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I shrugged. “The whole underworld goes to war when the sun rises, apparently. It’s wild out there. Let’s eat, I’m starving.”
He shook his head with a bemused look but grabbed the pack and started distributing our meager breakfast. We’d learned at least a few useful spells during our time at FU, most notably a much weaker version of Professor Shen’s cleaning spell that we could use to freshen up our clothes, and a replicating spell that worked on organic substances. So as long as nobody ate the last of our food supply, we could keep replicating it pretty much indefinitely.
The screams continued to echo from outside for another thirty minutes, but by the time we finished eating, none of us were paying any attention to them. They had become background noise.
As we grabbed our gear and left the cave and headed back out into the threatening landscape beyond, it occurred to me that although the “atmosphere turning you evil” thing might be a myth, there was no denying a simple, obvious truth.
Our time in the underworld was definitely changing us all.
Chapter Nineteen
Over the next several days, we grew even more accustomed to the morning screams and the pitch black of night, but I never could quite shake the anxious feeling of being watched. It was so bad that in spite of the ridiculous amount of exercise we were getting daily, I had stopped sleeping for longer than an hour or two at a time.
But there was one silver lining, even in these dangerous, stressful circumstances; the guys were growing closer than ever, and the five of us had turned into a functional group.
I’d worried for a long time that they would never get along. They had been forced into each other’s lives just like they’d been forced into mine and had become a sort of weird unit because of my power. For a long time, I had lived with the guilty thought that maybe I had ruined their lives, social and otherwise. But the longer we traveled together, the more they bonded on their own, without any magic on my part. It eased my conscience, even if it couldn’t ease my anxiety.
One day—I didn’t know which one, I’d lost track by this point—I woke up in a panic just before dawn with the worst feeling of foreboding I had ever experienced. I fully expected to wake up with a knife at my throat and all of my guys dead. But when I glanced around quickly, my heart thrumming in my chest, I found that everything was as I had left it when I’d gone to sleep, except that Kai had replaced Xero on watch.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, arching a brow at me.
I shook my head, fighting back the sick twist in my gut. “I feel like something terrible is about to happen. Is happening.”
Early morning light glinted off his black hair as he pointed into the near distance. A harpy eater was silhouetted against the ugly red light of dawn. He’d just caught his prey and was busy shredding it as it screamed.
“Terrible things always happen here,” he said matter-of-factly. Then his gaze softened a little as he took in the lingering panic on my face. “Eat something, you’ll feel better.”
I did as he suggested, but it didn’t help much. I crawled back into the pile of bodies and made out with Jayce for a while as Kingston sleepily groped my ass and boobs, sliding his hands under my tunic and down my leggings. It charged me up, but it didn’t help the anxiety at all.
Something was coming. I could feel it on the horizon like a cloud bulging with rain and lightning. I was antsy to get moving, but everyone was tired by now and reluctant to continue on our seemingly endless journey. I paced around our campsite, making sure everything was in its place and that evidence of our presence here was completely obscured. Finally, after about a billion years, everybody else was ready to go.
“You seem grim this morning,” Jayce commented, pulling me in close for another kiss before we headed out. He brushed my hair back from my face. “Cheer up! It’s a beautiful day.”
As he gestured with his chin toward the sky, some big bat-bird thing snatched a smaller bird thing out of the air and ripped its head off. I shot the hellhound a dark look.
He grinned sheepishly. “Uh… circle of life?”
I sighed and adjusted the pack on my back. “Let’s just focus on getting there.”
The mountains, which had loomed in the distance
for days, were finally close enough to see clearly. Not that I wanted to. They were covered in twisted black trees and jagged red rocks—or plants, it was still hard to tell—and almost looked like they were alive and waiting for a meal.
“God, I hope you’re right about this, Xero,” I said as I stepped up beside him. He had taken the lead today, guiding us through the rough terrain.
“I am. I think I am.”
“You think?” I almost stopped walking to stare at him.
He slid me an uncomfortable glance. “The foliage isn’t exactly what I expected it to be. There’s a chance the landscape is different on the two sides, like the Sierras, but…” He let the rest of that terrible thought hang, shrugging helplessly.
“Well, shit,” I muttered under my breath. “Have you told anybody else?”
“There’s nothing to tell.” He shook his head firmly. “Looks like a clear path through the trees up there,” he called back to the others. “Once we’re through there, all we gotta do is find a hole.”
The trees had become so thick and dense around us that our pace had slowed considerably over the past several hours. But as I craned my neck, squinting slightly, I caught sight of what Xero was pointing at. Up ahead, there was an opening between the gnarled roots and branches, something that looked almost like a tunnel through the dense forest.
As we stepped into the natural—or supernatural, I supposed—tunnel, my heart pounded hard and heavy. Time seemed to slow down around me as reality caught up to my intuition.
