He grabbed Cillian by the arm and dragged the other man with him over to a fallen tree trunk split in the middle by a boulder jutting out of the ground. When Cillian looked as if he might speak, Bran frantically shook his head. Cillian clamped his teeth together and didn’t fight when Bran pulled him into a crouch behind the tree trunk. Bran looked up at Jupiter, his familiar having tucked herself tight against the spot where the branch met the tree, an unmoving statue that would look like a shadow from a distance.
Bran shrugged off his backpack and carefully lay down on the cold ground, shifting so that he was underneath the fallen tree trunk. He turned his head to the side so he could see through the narrow space between the tree trunk and the ground, face hopefully hidden enough by the scraggly weeds growing in the slimy moss. At first, he couldn’t see what had made Jupiter give out her warning. Then, on the far side of the clearing, beyond the circle of standing stones and deep in the spindly trees, if he squinted, he could see a light.
Floating higher than the ones that had chased them through the forest, Bran watched it grow larger as it approached the clearing, casting an eerie brightness through the cold fog. It coalesced into something huge, fog peeling away from its terrifying form. The creature was tall, even though it was hunched over, dragging its arms along the ground as it walked. No, Bran realized as he lay there in the dirt, rigid and trying not to breathe.
It dragged prey.
The creature’s skin was gray and wrinkled, sagging at its joints. Its face was an elongated nightmare with four eyes, two on each side of the mouth full of teeth bisecting its skull from jaw to top. The sound it made was a rasp like nails being scraped over metal. It gripped in its hands two massive deerlike creatures with deep russet hides, much larger in scale than any deer Bran had ever seen. Both bodies had brokenantlers and ripped-open bellies, their intestines hanging from the death wounds and dragging behind them.
Bran thought the might-be-deer were too brightly colored to call the wyrding home. Nothing about this place screamed the living abided within it, but he was certain the animals hadn’t come from the mortal world. He watched as the creature tossed first one and then the other into the boneyard. Then it reared back and roared, the sound making Bran wish he could cover his ears.
Cillian’s hand gripped his leg right above the top of his hiking boot, fingers digging in hard. Bran didn’t dare move, and he couldn’t close his eyes, not if he wanted to make sure they weren’t seen. So he lay there and watched the monstrous creature crouch over its kill and tear flesh from bone with its vicious teeth. Blood coated its body, shockingly red against its gray skin, even from a distance.
As the creature ate its fill, focused as it was on the bodies, Bran finally unclenched a hand from the dirt and weeds, carefully rolling to his side so he could reach for Cillian. Cool fingers gripped his, and Bran tugged at him, not needing to tell Cillian to move quietly and slowly. With great care, Cillian stretched out on the ground beside Bran, sliding beneath the broken tree trunk with him amid the sound of crunching bone.
There wasn’t much room for them both, but they hunkered down together out of necessity. Cillian half lay on top of Bran, his head resting against Bran’s shoulder blade, an arm hooked over his waist. The length of the other man’s body pressed up against his was a weight he didn’t want to leave. The ground leached all the warmth from his body, and the cold air wasn’t much better. Cillian, though, he was warm, and Bran fought the urge to press closer—out of want or fear, Bran couldn’t say right then. But Cillian was an anchor of sanity that Bran gladly clung to as the creature finished its meal, face covered in blood, and left the clearing.
Right in their direction.
Bran held his breath, heard the quietness from Cillian that told him the other man was doing the same thing. Cillian’s fingers gripped Bran’s hip tight enough to leave bruises. Both of them stayed still and quiet, hidden beneath the fallen tree trunk, as the creature passed them bymere yards away, its deep, raspy breathing almost like a laugh. Bran squeezed his eyes shut, silently praying to the Mother to keep them safe.
Neither of them moved until the sounds of the creature’s passage were nothing but a lingering fear in the form of a rapid heartbeat. Jupiter sentsafethrough the bond, but Bran didn’t immediately move, not until she flew down to them and hopped beneath the tree trunk. She pecked him lightly on the cheek, and Bran finally drew in a breath that wasn’t tight in his lungs with fear. “Okay.”
He nudged Cillian with his elbow, and the other man rolled away from him. Bran instantly missed having him close. They crawled out from beneath the tree trunk, muddy dirt and bits of moss sticking to the black sap already on their skin covering them on one side. Bran tried scraping it all off, but it was a lost cause.
“Where to now?” Cillian asked in a hushed voice.
Bran looked at Jupiter, who was now perched on the fallen tree trunk, staring back at them. She spread her wings and launched herself into the air, flying away, hopefully in a different direction from that creature. They picked up their backpacks, and Cillian carried his rifle in a position that would be easy to quickly bring it up and shoot, and they started walking.
They left the boneyard behind with its newly ravaged dead and walked into the fog. Jupiter led the way, the bond a warm weight in the back of Bran’s mind. His mouth was dry, and he dug out a bottle of water, drinking half of it and passing the rest over to Cillian, who finished it off. Cillian put the empty plastic bottle into his own backpack, ever the ranger and refusing to leave trash behind, even here.
They walked for what felt like hours, Jupiter guiding the way through the fog on a winding path that saw them hide from the lights two more times before the chill began to abate. Each escape felt like a miracle, but Bran wasn’t sure his nerves could take crossing the lights again. Eventually, though, the sun started breaking through the fog, the gray sky above showing slivers of blue. Trees with bits of green leaves began to appear between the spindly lifeless ones as the wyrding gave way to something else.
Something beautiful.
A forest like Bran had never seen before gradually appeared aroundthem. The gray coldness of the wyrding faded away, revealing rich brown bark and deep green clover that covered the ground. The trees werehuge, bigger even than the redwoods Bran had seen once in California when he was a child and his mother had taken him on a summer road trip. They rose above like giant sentinels, their canopies thick with green leaves, the sun glinting brilliantly through the branches.
The forest was old—far older than any in their world. Bran didn’t trust it, no matter that it smelled earthy and rich, clean in a way that was refreshing after coming through the wyrding. The lingering scent of rot clung to both of them. He desperately wanted a shower, but more than that, he wanted to find Aisling.
The buzzing sound of a forest crept in, replacing the silence that had been suffocating in the wyrding. The bird song wasn’t familiar, just slightly off to his ears, reinforcing the fact they weren’t walking through the forest back home. That this land belonged to the Fae and they needed to be careful. All the warnings his mother had ever given him over the years tumbled through Bran’s mind, keeping him company as they made their way through the forest, following where Jupiter led.
She took them through trees and across a bubbling creek, skirting a meadow that had a herd of those massive deer grazing. One stood apart, its antlered head held high, on alert for any threats. Bran didn’t think it saw them as they passed by, but he wasn’t keen on catching its attention. It might look like a deer—bigger, with the same sort of antlers—but looks could be deceiving in the Otherworld.
They were maybe an hour past the meadow and down another energy bar each when Jupitercawedin three short bursts. Bran couldn’t see her, but he could sense her up ahead.
“Trouble?” Cillian asked.
“No, but she found something.”
They picked up the pace, Bran following his bond with Jupiter and taking the lead. As they walked between two trees, they stumbled onto something Bran could only call a road, the dirt worn down from use. He rocked to a stop at the edge of the forest, looking first one way, then the other.
Cillian walked a little farther into the wide road, spinning around in a slow circle, never letting go of his rifle. “Whatnow?”
“Jupiter got us out of the wyrding,” Bran said as he joined Cillian.
“And I’m glad for that, but how do we find Aisling in this place?”
Bran knew nothing about the Otherworld except for the stories kept alive by covens through the centuries. The important ones were shared, information gleaned by those witches who made it through the wyrding and to the Otherworld and back. Most of those were in his coven’s grimoire, and while Bran had memorized witchmarks, he hadn’t memorized the alchemist aspect of magic or the spells written down in dozens of handwritings from his ancestors.
