Page 45 of Birthright

If we were going to make it off this island, I had better speed things up a bit. Since getting off the boat, my actions had felt dulled. I watched Manus moving to the boat to tie it. He seemed to creep along like a motion picture that was running at the wrong speed. “Must be a trap. We’re moving too slowly.” I concentrated and moved toward him. My speed resumed to normal. “Just think about it and it goes away.”

He looked over his shoulder at me as he knelt, jerkily securing the boat. He closed his eyes for a second and then resumed at a normal pace. “That was weird.”

“Hint of things to come?” I grabbed the backpack and headed toward the mountain.

He grabbed me. “Keena, at least try to let me protect you.” His eyes were pleading. “It is my job.”

“I will. You’ve done a smashing job so far.” I punched him on the shoulder and headed into the dead forest.

On Thule, the trees didn’t welcome me. I couldn’t move through them as I could those at home. Instead, the dead branches seemed to reach and grab, roots rising to trip us as we walked. I knew they weren’t, but it was hard not to believe. Disturbing, but I tried to ignore it, afraid that if I thought about it too much, it would slow us back down to the unreal speed we’d felt at the shore.

Manus was just off to my side, making his own path. We didn’t want to walk single file. It would have left one of us with an obstructed view and slowed us in the event of an attack. We moved ahead steadily, eyes darting and aware of everything around us.

Howard made his appearance above us, the only life around. Manus looked up to watch him gliding and circling. I concentrated and opened my eyes to Howard’s view. He drifted about fifty feet above us. He searched the ground in short, quick movements of his eyes and head. Howard was as confused by the lack of life as I was. Through his eyes I saw more dead woods, no signs of anything moving. “Nothing,” I said, as I brought my vision back to my own. Howard shrieked as I left his head.

“I don’t like this at all,” Manus said in a low voice, his cat eyes darting back behind us. “Too quiet. Too easy.” He hadn’t slowed his forward movement and neither had I—but my hands searched out each of my weapons. It wasn’t a conscious action, just an impulsive need to know they were all where I’d left them. The only real fights I had been involved in so far were against my sister and a single Slaugh, so I wasn’t sure of myself. How would my body react without my magic? Manus had spent hours upon hours trying to emulate various battle scenarios, but I had always known it was him on the other end of the weapons. There’s security in that.

What lay in wait out here was starting to wash over my skin like unseen water and I had no way to know what to expect.

Patches of ice started to appear among the thinning trees, making the footing more and more treacherous. The land was slightly sloping upward, and the dead soil gave way to loose rocks in between the ice. The air was polluted with something wretched I couldn’t identify. We moved on, glancing at each other and around us frequently. I tried to push out my powers to feel something, anything. “I just can’t feel anything here.”

He nodded. “Me either. Makes my skin crawl.”

I gave him a knowing look, glad it wasn’t just my own fear that I felt.

CHAPTER 20

The forest of permanently petrified trees had thinned to little more than dead sticks when I suddenly stumbled on some ice and went to my knees, catching myself with my palms. I didn’t scream, but the sudden loss of control sent adrenaline surging through my system.

Manus rushed to help me up. “I got it. Just tripped.” But my eyes focused on what at first looked like a bleached-out piece of wood. It wasn’t the same wood of the blackened forest…

Another scream lodged in my throat. It was a bone—and not large enough to belong to an adult. It was a tiny femur…a child’s femur.

“Bones!” I said as I stood as fast as I could without falling backward. After gathering some balance, I took a step back. The sound that rose from my boots, now that I knew what was on the ground, was a spine-rattling crunch.

The simple act of turning to Manus made me feel weak, as if my blood was draining away from my brain. “They’re everywhere.” The air felt heavy. I had to struggle for a breath as I scanned every direction.

Bones.

“Keena.” His voice was steady and calm, his green eyes locking with mine. “Take a breath. They’re just bones.” He gripped my shoulders, the softness of his expression holding my attention away from the tiny femur at my feet. “We need to figure out what left them here. Steady. You can do this.”

“What ate all the meat off them? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?” He nodded his head. I didn’t want to know what ate this much. I scanned the area again, using the motion to loosen the grip of fear that had clenched my nervous system and was holding me stuck to the spot. Manus was right. I had to get control, remind myself what I was doing here. My father…Abbey. I pictured her little face over and over in my mind. I took a deep breath and looked around, studying the terrain a little closer.

The bones were all dry and bleached. None looked as though they’d recently made their way here. Either that or whatever brought them was damn good at stripping them clean. “They’re either old or…”

“Yeah. You feel any life around us at all?” We had instinctively moved until we stood back-to-back.

I took one of the daggers off my waist. “Nothing really alive except Howard, but something knows we’re here.” He didn’t answer, but he didn’t really need to. We started moving toward the mountain again, slowly, trying to step precisely so as not to alert anything to our presence by crunching the smaller bones under our feet. There was still no sound around us other than our own footfalls on the bones and rocks as we moved.

I felt the brush of something against me. Nothing physical…but I had a bad feeling, an unnatural caressing of something unwanted and unseen on my face.

There were mounds and piles of rocks and large stones all around us, the foothills to the small mountain, which was not as high as I had feared it would be, but nothing large enough for us to hide behind. Nothing for whatever was heading toward us to hide behind either.

I scanned the rocks on the side of the mountain, then I felt the same presence behind me. I spun, letting Manus come around to cover our front. Behind me there were only more rocks but the feeling was getting stronger. Still, I saw nothing but the gray and black of the rocks and shadows. My heart was beating so fast I heard my pulse roaring in my ears. I tried to steady my now-splintering nerves. I spun the daggers in my hands several times for something to do and to keep from gripping the handles so tightly.

I caught a small movement just under my foot. I looked down quickly—and saw another shift from the pile of bones to my left.

Two bones were moving toward each other. A third bone joined them.