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Or had the big idiot tried to play the hero on his own? What if he’d gotten away, only to circle back and try to rescue me?
Sounded like the kind of harebrained stupidity I would expect from myself.
I hoped his sense of self-preservation ran deeper than my own.
Giving the twig-strewn underbrush a baleful look, I trudged into the woods, hissing swears through my teeth. I was either going to walk out of here without further incident, or I was going to hike headlong into more trouble. Either way, as long as I didn’t get strung up again I felt like I was coming out on top.
I wobbled precariously over the uneven terrain. Spots of light danced across my vision, and the migraine swept over me slowly, like waves lapping at the shore. Each time I felt even a moment of relief, a new wave would crest and the pain would come over me again. And again. And again.
These were the kinds of headaches I used to get after my Awakening, when the magic was at odds with the wolf inside me. Most thirteen year olds only had to deal with the unfortunate side effects of puberty and hormones. Instead, I got a werewolf coming-of-age ritual and the sparking to life of my hereditary magic.
Bet no one ever had to deal with that at a bat mitzvah.
Back then the pain had been new and unbearable. It made me unfocused and dangerous. I’d spent years trying to master it and learning to balance the two powers inside me, and as I was finding out this week, I still had a lot of discoveries waiting for me. The return of the magic-induced skull-mangling migraines was like a visit from an unwelcome old acquaintance. In the past I’d been able to lock myself in dark rooms or find quiet spaces in the woods where I could meditate and rest until the pain subsided.
I didn’t think I was going to find my mental calm blue ocean out here.
Tears welled up in my eyes, and the pinpoints of light danced like little fairies across my vision. I had to keep my shit together and get my wits about
me. The last thing I needed was for a headache to be the thing that got me killed.
Here lies Eugenia Miranda McQueen, who died because she didn’t have any Advil.
Fuck that shit.
The one nice thing about my head being torn apart by tiny evil demons was that I no longer noticed the sharp things poking me in the feet. I focused on a tree a few feet away and stumbled towards it like a drunk. When I reached it, I rested my head against the rough bark and closed my eyes, breathing slowly until the wave crested and retreated from shore.
The windows between each new wave were getting shorter, but I still had a good ten or fifteen seconds of agony-free lucidity. Enough to keep myself moving along at a consistent pace.
The voice in my head cheered me along, though the words were nonsensical at this point and sounded for some reason like, “She can’t have gotten far.”
That was hardly a positive outlook.
My hand tightened reflexively on the knife, without me realizing what was happening.
Footsteps hurried down the path towards the cabin, and I dropped low, crouching in the underbrush, holding my breath as if one wrong sip of oxygen would be the thing to give me away.
Squinting through the rising darkness, I made out two people moving away from me who vanished around a bend. I hadn’t been out of the cabin long. Anderson must have had a phone or radio on him I hadn’t checked for.
If they knew I was loose, it would be all the more difficult for me to get away unnoticed. The last time I’d been out here, they’d been able to sneak up on me. I wasn’t going to let that happen twice.
I weighed my options. I could follow the voices and attack them when they weren’t expecting it. But I’d be one against three, and even without a crippling migraine those odds weren’t awesome. I could also track the direction they’d come from. There was a good chance it was mostly unguarded now, and I’d be able to see what sort of Waco-esque compound these crazy faces had in the woods.
Of course, there was the possibility their complex might house several dozen people who would be more than willing to hold me down while they waited for the cavalry to return.
No, the time for the fight option of fight or flight was over.
Now was the time for running away.
I followed the path at a distance, so it was only vaguely visible, like an oasis I was moving away from. I still planned on finding where the others had been waiting for Anderson because it was my best chance at finding the road out of here. I had no inclination to pick any more fights tonight.
After a few minutes of tense uncertainty—my skull throbbing in pain so bad I could barely see straight—an old plantation mansion came into view. It hadn’t weathered the end of the Civil War quite as well as Callum’s had. The paint was peeling and turning gray, the porch was a mess of broken slats, and a swing dangled from a lone rusted chain. Windows were broken and haphazardly covered with plywood.
It would have looked haunted, if not for all the lights on inside.
A few voices called back and forth to each other, but not in fear or panic. It sounded all the world like a family was getting ready for supper. I stopped in the trees about a hundred yards from the house and stared through one of the windows on the main floor.
The little girl I’d seen in the woods, still clinging to her battered teddy bear, was seated at a dining table, and a five other children were around her, all with blonde or strawberry-blonde hair. A woman sat next to the head of the table, her own hair as red as a sailor’s delight sunset, and she was leading them all in prayer.
