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There’s no answer, and Caleb isn’t sure where he is or where to go next. No clear trail shows on the forest floor to guide his next action. Is he even in the right place?
A piercing scream shatters the silence.
Caleb freezes, trying to figure out what direction the shriek had come from. He turns quickly in another circle and then takes off toward the sound before it fades completely. His legs eat away the distance between where he is and where he needs to be. He nearly trips on knobbly, gnarly roots twice but comes to a stop in a clearing when a small figure whimpers at the edge. A little girl huddles in the glade.
Cautiously, he steps toward her, and her head lifts. The tops of her ears end in points, and her hair is matted. Her chin quivers as she peers at Caleb. “Can you help me?”
“Help you with what?”
“My friend fell into a pit.”
Caleb studies the girl, trying to decide whether or not it’s a trick or what might be hiding in the forest beyond the clearing or who might be watching them. He crouches down next to the girl. “What’s your name?”
She sniffs, and her eyes are red rimmed. “Flea.”
He blinks down at the girl. “Flea? Your name is Flea?”
The girl sticks out her lower lip and her chin juts toward him. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Now are you going to help me help my friend?”
“Tell me what happened.” There’s something about the girl, something Caleb can’t quite put his finger on. “What happened to your friend?”
Flea jumps to her feet. “My friend, Spider, fell into a pit and a woman tried to help him—a woman I didn’t know. Then I heard a scream, maybe it was her. Now I don’t know what happened to either of them.”
Caleb peers into the surrounding darkness between the tree trunks and the overgrowth on the forest floor reaches his knees. A woman the girl didn’t know…that might be Nim. If it’s Nim, then Caleb needs to find her, and this might be a clue to her location. “Where are they?”
Flea gestures in the direction opposite of where Caleb came from. “Over there. I came when I heard the scream, and you were the first person I found who might be able to help us.” She tips her head to the side. “But your ears are rounded and not pointed. I don’t know your kind.”
“Take me to the pit, and I’ll see if I can get both our friends out.”
She jumps to her feet and sprints in the direction she pointed earlier. She runs as quickly as she can without slowing. “Come on!”
Caleb takes off after her, concerned he’s about to lose the only clue he has, but he’s barely able to keep up with the girl. Her clothes snag on the underbrush, but neither of them slow down. Flea crashes through the forest, and Caleb follows her, and when they come to a stop, they’re at the edge of a pit.
A woman lays in the bottom, her head propped on a dirt-covered stone. Caleb’s insides twist, and his throat dries. It might be Nim down there, and he’s not sure what’s happened to her. But one thing he notices is that there’s no friend, no one other than the woman on the ground.
Caleb turns to the pointy-eared girl. “Where’s Spider?”
She scowls and peers down into the pit. “Spider must have gotten out. I’m going to find him.” She sprints away, leaving Caleb alone at the edge of the pit. She shrieks into the forest almost immediately. “Spider! Where are you?”
Caleb lets her go without stopping her. Instead, he cups his hands around his mouth. Her lack of response to their arrival turns his stomach more than he expects. “Nim! Is that you?”
The woman doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t stir, but the longer he stares at her, the surer he is that it’s Nim. “Nim! Can you hear me?”
Nim doesn’t stir at all, and he can’t even tell if her chest rises and falls. He doesn’t have a choice. He has to get down into the pit with her. No obvious handholds exist on the edge or the walls of the earthen cavity.
With no easy way down to the bottom of the pit, Caleb jumps down from the edge, leaping out, sailing through the air, and bracing for the impact on the uneven ground. But it doesn’t hurt his non-vampire body as much as he expected, and he drops to his knees beside Nim immediately. Dirt rains down on them as Caleb checks her breathing.
The knot of worry loosens slightly as he learns he won’t be taking a dead body back to Maddy. At least Nim is breathing and still alive. Carefully, he checks over her. Nim has no exterior wounds, and there’s nothing obvious to explain her unconsciousness. He can’t sense any magic, and he can’t scent any wounds either—not that he could with a mortal nose.
“Nim,” he whispers. He pushes on her side. “Wake up.”
When she doesn’t budge, he grasps her shoulders and tries to rouse her by shaking her. Nothing happens. She still doesn’t wake, and Caleb’s at a loss for what to do next. He sits back on his heels.
A noise overhead brings him to his feet, but a large wave of mud slams into his chest and knocks him back to the ground with another bunch of mud inbound. He scrambles to his feet and tries to cover Nim, to protect her from the onslaught. Mud slide! How does that happen?
But he’s not wandering for long. After the next wave of mud crashes over them, Caleb catches a glimpse of Flea’s happy face, beaming down at him.
“Flea! Get us out of here,” he bellows, unable to pull himself out from the weight of earth.
