Page 95 of Wild Thorns

The darkness surged, too oil-slicked to be shadow.

A cold tide rose from beneath my feet, pulling at me like reversed gravity. The kitchen flickered at the edges, the bright light going gray, the warmth bleeding out of the air. The old woman's face stayed steady, but everything around her was dissolving, swallowed by the shadow that had poured off me in the dream before this dream.

"Help me," I gasped. The words scraped my throat. The darkness was at my chest now, pressing in, pressing down. My hand, my clean hand with Tara's charm, was the only thing still visible. A small island in a rising flood. "Please. Help me."

"What's you name, chile?" she asked. Calm. Patient. Like we had all the time in the world, even as the world disappeared around us.

I tried to speak. The darkness filled my mouth like water, like smoke, like something that had been waiting inside me all along.

"You name."

My lungs burned. My vision narrowed to a single point: the old woman's face, her dark eyes, her expression of fierce and terrible waiting.

"Seren—"

The world went black.

I woke with my own voice echoing in my ears and my hand closed so tight around something small and rough that my nails had drawn blood from my palm.

Tara's charm sat in the center of the crescent marks, slightly warm, slightly humming.

Chapter twenty-six

Goodbye For Now

Iwoke gasping, clawing at sheets that were tangled around my legs like restraints.

The shower hadn't helped. I'd stood under the spray until the water ran cold, watching the pink swirl down the drain, scrubbing at skin that still felt wrong. The blood between my toes. The metallic smell wouldn't leave my nostrils, no matter how many times I washed my face.

Sleep had come eventually, dragging me under despite my body's protests, but it hadn't been rest. It had been something else entirely.

The nightmare clung to me like a second skin.

Shadow. Or water? Dark water, thick as oil, nothing like the bayou I'd glimpsed through dream-kitchen windows. This was something ancient and hungry, something that pulled, grasped, and swallowed without mercy.

Eli had gone under first.

"You have to." Callum’s words came out gargled, choking. "You have to live, Serena. You have to—"

Darkness. Death. The Prince of Pain.

The words echoed through my skull even now, sitting in my tangled sheets with predawn light filtering through the curtains. There had been a woman — dark skin, a colorful head wrap, a kitchen that smelled like coffee and herbs. Words in French I couldn't quite grasp. I grabbed my head and squeezed as a sharp stab of pain threatened to split my skull.

A curse, I remembered. Something about a curse on me. Pain ripped through my skull again. I laid down and gasped for breath.

Tara's charm, glowing clean in my hand, while darkness covered every other inch of my skin. Tara's charm.

I tried to hold the kitchen's smell, the woman's voice. It slipped like water. All I was left with was a headache from hell and a feeling. A feeling of certainty that something was coming to swallow everyone I loved if I didn't find a way to stop it.

I pressed my palms against my eyes. Colors bloomed—fractals, warning signs.

The magnolia tree was visible through the window, silver-washed in the early light. Peaceful. Beautiful. Completely at odds with the carnage that had happened beneath its branches just hours before.

They aren't human.

The text had come through around three a.m.

We're here when you're ready. No pressure. Jasper.