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The trees should have thinned as we got closer to the compound. The trees should have fallen away. Instead the forest grew thicker, the brambles and underbrush overgrown and wild like they hadn’t been just a few months before. I was going to ignore it, hell-bent on getting to the compound, but I was shocked out of my shift when a recognizable scent filled my nose.
Kelly nearly tripped over me but managed to stay upright. “What are you doing?”
I couldn’t answer.
The other wolves stopped. Ox tilted his head, asking a question without making a sound.
I ignored him.
I took a step toward a tree I didn’t recognize. It looked like it was rotting, its trunk black and leaking sap like blood.
Some of the other wolves shifted behind me, demanding to know why we’d stopped, what the hell I thought I was doing.
I pressed my hand against the tree trunk, my palm immediately coated with a viscous fluid. I recoiled as the trunk seemed to breathe, the wood expanding and contracting, the bark split.
“What is this?” I whispered. I inhaled again, and I swore it smelled like Sonari, the teacher from the compound. The one who’d once tried to court me with the carcass of a bear.
Patrice said, “Robbie, don’t,” but I didn’t listen.
I tore at the tree, digging into the bark. It peeled away like flesh and muscle. Each piece I pulled off snapped wetly. Sap leaked in thick streams. I was about to dig further when the stream of sap parted and a finger stuck out from the tree.
“No,” Aileen whispered.
I stared as the finger twitched as if beckoning me. I heard Jessie say there were others, that all of these trees looked like they were breathing, but I couldn’t look away. I reached up above the finger and broke off another large section of tree bark. The tree bled, and through its lifeblood, a face appeared, the mouth open and closing soundlessly, lips coated in sap, eyes blinking.
Sonari.
She was in the tree.
I cried out as I stumbled backward. Kelly caught me around my bare waist, saying, “Robbie, Robbie, Robbie, listen to me, listen to me,” but all I could see was Sonari, her finger jerking, her mouth opening and closing over and over and over.
Gordo pushed by us, tattoos flaring brightly. Mark was there too, still a wolf, pressed against his side. The raven on Gordo’s arm looked like it was screaming, the roses closing into tight red buds, vines and thorns twisting.
“Is she alive?” Jessie asked, voice shaking. “Are they all alive?”
I looked around at the sound of her voice. There were dozens of similar trees, their branches leafless and dark, their trunks groaning. The sound reminded me of when Kelly was sick, that wet thickness in his chest. The trees stretched out ahead of us toward the compound, though I couldn’t see the walls, given how many there were.
“I think so,” Gordo said. He sounded grim. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Patrice stepped forward, palms together in front of his chest. He turned them until his fingers pointed in opposite directions toward his elbows. He dragged his hands apart, a brief moment where his fingertips touched before they parted. There was a beat of nothing, and then his skin seemed to glow preternaturally, the spots of rust that covered his face standing out in sharp relief.
The trees moaned, Sonari’s most of all. Their branches shook, sounding like the rattling of bleach-white bone. Sonari’s tongue stuck out from her mouth, sap dripping off the tip. Patrice caught it before it hit the ground and rubbed it between his fingers. He brought it to his face and inhaled deeply.
“Dere alive,” he said quietly as he wiped his fingers on his jeans. “He’s contained dem. Trapped dem here.”
“Can you help them?” Jessie asked. Chris and Tanner, still shifted, pressed against her sides.
Patrice shook his head. “Not now. Take more time den we have, if I could even do it at all. Dis is deep magic. Deeper den I ever seen. Dis is black. All black. If we remove dem, we might kill dem.”
Gordo looked like he was going to touch Sonari’s face, but Mark took his shirt in his jaws, pulling him back. Gordo barely put up a fight, still looking at Sonari. “He did this,” Gordo whispered. “He did this.”
Ox went to him as a human, stepping carefully in front of him. “Gordo.”
“Ox,” Gordo said in a fractured voice.
Ox nodded. “I know. And we’ll fix it. All of it. But we have to finish this first. Focus. I need all of you. Can you do that?”
For a moment I thought Gordo was in shock, but he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. When he opened them again, they were clear. “Yeah. I can do that.”
