“Okay,” Luis said, sounding equal parts disappointed and annoyed. “Give me another fifteen minutes. I’ve got to work some of these damn cramps out.”
I sat silent as he rubbed his calf muscles — which were indeed cramping, I could see the muscles jumping under his skin — and watched the wind whip through the trees below, bending them first one way, then another. If I listened carefully I could hear the voices of tourists brought up from the tram; they never ventured far from the safe, patrolled paths, so there was no danger of them making this final, perilous ascent and disturbing us. They’d buy their cheap souvenirs, take photographs, and leave as they had come.
“It’s the journey,” I whispered to myself.
“What?”
“Your age seems to value the destination so highly. All this fast travel, transporting from one spot to the next, rushing without experiencing. Recording to see later, at a distance. I don’t understand it. Why do you choose to live so — disconnected?”
It was Luis’s turn to be silent. He shrugged and kept working on his muscles. After a moment, I reached over and placed a hand over his leg, feeling the tense jump of the tissues beneath, and he took in a startled breath.
I took power from him. It felt like hot, golden sunlight moving through my body, and then I directed it out again, through my pale fingertips. Refined by the core of me, the part that was still and would always be Djinn, the power sank in deep, healing, soothing, restoring. “So odd that human Wardens can’t heal themselves,” I said. “That must be annoying.”
“Not really,” he said. Luis was now bracing himself, both hands rigid on the stone behind him, and his voice came out strained and soft. “I’d rather give than receive, anyway.” His face was flushed now, and his breath came shallow and quick.
I took my hand away. He flopped back full length on the stone and put a forearm over his eyes to block out the sun, and to prevent me from seeing his expression. I didn’t need to. There were certain … complications to this arrangement between us. Healing, whether applied from him to me, or from me to him, still touched on human nerves in a way that was either painful or extraordinarily sexual.
I suspected the latter, in this case. Which meant that it was better to be up and moving, quickly, before he could suspect I felt the distant echo from him. Before it could affect me, and build between us like supernatural feedback. I stood, grabbed my pack and gathered up the empty water bottles. As I did, Luis took the arm away from his eyes and looked at me, squinting into the sunlight. I offered him a hand, and he took it to pull himself upright, testing his legs carefully before dropping my hand and stepping well away. I watched him, still hyper-aware of his presence; that was the lingering effect of the healing, I knew, but there was something else in it as well.
He glanced up at me as he shrugged on his backpack, eyebrows raised in challenge.
I shook my head, and started for the trail head.
The trail down was certainly no easier than it had been on the climb up; in fact, it took considerably more care, now that I was more aware of the failing afternoon light, and Luis’s presence. I did not care to see him hurt on my behalf.
We were well into the shadows and premature evening of the trees when the first howl came, rising and falling in an eerie cadence. More than one beast. A chorus of them. I stopped, panting and wiping sweat from my face, and looked at Luis, who had gone very still. The sound grew, hushing birds and normal forest noise, and then faded away.
“I freaking hate it when you’re right,” he said. “Just so you know.”
I wasn’t fond of the fact myself, at this moment. “Wolves?”
“That’s no wolf pack. And bears don’t howl. Isn’t a mountain lion, either.”
“Then what is it?”
“Something that shouldn’t be here,” he said, and under the bronze color of his skin he seemed pale and shaken. “Something wrong, Cass. Really wrong. Let’s move it.”
“But—”
“This isn’t something for just the two of us to handle.”
“How do you know—?”
“I know, all right?”
“You know what it is.”
He took in a deep breath. “Maybe. But the point is, a couple of Wardens alone out here isn’t going to cut it. Let’s get moving, fast.”
I was unconvinced, but Luis’s concern was genuine enough. We increased our pace, though the going remained slow; the trail was rough and treacherous, growing more so as the shadows deepened. It would be full dark before we exited the woods, even barring any delays or accidents.
Within another half hour, our pace had decreased even further, and the howl sounded again — distant, but chilling. I could barely make out Luis’s face in the gloom. The sun was scraping the western horizon, expiring fast, and we were still in the thick of the trees. The temperature was also dropping, bringing chilly gusts of wind to whip the limbs of the pine trees and create a whispering hiss that sounded like a warning.
“We’re not going to make it out before dark,” I said. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t planned for two of us. I was going to stay here for the night.”
“Flashlights,” he said. “Keep moving.”
I had packed two, and so had he — sturdy things, and bright, but the artificial light seemed to only serve to make what it illuminated seem harsh and strange. Our pace increased, but so did our pursuers.
When the howls came again, they sounded closer.
Luis clicked off his light, and after a moment, I did the same. We stood in silence, listening. I felt something echoing through his connection to the earth — something strange and as dark as the falling night.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s out here?”
“Something old,” he said. “Very old. It’s an avatar.”
Avatars were rarely encountered in the human world; they were manifestations of old powers, very old. Eternal, but rarely emerging from their sleep to possess and drive a human. The Greeks had known of them, and the Romans. The races and tribes even older had a history of encounters with the dark at the rawest levels — a history the Djinn had observed, even if there was little written record of it in the human world.
But here? Now? Why?
“What kind of avatar?”
“Madness,” he said. “Primal madness.”
I felt a cold chill sweep over my all-too-mortal flesh. As a Djinn, I had seen the rites of Dionysius and Bacchus enacted. I’d seen the frenzy sweep through the Bacchae as they were driven to leave behind their human, civilized selves.
I had seen the destruction they left behind.
“The missing women,” I said. “Bacchae. Following the avatar.”
“And they’re hunting,” Luis said. “Tonight.”
The howls sounded again, a high, wild sound that echoed from the stones. Then the howls dissolved into frenzied screaming, filled with triumph and fury, and I heard beneath it the cries of something that voiced its pain without words. An animal. Something large.
A rabbit burst from the underbrush and dashed past us, frantic and glassy-eyed. Then another. A family of raccoons crossed the path ahead of us, fleeing the same direction, and in another moment, a doe bounded in pursuit.
“Move,” Luis barked, and we increased our speed as much as we dared. More animals flashed across the limited scope of our flashlights, fixed only for an instant by the bright beams. None of them paused.
The last, another doe, had long bloody scrapes down her flanks, and she was running flat out, panting, head down. Running for her life.
I remembered the male hikers, bodies torn and half-consumed by predators. They’d never understood their risks. Never had a chance.