Tested

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

The town wasn’t deserted. I felt the presence of darkness, even during daylight.

“I don’t think this a good idea, Dad.”

His forehead creased into a frown, but he kept walking. “We have to get through here to find that boat,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll be walking for days. We need to get out of here before the werewolves reach us. There’s no telling if they could mistake you for the enemy, or if they’ll help whoever’s leading them take us in. We’ve been travelling too long already, been turned around too many times. I’m afraid we’ll be too late and stuck if we don’t keep moving.”

I wrapped my arms around my body. “This place gives me bad vibes. What if the werewolves chased everything up here? What if their clean up job sent too many strays this way? We could be walking right into worse trouble. There’s something—”

“We have to leave, Jess. Time’s running out. We can flee while things are still in disorder, but we don’t know who’s going to take control once the country is clean again. If the fae take over, we’re in trouble. I’ve told you this already.”

He strode on. I adjusted my bag and followed. But both of us were warier than before. Both of us knew to be alert. I treaded as silently as possible, despite the fact the monsters didn’t make an appearance during the day.

I sniffed the air, puzzled. “Can you smell smoke?”

“No,” he said sharply. “But it’s not unusual for fires to spread. Stop worrying.”

After a few minutes, I worked up the courage to say something I had been thinking for a few days. “We could go back to Sonia and the others,” I said. “Make a life.”

“You agreed leaving was best for them. Please don’t suffer an attack of selfishness now.”

I fell silent, grumpier now, regretting everything I might have said back at the detention centre. The werewolves had probably reached my friends by now. They might even have been free to go home. Sonia had promised me she would take care of Pria, but it had felt wrong to leave her. After everything we had been through, Pria and Sonia felt like family. The memories of the girls we had left behind gave me nightmares, but I hadn’t really had a chance to truly let what happened percolate enough to deal with it.

We made it almost halfway through the town when we found charred bodies.

“What do you think happened?” I asked as Dad knelt by the bodies. My stomach turned as he reached into the mess and pulled something out.

Nauseated, I watched as he held something in the air.

“A fang,” he said after a minute.

“They’re monsters?”

“Looks like it.”

“And people set them on fire?”

He frowned, getting to his feet. “You saw the last town. People have strange reactions to upheaval.”

“This is getting weirder. I’m a little freaked out, Dad.”

“We’ll be fine. It’s not like the last place. This one has been cleared out for a long time. We have less to fear from humans. There won’t be enough of them to do us harm.”

But he upped his pace, and I knew he was nervous, too.

“There’s nowhere we can hide tonight,” I said, knowing he was thinking the same thing. “This place is all wrong for us.”

“We’ll find somewhere,” he said firmly.

We turned onto a main street. I heard footsteps in the distance, light, quick, running away from us.