* * * *
I parked just as the sun was setting. I’d been told that my car had been kept in the company parking garage for the last month, so I’d been able to give Sonya back her Camaro. The feel of the steering wheel under my hands, the windshield with the crack in the corner, and the shady heater were all familiar. It surprised me how much I’d missed my car, and I resolved to never be kidnapped again.
I couldn’t see any other cars besides mine, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the wolves hadn’t arrived yet. I got out, enjoying the cool air on my skin and moved around to sit on the hood and wait. Twenty minutes passed, then an hour, and still no sign of the help Leo had promised. I waited another hour and then gave it up as a lost cause.
No one was coming.
I guess I was on my own after all.
Not sure what I would do if I actually found him, I set off into the park. I may not have been a born tracker, but I could follow the faint vibrations from the bond that Gabriel and I shared. Whatever he’d done last night to make the signal not as strong, had me stopping several times during my search. It was as if the bond were a radio station and I was driving through an area with bad coverage. It was filled with static, and in some places, it disappeared entirely.
The first time I lost it, it felt as if something were tearing out of me, razor wire in my veins. For a brief, unforgettable moment I thought Gabriel was dead. Then I stepped to the side, and the bond snapped back, shaky, but accounted for. It happened several more times, at which point I decided to try and head in another direction.
I found that no matter where I went, the strength of the bond never increased. It didn’t tug, it didn’t vibrate, and it didn’t grow hot or get cold. It just was.
“This isn’t working,” I grumbled, growing frustrated with myself. It had sounded like a good idea in theory, and without the Weres there to help, it had been the only option I’d had to track down Gabriel. Now that my plan was a bust, the only other thing I could do was wander the woods until I stumbled over a Fed.
I was preparing to do just that, when I saw it from the corner of my eye.
The shadow in the woods.
The darkness among the trees deeper than the night around it.
The pitiless eyes.
Yawning mouth and a laugh that left the taste of razor blades and blood in my tongue.
I went very still, shaking too hard to move. Blood like ice and legs like lead.
It was a chore to walk. To lift my feet and move forward. I couldn’t look at it. Couldn’t acknowledge it or the terror would send me running. So I just kept moving. Kept walking through the night with shadows dancing on either side of me and the eerie laughter of the specter drowning out the sound of every other creature in the forest.
There came a moment of stillness.
A moment so still that all sound stopped and the very wind held its breath. The trees quit their whispering and the leaves beneath my feet didn’t so much as whimper with the steps I took. When the first shadow touched me, it felt like ice. Like death on a caress. It brushed across my arm and the limb went numb. Falling limply at my side. Around the numbness pain traveled, razor spikes tearing deep into my skin so that I screamed, clawing at myself and cursing. Anything to make the sensation stop.
The next touch came in on the tail end of the last. Gripping my neck in tight icicle claws that choked my scream off with a gurgle. I tried to do it anyway, tried to make some sound as agony ripped into my brain and shredded my vision in black but nothing came out. I tried again, again, and again, nails digging into my hair and tugging at the strands as the pain traveled deeper. Fingers invading, nails scratching at my insides, picking me apart and leaving me empty. I tried until I felt something wet dripping out of my mouth onto the forest floor, and when I inspected it with shaking hands it was blood that I found.
Then, and only then, did I run.
I crashed through the underbrush, stumbling and striking trees, hands searching the world before me. The darkness on me, the darkness in me, was traveling, swimming in my bloodstream, coating my skin, laughing at me.
I ran through the forest, silent and clumsy, the smoky tendrils of the specter wrapping me up and swallowing me down. I was a mix of pale skin and oily darkness. Then the darkness ate the last of me, wrapped tight around my body, and brought me broken to the ground.
I lay on my back, unable to breathe, suffocating on the nightmares in my throat. The only thing still untouched was my eyes. I could still see.
Still see the rocking canopy of the trees above my head.
Still see the eyes as black as any hell watching me from between the branches.
Still see the specter as it left its perch and fell into me, exploding like ashes cast to the wind as we made contact.
Merged.
Became one thing.
Before, I was Phaedra.
After, I was Nothing.