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I shuddered. “Can we get around them?”
Jayce and Kingston looked at each other for a millisecond before each one shifted and darted away. Kai leaned against a tree and shook his head.
“I’ll pass on this little competition,” he said. “Not a fan of moose.”
“Harpy eaters,” Xero corrected absently.
Kai shrugged. “Potato, tomato. Who’s got the food?”
“You just ate.”
“Yeah, and it’s lunch time. If we’re going to have to wait for a herd of demon moose to pass us by, we might as well eat.” He sat down on a lumpy root and crossed his arms definitively.
Kingston and Jayce returned less than a minute later.
“They’re moving pretty fast, but there are a lot of them,” the dragon shifter reported. “We should probably just wait them out.”
Kai shot me an I told you so look.
We settled in for lunch, but I couldn’t eat much. I’d felt sick since we’d left the cave. I’d assumed it was just nerves, since we were entering an unknown world full of danger, but the longer we were out here, the more comfortable I became with the hazards we faced. Not that they’d become less terrifying, but at least they weren’t unknown anymore.
But the sick feeling twisting my stomach hadn’t eased up. If anything, it’d gotten worse.
As I washed my tiny meal down with water, the hairs on my arms stood up. I froze, then silently rose to my feet. The guys instantly picked up on my vibe and fell silent as well. The damn moose or whatever were still crashing through the undergrowth in the distance, but there was something else.
Kingston nudged me and questioned me with his eyes. I shook my head, putting a finger to my lips. I could feel eyes on me. I slowly spun in a circle, looking all around for the source, but saw nothing. I’d watched enough horror movies to know when to look up, and I did, but there was nothing there either. The feeling passed as quickly as it had come. Frowning, I sat back down.
“Felt like someone was watching us,” I explained.
Xero nodded. “I felt it too. It was probably an animal. Keep a sharp eye, but don’t worry too much. Human hybrids are outside the food chain.”
“I’ll go up and check it out,” Kingston offered. In one fluid motion he rose to his feet and shifted, taking flight the instant after he stood.
“He’s getting good at that,” Jayce said appreciatively.
“A little too good.” Kai frowned up at the sky where Kingston was no longer visible. “He likes it here too much.”
I shrugged. “Who wouldn’t like a power boost? He’s not going to turn evil, you know. I’m convinced that’s just a myth.”
“Why would they do that?” Jayce asked. “Wouldn’t spreading a myth like that just make people give up as soon as they got here? Seems like it would weaken our side.”
“It does, doesn’t it.” I gave Jayce a meaningful look, but he just shot back a confused one. I sighed. “I’m saying, what if the myth didn’t originate with the Custodians?”
He puzzled on that for a minute, then his eyes widened. “Oh! Gavriel’s army?”
“Got it in one.” I nodded, ignoring the little butterflies that flapped in my stomach when Jayce grinned at me proudly. For some reason, seeing him happy always made me happy, as if even in the most fucked up circumstances, all was right with the world. “I mean, it makes sense. A rumor like that would be enough to keep the underworld free of trained demon hunters. And it’s worked, hasn’t it?”
“Better than any ward or defense.” Xero scratched his chin thoughtfully. “If you’re right, it’s honestly brilliant.”
Kingston returned just then, pooling back onto the ground the same way he’d gone up. As his humanity returned, he shook his head. “Saw a few harpies hunting some kind of serpent, but nothing’s paying attention to us. Not that I could see from up there anyway.”
Kai’s eyes suddenly changed and he sniffed the air. “We should move anyway. The moose are gone.”
“Harpy eat—oh, never mind.” Xero shook his head. “You’re right about moving on though.”
We kept moving through the jungle all day and into the night. None of us wanted to sleep in the forest if we could possibly avoid it, though Kai and Jayce ran laps around us every few hours to make sure we weren’t being hunted, and Kingston frequently took to the sky to make sure we were heading in the right direction. Xero showed us which plants were venomous, which were poisonous, and which were mobile, pointed out different kinds of animals’ droppings and prints, and showed us how to identify various nests. The Harpy nests were easy to see once I knew what to look for, since they were primarily made of hair with bits of unfortunate scalps still attached.
When the forest had grown too dark for me to see anything in either form, I squeezed Xero’s hand. “We should probably give in and make camp.”
