Page 23 of Nightshade

Could werewolves speak to raccoons? Was this little creature going to tell that he’d caught me eating innocent furry friends?

I held out my hand, and the raccoon shuffled forward. He chirped as he sniffed my fingers. Soon enough, he realized that I didn’t have anything to offer him. A lance of disappointment cut through me at the betrayed look in his eyes, then he scampered off back into the trees.

If that was Leo’s friend, I couldn’t help thinking I hadn’t made a very good impression on him.

Back in the cabin, I shifted the bed away from the window and crawled beneath the blanket again. I could read in the dark, the contrast between ink and page enough for my eyes to make out clearly. It wasn’t as nice as by moonlight, but tucked under the blanket while it formed a little tent around my head, I read a chapter of the sappy, melodramatic romance before I went to bed.

I jerked awake to the sound of voices nearby, and picked them out immediately. There were three women and a man—voices I recognized from the coven house. The witches had found me, and worse, the sun was still shining bright beyond the north-facing window.

There was no way I could dart out the front door and hope to escape magic users before I burnt alive.

Even that back window—I’d be in full sunlight. I’d die.

For a bitter second, I thought that might be better, but then I heard a woman speak.

“What do you think Ivan’s going to do when we return him?”

“Who cares? We give him back, and we’re done with it.”

“No,” she said. “The first thing that vamp does is turn on the water works, say we kept him caged to save his own skin. It wasn’t his fault he’s been missing, it was ours. Then Ivan takes his anger out on us.”

Another woman spoke, and I swear there was a tremble in her voice. “So then . . . isn’t it better for him to just disappear? Ivan doesn’t know we held him. He just knows that he couldn’t sense Altair, and when he escaped, he could. In this area. That’s not, like, proof of anything.”

The man scoffed. “Do you actually think proof matters to a creature like him?”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

A bolt of panic stripped any thought but survival from my mind and I looked around wildly.

There was the bed, the blanket, a towel hanging on the bed post, and that was it. Hiding under the bed wouldn’t do me any fucking good.

I took half a step back, and the floorboards creaked underfoot.

They were rotten. Soft. There was some kind of space beneath the cabin. It was better than nothing.

I crouched, tearing up the boards. They creaked and snapped, almost dusty at the broken edges, they were so rotten.

“Did you hear that?” one of the witches asked the others.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Every single thought boiled down to that one curse as I squirmed my way through the small hole. It was musty down here, damp from the uncovered earth.

It was dark, at least, and the old foundation was made of stone. They’d have to pull me out if they wanted to get at me—to take me out and return me to Ivan, or to try and save themselves by slaughtering me.

If they fucking tried, I’d eat them alive. Every single one of them.

Yes, I’d leave them no choice but to kill me, and if I could take out any of them on the way, good. It was better than they deserved, because I could tell them right now that my death wouldn’t save them from Ivan’s wrath.

I could tell him that the witches had found me on his behalf, that I’d never seen them before, and he’d still lay waste to the coven the second they were of no use to him. He’d do it just for fun.

I dug my hands into the dirt. If only I could bury myself in it, they wouldn’t find me. I could hide. I could⁠—

The dirt beneath the heels of my palms began to shift, softening and rolling back like the ground itself had opened up so I could prance my way straight to hell.

It was cool and damp, and it kept shifting while I pressed myself flat to the ground. Soon, it was covering over my head, burying me alive.