better look. “What about that guy that was out there? The one built like a linebacker for hell’s football team.”

Liv snorted with amusement. That wasn’t a bad description.

There were others that would additional work too—berserker, ogre, titan.

She froze and swallowed sharply. What if he was some sort of primal being, like a titan?

No, that didn’t make sense. If he was something with godly powers, he would have already peeled the cabin open like a sardine can.

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I don’t see him now, though.” Her gaze trailed over the trees. “I don’t see anything.”

“What do you think it means?” Jessie glanced up at her worriedly.

“It could be a trap, that they are trying to lure us out, “Liv said slowly. “Or maybe they gave up for the time being and it’s our best chance of getting out of here.”

“I vote for getting the fuck out of here,” a guy said as he straightened from where he had been crouched, attempting to calm a hysterical girl sitting in the chair in front of him. “I need to get Wendy away from this place.”

Liv glanced over at Wendy and noted her pallor. She didn’t look well at all. “Is she sick with something?”

“Pregnant,” he replied shortly between stiff lips.

His jaw visibly clenched with the anxiety running through him.

“Gray talked us into coming out here for summer solstice saying that the magic raised would be valuable for our growing baby. I didn’t want to bring her this far out into the middle of nowhere when she is this far along, but?—”

“But I wanted to come,” Wendy replied in a low voice. “Fuck. This is all my fault, Jack.”

Jack shook his head and clenched her hands once again. “Don’t even say that. It wasn’t unreasonable to want to come, especially not when Gray offered us one of the cabin rooms. No one could have predicted this. Just try to keep calm for the baby, okay?”

Liv’s gaze drifted over her, noting for the first time the bulge of her belly straining against her shirt. She wasn’t just a little pregnant. She was holy shit she’s about to drop any moment pregnant.

“Who gives a fuck?” one of the mystery guys snapped as he impatiently lowered the cellphone he’d been tinkering with.

He flashed its screen toward them. “There’s no signal—no one to call for help.

I don’t care if she’s about to give birth to goddamn royalty, no one is leaving here without me. Especially not in my truck.”

Jack’s jaw hardened and he began to straighten but Wendy caught his arm, keeping him with her. “Jack, don’t.”

“No one is going anywhere without anyone,” Liv flatly replied.

“Don’t imagine that you will be given priority either, asshole.

The truth of the matter is that we have no idea how many vehicles out there are still functioning, much less whether or not your truck is one in piece.

Don’t let your mouth be the reason you get abandoned out here. ”

Cellphone twin number two grimaced at her apologetically. “Ignore him. David is still wired on all the caffeine he drank on the ride over here. I’m Josh.”

She nodded to him in greeting. “Liv.”

The sketch of a faint smile appeared briefly on his face before disappearing again.

“Liv. Excellent. So, do you have any ideas about what we can do from here? David may talk big, but we are both from the city and have never even been out in the woods before. Becoming one with nature was a lot more attractive from our fifth-floor apartment when monsters were just something from bedtime stories.”

“No ideas yet,” she replied apologetically.

“Of course not,” David grumbled, but she pointedly ignored him.

“That said, not much can be decided when we can’t ascertain clearly what the hell is going on out there,” she continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Does anyone have a count of how many vehicles there are total out there?”

Josh frowned thoughtfully. “I believe David and I were the last to arrive. There were five cars, including Grey’s pickup, and then our own, which made six.”

“Right,” Jessie replied, her voice wobbling from stress.

“W…we chartered a bus that brought in most of the coven, but they aren’t supposed to be back to pick anyone up until the end of the weekend.

There weren’t many of us who drove in. It was arranged that way to keep traffic around the cabins down. ”

“Cabins?” Liv glanced at her curiously.

Jessie nodded. “While this is in the main cabin and in the best condition, there are four other cabins not too far away from here that are available for folks to bunk in who didn’t want to rough it in a tent.”

“Yeah, the three of us and a few others were planning on crashing in cabin B,” Tyler replied as he moved in closer with his buddies, joining the conversation.

“We scouted out the site with Grey last week and took a good look at all the cabins. This was originally built back in the 70’s as a summer camp, I think. ”

“Do you think any of the survivors might have managed to flee to any of the other cabins?” Live asked.

Tyler shook his head. “No. We were all running in basically the same direction—away from those things spilling out from the woods. The main cabin here is the only one close to the road. No one would have run toward those things to get to another cabin—if they even knew that they were there,” he added with a grimace.

“The cabins were supposed to be a surprise. Gray had it all planned out, so I don’t think he told anyone. ”

“Ok,” Liv murmured. “We can assume that we are all that’s left, then. So, that just leaves us with not knowing whether or not we have any functioning vehicles left to us.”

“And the matter of getting to them,” Jessie quietly pointed out. “The designated parking spot is not exactly right next to the cabin or people who have made it to the vehicles. Other than Grey, that is,” she said quietly.

“And assuming that something doesn’t take us like they did him,” Josh added. “Anyone have any ideas?”

“What it is, it’s probably going to include live bait,” Zane loudly interjected.

Liv gave him a dismissive look. “No one is going to be ‘live bait.’”

“Thank the gods for small favors,” Tracy replied with a nervous laugh. “If this was a horror movie, some poor fool is shoved out the door to be the distraction while everyone gets away.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Liv assured everyone. “But we do need to get a lay of the land. So, someone is going to have to step outside and take a quick look around.”

David crossed his arms over his chest. “And just what sort of idiot do you think will volunteer to do that?”

She met his gaze with a flat stare. “Me, naturally. It is my idea.”

“Liv, no,” Jessie whispered, her hand twisting in the fabric of Liv’s shirt. “You can’t go out there. There are monsters out there.”

That was quite true. And she didn’t have the time to think of something more horrifying.

That was it, right there at the top of her list. A genuine fucking nightmare.

Being scared out of her wits wasn’t going to keep her, or anyone else, alive, however.

Liv smiled reassuringly at her and gently unhooked Jessie’s fingers from the fabric of her clothing.

“I’m just taking a peek and then I will come right back inside,” she assured her. “You can stand guard at the window and just bang the shit out of it to warn me if you see any mother fucker out there move—alright?”

Jessie’s mouth opened to protest, but then snapped closed again and tightened as she quickly nodded her head.

Good. Jessie was using her head. That would keep her alive.

Now if only she could be certain that something wouldn’t try to chew her soul right out of her body the moment she stepped out the door.

Fucking hell.