Chapter 11

Marlowe

That funeral dirge is so horrifically familiar to me that I could sing it.

I never would. Never.

My foot scuffs against the dirt as I stop, and my hand lifts automatically to Kate’s shoulder. Gripping her. Holding her still. Keeping her next to me.

I’ve only ever heard the Hag Wytch sing when she was putting the world to sleep. How are we hearing it now, in the middle of the night, in another world?

Christ. Right when I was about to get all deep with this woman whose life I ruined. Great timing.

Pretty sure I was going to open my big mouth and say something about my parents. I don’t know what. But I liked the way Kate was when we were with Miriam and Dennis. Not just the sex stuff—though I loved that—but the other things.

She stood up for me, got between me and my friends. Between Brooks and my friends. Stopped a fight. Guarantee that if Kate hadn’t been there, Brooks would’ve tried to spell Dennis anyway, and I would’ve attacked him. We would’ve brawled like we’ve done in the past and ruined everything.

This was so much better. It’s all better, with Kate around.

Even this, with the sound of that horrible song echoing through the foggy woods. It’s eerie in here, despite being on this side of the gate. I can taste the miasma of the Witchwoods rolling out, can feel it greasing my tongue. Like loneliness and cold spaces.

My skin ripples, and the vertebrae in my spine snap straight. Not from our fear spell—we’re numb to that—but from her.

Hag Wytch.

The sound of her ghastly lullaby, it’s like … my skin is being peeled off. As if she can see underneath all that flesh and blood to whatever it is that scares me most.

The thing that already happened: losing everything.

I hate those woods and I hate this fucking Wytch.

I draw my machete, gripping the leather-wrapped hilt on my left hand. Still holding onto Kate with my right. Charms dangle off the pommel, dry bones clanking.

“Do you see that?” Kate asks, just a split-second before I catch the flashlights bobbing through the darkness on the opposite side of the clearing.

Brooks and Tanner step close on either side of me, their eyes fixed on the approaching lights. Three of them. Bright spots of color in a silent forest—even the animals have fled. Brooks narrows his eyes like he’s as confused as I am.

What the actual fuck? The fear spell isn’t holding? I wet my lips, but when I let my guard down, there it is. Bloodcurdling terror grips me until I force it back with a strong exhale.

“This is ridiculous,” a woman says, waving her flashlight around and catching it on my body. I throw a shadow on the forest floor behind me, one with demon wings stretched out on either side of it. I might be invisible to these people, but I’m still here.

Kate tenses, trying to take a step forward and then giving me a nasty look when I dig my fingers into her.

We can still hear the Hag singing. Can’t see her. Can’t sense her coming the way a mouse knows there’s an owl at his back. But that awful goddamn song is still going, like the sound of spiderwebs on the wind. Sticky, gossamer threads wrapped around my neck.

“Agreed.” A different voice, still female but lower in pitch. “Look, I know you want to believe her, but I don’t. There’s no magic in this tree. Magic isn’t real. ”

“I still can’t believe you two came with me,” a third voice adds, chuckling. “But you’re right: I want to believe her. I hope she’s right.”

“Wait!” Kate yells, using her shadow to throw my hand off. She darts forward, toward the lullaby emanating from the tree and the three women who’ve just paused in front of it. I am on her like that.

Wrapping her around the waist just as she reaches her friends.

They don’t seem to have heard us, like they’re deafened by a song they can’t even hear.

Well, they hear it, but they don’t realize it.

Yet.

All at once, like they’re gathering strength from one another, the women thrust their hands into the Witch’s Tree.

Kate’s friends thrust their hands into the tree.

Because that’s who they are. It’s why she’s in a panic right now. Shit.

Nobody understands that fear the way I do, losing your friends in the span of a single breath.

The women are dragged into the tree together, squeezed through the opening and swallowed. Something esoteric and ancient groans from inside the stump, and Kate lets out a scream.

And then even her friends’ feet disappear through the hole, gone as quick as a blink.

I’m holding Kate, but she’s throwing herself forward, like she’s reaching—

Her fingers curl the edge of the hole and that’s enough. She’s like dust, pouring through my arms and dragged into the tree as I try and fail to hold onto her.

Like she’s already in another world.

Something in my psyche just fucking snaps when I see Kate disappear.

I knew it.

I knew that she was the sort of woman who would follow the people she loved into hell.

I just didn’t fucking … I didn’t … I …

“ What the actual fuck?!” I shriek, stumbling up to the tree and slamming my palm against it, directly above the hole. I peer into the blackness, struggling to breathe, my vision tunneling.

I became a monster to escape that place. I ruined Kate. She’s gone. Kate is gone.

It’s not even a thought, what I need to do.

Tanner and Brooks are right beside me, and I can’t decide who exactly got here first.

“Goddamn it, Kate,” I whisper, panting as I gaze into the blackness, drawing up whatever courage is left in a creature as wicked as me.

If Kate can walk through those woods without speaking, it’s no big thing. She’ll come right back. If she doesn’t …

I don’t care if she sews her mouth shut, I’m not leaving her there.

Not for a second.

And I almost hate her for that, too.

Tanner puts his hand in the hole and disappears before Brooks can say a word.

“I said I’d never go back there …” he murmurs, stricken. All six eyes on his hat wide and red-veined. Shattered.

Like how I feel right now.

I ignore him, thrusting my own hand into the hole, and then … a sickening twist in my gut, vertigo, a sense of falling and flying that hits at the same time. My bare feet shift on the dirt, and I turn away from the Witch’s Tree just in time to see the horror unfold.

Kate is standing behind the three women, her mask resting on the lips of the one in the middle. She has her arms wrapped around the other two, hands pressed over their mouths and witch claws digging into their cheeks.

All four of them are looking up at a monster that haunts my nightmares.

Sometimes, it’s hard to sleep and I wake up with gritted teeth and sweat pouring down the sides of my face. Imagining this very scenario, a moment where I can’t flee to the safety of the cottage.

Running isn’t an option.

The thing before me, it’s a horror that’s spent nights tracking us in these woods, chasing me from the sanctuary of one tree stump to another. Avoiding death at the hands of both the Hag Wytch and the gore-bear .

The smell of it makes me gag, but I crush down the reflex. All I can do is fight.

I swing around in front of the four women, spinning my machete in my hand as I face off against a ten-foot-tall, seventeen-hundred pound bear thing.

Its fur is matted with blood and gore, and its teeth when it opens its mouth are at least two inches long. It has two extra limbs, and a huff that shakes the boughs of the Witchwoods trees above our heads.

The bear screams and wasps come pouring out of its mouth, a haze of stingers and bright yellow stripes on angry, helmeted little faces. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I want to scream at Kate to run, but I can’t. She knows it, and she’s smart as hell, too, so she yanks at her friends and starts them sprinting in the vague direction of the cottage. Tanner is directing her with a wave of his arm, pulling his bow off his back and nocking an arrow.

His arms tense to fire at the gore-bear rearing above me, but he never gets off the shot.

There’s another sound from behind Tanner, and he spins, loosing an arrow directly into the puffed-out vocal sac of a giant toad. It’s as big as the bear, with glowing warts that ooze. Shit.

Between the toad and the bear, we’re trapped.

I trust Tanner at my back, so I offer him the same courtesy. Don’t have to like the guy to keep my word. Like soldiers. I draw a wave of water around us, blocking the swarm of wasps as they funnel forward in a cohesive swarm. Coincidentally, the splash of it cleans some of the blood from our skin, and Kate’s friend gasps behind her borrowed mask.

Ah, yeah. We were invisible. Maybe not anymore.

Just that little bit of magic, and I can feel my body sag. Casting that fear spell wasn’t easy. It’s the sort of thing you sleep for two days to shrug off. But fifteen minutes later?

I’m back in the Witchwoods again.

This is the place that I was willing to do anything to escape.

I guess I wanted a woman who’d follow me anywhere because I’m the sort of man who will follow her anywhere, too.

The bear’s mammoth front paws slam into the ground, and it charges right through the water and straight at me. I step to the side, but I bring my machete down on the hump of its bulky neck. The blade bites into fur and flesh, spattering me with crimson, but the charge doesn’t stop.

Brooks is there, between the women and the bear, flicking his fingers out and setting the animal’s fur on fire. Doesn’t stop it though. It’s coming at him so quickly that we have few choices. Even as the bear barrels past, wrenching the machete from its neck, I’m coming up with another plan.

I let go of the weapon and draw my own bow. Instead of shooting the bear, I lift the tip of the arrow up and hit the toad in the eye. It comes at me with a violent trilling sound that puffs up the sac beneath its gaping mouth.

With the bear directly in its path, the pair of them slam into one another and begin to fight. Two beasts tussling over easy prey.

Shoving my mask into place, I sprint over to Kate and snatch her by the upper arm. We need to get to the edge of the woods before somebody accidentally speaks and ends up trapped here. If that happens to Kate’s friends, she won’t want to leave them, and we’ll make her do it anyway.

She’d hate us for that.

If Kate speaks … she’s damning us all.

I drag her, and she resists, fighting to keep her friends in line. The one with the brunette hair is rooted to the spot, wide-eyed and shaking. She’s let go of the dark-haired girl’s hand. Georgia, I think her name was.

Georgia grabs at the brunette, losing her own grip on Kate.

All of this shit is enough to trap us again.

The monsters have separated, and there’s nowhere to go. Both the gore-bear and the flash-toad are circling us again.

The bear walks with the swaying gait of an easy predator, blood oozing hot and vile down its neck to hit the wet earth. The toad shuffles, like a fish out of water, purple tongue unfurling from its massive mouth. Its acidic warts flash, lighting up the dark with warning.

A ghost squats on the tree limb above me, watching with sightless eyes. Bad omen. Ghosts are bad omens. Other creatures lie prone on the ground around us, wilted bodies disappearing into the murk of the woods. Asleep? Or … dead.

“ They’re back. Oh, they came back. They’re doomed!” The forest spirits wail as I pant behind the mask, holding my bow and trying to think. Waiting for Brooks to come up with a plan. Wondering if Tanner can’t just grab Kate and run.

The wasps are held back by the curtain of water, their wings growing wet when they pass through and their fat bodies tumbling to the ground. The gore-bear crushes them as it pads by, long claws digging into the dirt.

We might have to retreat to the cottage before we try for the edge of the woods. Fuck. Every second spent here is a second too long. Every minute is a dark guarantee that we’ll get stuck in these woods all over again.

We’ll have to gather spell ingredients. Even with sex on the table, even with a lot of bloodletting, it’ll take weeks. That’s years back in the real world, and worse—it’s days of hell and danger and death. The Hag wouldn’t have called Kate’s friends here if she wasn’t using them as bait for our coven.

I don’t know what the Hag Wytch’s motivations are, and I don’t care.

If something is trying to kill you, then does it matter why?

Tanner uses all of his arrows on the toad, drawing up a strong wind to drive them deep into the monster’s flesh. One of its purple warts bursts, spattering acid onto the trunk of a tree and dissolving the bark. The moss screams as it’s burned away, falling to the dirt in dead, black clumps.

Brooks focuses on the gore-bear, driving the fire on its back into a frenzy and filling the air with smoke and the reek of seared flesh and hair. The creature shakes its coat, turns, and flees into the night, running straight in the direction we need to go.

The toad isn’t so easily swayed, ignoring the heavy branches that Tanner drops on its head with another gust of wind. Brooks turns his attention to the second monster as I ready another arrow, but the toad isn’t the real threat.

The tree boughs whisper their warning; I hear the thump of great wings.

The Hag Wytch dives down and hits Brooks hard enough that I can hear bone snap. Blood sprays, and then he’s on the ground and struggling to hold back a scream. Kate rushes toward him, but I grab her by the elbow and shove her back, turning and pointing in the direction of the cottage.

She looks up at me, her own mask missing while mine swings carelessly on my face. I yank it off and jam it over her mouth, ignoring her friends as I shove her in the right direction.

Then, I turn and find Tanner already hauling Brooks to his feet. Our leader is stoic and white-faced, but he makes himself walk even if that means dragging his leg. The white glisten of bone catches my eye in the near-perfect dark, lit up by the glow of some nearby mushrooms.

I sling my arm around his waist while Tanner forces Brooks’ left arm around his shoulders. Together, the three of us sprint through the shadows of the woods behind the women and we just barely make it back to the cottage before the Hag slams into the door.

The walls shake, and the owl’s screech pierces our eardrums. The sound is enough to send the three women to their knees in the foyer, but it doesn’t faze Kate.

She’s waving her hands frantically over Brooks, but she doesn’t say a word, helping us get him down the stairs and onto the couch. Blood is everywhere, soaking the fabric and pooling on the floor.

I start signing questions, my hands heavy and pounding when they come together, like I’m shouting. My fingers whisper through the air in a hurry.

What’s a quick spell to stop the bleeding? You’ll die, Brooks.

I know, he signs back, much calmer than he ought to be. We don’t have any time to gather supplies. Get what’s left of the healing salve.

I don’t argue with Brooks, retrieving the item from the shelf and unscrewing the lid. When I get back, I see that Tanner’s already cut his pants off. Completely off.

God-fucking-damn it.

Brooks’ leg is … I wouldn’t call it attached.

I snatch one of the small chalkboards off the desk and scratch out a quick message to Kate.

Need you for this. I wipe the board clean with my fist, trying not to think about the first time we met. I used this board to threaten her because all I wanted was to go home. Then, I got there and discovered I had no home. Then Kate offered me a new one.

Now I’m back in the woods.

I want to scream. I want to kill something—preferably the Hag. Maybe Kate’s friends. Instead, I write out what I know she’s going to need to do.

Kate reads the board and then looks up at me with my iron mask covering her full lips.

Get her over here, Tanner instructs, signing out a frantic message for me. His wolf ears flatten against his hat brim. He’s fading fast.

I look down and notice that Brooks’ eyes are half-closed (the ones on his hat are squinched in pain), and he’s breathing much harder than he should be. Not that I blame him. I’m not even sure what’s holding his knee to his thigh at this point except for some ragged flesh. How he managed to drag his leg as he ran with us, I have no clue.

Sheer stubbornness?

Kate moves up to the couch, but she hesitates. It takes me a second to remember why.

I’ve just told her to mount Brooks, a man who looks like he’s fucking dying. He is fucking dying, but that’s beside the point. He’s also flaccid.

I reach up to my own hat, snatch a spell, and then snap the tiny bird bone in half. The bone is no longer whole and rigid, but when I toss it at Brooks, it grants that honor to his cock.

He groans in clear discomfort, but I don’t feel sorry for the bastard. All I need is for him not to die. If he does, and we get stuck here, we’ll never get out. If he dies, our magic will be small and insignificant.

Brooks cannot die.

Kate looks at her friends and then back at Tanner, asking a silent favor. He moves away and digs two more masks out of a wooden chest, putting his finger up to his lips before handing them over to the women standing at the base of our stairs.

Once the masks are in place, he points to the hallway and makes the gesture seem urgent. The women no longer seem to be under the spell of the Hag, and they’re smart enough to know that they don’t want to see whatever it is that their friend is about to do to the dying witch man on the blood-drenched sofa.

Tanner turns in the doorway, blocking the women’s view, but keeping his attention fixed on Kate and Brooks. If he dies, we’re fucked. You know that, right? He signs all of that to me, but I ignore him. I know. I get it. I don’t like Brooks on a good day, but I won’t let him die.

Sorry, I sign at Kate by rubbing my fist in a circle on my chest. She peers at me with a cute little crook between her brows. God help me. I drop to my knees, taking her pants down with me. Untangling the leather from her ankles. Tugging it off.

When I stand back up, our eyes meet.

All four shadows dance maniacally around the walls, spinning in dizzying circles. A coven on the fritz.

I grab Kate by the hips and lift her up, putting her over Brooks and reaching between her legs from behind. Her face burns red, but I don’t care. We need this done and quick. Brooks will need several hours to sleep this wound off, and I don’t think we’ll get past the Hag if he can’t run his own ass out of these woods.

I am not staying the night here.

I refuse.

So whatever it takes, as usual.

I grab Kate’s hips and I push her down onto Brooks’ cock. I didn’t want to touch it, but I have to hold it still, impaling the woman I like on some other guy’s dick. These woods are pure fucking hell. Torture. Screw this place. Screw this goddamn place.

Kate moans guiltily behind her mask, but that’s okay. A moan is fine. Only words are taboo.

With a tentative hand, she wraps her fingers around Brooks’ neck.

Next part of the spell: we need him to be unconscious.

I’m not taking any credit for this shit: Brooks wrote this spell. If it’s kinky and off-kilter, that’s all on him. He can suffer the consequences of getting fucked and choked by his girlfriend while he bleeds to death.

You have to put some pressure there, I sign to Kate, but she doesn’t understand. With another sigh, I reach up and cover her hand with my own, forcing her to put just enough pressure on Brooks’ pulse that he’ll get dizzy and hopefully pass out.

Kate also doesn’t move her hips. With a growl, I straddle Brooks’ legs—including the ruined one—and get up right behind her. My knees are pressed firmly into the wet fabric of the couch, leather rubbing against bloodied fabric. With my right hand, I help Kate apply pressure the way she needs to. With my left, I roll her hips on Brooks’.

She follows along with me for a few seconds, and then starts to churn her hips, hard and fast. Perfunctory but wild. Like Tanner said, savage. Kate fucks Brooks into a disturbingly quick orgasm, considering the state of him. Good thing that charm came with a heavy dose of aphrodisia.

Our esteemed coven leader shudders all over, spilling himself inside of Kate as I press a little harder on the side of his neck. His head lolls to one side, and Kate catches it. Gently, more gently than he deserves, she rests Brooks’ head against the back of the couch.

She’s the first to scramble up, snatching a blanket from a nearby chair and wrapping it around her hips. I give her a look and a displeased quirk of my lips before I stand up, blood dripping down my pants. Glancing back, I can see that Brooks’ leg is already knitting itself together.

The things we can do with this girl, Tanner remarks in sign language, shaking his head.

The things we’ll do because of this girl, I sign back, and if he weren’t wearing his mask, he’d probably laugh. I ignore him, picking up the chalkboard again.

Kate shies away from me, like that move isn’t completely anathema to her true character. Pretty sure she’s just creeped out that she fucked a dying witch back to life. Cutting off the blood to his brain so that he’d pass out as he came was probably a new one for her, too. I’ll try to summon some compassion for this woman. None for Brooks though.

He needs to sleep for four hours, I write, and I know we’re all thinking about the sunrise. It was, what, ten o’clock when we walked into the woods? The ritual took an hour. Say, conservatively, that it’s only two. That means sunrise is around six.

I want to scream. I could, I guess, but it’d be wordless and terrifying.

I swallow it down and scrub the board with my fist.

Want me to finish you? That’s what I write.

Kate just stares at me and then frantically shakes her head, like I can’t see all the little tells in her body that project how turned-on she really is. Flickering pulse. Sweaty forehead. Quivering muscles.

I wet my lips and she watches the slide of my tongue. With a scowl, I collect another spare mask from the wooden chest, and I put it on. Kate tosses the blanket aside and hurries to put her pants back on. When I draw a silk robe from the chest and toss it her way, she covers up her breasts by belting the emerald green fabric around her waist.

Only then does Tanner allow the other women to leave the rear part of the house.

They emerge slowly, staring at Kate. At Tanner. At me.

Great. Fucking fantastic.

I’m trapped in silence with Kate’s friends, two of whom I don’t like much. Georgia is okay, but the other two … Goddamn. None of them were worth coming back here for.

But Kate was.

I knew you’d follow her, Tanner signs to me, but I ignore him, choosing instead to flip him off while Kate stares at her friends in perfect silence. Maybe I don’t like these women, but they don’t mess with their masks. They don’t talk.

They know the legend of the Witchwoods, everyone in Humboldt County does.

Just … nobody really believes it until they see it for themselves.

You don’t know shit, I sign back, but Tanner isn’t done. He’s moving his hands in a flurry of bullshit that I ignore, attention fixed on Kate.

She doesn’t look at me, but I know she can feel my stare. It’s in the movement of her shoulder blades beneath the silk robe, the way she clutches the tie, the soft sound behind her mask when I press the chalk and the board into her hands.

One rule: don’t speak, she writes as I settle onto one of the stools, cross my arms over my chest, and do the only thing I can do.

I wait.

But my eyes never leave Kate.

The type of person who’d throw themselves into a nightmare for someone else … rare. Kate has just proven by virtue of her actions that she isn’t Miriam or Dennis. She would’ve come after me. I wouldn’t have had to be alone here.

Yeah, I’d already decided to give Kate a chance.

Tonight proves that I’m going to give her more than that.

Are you angry? she writes on the board a few minutes later, after she’s sure her friends understand what’s at stake here. I look up, from the board to her face, and I see that she’s genuinely worried that I’m going to have a fit.

Even I’m mildly surprised that I haven’t.

I take the board from her, and I scratch it out in dark, heavy strokes.

I hate to be left.

I hope she understands what I mean. There isn’t enough space on that board to say it. Besides, I’d rather she heard it from my lips directly.

Me, too, she writes, flashing the chalkboard at me before returning her attention to Brooks. To Tanner. To her friends. She writes another message for them, but I don’t care what it is. She can say and do whatever she wants while we’re here; I’m going to keep my eyes on her the entire time.

You’re the fall hard, fall fast type, aren’t you? Tanner signs out, but I ignore him, too.

Eyes for Kate.

Only for Kate.