Wolf's Kin (Monstrous Hearts #3)

Chapter Fifteen

Ambrose seemed much happier out in the elements, even sounding friendly as he said, "It's not too long a walk. Maybe an hour or so. I don't drive."

When Colton remained silent, Alice nodded politely, appreciating the chance to stretch her legs and take in the view. Once they left the town and its lush border of fields and trees, the grass turned tough and weedy-looking. The land wasn't truly flat, with mild rises and falls, but she saw nowhere to hide and nowhere to rest, just scrubby, soft ground marked by occasional paths created from generations of feet.

Ambrose and Colton ignored both these and the crumbling walls that emerged from the ground and sank back in just as quickly, but Alice found herself studying the moss-covered stone. It was easy to imagine the land swallowing anything else that tried to exist. There weren't even any trees or bushes. She felt very small and intrusive in the middle of such harsh beauty.

Out in the wild, both vargr slipped into their nature even as they remained in human form. Silent, focused. Unrelenting. Neither of them spoke and kept yards apart, yet always seemed aware of each other. Shoulders tight with caution. Steps careful as if ready to spring into a lunge. They had come to an agreement, but that didn't mean they were at ease with each other.

If they were hyper-cautious, then she was growing ever more distracted. The ghostly sensations she'd experienced back in the town were magnified out here, as abrasive as the wind cutting at her face. Voices whispered among the bristling deergrass. A scream once came from a distant ridge of forest. Whenever she stepped onto damp ground, she glanced down, half-expecting blood to well up around her shoes.

Impossible to guess how much time had passed before their path reached the crest of a slope and revealed the dark, dense earth on the other side. Pools of water, black and sluggish, reflected the grey sky. The smell of decaying plants thickened the air.

A hump rose in the very middle, and after a moment she recognized it as the remains of a tree. It must have been ancient, all branches snapped off and the bark too weathered to tell its original color. It looked less like a stump than a growth on the earth, misshapen and unnerving.

Ambrose must have sensed the subject of her attention, because without looking back, he said, "That's the bog. No one goes there but me."

The chill she had felt back at the pub now felt like ice-cold terror—but not her own. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to calm down. Yet when she looked up again, the stump had turned into a mammoth white tree, gnarled and leafless. Blood trailed down its bark. Scraps of skin dangled from its branches.

Her breath caught in her throat. Dimly, she heard the sound of her name, but it faded beneath growing whispers. Indistinct words rose to the rhythm of her pulse as fresh trails of red ran down the trunk, urging her closer for all that her feet didn't move.

A great, throbbing heart remained in there somewhere, as if the tree itself had absorbed all flesh fed to the bog and all blood spilled into its water. It was dead but somehow still hungered, aware of her in the way of a normal plant following the sunlight.

Closer, it hissed, and the whispers echoed the word. Closer so you can sink down and sleep. You won't even feel it when your bones begin to melt...

A hand grabbed her chin, forcing her to look away from the tree. Her mind cleared in a flash, and she realized she was gasping for breath, bile sour in her throat as she stared into Colton's feral eyes.

"It—" she started to say, gaze instinctively darting back toward the tree.

"No." His voice came out as a snarl, and he stepped closer to fill her view. "Don't look anywhere else. Just at me."