Garden of Snakes

  I’ll walk every step of the way back to my freedom myself.

  But as I look out and around, emotion bites at the back of my eyes.

  We’re lost.

  Completely and utterly lost.

  For an hour we followed the river. But what I didn’t anticipate was that there must have been two rivers. The one behind Charles’ house ran parallel to the one that cuts through town. Only when it cut south, it never ever led toward town. We headed east when I thought we were avoiding town, but we’ve been walking the entire day, and we never hit the gorge I recall driving over before hitting Woodson.

  “I need to sit for a minute,” I say, aiming for a fallen tree and stumbling over to it. I collapse onto it, bracing my elbows on my knees, holding my head up with my hands. Sleep immediately pulls at the back of my eyes.

  “We should stop for the night,” Michael says as he stands close by, looking in every direction. He’s been completely paranoid the entire time, watching in every direction for Charles to walk through the woods and take us down. “You’re putting too much stress on your body. You need to rest.”

  I shake my head, though I don’t have the energy to look up. “They might catch up to us. And I don’t want to have to spend a second longer in this wretched state than I have to.”

  Michael chuckles. “Yeah, I was never a fan of Vermont either. Stuck up flannel-clad posers.”

  I know he’s being extra harsh just to make me laugh, so I huff a little one for his benefit.

  I slide down the log, sitting on the ground with my back propped up. I lean my head back against the rough wood, feeling bark break off into my hair. I look up at the sky, trying to ignore the exhaustion that’s making my body feel like it weighs a thousand pounds.

  The sky is dark by now, the sun having set over an hour ago. The clouds hide the sun and the world is cast in an extremely dim gray glow. I can barely see. The thick trees that surround us on all sides absorb what little moonlight that makes it through the clouds. There’s not a chance of seeing the stars.

  I’m over a hundred miles from home. I’m free. But I can’t find my way back.

  “Still nothing?” I ask Michael as I let my eyes slide closed.

  “Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “These trees are deafening. Haven’t heard a sound since we left the House.”

  I shake my head, squeezing my eyes closed tighter.

  The population of Vermont is so small. The towns are scattered far apart in this part of the state. We could be really, really far from the next town. There’s a good chance Michael and I have been walking directly away from any kind of civilization.

  “Lost in the woods,” I say. I force my eyes back open, just as a raindrop falls from the clouds and hits my chin. “In this modern day, people can still get lost in the woods.”

  “Kinda makes me wish I’d paid more attention in that astronomy class in high school,” Michael says as he stands beside me. “Navigating by the stars and whatnot. Not that it’d do me much good tonight.”

  I take a deep breath, focusing on my limbs. They’re exhausted, swollen. Ready to rest for the night.

  But I have somewhere else to be. Someone else to get home to.

  I hold my hand up, and Michael pulls me to my feet.

  “You good?” he asks, concern in his voice.

  “I’m good,” I say with a nod, even as my feet throb with the first few steps I take.

  I ignore my aching body with mental distraction. Instead of seeing endless trees, with difficult underfooting—a million branches that threaten to take me down, I’m in a warm bed with a heavy arm over my middle.

  A soft set of lips are brushing against my ear, a scratchy beard tickling my skin. My hand rests against a firm chest, touching a scar.

  Lexington hums softly, some song from the forties, or maybe the eighties.

  We’re walking through downtown, hand in hand, looking for a random place in Little Italy to eat. He’s telling me a ridiculous story about a midnight excursion on a tiny rowboat to Martha’s Vineyard he once took in the fifties.

  He’s helping me in the shop, and when the last customer leaves for the day, and we lock the doors, he presses me up against the counter, looking deep in my eyes as he tells me he loves me and then kisses me soft and long, and then wild and quick.

  That’s why I have to keep walking. Because, somewhere out there, probably in this very same state, is the love of my life.

  I keep walking. Because I have to get home to Lexington Dawes.

  “Eat something,” Michael says, jolting me back into reality. I look over at him and he extends a protein bar in my direction. “You’re burning extra calories these days. You need to keep up your energy. I’ll let you walk one more hour, and then you’re getting some sleep.”

  I peel the wrapper open and take a bite. My stomach immediately growls. Even as my feet each feel like they become ten pounds heavier. I nod my head, because I know an hour longer of walking is ambitious tonight.

  I’m freezing. My entire body shivers, pulling me from sleep. From dreams of monkshood and lavender. It’s pitch black and the air feels too thick and warm. Reaching up, I pull something from off my head.

  Michael’s jacket drops to the ground beside me, even as a drip of rain falls from the tree above me and hits me in the temple. I sit up, pain screaming through my body. Dirt and leaves and mud stick to me.

  A huge maple with massive leaves provided our shelter when I couldn’t walk any longer last night. I curled up against the base of it, and within two minutes, I was out cold.

  “It quit raining pretty soon after we stopped,” Michael says as he helps me to my feet and then onto a large rock. I wince as my muscles protest against their primitive sleeping arrangements. “Looks like we might get some sun later, though.”

  He points toward the sky and I look up. The clouds are more of a white now and off in the distance, it looks like blue skies are about to break through. Michael is already wearing the sun goggles.

  “What time do you think it is?” I ask with a yawn.

  “Eight, nine o’clock maybe.” He reaches down and pulls out a water bottle and offers it to me. I take it, though something inside me protests. I’ve taken care of myself for my entire adulthood now. It’s weird having a man old enough to be my father watching over me so much.

  “Hey,” I say as I screw the cap back on. “I think this is the first morning I haven’t puked in three and a half months.”

  “Look at that,” Michael says with his charming little smile. “There is an upside to being lost in the woods.”

  I smile a little, taking the box of crackers he hands over. I’m dying for some fruit or something, but beggars lost in the woods can’t be choosers.

  “Come on,” I say, standing, despite my throbbing back. “I can eat and walk.”

  All day long. We walked past high noon. Through the warmest part of the day. And now the sun is heading back toward the horizon.

  And still, we’ve not come across a single house. Not a single road. No signs of a town.

  Using the sun to gauge our direction, we were heading southeast, to where I thought we should eventually hit a highway. But after all this time, we turned directly south. Maybe we’ll just have to walk from here all the way to Boston. We’ll just suddenly pop out of the trees and land in the Atlantic Ocean.

  Michael has been walking slower ever since he stepped back out from behind a tree to relieve himself. I’ve been guiding myself for the last thirty minutes, making sure to keep the fading sun on my right. Michael trails behind, tethered to me with a length of rope we found lying in the leaves so he can walk with his eyes closed.

  I didn’t even realize his breathing had changed at first. The harder way his breath came in and out of his lips just seemed natural for the first five minutes. We’ve been walking all day long. I’m tired, too.

  But now little hairs stand up on the back of my neck. A little alarm tugs on the back of my brain.

  I li
sten to him more closely.

  Hard, shaking breath in. Forced out, as if through clenched teeth.

  I slow, three more steps, two. One.

  Michael comes to a stop, very close behind me.

  I stoop slowly, grasping a broken branch beneath me, one with a sharp end. Slowly, I turn around.

  Two faint yellow rims are visible through the sun goggles. But they glow, and from beneath the goggles, I see black veins sprouting from his eyes.

  “It’s been too long, hasn’t it?” I breathe carefully. I hold the stick tightly in my hand, even as they start shaking.

  I’m not afraid of having to defend myself against a hungry Bitten.

  I’m worried I might have to kill one of my best friends so he won’t kill me in bloodlust.

  “Five days,” he says through clenched teeth. I see the skin that covers his lips bulge, and know that his fangs are lengthening inside his mouth.

  I swear under my breath, swallowing hard. My knees bend slightly, prepared to fight, to swing. If I have to.

  “I don’t know what to do, Elle,” Michael breathes hard. I see his fingers roll into fists. It feels as if he grows three inches as the predator in him begins to take over. “If you run, I don’t know that I can keep myself from chasing and catching you.”

  I nod. It’s true. Once the blood cravings overtake them, their instincts take over. I won’t stand a chance.

  “I don’t see any other options here, so I don’t want you to argue with me,” I say as I slip my jacket off, setting it on the ground beside me. But I watch him the entire time, keeping my forest-made stake at the ready. “You keep your eyes open the entire time, you keep looking at me, so you don’t forget who I am. Who you are.”

  It’s difficult to read him with his eyes covered. But he doesn’t argue.

  I bring my arm up, already covered in numerous scars. “And I’m going to hold this to your chest.” I take a step forward, placing the end of the stake against Michael’s chest, right above his heart. He grabs my wrist, holding it firm there.

  “And you’re only going to take what you need to get yourself by,” I say evenly, despite the fear that creeps into my throat. “And then we’re going to keep going. Okay?”

  Michael’s breathing is almost violent by this point, out of bloodlust and fear of what he might do, I’m not sure. But only two seconds later, he sinks his fangs into the flesh of my arm.

  My mind empties out. Every one of my muscles goes slack and tight at the same time. I feel like a rag doll, though snapped stiff by my own body so I won’t collapse to the forest floor.

  My brain drifts into a fog, wandering off to get lost in the mist. I don’t care about the sharp pain in my arm. Or the tight way he grips my wrist, pulling it tighter against his chest.

  I’m nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  The gray fog I find myself lost in grows darker. The air grows colder.

  And suddenly I don’t feel so anchored. Suddenly I feel myself falling, for just a moment that feels like a full minute, before something firm and stable catches me. The stake slips from my grip.

  Muffled and garbled sound tickles my ears. A little light flickers in the back of my brain.

  “Elle?”

  I open and close my eyes. Slowly, very slowly, the gray that became my world begins to clear, and I make out the tip of trees touching the golden sky.

  “Elle, can you hear me?”

  I blink again, feeling the fog shake from my brain.

  “Elle?”

  “I’m…” I try to get my sluggish lips to move. “I’m okay.”

  Michael’s face comes into view, his eyes still hidden behind the sun goggles. But the rest of me still feels numb.

  I hear him swear.

  I feel his arms tighten around me, cradling me like a baby.

  I feel the ground move beneath me.

  And I stare up at the sky, waiting for the cursed vampire toxins to clear from my body for the thirtieth time.

  “A road!” Michael calls out from ahead of me. “Holy shit! It’s a real deal road!”

  Adrenaline zips through my blood and I pick up my pace, despite the fact that everything hurts. I have to be careful. It’s nearly pitch black, likely the middle of the night. I jog the last dozen yards to catch up to Michael.

  And finally, finally, my feet touch down on a real road. A faded yellow dotted line cuts down the middle of it.

  “Thank you,” I breathe to the sky, relief flooding through me. A smile cuts onto my face as I grab Michael’s hand and begin walking down the middle of the road. It’s not in great shape. It’s older. Cracked in more than one place. Worn and tired.

  It’s not a well-traveled road.

  But it’s a road.

  And it has to lead to somewhere.

  One hour. No cars.

  Two hours. No cars.

  Three hours.

  How has not a single soul driven by us?

  The plan was to put out our thumbs and hope we get a kind Samaritan to stop. And if that didn’t work, Michael would overtake the driver and lock them in the trunk. I didn’t like that plan, but at this point I was desperate.

  But here we are, walking south on this road for nearly four hours, and there hasn’t been a single person.

  “We’re never going to get picked up, are we?” Michael says as he hugs me to his side to try and stop the shivers that are working their way through my body right now.

  “Maybe in the morning,” I say. “There has to be someone on their way to work, or something.”

  “But there hasn’t even been any houses along here!” Michael says in frustration. “We are literally in the middle of nowhere.” He lets out something between a growl and a grunt. “I freaking hate Vermont.”

  “Me too,” I agree.

  Which Michael laughs at.

  Suddenly, something lightens at my feet, and a moment later, the trees around us are illuminated. Hope leaps into my heart, and my palms break out in a prickly sweat. I spin around, and just over the hill, I see an SUV crest.

  I stick my thumb out, so absolutely desperate and hopeful and tired and exhausted.

  Emotion bites at the back of my eyes.

  Sleep makes me feel delirious.

  “They’re slowing down,” Michael declares in awe.

  And indeed, the SUV begins to slow as it rolls up just a little behind us. It stops just a dozen feet away. I hold my hand up to block out the bright light of the headlights.

  The passenger door opens and out steps a figure.

  Tall and slender, with perfectly styled, dark hair.

  And my hands go numb when a familiar face finally comes into focus.

  Rose Salazar.

  “Need a ride?” she asks with a smile.

  My mouth opens and closes twice, searching for words, but they don’t come.

  The last person I expected to pick us up was someone that I already knew.

  “We need to run?” Michael growls under his breath, his eyes instantly igniting yellow. His grip on me tightens and his knees bend.

  “N-n-no,” I struggle to form the simple word. “It’s okay. I know her.”

  Slowly, I take a step forward, Michael right at my side. Another. Rose watches me with this look in her eyes that is almost smug. A little smile curls on her lips.

  “You look a little worse for wear,” she says as she opens the back passenger door. “Get in.”

  I still can’t believe she’s here. Out in the middle of nowhere.

  Staring at her the entire time, I slide into the seat, immediately followed by Rose.

  Two other women occupy the SUV. A blonde woman sits at the wheel, looking at me in the rearview mirror. And a chocolate-skinned woman with curly hair waits in the back seat.

  Rose slips back into the passenger seat and the blonde takes off, ripping down the road at a terrifying speed.

  “How did you find us?” I breathe.

  Rose has always intimidated and scared me. My anticip
ation of her reply is no different.

  “We have our ways,” she answers cryptically. “We’ve been looking for weeks. Finally got a possibility yesterday morning. Wasn’t easy since you kept moving.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Michael asks. His eyes are narrowed. He sits at an angle so he can keep an eye on all three women, his hand held firmly around my right forearm, as if he’s prepared to throw the door open and drag me out of the SUV if he has to.

  “You really shouldn’t ask questions you’re not fully prepared to hear the answers to,” Rose says without looking back at us. “Even then, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  Michael takes a breath, and I just know he’s going to say something loud-mouthed and violent. “Don’t,” I say, shaking my head as my heart rate picks up. He meets my eyes.

  “If you’re afraid of them…” Michael says, trying to pull the truth from my eyes.

  I shake my head. “It’s complicated. But, I think we’re okay.”

  Rose laughs. “You’re a complex creature, Elle Ward. And yes, I know your real name. Penny Jones never suited you.”

  A cold shiver works its way up my back. Rose has always known too much.

  “How long until we get back to Boston?” I ask.

  Rose doesn’t look back. She stares out at the slowly lightening world outside. “We’re not going back. Not right away. We need your help with something first.”

  Michael’s hand suddenly whips out, his fingers closing around Rose’s throat from behind. She lets out a choking gasp, even as the blonde swerves, pulling at Michael’s hand.

  “You’ll take us home,” Michael hisses. “Or you’ll be going with us anyway, but as a bloody slick on the floor mats.”

  Suddenly Michael cries out in pain, jerking his hand back, cradling it to his chest. The skin is bubbled and blackened, as if burned in a fire.

  “What the hell?” he hisses, clawing for the door, only he can’t seem to get it open. “What is going on here?”

  Rose rubs at her throat, glaring death at Michael. “I promise you that no harm will come to Elle. We simply need her help, in exchange for finding and rescuing her, and once she’s done, we’ll return her home.”