Page 38 of No One’s Daughter

​We walked through the underbrush, entering the thick forest at the edge of the caravan park, the dead leaves crunching beneath our every step as an eerie sensation slithering its way up my back. Suddenly, a swarm of birds above our heads scattered from the trees, taking their anguished cries with them. A warning sign if I’d ever seen one.

​Then it was quiet.

​Too fucking quiet.

​Even at this time of night, the woods should be alive with many a night predator from owls to foxes. No, something wasn’t right.

​A low growl emanated from the darkness.

​I whirled around to look at Ailsa, who seemed wholly oblivious, although she also looked like she was barely holding on.

​Then it dawned on me.

​Fuck.

​I pulled my knife from the inside of my boot as my eyes scanned the darkness. “I know you hate my guts, but it’s really really fucking important that you listen to me right now.” I kept my voice low and steady. I took a step backward, shielding her with my body right when I saw two red glowing eyes staring back at me.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ailsa

MY BOOTS SKID to a halt and my eyes widened as my vision locked with two glowing crimson eyes. Something deep in my chest knew something was wrong.

​Really wrong.

What the fuck?

Then a growl.

And another set of eyes.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood as more and more growls echoed and a shudder ravaged my spine as a thick, dark fog rolled in between the trees and gnarled roots, all but snuffing out the moonlight.

We were surrounded.

“At the first chance you get, you run into one of the caravans, lock yourself in and barricade all entry points,” Davien instructed with a lethally calm tone.

All I could focus on were the wet, disgusting sounds of the beasts’ salivating mouths. What even were they?

“Ailsa,” Davien gritted out.

I swallowed hard. “I’m listening. I heard you. I’ll do as you said, but what about you?”

Perhaps I shouldn’t care, but there were at least seven of these beasts from what I had counted, and only one of him.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, holding his little knife in front of him in a fighting stance just as a puddle of what looked like oil—black, slick and weirdly coloured with sparks of purple—appeared on the bed of leaves in front of us. “Now, Ailsa. Run.”

I should have ran.

I knew that.

But I was frozen in place in fear.

A scream had lodged itself in my throat, fighting my heart for space. Half of me was pulled under by the despairing feeling of fear spreading through my bones, the other wanting, begging to put up a fight. But my feet didn’t move, making the choice for me. A flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the forest’s every dark corner and the scream finally fled my lips.

The beast in front of us angled its head at me and I saw it properly then. It was a hound, if it could even be called that. Too large, too mutilated.

Its body dragged itself from a tar-like substance, limbs too long, joints bending at angles they shouldn’t, its skin—or what passed for it—shifting and dripping like it couldn’t quite hold a solid form. Its eyes burned into me. They were void-like and endless, and when its mouth opened, it stretched too wide, showing rows of jagged teeth slick with that same black substance.