The Kingdom

Thirty-Five

I don’t know why I headed to the laurel bald, to Freya’s grave, but I had a strong sense that Tilly had gone there. Maybe I’d inherited her uncanny intuition, or maybe I could somehow hear her calling out to me. Maybe it was Freya’s ghost that guided me. I only knew that the pull was too powerful to ignore. And I knew of no place else to look for her.

It was raining again by the time Angus and I reached the cemetery. As I charged through the woods with my mace and a handful of tools—make-do weapons—I’d grabbed from the back of my car, I told myself it was foolish to think that I could save my grandmother single-handedly. Or that I could trust anything that came out of Catrice’s mouth. By her own admission, she had helped plan a murder. And yet…what choice did I have? Freya was lost to me forever. I didn’t want to lose Tilly now that I’d only just found her.

As Angus and I crested the hill, I tried yet again to call the state police, but I still couldn’t get a signal. I thought about calling Thane, but what if Tilly was right? What if he’d been in league with his grandfather all along?

The thought of his deception cut like a knife, but I didn’t have time for self-pity. Later, I could look back and dissect our every conversation, searching for clues and nuances that might have given him away. But now was not that time. Not with Tilly’s life on the line. She’d brought me into this world, and she’d never once hesitated to protect me. How could I not do the same for her?

I scrambled down the overhang, and my heart started to pound as I approached the grave. My grave. Angus was acting very strangely. He sniffed the leaves and pawed at the ground, and I thought perhaps he’d picked up my scent. But when I called his name, he whirled with bared teeth and feverish eyes.

My stomach tensed as I watched him warily. “Angus? What’s wrong, boy?”

He answered with a low growl, and I drew back on a gasp. What had come over him?

He crouched and circled as I stood frozen, Papa’s terrible warning thundering in my head: Those closest to you are the most dangerous because it will try to use them to weaken you.

“Not you, Angus,” I whispered.

He continued to circle, hair bristled, until I had no choice but to slowly back away. He returned to the grave then, but he kept his agitated gaze on me. He didn’t try to approach or attack. I wondered if he only meant to scare me away.

The rain was still coming down, and I could hear the steady drip on the leaves. And something else. Something familiar and instantly alarming. A splintering sound…

I couldn’t identify the noise, but I knew—somehow I knew—that the killer was just beyond the overhang, just beyond my line of sight.

I remembered something Catrice had told me once. The three of them—she, Bryn and Luna—were like blood sisters, and they knew these hills like their own backyard.

And what of Hugh? Could he be out there searching for me, too?

Like Freya before me, I had been drawn into their dastardly game, but I couldn’t let myself think about my birth mother’s gruesome end or the horrifying way I’d come into this world. I couldn’t think about Thane’s duplicity or Angus’s betrayal. I had to keep a clear head—

A silhouette appeared at the top of the overhang—black-clad with ax in hand—and I turned with a gasp, plunging recklessly through the bald. I almost expected Angus to lunge after me, but he stayed at the grave, watching over something that I couldn’t see.

Limbs whiplashed my face and yanked at my hair as I ran blindly, driven by pure terror and the memory of Freya’s ghost. I kept up the pace until the mountain laurel thickened, the branches becoming so tightly entwined I could barely claw my way through. Any light that might have shimmered through the rain clouds was completely obliterated by the low-hanging canopy, and I was soon hopelessly lost.

Emerging into a tiny clearing, I bent to rest, hands on knees, as I tried to catch my breath and corral my racing heart.

Lifting my head, I listened for sounds of pursuit, but all I could hear was the relentless patter of rain and the buzz of mosquitoes around my face. No, that wasn’t quite true. If I listened closely, I could hear the waterfall in the distance. I tried to orient myself to the sound, but I’d strayed too far into laurel hell, and now I’d lost all sense of direction. A more effective trap, I could hardly imagine.

I hunkered in that little clearing, wet and trembling and petrified of what waited for me somewhere in that maze. If the sameness of the landscape befuddled under the best of circumstances, navigating that solid wall in a full-blown panic appeared hopeless. I found myself turning in a slow circle, searching for some clue that would lead me to Tilly. To safety. All around me, the skeletal forms pressed in on me, the grasping branches like disembodied ghost arms reaching for me from the mist.

Then over the rain, I again heard a cracking sound, rhythmic and steady, and now I knew what it was. The killer was using the ax to hack a path through the tangle of limbs, and the noise was getting louder as the hunter closed in on the prey. There was no need for stealth. I was already cornered.

Hand to heart, I strained to pinpoint the direction. It was coming from my right, I thought. No, to the left. No…right… .

As if tugged by a string, my head moved back and forth. Thoroughly disoriented by that treacherous labyrinth, I found myself momentarily paralyzed, terrified of fleeing straight into danger.

Curling my hand around a knotty branch, I clung as if to a lifeline. I heard nothing now. No chopping, no footfalls, no ragged breaths other than my own. In that bated silence, my fingers tightened convulsively around the brittle limb as I imagined the killer’s hand gripping the ax.

And at that precise moment, when I could have used every advantage, every scrap of cover, the rain stopped. New sounds came to me suddenly—the distant trill of a loon, the muted rush of the waterfall.

I could hear breathing now, too, a sharp inhale-exhale as if my scent had been caught. The killer was right there. Right behind me.

Dropping to my knees, I scrambled up under the branches. The rhododendron—a dense, stunted nightmare—was now my ally.

My lip had been split, and I pressed the back of my hand to the pain, trying to relieve the throbbing pressure. I tasted blood and thought again of Freya. I didn’t want to meet the same end. She had been young, pregnant and desperate—easy prey. At least I had the advantage of knowing the game.

Huddling beneath the branches, I pictured the killer in the clearing, patiently waiting for the quarry to take flight. I didn’t move even to tuck back the hair from my eyes. I hardly dared to breathe. I was concealed for the moment by the screen of leaves and limbs. All I had to do was keep still. The killer would have no way of knowing which way I’d gone. After that initial mad flight, I’d learned a valuable lesson. The trail of broken twigs had led straight to me. From now on, I wouldn’t make it so easy.

The killer was moving around in the clearing now. I could hear the scrape of branches and the shallow, rapid breaths that came from excitement. I peered through the snarled branches until a form took shape.

I made no sound. I was sure of that. But all of a sudden the ax slashed down through the twisted limbs right above me. I didn’t scream. I barely even gasped. Something more than fear drove me now. Instinct for survival, yes, but also anger. Anger at what had been done to my young mother. Anger at being hunted like an animal. I wouldn’t succumb to fear or panic. I bit down hard on my sore lip, and the pain gave me a spurt of adrenaline.

On hands and knees, I crawled through the endless tunnels of tree trunks as the ax chopped at the branches above me. I felt the blade graze my shoulder, and I went flat, propelling myself forward on my stomach until I was safely out of reach. I could move faster underneath the canopy, and I almost expected the killer to ditch the ax and come in after me. But miraculously, the sound moved away from me, and I realized I hadn’t been spotted, after all. The killer fanned out around the clearing, trying to flush me out.

Now that the rain had stopped, sound carried surprisingly well, and I heard the thrash of another body moving through the bald. The killer heard it, too, and reversed course making a beeline toward it. I wanted to call out, not just for help but as a warning. But what if someone had come to help the killer? If I gave away my position, I would be a sitting duck beneath that canopy.

I waited until the sound of the chopping faded, and even then I didn’t ease back into the clearing. Instead, I stayed on all fours and began a long, miserable crawl through that thicket. The feeling of isolation and impending doom sapped my energy and destroyed my will, but I forced myself to go on. I had no choice. The canopy had tightened, and the only way in or out was on hands and knees.

At some point, I thought I heard the hack of the killer’s ax coming closer, but it may well have been my imagination. It was dark beneath those branches, and with no sense of direction the mind began to play tricks. I heard my name called, softly, furtively, and I had to catch myself from responding, so great was my need for human contact.

What if I never got out? What if I died in here, all alone without seeing my mother or my aunt or my papa ever again? Without finding Tilly—

I cut off those insidious thoughts. I couldn’t lose control. I had to stay focused. There must be a path somewhere, an animal trail that would lead me to the edge of the thicket.

On and on I crawled. My knees were raw and bleeding, and I was in torment from a thousand scratches. After a while I began to hallucinate. I could see glowing eyes deep within the laurel tunnels, and the ground beneath me trembled, as if in the aftermath of an earthquake. Worst of all, I heard the whisper of my name, and I thought that it was Thane. His voice was so real to me that I once again started to call out. But reason interjected, and I realized that it was only my imagination or some terrible trick. Even if he was there, he might be in league with the killer. He might even be the killer.

Amelia…can you hear me? Amelia…answer me… .

“Thane?” I said his name aloud into the wind, but he didn’t respond because he wasn’t really there. No one was. Not even the killer.

I was all alone in my own private hell.

I lost all sense of time as well as direction. I had no idea how long I’d been crawling through that maze, but it must have been hours. The canopy was so solid, I couldn’t see the sky to gauge the time of day. There was no way to follow moon, stars or even the mountain peaks. It really was a damnable web, and for all I knew, I’d been crawling around in a circle.

Energy flagged and I stopped to rest. Drawing my bloody knees up to my chest, I wrapped my arms around my legs and sat there wet and trembling and demoralized. I don’t think I was even frightened of the killer at that point. I might even have welcomed the sound of the ax hacking a path toward me because at that moment, anything would have been preferable to that utter seclusion.

I knew that I would have to somehow rally and keep moving, but for a moment, I allowed myself to flounder in hopelessness and self-pity. I probed at the scrapes on my knees and wiped blood and rain from my face. The scratches from the laurel bark were far more painful than the surface cut left by the ax, but the idea of that blade slashing down through leaf and stem drew a very deep shudder.

Still I sat there. I couldn’t make myself go any farther. It wasn’t like me to give up, but I had nothing left in me. No energy, no hope, not even the anger anymore. The thought of remaining there until a wild animal picked up my scent or until I died of starvation was not without appeal. All I wanted was to just…sit there.

And then through that dense foliage, a sound came to me, and I discovered that I wasn’t quite as apathetic as I’d thought. Something was coming, and my head jerked up to register both sound and direction.

Whoever it was—whatever it was—stayed low to the ground and moved quickly. A scent came to me then, that of a rotting corpse, and even as fear exploded, I again tried to tell myself it was just an animal carcass. Something had died in the bald, and the wind had shifted so that I only now got a whiff.

But that scrabbling sound…

As my gaze scoured the tree trunks in front of me, I caught the dart of something down one of the tunnels. It was only a flash, a shadow, but in that brief instant, I saw the flare of a coat. Or was that wings?

The idea of something not quite human stalking me through that godforsaken warren brought me to my feet, and I plunged irrationally into the thicket only to run up against an impenetrable wall of limbs.

Teeth chattering from cold and fear, I once again dropped to my knees and scrambled down one of the burrows.

I could hear it behind me. Then in front of me. Then off to the side. Whichever way I turned, it was always there. And that smell… Oh, God…that smell…

Panic spiraled out of control, and my breath came in sobs. Twigs snapped directly over me as if the thing had climbed to the top of the canopy and crawled above me. Heart pounding, I stopped and looked up. I could see nothing, hear nothing. But that fetid smell crept down through the branches and gagged me.

Fear flailed anew, and I turned to clamber through one channel and then another. Twigs and leaves rained down on me as the thing kept pace with me.

After a moment, I realized that it wasn’t keeping pace at all. Rather, it seemed to be herding me. It stayed just ahead of me, causing me to turn this way and that in a futile attempt to escape.

The worst part was…I didn’t even know if it was real. Maybe my mind had broken down completely and the thing had been sprouted by fear, panic and insanity.

I glanced up again, saw a pale eye leering down at me through the branches, and it was all I could do to choke back a scream. A shriek would undoubtedly bring the killer, and I couldn’t be certain my otherworldly stalker hadn’t been dredged from the deepest, darkest corners of a mad mind.

Maybe the killer wasn’t even real. Maybe everything that had happened in Asher Falls was just a nightmare… .

I kept going, babbling under my breath, “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.”

The rain was still coming down. On some level, I’d been aware of the drum on the leaves all along, but now when I looked up, the drops pelted my face, and I realized that the blind had thinned. Light seeped through and I could see nothing in the trees above me, hear nothing in the underbrush all around me. The thing was gone and with it, my panic. I closed my eyes for one brief moment and let the chill of the rain revive me. Then I rose on shaking legs and stumbled forward.

The edge of the thicket beckoned.