Hidden in the Heartwood {sapphic paranormal}

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

27. || shake off your flesh.

As the click click click of the jeep faded away from the woods, the rumble of roots settled beneath River's feet. Their pounding heart sunk in the empty pit of their chest, beating slow like the forced breaths of wind through the hollow.

"Shouldn'ta done that, love," Vera whispered over River's shoulder. "We've nae way to break it now."

"Ya said it can end with my blood." River looked down at the tattoo scarred into their forearm. For a century, they had thought they'd been subservient to some malevolent woodland demon when the demon had just been themself all along. "Just mark me and send me back to hell."

"Ya know I can't." Creeping over the raised roots of the hemlock, Vera slithered her arms around River's neck from behind. Her cold fingers slid down their chest and around their sides. "I can't let ya go. Not when you're meant to be sittin' here atop the dead with me. I told ya once, this mountain's got big plans for us two."

The snap of a branch from around the hemlock pricked River's ears, raised the hair on their arm. Another snap in the other direction. River tugged free from Vera's hold and backed away from the trunk where two shadows flanked the gnarled tree. Vera rose to stand before the split in the hemlock.

That other jagoff—the one with a dippy egg for a brain—stepped forward, eyes all white and clouded over like his degenerate friend who now laid in pieces. He reached down towards one of them pieces and the shine of the steel hatchet gleamed in his hands against the dark. But that second figure skirted the shadows. Its silhouette looked familiar. Both were quick to match River's backwards stride, agile enough to step over the upturned earth and roots, evidently not as torn up as that first zombified jagoff had been. As River reached for the knife in their belt, their palm met nothing but buckskin leather.

Vera held the bone handle out to that dark figure and he flicked open the blade. Angling towards River, Jedidiah emerged from the shadow of the hemlock looking and smelling two days deader than when they'd left him still breathing—or maybe not—at the top of the mineshaft. The blaze of the mountain marked his chest, but not with River's blood. Somehow, Vera had reanimated them like that othern, playing mummers with their empty flesh sacks.

"What have ya done?" River spat as them dead haunts stalked their sides. Their foot hit the edge of the eroded bank. Nothing but a pit of thick mud and limestone and exposed roots filled the crick below. "Vera! Call 'em off."

But Vera just took her seat on the trunk and flicked her finger their way. Erupting from the ground, roots snaked around River's boots and up their legs, roping them in place. Her weakness she'd shown earlier had just been some pantomime. River tore at the scaly bark, ripping at the anchors that bound them to the earth, but it was no use. Stretching as far as they could reach through soggy leaves and rotten red berries along the ground, their fingers wrapped around a fallen limb covered in thorns.

Wet, yolky gore still dripped down the side of that boy's head. He'd gotten close enough that River could count the beetles that crawled out his cracked skull over his bloodied scalp. Jedidiah stood back, laying in wait with that grimey smile across his ugly mug.

As the boy raised the hatchet, River tightened their grip on the limb, but before he could swing, that little thornberry snatched him back with her branches. Her needles pierced into him, pinning him to her trunk and he shredded himself to rip away from her brittle hold. Weighed down by the sickness that had rotted her berries, she no longer had her strength. The blade of the hatchet cut into one of her limbs, cracking through it like splintered bone. Again, that jagoff swung, sinking it this time into her trunk. Dark pus oozed from her wounds as her branches shuddered and grasped helplessly at that monster, but he swung and hacked and tore away at her.

"Vera! Enough!" River cried, throwing down the limb. "Go on and kill me, trap me here for good if that's what ya want, but leave that little tree alone." Her death half a century ago had been pure accident and River had buried her here near the water once the mountain had claimed her soul. She'd always held a special place in their heart and River felt every blow as that jagoff tore into her. "Vera, please."

Something in her stern face shifted and the roots loosened at River's feet. They kicked free of them, stumbling towards the little thornberry. Until their leg went prickly numb. And then they felt it. Searing pain ripped up their back, down their legs. Something cold and sharp cut through them. That dark sludge began to fill their mind's eye again as they caught a glimpse of Jedidiah behind them. River's back hit the ground and they tried to push up, crawl away. Warm blood soaked their shirt, wet their fingers bright red. Jedidiah loomed over them and gripped aholt their hair, plunging the bone handled knife into their stomach.

The cold steel blade tore through their muscles as he drove it deeper into them, stealing their breaths as they gasped for air. The tang of blood filled their mouth and the pain became distant, still present, but somehow elsewhere altogether. Out of the corner of their eye, Vera stood up and it looked like she maybe tried to step away from the hemlock towards them. A flash of gray fur darted behind her. That lone coyote, maybe. But that dark sludge continued to fill their head and it was hard to see much else.

Jedidiah pulled the knife out and waved it around, ready to sink it into them again when a dull thump made his whited eyes bug out. Clots of brown blood slid down around his ears and he fell face forward into the ground beside River with a long-handled axe wedged deep into his skull. As River squinted through the dark and waded through their mind sludge, a rifle—their rifle—shot through the air above them and the sound of that jagoff hacking at the little thornberry ceased with a thud.

One more shot fired overhead. Wood splintered and burst as the bullet split the hemlock where Vera had been, but her throne of mangled roots sat empty.

"Boots?"

"I'm here, River." Her face appeared over them, a little blurred as they squinted to focus, but just as beautiful as ever beneath the moonlight. She leaned hard against their stomach to hold pressure. "It's Finley, I'm here."

"Finley, huh?" they hummed, reaching up to tuck her hair around her ear. Her features softened as they cupped her cheek. "I uh," they sputtered and spit blood from their mouth, "I might need ya to milk the goats again tonight."

As she laced her fingers with theirs, everything went deep dark, black as the mine.