Regrets pulse in my ribcage. Maybe I’m misremembering the past, maybe an outside force twisted what I saw. Or maybe the man in that bedroom wasn’t E at all, and I’m just so afraid it was him, I can’t see past it.
But the resemblance—the haloed light, the bite of power…
My stomach knots.
I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to know. Because if it’s true, then what we just did is unforgivable. I lie there in the growing light, my doubts multiplying in the silence, and tell myself there must be another explanation. There has to be.
Chapter 29
Bitten
E
Soon after we fold up camp and set out on another day of traveling, the trail gives way beneath our feet, dissolving into a scatter of massive stones peppered with damp moss.
Rust-colored water churns beside us, its current grinding against the rocks with a dull, relentless roar. The river has morphed into rapids crashing down the hill, the bank steep enough that one wrong step would send us tumbling straight into the rushing water below, where the current would swallow us whole and carry us out of sight for good. So we veer away from the riverbank.
The sky hangs low and gray, enhancing the feeling that I’m carrying something heavy on my shoulders. This new body feels foreign, but I don’t feel the soreness or fatigue I would expect from muscles that haven’t been used in decades. Somehow, I’m dead, but still in shape.
“I’m impressed you can keep up, Casper,” Nick finally says, leading the expedition while I close the march a few feet behind Max.
“Is that fatigue I hear in your voice?” I tease him, his breath shallower than it was a couple of hours ago.
“Not at all.”
He’s struggling, but Max is struggling even more.
“Well, I can’t keep this up for much longer,” she grunts, uncorking her water bottle. “We’re going to have to take a break or seriously reduce the pace.”
The steep hill is full of tall pines and deciduous trees in shades of burnt orange, ochre, and deep red, but the rocky slant doesn’t offer much space to make camp.
Max ties her jacket at her waist, a hint of sweat shining on her forehead.
“You let yourself go, sis,” Nick teases. “All those long shifts at the hospital made you soft.”
She pauses for a second to catch her breath before showing all her teeth. “Bite me.”
Nick presses his lips together, his gaze darting from his sister to the hillside, then to the river. “We need to get to the top before nightfall, or we won’t have much fun sleeping tonight. We can go another thirty minutes or so, then take a break.”
Max is barely a step ahead of me when she cries out.
She jerks away from the rock with a sharpow, her balance slipping. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she hisses, reaching down to her leg before falling onto her ass.
A flash of light moves at her feet.
The golden snake recoils from her ankle, its scales shrinking and expanding as it rushes off toward a crack between the rocks.
I lunge forward, pin it with my boot, and bring a loose stone down hard on its neck. The creature’s tail whips as I sever its head.
Max slides off the rock and hops on one leg toward the line of trees, her face pulled in a tight, painful frown. “Fucking hells. It stings.”
“Don’t worry, it’s dead now.”
I catch her around the waist before she loses her balance, then lift her fully into my arms.
“No, you shouldn’t have!” she says quickly. “Poor beast. I’m the dumb human who stepped on it in the first place.”
“Let us not mourn the poisonous snake, yes?”
