Page 60 of Hunted

I nodded. “Stand back, both of you.”

“What are you going to do?” Valerian asked.

“Remember when I put you through the wall the other day?”

He rubbed the back of his head. “How can I forget?”

“Well… I’m about to try that again, only this time, intentionally.”

“You’re going to blow a hole in the fireplace?!” Tallin shrieked.

“I’m going to try. The chimney is where the stone is thinnest… I don’t have another choice.”

“We never do,” Valerian said. “Do it.”

I turned to look at the fireplace again and raised my hands. Summoning this magic was different to anything I was used to. I still had a long, long way to go in my studies in order to master all the different sigils and hand gestures, but right now, I wasn’t going for discipline or finesse. Right now, I needed to pull as much power as I could and hurl it at the wall with all of my might.

With any luck, the creature’s dark magic hadn’t entirely trapped us yet, and we would find the outside world on the other side of that wall. If I messed this up, not only could we still be trapped here, but I could bring the entire cottage down on our heads.

Always jumping from one bad situation into the next, aren’t you Amara?

I didn’t have time to draw sigils into the walls. The best I could do was sketch them out in the air with my fingers, tracing invisible patterns and hoping that did the trick… only nothing happened. I couldn’t feel any kind of magical buildup, I didn’t know whether I was summoning my power, or just waving my hands around in the air like an idiot.

Then I saw my mother’s face in my mind. A flash of blue eyes and silvery hair. She was smiling at me. I couldn’t hear her, but the word Snowdrop was on her lips. Beside her stood my father. He also wore a smile on his face. Silently, he extended a hand toward me. I wanted to reach for it, to touch him, to pull him to me or pull myself toward him.

But first, I needed to get through thisfuckingwall.

I felt my magic bubble up, now. With a spark, my right index finger lit up, and as I moved it through the air, it left a glowing trail behind it in the shape of the sigil I was trying to draw. In a few short moments, I had carved an explosive rune into the air, and then another, and another.

Three of them should do the trick,I thought to myself, and I drew in a deep breath. As I exhaled it, I pushed the sigils into the wall with as much strength as I could muster. I felt power, real power, tear out of me and surge toward the wall, the three sigils launching themselves into the back of the fireplace and converging as they struck the outermost wall.

There was a concussive bang that sucked the air out of the room, the fireplace snuffed out, and the outermost wall exploded in a hail of stone, and soot, and charred wood. Though my ears were ringing, I was able to see the hole I had made in the wall in the back of the fireplace… and there was snow on the other side of it.

“Let’s go!” I yelled, though I could barely hear my own voice.

I dropped to my hands and feet, taking my wolf form in a flash of movement that this time felt as easy as breathing, as uncomplicated as flexing a muscle. Tallin went through the hole first, the little sprite leaping through it and yelling at us both from the other side to hurry. Valerian went next, sliding onto his stomach as he reached the fireplace and squeezing himself through it.

I was last to make it outside, and while it was dark, and cold, I welcomed it over being trapped inside of that cottage. As the three of us ran and vaulted over the stone wall, I couldn’t help but look back at the cottage. It was tiny, and yet to us it had already started looking far larger on the inside.

Though the creature was nowhere to be seen, I knew it was there, lurking in the dark somewhere. Again we were running from it, again racing into the woods to escape the creature’s grasp. The worst part was, we were cut off from our instant escape route, and there were still twenty-four hours until the crescent moon.

I had no idea where we were going to go, or what we were going to do, but we were going to need a plan.

The best one yet.

CHAPTERTWENTY

Ididn’t have to look around to know the monster was behind us… out there, somewhere, chasing us, stalking us,hunting us.We had fled from the cottage at breakneck speed, but none of us knew where to go, or what to do next.

We didn’t know where we were going, which way was London, or where in this frigid, hilly area we would find shelter from the creature at our backs. We were lost, totally rudderless, and only minutes away from being caught because there was no way we could run like this all day and night.

“We need a plan!” I yelled.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Tallin said, panting as he ran.

“What we have to do is find a way to weaken this creature,” Valerian said. “It must have a weakness. It can’t be completely invulnerable to whatever we can throw at it.”

“It’s Fate,” I said, “It can be, and it probably is.”