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“Oh no! No!” Stella said.
Mercury lifted her head from Ford’s shoulder. Her back felt hot and wet, but there was no pain, though her vision blurred crazily.
“Put me down. I can walk.” Mercury thought she said the words in a normal voice, but all that escaped her mouth was an unintelligible whisper.
“Get down the bank!” Ford said.
“It’s steep. And there are brambles everywhere,” said Stella as she touched Mercury’s face and smoothed her hair back. “It’s okay, Acorn. You’re gonna be okay.”
“Where the fuck are they?” Amber’s voice was shrill and entirely too close.
Mercury’s blurry gaze lifted to see a lantern bobbing behind them like a specter.
“Doesn’t matter. We have to get down there. Now,” Ford said. Without waiting, he tightened his grip on Mercury and they dropped over the side of the steep bank. She moaned as she jostled against him. Brambles tore at his jeans and sliced his skin, but Ford kept going until he reached the rocky bank.
Karen slid down the incline behind them. Stella followed her more slowly—then she stopped about a third the way down, her focus on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Ford hissed.
Stella’s gaze went to him. “Her blood—it’s making the brambles grow.”
Mercury blinked and managed to clear her vision enough to see that Stella stood in the middle of an expanding thicket of thorns. Then her best friend smiled fiercely. She bent and lifted a thick branch tipped by nasty-looking barbs. Quickly, Stella sliced across her arm, then shook it all around her so that blood rained on the brambles. In a voice filled with intent, Stella Carver commanded, “Grow!” Then she slid the rest of the way down the incline to them.
As Ford and her two friends rushed away along the creek, Mercury gazed over his shoulder at the incline, where huge, spiked plants were spreading all along the bank like water loosed from a dam.
