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I didn’t have a choice. With another nudge, some force, some power, dug into my chest. I cried out, coughing against the sensation. Like a hook had lodged into my heart, I reeled forward.
The door to the garage whipped and clacked against the wall. Wind that did not belong in a building burst from the frame, and in the next heartbeat, all I knew was blinding white light.
CHAPTER 2
Adira
My face slammed into grass,damp and soft like the sea moss I’d touched at the aquarium on a school field trip once. Not desert grass. Truth be told, the air was too cool, too wet, too fresh—this wasn’t the Las Vegas Strip.
Every bone, joint, and tendon in my body screamed from the impact. I let out a long groan, bracketed my elbows, and lifted my upper half.
My heart stopped.
Where towering casinos lined busy streets packed with too many cars, now I was encased on all sides with spruce trees with black needles, twisting aspens that wove together like a lazily knitted tapestry, and lush ferns sprouting over the roots.
A dirt road sliced through the center. Grooves on either side dug into the dark soil—wagon wheels?
I leveraged to my knees, anxiety tightening in my chest, and scanned the forest. Wind pummeled my face. Cruel gusts whipped loose hair against my cheeks, fierce enough the band of cat ears dislodged from my hair. Ominous clouds crept over the treetops in great billows of rage. I jolted when a sharp flash of lightning burned a hole through the center.
What happened?
Frenzied thoughts battered my skull. I drew in a long breath through my nose, then blew it out too forcefully through my mouth.
Think. I closed my eyes, retracing my steps. Graham, a knife, the empty corridor, a woman with lavender hair, bright light.
Well, shit.
I was dead. A goner. Graham got the drop on me, that was all there was to it. I was dead, and as the girl who’d been raised in the desert, earning a living from crooks and killers, now I got to spend eternity in a cold forest where my irrational fear of storms would torment me for all time.
Then again, did muscles and joints ache in death like they did in life? Who really knew, but I hoped even if I was meant to spend my days in fire and brimstone, my body might be a little demon immortal with a few perks.
I stood, brushing bits of grass off my knees, and took note of my fingers. What the . . . the red, coiled birthmark now burned in rich black ink. Much the same as the tattoo on my back, the random marks shifted into something smooth and beautiful.
Runic symbols, feathery flourishes, all of it covered the tops of my hands from slightly above the wrist to the last knuckle on each finger.
Lovely, delicate, yet almost like some kind of warrior, and I was inwardly screaming. What was happening? Panic clung to my lungs, squeezing until I could not draw a deep enough breath.
Focus. I shook out my tattooed fingers. If I wanted answers, I’d be wise to keep a steady head and try to orient to whatever was happening here.
If this was a dream-journey from some comatose state of my brain, there ought to be signs to lead me out.
Unless this was my eternal damnation. Still, I’d assume there would be something semi-familiar. Wasn’t that how this stuff worked? Bits and pieces of our lives were stitched into the tapestries of our forever?
A throaty chuckle came from behind.
I spun around. There, seated on a fallen log, was a woman with long braids of silver hair over her shoulders. Lacedthroughout her plaits were leather ribbons and . . . were those bones?
“Lost in the Torrent, are we, Sweet Iron?” The woman chuckled again and plucked a soggy looking mushroom from the grass and placed it inside a round basket.
“Um.” I glanced over my shoulder. “I don’t know where I am.”
“In my garden, if you please.” The woman frowned. “On my phoenix blooms, to be exact.”
Beneath my feet, a smashed bed of poison green flowers was pressed flat to the soil.
“Shit, I’m sorry.” I arched a brow. “Wait. This whole place is your garden?”
The woman blew out her lips, then tugged at the neckline of her burlap-looking dress. Inked on her skin were brilliant swirls of green and black designs. “I’m a mage, aren’t I? This is my part of the Greenwood. Since I’m the only one with the spine to sit out in the open through Torrent to listen for the whispers of the trees, I’d say I’ve earned the privilege to call this spot my bloody garden.”
