Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

With Everett gone, I was ready to listen to what Leo had to say. Everett would be back Sunday after the tournament was over. I had all weekend to get some research done, and I couldn’t waste any more time. My mantra sounded like a broken record in my head.

I walked back down the hall and knocked on Leo’s door quietly at first, in case he was sleeping. The door wasn’t latched closed, and it creaked open slowly. He was at his desk writing in his notebook, unaware that his door had opened. I put a foot in the room and called his name softly so as not to scare him. He whipped around in his chair, suddenly aware of my presence.

“Leo?”

“Elise! Sorry I didn’t hear you.” Leo looked lost. Dark bags hung under his eyes. “I’m so confused about this rot. I’ve been plotting where I found it on a map, and I can’t figure out the pattern. Usually decay travels through waterways or underground in groundwater, but all the rot on Daniels’ land is coming from a tree on his property. It makes no sense.” He was visibly flustered. I had never seen him ramble like this before.

“Slow down, Leo. Show me what you have,” I said, walking over to his desk. Leo moved aside from the map he was plotting on, and I leaned over the desk to look at it. Hand drawn by him, the map was very detailed. “Did you minor in cartography?”

Leo shook his head, unable to follow my jest. “Look, Elise. I’ve been meeting with the property owner, Charles Daniels, for the last week or so, and he’s just as confused as I am,” he said. “He asked if I knew anyone from the university who knew more about plant life and conservation science, and I told him you were already looking into the rot. He wants to meet you. It’s all over his property, the rot. It’s the worse around this giant oak tree here.”

Leo pointed to a circle on the map that denoted the tree. He had carefully filled in the land where the rot had spread with a brown-colored pencil. Indeed, the rot was thickest surrounding the tree and thinned out farther away from the tree.

I took note on the map of where I had taken my samples from—about a mile away from the tree. I obviously needed to see the tree. I also wanted to know more about this Charles Daniels. I had never been one to stray from a challenge.

“This is good, Leo.” I patted him on the back. “Can you bring me to the tree so I can get some samples? I think you’re right that this is the source. All the rot seems to begin at this tree. It could be traveling along the root system.”

Leo looked back at me with a skeptical face. Even I wasn’t confident in that answer. I’d found rot a mile away from the tree. I didn’t know of any oak tree whose roots stretched that far. Until I could investigate it myself, I couldn’t imagine what I would find.

“We can go right now.” He began packing up his backpack. “Daniels is always around. I’m sure he’ll want to get your opinion.”

I nodded and turned back to my room to retrieve my backpack. According to Leo’s map, it would be at least a five-mile hike to the tree. I grabbed my trail shoes and a shirt to go with my leggings, then tied up my hair.

We set off on the trail with Leo leading the way. He seemed more relieved now that I was coming with him to see the tree firsthand. I almost felt bad that I had made him wait. The stress of his research must’ve been really getting to him.

His hair was untied, and it flew around his face as he looked down at his feet to avoid tripping on the rocky trail. I caught up with him, matching his brisk pace. The trail was wide enough for us to walk side by side, and I took advantage of the wide berth.

“So, what do you know about this Charles Daniels?” I was hesitant to talk to any other locals. My past run-ins with them had led to kidnapping and bloody tournaments. Leo had said he’d spent a lot of time researching this week on Charles Daniels’s land, and it seemed like he hadn’t anything like I had yet, so maybe Daniels was just a regular guy.

“He came up to me about a week ago when I was knee deep in a pond on his property,” Leo said. “I didn’t know it was his property, and I apologized and offered to leave. He insisted I could stay as long as I looked at a tree on his property that was dying. I told him that wasn’t my area of expertise, and he asked if I knew anyone who could help. I instantly thought of you and told him I knew someone. He wanted me to go get you that day, but I told him I wanted to see the tree first.

“When he brought me to the tree,” Leo continued, “I knew it was something that you would want to see. This past week, knowing you’ve been busy, I’ve been trying to figure out how the rot is spreading. I thought I could do it myself since most diseases can be traced to water, but I haven’t been able to find any answers.”

I looked at Leo’s frustrated face with one of understanding. It was easy to remember all the times I had been there too, thick in the research, unable to find any solutions.

“Daniels has been getting impatient about wanting to meet you, since you’re the expert,” he said. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

A strange feeling came over me at the way Leo talked about Daniels. He seemed pushy and confused about how research worked. Solutions were hard to find. Often it took lots of data and analysis to find actual answers, and while I had some expertise, I was still just a grad student. There was no guarantee I would be able to do anything for him.

Nevertheless, I reached out and patted Leo’s shoulder. “I’ll do my best to help.” He was tense but nodded in appreciation.

We came to the rocky avalanche across the trail, and I had flashbacks of Wilder telling me to turn around a couple weeks ago. Stupid Wilder and his stupid chivalrous act. He had just wanted to get into my pants. Warn the pretty girl that danger was ahead, and she’d fawn over you in gratitude. Too bad for me it had worked. Lesson learned.

Leo and I carefully climbed over the mess of rocks that littered the path. Thankful for my thicker trail shoes, I made my way across the rocks unscathed. Leo, although slower, followed behind, making his way over the rocks. He climbed over the rocks in a certain pattern that made me believe he had come this way many times before.

As we continued along the path, it became narrower, and we had to walk single file. I let Leo lead the way, and our conversation diminished. The crunch of our footsteps and bird calls floating through the woods filled my ears as we got into a walking rhythm.

Miles went by as I flipped through the mental catalog of my research findings so far, which was pretty much nothing. My samples had brought back no results and had landed me in hot water with the university. Hoping that I would find something that could save my reputation kept me walking, one foot in front of another.

A few miles in, the ground surrounding the trail became littered with splotches of brown. Every fifty feet in, the rot became more and more prevalent. The spots of rot went from the size of a coffee mug to a basketball to a small car. Soon there was less green on the forest floor and more brown.

I stopped walking to squat down on the edge of the trail. Leo, hearing the loss of my footsteps behind him, stopped as well. My fingers reached out and brushed the brown foliage. Reacting as my samples had, the leaves crumbled beneath my fingertips and turned to a fine dust.

I looked up at Leo. “This is the worst I’ve seen.”

He nodded and turned forward, continuing the trail. I followed, interested in what I would find ahead.

The canopy of the giant oak tree blocked the sun from the sky with its thick branches and broad leaves. We weren’t even to the trunk of the tree yet; I could see how large it was. The ground was completely brown. Each of my footsteps caused a mound of dust to poof over my shoes as the pressure of my footsteps pummeled the leaves beneath. Leo and I had to watch where we walked, dodging the giant tree’s roots that weaved above and below the ground, making small bumps that were perfect to sprain an ankle on.

“This is it.” Leo motioned to the trunk of the giant oak a few feet ahead of us. I’d been so busy watching my footing, I hadn’t seen it coming.

“Amazing.” The tree must have been a couple hundred years old. Its bark was thick and strong, and its branches were large enough to support a complete set of swings. Any child would be lucky to have a tree like this in their backyard.

Walking forward, I dropped my backpack onto the ground near the tree, then ran my hand down the bumpy bark of the tree. It was so majestic that I felt the need to touch it. A tiny zap hit my hand as I laid it on the bark, and I jumped back, pulling my hand away quickly. I turned my hand to look at my palm, but there was no red mark, no inclination that it had injured me. Leo looked at me curiously and walked over to where I was standing.

“Hey there!” We both jumped at the loud voice and turned around, keeping our backs to the tree. A tall man with dark brown hair and a mischievous smile walked out from behind some trees. A baseball cap covered his head, thick black glasses outlined his eyes, and long brown beard covered his chin, but I knew that face anywhere.

“Hey, Daniels. I brought my colleague, Elise, with me today. I think she can help me figure out what’s going on with your property.” Leo motioned to introduce us. I unfortunately didn’t need any introducing.

“Charles Daniels? Is this what you’re going by nowadays?” My blood was pumping.

“What, Elise? You aren’t into a little role-play?” His smooth, deep voice now made me nauseous.

“Wilder! What are you doing out here?”

His presence and smug attitude had thrown me for a loop. After our initial encounter, he had been nothing but standoffish and quiet toward me, acting like nothing more than a grumpy teenager. Wilder stood before me, now a confident man. That made me nervous.

“I hoped he would bring you. I was told you’re the expert in all things…nature.” Wilder motioned to the surrounding trees. “It took some convincing, didn’t it, Leo? Lots of late nights with you trying to figure out what was going on.”

Leo stood still, taking in what he was saying.

“I was patient with you, let you figure out that you couldn’t solve the mystery of what is happening in these woods,” Wilder continued. “I knew you would eventually bring her.”

Leo looked at me with wide eyes. “You two know each other?”

I gave him an annoyed look. He must have been too far down Jenny’s throat that night to notice me and Wilder. Although I couldn’t completely blame him—Wilder looked different. His long beard changed the shape of his face.

“Yeah, we unfortunately do,” I said, looking at Wilder with disgust.

He walked toward us, strolling slowly as if he already had us trapped. “I don’t remember it being so unfortunate. Maybe only unfortunate that we got so rudely interrupted in the morning.”

Wilder’s eyebrows lifted in anticipation of my reaction. I tried to back away, only to trip over a large root and run my back into the rough bark of the oak tree behind me. Electricity zapped at my back where I touched the tree. “Now that I have you here, Fumbles…” I gagged at the nickname. “I was wondering if you could look at my tree here. It’s been causing all sorts of trouble in the forest.”

I looked down at my feet and the brown dust that I had made with my footsteps. “I would need to take samples and bring them back to the university. Then I would have to compare data from…” I started.

“I don’t have time for that!” Wilder roared loud enough that several birds flew away from their nearby perches. “Where’s the stone?”

His question threatened me like I knew the answer. My silent shock was enough to further anger Wilder. “Where’s the stone, Elise?” he said again. “I know you have it. I could smell it on you the first night we met.”

My mind raced, trying to figure out what stone Wilder was referring to. I kept coming up blank.

“I’m a tracker, remember? The best in the pack. I can smell everything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wilder. I don’t have any stones.”

Unhinged, he stomped toward me, reaching into his waistband and pulling out a knife. His face reddened, and small beads of sweat popped out of his forehead.

I pressed myself further against the tree, wrapping the back of my body against it. The fear flowing through me numbed my back to the pricks of power coming from the tree. Wilder grabbed my chin with his entire hand and pulled my face up to meet his, inches apart. I could feel the icy blade of the knife resting against my throat, could see the angry veins protruding from his skin.

“Where is it?” he asked in a quiet voice then, and I wasn’t sure which was scarier.

Unable to turn my head because of the knife at my neck, I couldn’t see Leo standing next to me against the tree, but I could hear him. His voice started as a quiet monotone chant saying “ Stop ” over and over, like something an unsure child would do. “ Stop! Stop! ”

Wilder and I froze at his chants as they got louder.

“ Stop! Stop! Stop! ” Leo was always so relaxed and had such a passive personality that this type of confrontation had to be out of his comfort zone.

Time slowed. From what I could sense under Wilder’s knife, Leo was standing against the tree next to me yelling one minute and the next, he wasn’t.

I felt a breeze as he twisted off the tree and flung himself haphazardly across Wilder’s back. His eyes met mine from across Wilder’s shoulder, scared yet determined. The knife left my throat as Wilder used his arm to fling Leo easily off his back. With no weapon, Leo was unmatched against Wilder. He landed in a ball on the ground, hitting his head on one of the raised tree roots, then he groaned and rolled onto his back.

“Fucking idiot!” Wilder cursed as he turned away from me and stomped toward my roommate’s limp body. Free of the knife, I shuffled away from the tree, trying to figure out an escape. Leo moaned as Wilder picked him up by the armpits.

“Leo!” I yelled, trying to gauge how conscious he was. He mumbled several jumbled words in response.

“Let him go, Wilder!”

As if my words meant nothing, he laughed. “I don’t think I will. He served his purpose, bringing you here, away from your dear Everett’s protection.”

The thought of Everett made my heart pump faster. If only he were here right now.

“He just attacked me. And to think I was going to let him go home once I got the stone from you.” Wilder let go of Leo’s arms, letting him fall to his knees. Leo’s body slumped over, but with quick reflexes, he caught his upper body with his hands. “No one attacks me. I am not weak. I am worthy.”

Listening to Wilder spout off nonsense made my muscles tense. I walked toward where Leo’s body lay hunched over on the ground.

“Stay back, Elise. Everyone will get what’s coming for them.” The knife Wilder held in his hand reflected in the sunlight that peeked through the canopy of the trees.

I froze as he took a step over toward Leo was and lifted his head up by his long hair. Leo groaned, still half-conscious from the hit to the head. With a practiced flick of the knife, bright red blood spilled from Leo’s neck. It happened so fast I could do nothing but stand there, fully in shock. It wasn’t until Wilder let go of his hair and let his lifeless body slump to the ground that I screamed.