Page 7

The horses skittered to the side occasionally, their ears stiff and pointed forward with flaring nostrils.

The further they ventured through the thickening brush, the more skittish they became, often neighing and whinnying as they tossed their heads.

Although obviously very anxious, even the horses seemed well adjusted to the environment.

“Keep your wits about you,” Gregory muttered quietly when true shade passed over them, and his hands tightened on his reins. “We’re in their territory now.”

“It’s fine,” Sal muttered with an air of indifference, flapping his hand from side to side dismissively. “We’ll hear ’em before we see ’em.”

In answer, Mathews grunted with a head nod before looking over his shoulder. He and her connected eyes, then he lifted a single finger and pressed it against his lips. With no idea as to why he was telling her to shush, she shied away from his gaze to stare down at the horse’s hooves.

Who are they talking about? She hated admitting that she didn’t know all too much about the area. She eyed the lushness around her once more. We have to be close to the centre of the continent by now.

Just where were they taking her? There should be nothing and no one here except perhaps the native people, but even they were few and far between. She doubted she was being carted to one of their villages, as these men would likely sell her for coin, if anything.

It wasn’t uncommon for women to be taken for such reasons, forced to marry men other women didn’t wish to wed. Or worse.

Lindi shuddered at the thought.

Within minutes of being in the shade, as if the forest was only a thin band, they broke the tree line. There was an uncomfortable scent in the air, but Lindi couldn’t place it.

It was sickly sweet, but so very light it was more like an afterthought on the back of her palette. It came and went due to the light wind, the smells of the forest behind them mostly overshadowing it.

It didn’t matter either way.

In that moment, Lindi didn’t think anything could have distracted her from the shocking scene when they halted their horses and turned.

A gigantic hole, like a rip in the earth with a cavernous fall off the edge of a cliff side, opened up before them.

“A crevasse?” she whispered, gawking at it as the men rounded to the side to trot next to it.

No, a crevasse was much smaller than this.

She could just make out the other side, as if it was on the border of what the human eye could see in the distance, and that was only in front of her. To her left and right, it was nothing but a shadowy, gaping hole forever.

They eventually stilled their mounts and the angle they finally brought her to allowed her to see deeper inside it. There was nothing down there except the occasional tree and shrub, although further to her right, she could see a dense forest.

The other side of the canyon was nothing but barren desert, as if the forest only existed on this side of it.

“I didn’t think something like this existed in Austrális,” Lindi stated.

Ignoring her like usual, their saddles groaned and creaked as they dismounted, their boots thumping against the hard dirt of the rocky canyon edge. Two of the horses shook their necks at the release of pressure on their backs, causing their manes to flick and sway.

“We’ve started calling it the Veil,” Gregory stated as he stroked his sandy-coloured horse’s neck.

Her lips parted in surprise that he’d answered her.

“The Veil? I’ve never heard of a such a place.” Her lips pursed as she peered into it, only for her vision to wobble at the sheer, deadly drop. “Why would you call it that?”

“The mist,” he answered, scrutinising her face for a moment before quickly averting his gaze. “It’s faded today, but the more we come here, the thicker it seems to get.”

“It’s grown again,” Sal said with a strange depth to his tone, and Lindi looked over to find his usual smug expression was deeply concerned and narrowed on the horizon. “I swear somethin’ unholy is at play ’ere. No forest should grow this fast.”

At his foreboding words, goosebumps trailed up her arms, and the prickling spread over her when Mathews stepped closer and pulled her from the back of his horse.

“The mist shrouds terrors, like a layer of foreboding quiet that hides hostility,” Mathews stated, revealing a deep, body-chilling voice for the first time, which was made ever colder by his words.

“It’s a cloak of lies, obscuring the beautiful growing forest to hide the nightmares that linger within it. A veil.”

Lindi didn’t know why she smiled, but it was weak, false, and shaky as her lips quivered, and her nose tingled with the threat of tears.

“Y-you’re scaring me.”

All three looked at her, and she realised then that the only part of her that wasn’t surrounded was her back – yet the forest behind her felt oppressive all of a sudden. Their silence at her statement twisted her insides, and finally her eyes watered.

“What are you going to do to me?”

She eyed the deadly fall, wishing she could see how tall it truly was before nausea clutched her stomach and forced her to turn away. She feared...

No. She shook her head, dismissing the thought that came to her. They wouldn’t. It would be cruel to bring her here... just to toss her over the edge.

There needed to be a deeper meaning to them taking her and spending days bringing her here, other than to do something so barbaric.

“The Almighty Father is angry with us,” Gregory muttered as he came closer. It wasn’t the first time she saw it under his dark robes, as he often held it at night while they rested, but the cross at his waist was more noticeable in the daylight when it peeked out as he moved around.

Her stomach dropped, her new fear rebounding as quickly as she squashed it, and a cold chill crept up her spine.

Mathews knelt before her with rope in his hands, and before she could step back in protest when he reached for an ankle, Sal pulled his knife from his weapons belt.

“Don’t, missy,” Sal bit with gritted teeth. “Don’t make us chase ya. We want away from ’ere as quickly as possible.” Then he gestured to the gap of sunlight pouring into the canyon. “The light is fadin’, and it’ll only grow more dangerous traversin’ back through it with every hour.”

“Please.” Lindi took a step back, her bare foot ducking out of Mathews’ grasp, while the other shoe-covered foot was held firm.

She turned her beseeching gaze to Gregory, the only person she’d seen any kindness from, hoping for his benevolence once more.

“Whatever you’re planning, please don’t do it.

Life is sacred – that’s what his teachings show us. ”

“We have no other option,” Gregory muttered, watching as Mathews threaded the rope around her ankles.

“We have to stop them, and we’ll try anything and everything before it’s too late.

You haven’t seen them, so you don’t know what they’re like, but we do.

If we don’t appease him soon, we fear we’ll be overrun.

This must end when we can still hunt them.

Before they start forming packs and decimating villages. Before they get... bigger. ”

“A-are you talking about those rumours?” she asked with a sob. Lindi’s knees buckled as tremors assaulted her joints. “I thought they were...”

“Stories?” Sal bit. “Yeah, us too – until we saw one.”

Then he pointed to the horrible scars marring his face, the ones she’d never been able to make any sense out of.

The side of his cheek was missing, his nostril and upper lip split in half.

How he’d managed to retain both his eyes was a miracle, considering all the puncture wounds created in oval shapes.

Now that she looked deeper into them, she realised they were pointed fang marks, as if a small creature had pinned him down and bitten his face multiple times. The rest of his body was covered in claw marks, especially upon his biceps and upper chest.

“We’ve seen and killed many since then,” Mathews stated, his leather armour creaking as he stood.

“Why me?” Lindi asked, covering her face to hide her anguish from them, her fear, her very tears. The way her chest twisted so nastily, she wanted nothing more than to expel her heart, so it didn’t hurt like this or feel so betrayed.

“Why else?” Sal stated coldly, before carelessly pushing her so she’d stumble backwards, her ankle bindings having just enough slack to let her shuffle towards the edge of the canyon. “Pretty maiden sacrificed to a God. It’s well known in history, no?”

Peeking behind her, the blood rushed to her ears when Lindi noticed the ledge below the one she was on now, and the steep incline of rocks meeting them.

When the heel of her shoe dipped over the edge, Lindi jerked forward with a shriek.

Her ankles caught in the rope, and she fell to her knees, only to be yanked up once more by Sal.

“But why me ?!” Lindi yelled when she was turned and hauled a safe distance away from the edge. She didn’t dare hope that meant they were changing their minds.

“You were alone,” Gregory answered, remaining a safe distance back as Sal and Mathews blocked any chance for her to attempt a feeble escape.

“Your village was small, your parents simple farmers and easy to overpower. Sorry about your father, by the way. That... shouldn’t have happened. He shouldn’t have needed to die.”

He cut Sal another fierce glare over it, who merely rolled his eyes in return.

“You’re unwed, young enough and isolated enough to remain pure, and so devoted to our God that you wouldn’t violate his teachings.”

Seriously? A virgin fucking sacrifice?

That was old and barbaric! She’d heard tales of such things, but that was from ancient times, and ancient lands and people. Those sorts of things didn’t happen anymore, and yet... apparently here she was, about to be one.

She was even wearing a damn white gown, all dressed and ready.

Her cries became more distressed, and she fisted the back of her nightgown, wishing with all her might that her arms were free so she could fight back. She feigned a step to the right, causing them to heave that way, then she attempted tiny shuffles to the left.

She made it about two half-steps before she was caught again.

Heart racing, with her breaths sawing in and out of her rapidly heaving chest, Lindi couldn’t believe the very deity that told her to save herself until marriage would be the reason she’d die.

And there would be no one here to save her. They were thousands of kilometres from any kind of civilisation, in the middle of the continent. Hundreds of thousands of people lived near the coasts or just below the mountainsides, but not here.

She should have known something was wrong with the world, that things were changing, when she saw the lightest snowflakes in her village for the first time last year.

It’d never happened before, snow a strange and foreign sight in Austrális, to the point that they melted before they even touched the ground.

Gosh, the winter that year had been harsh, but she never thought there was a deeper meaning to it.

She never thought it would be the first sign of this day.

“You’re making a mistake!” she screamed, twisting hard enough from Mathews’ hold that she fell towards Sal with her face pointing down.

A shocked and pained gasp ripped from her when something cold, hard, and sharp lodged in her gut.

With Sal holding her shoulder to keep her upright, she looked down with widened eyes to find his dagger lodged hilt deep above her navel.

Hot crimson liquid spread across her abdomen and quickly cooled against the wind.

He ripped the blade from her, and Lindi instantly sagged to her knees as her arms pulled against her bindings in an attempt to cup her wound to no avail.

Gregory began some kind of loud, boisterous chant, but she couldn’t make it out against the ringing in her ears and the black spots in her vision.

Unable to stem the flow of her blood, she collapsed to her side with the edge metres from her. The pain was immense, her fear even more painful, and her heart racing with adrenaline worsened the throbbing.

She couldn’t believe this had happened... that this was truly the end.

The shock that clutched her bones had her frozen on the ground momentarily, and she only snapped out of it when they finally stepped away to leave. To discard her here as she bled out.

To callously leave her in her final moments of death.

I thought they were going to throw me off the cliff.

She didn’t know what was worse: the fast fall or this slow and lonely death.