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“Keep walking!” Solon says roughly, hands at my back, pushing me forward.
I look over my shoulder at him and Dracula, both of them staring dead ahead, chins high, ignoring the hands reaching for them. On closer inspection though, there is fear in their eyes. Great.
I stumble forward, wondering why the hell we’re all walking. “Why aren’t we running?” I ask, shrieking again at a close call.
“Because if we run, then it’ll draw the Lapp Witches out,” Kaleid says.
“It’s too late,” Solon says. “I’ve already seen them.”
“Shit,” Natalia swears, glancing at us over her shoulder. “When?”
“Last while. They’ve been watching us from the forest. Keep walking Lenore, you’re doing good. Just ignore them.”
“Ignore the disembodied hands?” I yelp.
“I told you things would get strange.”
“Fucking understatement, don’t you think?” I snipe, just as another hand nearly gets my leg.
Finally the reeds start to flatten out, the hands fading with them, and then Kaleid comes to a stop.
In front of us is a lake.
A lake of blood.
At least, it looks like blood. It’s all red, stretching out toward the forest on the other side.
“What the hell?” I ask.
“The lake of blood,” Kaleid says, as if I know what that means.
“Is it real blood?” I ask.
He nods grimly. “But don’t drink from it.”
“I’m not drinking from it. I’m not going anywhere near it.”
His face breaks into a grin. “Oh, don’t you realize it, Lenore? We’re all going in it. This is the way into his world.”
My eyes widen in fear and I look to Solon for explanation. “He’s kidding, right?”
Solon’s jaw clenches for a moment but he shakes his head. “Unfortunately, he’s telling the truth. This is where Skarde went. This is how we get to him.”
“We have to go into that!” I ask, pointing wildly to the lake. I look to Natalia to back me up. “You’re okay with this?”
She shrugs. “I’d rather not, but if we have to then we have to.”
“So, what then, it’s like the lost city of Atlantis at the bottom or what?” I ask.
“You dive in, and you dive right through to the other world,” Kaleid says with an edge to his voice, his patience being tested. “You’ll come out the other side. But we need to hurry. If the Lapp Witches…” then he trails off, his eyes locked on the space behind us.
The skin at the back of my neck prickles and now I know whatever Kaleid is looking at is bad. Very bad.
I take in a deep breath and turn around.
In the forest behind us are several figures standing between the trees. They are tall, thin, dressed in black cloaks, and have human skeleton hands.
And they have deer skulls for heads, sharp antlers sprouting from the top, their empty black sockets staring at us. It feels like they’re staring into my soul, stirring something in the well, something I don’t like.
I know these creatures. I’ve met them before.
“Jeremias,” I whisper, reaching over for Solon’s hand and holding on tight. “I’ve seen them with Jeremias.”
“These are the Lapp Witches,” Kaleid says. “We’re in their territory. Same as the vanha väki. The old ones. We’ve crossed across the border back into Finland.”
I’m about to ask why this is the Lapp Witch territory if I’ve seen them in San Francisco, but I know that where Jeremias took me doesn’t exist in any place in this world. Seems I’m able to do interdimensional travel too.
“What do they want with us?” Natalia asks. “They’re just staring.”
“They belong to Skarde,” Solon says in a low voice. “I can tell.”
And just like that, the deer skull creatures start walking out of the woods, coming toward us. There’s about seven of them, and they seem to glide, their feet never touching the ground.
“Oh, fuck,” Dracula swears, his body tensing, as if ready for a fight. Solon’s grip on my hand tightens. Natalia looks ready to run. Only Kaleid seems completely calm about all of this.
“Do you need me to light them up?” I ask, not taking my eyes away from the deer people. “I can do what I did with the Dark Order. Solon and I were a team.”
“No,” Kaleid says firmly. “We might need them. They might be our ticket in.”
We all watch as they come over, but then they split. Three of them grab Solon, wrapping their boney skeleton hands around his shoulders, while another three do the same to Dracula, pulling them to the side.
“What are they doing?!” I yell, ready to throw down. I start going for Solon, to help him, even though he’s just letting it happen.
But then one of the deer skull creatures is in front of me, palm out, pushing me back with an invisible force. I stare into the empty eye sockets, dark black holes that swirl into a void, and I feel like the world is starting to spin.
