I peeled my eyes open, welcoming the milky white moonlight on my face and relishing Draven’s soul tangled with mine, as always. I couldn’t get enough of the novelty of it all—our beings fused forever, our hearts attuned to perfection.

His love for me blossomed in my chest as I lifted my head from the pillow and found his grayish gaze on me, his fingers playing with a lock of my hair. He was leaning over the bed, watching me intently. We kissed, softly and deeply, and the world disappeared for a minute. It was like that every time our lips touched.

“Good evening, goddess.” He gave me a lazy smile.

I sat up and stretched my arms, welcoming the night’s breeze through the large bedroom windows, as it fluttered through the white veils of our canopy bed and the silk of my camisole. He slipped out of his shirt, letting it fall to the floor. Upon a second glance, I noticed he looked tired, but superb as ever, his broad chest stirring butterflies in my stomach. Ninety-eight black band tattoos covered his arms. Two more and he’d officially be named for the position he’d already held for three months: Master Druid of Calliope.

“I dozed off.” I smiled back. “What time is it?”

I rubbed my face with my palms, then glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was just after midnight. Six hours had passed since our GASP meeting, and since Draven had heard back from Hansa after we’d seen them leave for Neraka this morning.

It had been a long day. I’d gone into a brief training session with Phoenix, while Jovi and Anjani had tried to spend as much time together as possible. The newlyweds had postponed their honeymoon until after we got our team back from Neraka, so whatever moment they could get alone in the meantime, they didn’t hesitate to vanish.

“Do you think they’re okay out there?” I asked, as Draven sat on the bed and brought his face closer to mine. He frowned slightly, sensing my concern over Harper and the rest of the GASP recon team. It was my sister’s first time on a mission so far away from home, and I couldn’t help but worry.

“It’s time I check in with them, anyway.” He gave me a soft smile, his emotions pouring out of him in shades of amber and lime, in a bid to reassure me. I nodded slowly, and he closed his eyes. “Telluris Hansa.”

Several moments went by, and his brow furrowed. I felt a little pang in my stomach, and his hand instinctively came over mine. Draven was extremely adept at recognizing and reacting to my emotions. He didn’t like me experiencing anything negative, and whatever he could soothe in me, he did.

“Telluris Hansa,” he called out again. His forehead smoothed, and he looked at me, his eyes twinkling. It seemed she’d picked up. “Hey, Hansa… Everything okay there?”

I watched quietly for changes in his expression—the slightest twitch, the faintest shadow passing over his face.

“That’s good. At least you get good beds to sleep on.” His lips stretched into a smile as he listened to Hansa. “How’s the team? How is Harper?”

My heart started beating a little faster, but mellowed when Draven squeezed my hand and winked at me.

“So you’re spending the night at the inn, and you’ll do more interviews tomorrow morning… How are the Exiled Maras treating you?”

I inched forward, tuning in to the subtle changes in his emotional spectrum. He didn’t think I’d noticed, but I caught the sliver of dark gray doubt.

“Okay, let’s catch up again at dawn,” he said, “and I’ll brief GASP afterward. Just stay safe, all of you, and reach out if you sense any kind of serious trouble, okay? Thanks, Hansa… We’ll speak soon.”

He exhaled, then focused on me.

“They’re all just fine, Serena,” he said, his hold on my hand loosening. “There’s nothing to worry about at this point. They’re settled at an inn in the city. Everything looks normal. Everyone is treating them with nothing but respect. Hansa says the Exiled Maras are even peacefully coexisting with an indigenous species called Imen. Based on how she described them, they remind me of humans from your world.”

“And Harper?” I asked, still mildly nervous.

“She’s doing well.” He smiled. “Thoroughly enjoying the adventure, apparently, though it’s been fairly low stress so far.”

“Okay…”

I still wondered about the doubt I’d sensed in him earlier. As if he’d read my mind, Draven brought his hand up, caressing my cheek.

“I know you felt something in me, but it’s not something I can explain,” he said, his voice low. “It’s this underlying feeling. I can’t put my finger on it, but it keeps me on edge where Neraka is involved. And I don’t like how I can’t actually… feel Hansa, or the others, for that matter, but I blame it on the asteroid belt they have there. It’s also most likely why Telluris doesn’t work as smoothly as it does here on Calliope. It’s nothing you should worry about, Serena. It comes with the unknown territory that is Neraka. It’s a different galaxy altogether—we’re adjusting and learning new things about it as we go along.”

I sighed, and he pulled me closer, gently wrapping his arms around me and filling me with his exquisite warmth.

“They’re okay, my love,” he murmured, his lips hot against my ear. “We’ll catch up with them again in the morning.”

“Maybe I’m stressing myself out for nothing,” I replied.

“You’re being an amazing sister, that’s all.” He smiled, and kissed me.

We lost ourselves in one another, and I cherished his comforting presence, feeling my concerns about Harper and the recon team subside.

He held me tight, and deepened our kiss, taking me further away from the real world.

I was, of course, curious to learn more about the Exiled Maras’ life on Neraka. But that could wait until tomorrow.

* * *

Dear Shaddict!

Thank you for reading ASOV 52: A Valley of Darkness.

I have two exciting new releases to share with you!

See the details for the next Shade book, , right after the following announcement:

On November 26th, 2017, I will be releasing a brand new vampire romance series called .

It’s a new spin on the vamp lore you love, and I am super excited to share it with you.

Below I have shared with you an exclusive early SNEAK PEEK of the first three chapters of , so keep turning the pages!:

Chapter 1

“Remind me which genius suggested we put this off till midday?” My friend Angie’s muffled voice drifted through the stalks of corn to my right.

“I believe the same one who didn’t pack enough water,” my second companion, Lauren—also obscured by giant shafts of corn—replied, from five feet to my left. Her naturally dry tone sounded more sarcastic than usual, probably because, thanks to Angie, we’d run out of water half an hour ago.

I smirked, taking a few seconds’ pause from picking corn to wipe sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist. Despite wearing a shirt and shorts made of cotton so light it was almost see-through and a wide straw sombrero, and religiously sticking to the shade of the corn stalks, this Texan sun was killing me. Still, I loved this kind of work, using my hands— it was cathartic—so I wasn’t going to complain.

“Also the same one who suggested we spend our vacation on this delightful farm,” Lauren added with a grunt. I pictured her tall, lanky form hunched over as she tackled a far too unripe cob, while her narrow, purple, librarian-style glasses glided slowly but surely down her nose. She was not so much a fan of manual work.

“Oh, come on, Lauree.” I couldn’t resist teasing her, despite my resolution to save my voice for after we’d returned to the farmhouse and I’d downed a liter of water. “We know you love it here.”

“‘Course she does,” Angie proclaimed, and I could hear her broad grin through her voice. “What’s not to love?”

“Guess you have a point.” Amid her heavy breathing, Lauren managed to force a note of thoughtfulness into her voice. “I mean, aside from the fact that we’re off the grid, with no electricity or phone signal for literally miles—who wouldn’t appreciate a welcome package of a heap of moldy towels, a sprinkle of roach droppings on their pillowcase, or… a snake in their toilet pot?”

Angie and I burst out laughing. From the tremor in Lauren’s voice, I could tell she still hadn’t gotten over last night’s surprise. Trust Lauren to get dibs on the snake.

“After I had sat down, I might add.”

“It was a grass snake,” Angie retorted, “and a pretty cute one at that.”

“Cute my ass,” Lauren grumbled.

A span of amused silence fell between us as we returned to filling our sacks. This was the second of three assignments we had to complete today; the first had been running bed linens through a manual laundry machine, draining them through a ringer, and then hanging them up to dry outside, and the third would be picking fresh herbs from the greenhouse. Mr. and Mrs. Churnley, friends of Angie’s grandparents and the owners and sole full-time residents of Elmcreek Farm, were to assign us three such jobs every day, in return for free board and lodging.

We had arrived only yesterday evening, having flown from New York to Austin, but I was already feeling a sense of calm about the place. Being without electricity, internet, or a working phone was a culture shock we were all still getting used to, but the lack of external distractions was exactly why we had chosen to come here.

This summer was the last chance Angie, Lauren, and I would have to spend quality time together for possibly a very long time, because after the vacation ended, we’d all be heading off in vastly different directions—Angie even to a different country. I was enrolled to begin a mechanical engineering course in Michigan, and Lauren was to study pre-law at Stanford, while Angie would be jetting off to Paris for an apprenticeship at a prestigious sports-fashion brand (thus combining her two biggest passions). If things worked out for Angie there, we’d see very little of her indeed.

She and I had known each other since kindergarten, while Lauren had known us since first grade, so we decided we needed to do something special, and completely different, this summer—something we’d never forget.

I also had a more personal reason for wanting to be in the middle of nowhere this particular vacation… unreachable. Before I left for Michigan, I knew my birth parents were going to try to get in touch—something I dreaded from the very core of me. My adoptive parents, Jean and Roger, could only hold them off for so long now that I’d turned eighteen, and the court legislation no longer had the same hold that it did during my earlier teen years. After I became an official adult three weeks ago, my birth parents had gotten the idea that they wanted to know me. I might have been more amenable to that if they hadn’t spent the first decade of my life neglecting me to the point of abuse. Alcohol had always taken precedence over me in their lives, and I didn’t see any reason that would change. Their addiction would’ve gotten me killed if I hadn’t run away at nine, and I swore then that I was never, ever going back…

I let out a breath, forcing my consciousness back to the bright, beautiful world around me, allowing it to separate the past from the present.

Yes. Elmcreek was the perfect escape for all of us this summer.

“Oh man, my hat just blew off.” Angie broke the quiet. “And—augh—I can’t reach it. Could one of you guys help me?”

“I volunteer Riley,” announced Lauren.

Exhaling, I stowed the cob I held in my hand in my sack. “Yeah, okay, shortie. Coming.”

I waded through the field, batting away flies and pushing aside leaves until I reached her. The five-foot-five girl with curly blonde hair was standing on her tiptoes, the hem of her short blue dress hiked high up her legs as she stretched for a floppy pink sun hat that was ridiculously out of her reach. She turned around to face me, her hazel eyes meeting mine. She had a smile on her round, impish face, and her light blonde eyebrows, so fair in the daylight they were almost invisible, rose in expectation.

I eyed the hat again and tried to reach for it myself first, given that I was a fair bit taller than her, but I couldn’t, so we ended up coordinating a balancing act with her on my shoulders, knocking my own hat to the ground in the process.

“Wo-hoah, it’s like a whole other world up here,” Angie gasped as her head rose above the jungle of corn.

“Just be quick,” I muttered from between her chunky thighs. “Your butt is breaking my shoulders.”

“It’s all muscle and you know it,” she retorted, before stretching out.

Then she stilled.

“What’s taking so long?” I asked, squinting in the glaring sunlight.

“Hey, I thought the Churnleys didn’t have neighbors on that side of the woods.”

“What?”

“Looks like there are people over there, sunbathing on logs.” She pointed northward, toward the direction of the woods that bordered the Churnleys’ portion of land. I realized she had grabbed the hat already, and was now just staring straight ahead.

“Okay—I’m glad you’re having a nice time up there, but if you’re finished I’m gonna—”

Angie’s knees suddenly clenched around my head. “Wait, Riley. They’re dudes… Four of them. They look like lumberjacks or something. Here, you can see too.” She dove a hand into the side pocket of her dress and slipped out her phone. “That’s what a zoom lens is for… Still got a bit of battery left.” A sharp click sounded as Angie’s phone camera went off.

“Okay, geddown now,” I growled, tugging at her ankle.

She acquiesced, sliding down me with a self-satisfied look on her face. She squinted down at her phone to check out the photo she’d just taken, but it was far too bright to see the screen properly.

“Well, now we all have an extra incentive to hurry up and get back to the house.” She winked at me, before donning her hat and continuing to pick corn.

Smirking, I rolled my eyes and picked up my hat, then moved to return to my spot in the field, when Lauren suddenly materialized out of the bushes in front of me. Her faded blue dungarees looked decidedly grubbier than when we had started, and her coffee-colored ponytail was a tangled mess, but her brown eyes sparkled with mild interest. Adjusting her spectacles primly, she flashed us a sardonic smile.

“Did I hear someone say ‘lumberjacks’?”

* * *

Water was more than enough of an incentive for me to finish the job quickly. After my little break, I worked at twice the speed and managed to pick enough corn to fill all three of our sacks within the next fifteen minutes. Then, lugging each sack over our shoulders, we traipsed back to the wooden two-story house that stood at the edge of the cornfields.

We mounted the steps to the porch, passing the Churnleys’ three lazy golden retrievers, who barely raised an eyelid as we reached the door. It had been left on the latch, and Angie pushed it open with a creak. We stepped directly into the kitchen/dining area, where we were met with the pungent smell of Mrs. Churnley’s cooking, and the short, podgy lady herself standing in front of a stove, her bouncy gray hair cooped up in a brown bonnet, while her bald husband sat at the dining table dutifully peeling potatoes.

Their eyes shot to us as we strode in and planted our sacks down on the wooden floorboards.

“Where should we leave these, ma’am?” Angie asked, panting.

“Oh, good girls!” Mrs. Churnley left the frying pan she had been monitoring and bustled over to examine our finds. “You got some real beauties here! I’ll have Mr. Churnley skin some for lunch.”

Mr. Churnley, who was of a similar height and build to his wife, waddled over to join her in examining the corn with his monobrow furrowed, while Lauren, Angie, and I hurried to the sink. We each grabbed a metal cup from the drainer and quickly served ourselves water from a large pitcher. Once we’d swallowed two cups in a row, Angie remarked to the couple, “Seems like you might have new neighbors, by the way.”

Mrs. Churnley turned, her rheumy eyes widening as she made her way back to the frying pan. “Hmm?”

“Yeah,” Angie replied, “we—or I—saw four guys lounging around in the field next door. They were shirtless, so I assumed they were sunbathing…” She set her cup down and dove her hand back into her pocket to retrieve her phone. But as she navigated to her photo app and touched the screen to zoom in, she frowned. “Huh. That’s real weird.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she squinted at the screen.

“What?” Lauren and I asked.

“I can’t, uh, make them out in the photo,” she replied, still looking befuddled. “There’s just logs. Odd. I could have sworn I saw dudes there too.”

Lauren’s lips twitched in a wry smile as she took the phone from Angie. “Yup,” she confirmed. “Logs.”

I peered over Lauren’s shoulder to take a look at the photo for myself. A cluster of four logs lay near the edge of a flat field, right near the woods’ border… Definitely no shirtless lumberjacks.

Mrs. Churnley chortled, nudging Angie in the arm with her elbow. “Seems we all react to the heat differently, eh? The only ‘shirtless dude’ I’ve seen around here in the last twenty years, other than Mr. Churnley, is Mr. Doherty, our neighbor on the southern side of the fence, and I wouldn’t say he’s anything to get excited about—unless curly white chest hairs are your thing.” To our alarm, she threw us a salacious wink.

“Now, Nora,” her husband spoke up in a gruff voice, “don’t get the ladies too excited.”

I felt myself turn as red as the tomatoes on the kitchen counter as Mr. and Mrs. Churnley erupted into raucous laughter. Angie, Lauren, and I cleared our throats in an attempt to join in, before inching toward the door.

“We’re just gonna go and rest a bit before lunch if that’s okay,” Angie said with a plastic smile.

“Of course!” Mrs. Churnley replied, and the three of us swiftly took our leave. “It’ll be ready within the hour!”

I let out a breath as we entered the narrow corridor. They were definitely an unusual couple. Apparently they used to live in the city, and worked as bankers before they got so burned out on metropolitan life that they had a midlife crisis and swung the other way—completely the other way. They bought this patch of land decades ago, and judging by the state of the house, they probably hadn’t renovated it since they moved in.

We climbed the rickety staircase that led to the second floor, where the three of us shared a bedroom fitted with three single beds. Although the Churnleys had space for guests, it was quite obvious they weren’t used to having any. There were two other bedrooms on our level—one belonging to the old couple, and another that had fallen into disrepair. Angie suspected the latter had belonged to their only child, a boy who had died at the age of thirteen from a rare form of cancer.

Angie’s grandmother was convinced they were terribly lonely, but would never admit to it, since they’d “rather rot” than go back to living like the rest of the world. So when she learned that Angie, Lauren, and I wanted to do something memorable this summer, she had been quick to think of her old friends, and had contacted them by snail mail.

Lauren was the first to use the en-suite bathroom when we entered our musty-smelling room, while Angie and I flopped back on our creaky beds. The shower started, and we sniggered as Lauren stepped in and sighed to herself, “Ah, luxury.”

It was kind of amazing the things you appreciated when everything got stripped from you. I imagined I’d feel utterly spoiled when I returned home in a month.

Angie blew out softly, staring up at the bare wooden beams strutted across the cobwebbed ceiling. “I could have sworn I saw dudes there,” she mumbled.

I smiled to myself. “It was an illusion, Angie,” I said in a dreamy voice. “A mirage… Where normal people would see an oasis of water in a desert, you would see an oasis of, well…” My tone dropped. “I do kind of worry what that says about you.”

She chucked a pillow at me. “Shut up.”

“Hey,” I said, changing the subject, “why don’t we go visit the creek this afternoon? After lunch, we can gather the herbs quickly, and then have the rest of the day free.”

“Suits me,” she muttered. “We’ll see what Lauren thinks.”

I stood up to stretch out my arms and, yawning, caught sight of myself in the stained mirror near the window. My brown hair was hardly in better condition than Lauren’s or Angie’s, even though I’d braided it and then wrapped it in a tight bun, and the corners of my blue eyes were tinged reddish—they were feeling a little irritated, come to think of it. I wasn’t used to being so close to nature.

The shower stopped abruptly. Lauren emerged from the bathroom a moment later, clutching a towel around her bare body, her shoulder-length hair foaming with shampoo. “So, the water just stopped,” she announced, her toes curling on the wooden floor as water pooled around her feet.

“Ah.” Angie threw her an amused, yet apologetic look. “Maybe—”

Before we could hear her speculation, Mrs. Churnley’s voice boomed up from the bottom of the staircase. “You used too much water at one time, dear—whichever one of you was in the shower just now. I’ll have Mr. Churnley come up and show you how to manually work the pump—”

“Oh, don’t bother, ma’am,” Lauren replied quickly. “I’m sure Mr. Churnley has enough to do.”

She looked back at the two of us with tight lips, and I frowned, assessing our options. “Maybe we should just save our hair washing for the creek and use this bathroom only for quick showering—Angie and I were gonna suggest we go there this afternoon anyway.”

Lauren blinked, taking a moment to process my suggestion. “Hair washing in the creek,” she repeated, almost robotically. “Right. Okay. So, I’ll just… wrap up this sticky slop of hair and wait then. That’s fine. No problem.”

With that, she turned and marched stiffly back into the bathroom. Exchanging glances with Angie, I laughed. It seemed Lauren was getting past the stage of expecting things to work and surrendering to the experience. And that was good.

It was the first step toward us all having a lot of fun.

Chapter 2

“So where is the creek exactly?” Angie asked Mrs. Churnley. We stood on the porch after eating as quick a lunch as we could manage, with the couple for company, and finishing our duties in the greenhouse.

Mrs. Churnley prodded a chubby finger toward the tractor path that ran in front of the house. “Just take a right turn once you’re out of the gate and follow that track. It’ll lead you to the creek after about a thirty-minute walk. Do make sure you’re back before it’s dark, since there won’t be any lights to lead you.”

“Sounds simple enough!” I said brightly.

“Thanks, ma’am,” Lauren said, adjusting her towel-turban, beneath which the shampoo had mostly dried and turned her hair into a curious blend of stiff and sticky.

As we turned to leave, passing the lounging dogs and heading down the steps, Mrs. Churnley added, “Oh, and watch out for leeches in the creek! Neither Mr. Churnley nor I have been down there since last summer, but they’re usually around at this time of year.”

Lauren’s jaw tightened. “Thanks.”

“Leeches beat snakes though, right?” Angie snickered as we stepped through the gate and began our journey along the track. Breathing in through her nose and setting her gaze straight ahead, Lauren chose not to comment on that.

I was carrying a large bag stuffed with towels, two jumbo bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and enough drinking water (I’d made sure of it myself this time), and we all wore our bikinis beneath our clothes. Lauren, being Lauren, was also sporting green jelly shoes.

“This place really is in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?” I remarked, both admiring and feeling kind of intimidated by the endless sprawl of no-man’s land that surrounded us. Having been brought up in the city and not traveled much in my life, the largest stretches of nature I was used to seeing were city parks. This was something else. It made me feel small and insignificant, like a tiny piece of a far greater existence that really didn’t care about my life plans or problems.

“Ya know,” Angie said, her tone taking on a distant quality as she joined me in gazing out on our surroundings, “I wish we were here for longer than four weeks.”

A melancholic silence fell between us. Even Lauren didn’t remark. None of us had to ask why Angie wished for that. Despite our proclamations that our friendship would stay the same in spite of the distance, deep down I was sure we were all doubtful about how the next stage of our lives would really affect it. If I was honest with myself, I didn’t see how our dynamic wouldn’t change. It seemed inevitable that we would drift apart, no matter how much we loved one another. We would meet new friends, be exposed to different ideas, and the little quirks we’d come to know each other for would change along with our habits.

We would grow into different people; there was no escaping that. The friends Jean and Roger were closest to now, in their mid-forties, were not the same as those they’d had in high school.

The thought made me feel insecure, but also all the more fiercely grateful that we had come to this place, so stupidly cut off from everything that could distract us from us.

Glancing at my friends, whose eyes, like mine, had turned to the gravel crunching beneath our feet, a renewed determination rolled through me to make the most of the next four weeks that we possibly could.

I allowed a toothy grin to spread across my face as I set my gaze on the entrance to the woods, where the track was leading us.

“Last one to the trees is a roach dropping,” I announced, before rocketing forward. Lauren yelped as I caught her arm and dragged her along with me, her jelly shoes slapping on the ground. Angie didn’t need an assisted head start—she might have been the shortest of the three of us, but she was the fittest. She quickly caught up with us, and it was, predictably, Lauren who earned the unfortunate title, Angie and I just about tying in first place.

We skidded to a stop once we were over the woods’ threshold, and looked around. It was cooler and darker than I had expected it to be in here—I was surprised by how thick the trees were. Faint birdsong drifted down from the canopy of branches overhead, and the air was still, with very little breeze.

“Kinda creepy,” Angie said in a hushed tone.

“Beautiful creepy,” I replied, just as softly.

We walked on in silence, and I relished the peace, the woods’ quiet energy thrumming around us. Direct sunlight touched our faces only intermittently as we followed the path straight ahead.

Then Angie stopped abruptly. “Hey,” she whispered. “Do you hear that?”

Lauren and I halted and listened. I was confused at first as to what exactly Angie was referring to, but then I heard it—a distant thunk, thunk, thunk. Like the sound of metal against wood.

We met each other’s gazes, and I knew exactly what Angie was about to say from the triumphant gleam in her eyes before she said it.

“Lumberjacks!” she whispered. “Maybe I wasn’t imagining them after all! They could’ve spotted my head above the crops and just rolled off the logs before I took the picture, or something…”

Lauren frowned at Angie, looking dubious, but then shrugged. “I would’ve done the same if I noticed some perv watching me.”

Ignoring Lauren’s comment, Angie strayed from the track and began to creep through the undergrowth toward the noise, leaving the two of us staring after her.

Lauren’s thick eyebrows rose high above the rim of her glasses as she exhaled. “So, are we going dude hunting now, or to the creek? Because they’re in two opposite directions, and as much as I would—”

Lauren faltered as Angie turned around and held a finger to her lips.

The noise had stopped.

There was a pregnant pause as we waited another thirty seconds to see if it would start again, and when it didn’t, Angie let out a sigh and ambled back to us.

“Seems they’re shy,” she remarked with a droll smile.

“Okay, let’s keep moving,” Lauren said firmly, taking the lead. “Some of us have crap to scrape off our heads.”

* * *

As Mrs. Churnley had promised, the creek was easy to find. We heard gushing about five minutes before we reached it, and quickened our pace to arrive before a beautiful, gently flowing basin of water enclosed by stooping tree branches and bordered by bushes of white and purple wildflowers.

“Well, this is nice,” Lauren admitted, her expression almost suspicious.

We approached the bank, searching for the best place to set up. We found a little patch of grass, and I dumped the bag there before pulling out the items we needed. We stripped to our swimwear, examining the ground more cautiously now that we were barefooted, and then approached the water. It was surprisingly cold, but a welcome contrast to even the relatively cool forest air—we had all grown sticky during our walk.

Goosebumps ran along my skin as I waded deeper, the soles of my feet slipping along the smooth stones of the riverbed. Our eyes darted around the murky water, searching for leeches. When the water was up to our waists and we’d spotted none, I bit the bullet and submerged myself all in one go—Lauren and Angie following suit.

I billowed to the top, gasping for air. “Awesome!”

Lauren quickly set about scrubbing all the dried and cakey shampoo off her hair, and I moved back to the bank to grab the shampoo and conditioner bottles. After the three of us had completed the ritual—which actually took less time than it would have in a regular shower or bath, due to the movement and volume of the water—we started frolicking about like graceless mermaids, and things soon descended into an all-out splashing war. We were only vaguely aware of the time passing from the amount of sunlight that trickled through the treetops, and by the time I pulled away to check my watch on the bank, we needed to start heading back, unless we wanted to get trapped in the woods after nightfall.

“Oh, dang,” Lauren said as Angie and I were leaving the water. “Where’s the shampoo?”

We whirled around to see her pointing toward a stone jutting out into the center of the creek, where we had set down the bottles while we swam. Angie and I had totally forgotten they were even there, and now only the conditioner bottle remained standing.

“Oops, that sucks,” I said. “One of us must have knocked it accidentally. Looks like we’ll be stuck with Mrs. Churnley’s homemade shampoo for the rest of the trip…”

With that prospect ringing in her ears, Lauren surged toward the stone, snatched up the conditioner and threw it to me. “You two get everything packed up,” she ordered. “I’m looking for that shampoo.”

“Need your glasses?” Angie offered with a smirk.

“Just pass me a long stick,” Lauren muttered, staring down.

Angie and I left the water and hunted around for a broken tree branch until I found one that seemed thick and long enough to be useful. I chucked it toward Lauren, and then Angie and I turned away from the water and began drying off.

Lauren’s shriek a minute later made us whip back around.

“What the—” She swore.

“What?” Angie and I called, staring at her as she splashed toward us, her eyes set on a patch of water about five feet away from the rock where we’d kept the bottles.

“I dislodged something!” she panted, still backing away from whatever it was she’d spotted in the water.

I was expecting it to be a leech, or a group of them, but then I saw it. Something was rising from the depths of the creek. A long, dark shadow at first, but as it broke the surface, it was… My eyes bugged. It took my brain several moments to put a name to what I saw.

“A wing?” I blurted.

It was a huge, black, shimmering thing—several feet across—with protruding veins and a startlingly pointed tip. It looked like… some kind of giant, prehistoric bat wing.

Angie was already wading into the water for a closer look, passing Lauren and grabbing the stick. By the time she reached the thing, Lauren had climbed out of the water and snatched up her glasses so she could see in detail past more than a few feet. Angie used the stick to guide the wing to the bank, and once it was close enough, I wrapped the edges of my towel around my hands to act as gloves and kneeled over the edge. I gingerly got a hold of the edge of the wing and, in spite of how offputtingly heavy it was, managed to haul it up onto the grass. We gathered around it, our mouths hanging open.

“It must’ve been stuck between some rocks on the riverbed,” Lauren breathed.

“What is it?” Angie mused, bending down. She cautiously poked a bare finger against its leathery surface, and it gave way at her touch. Her nose wrinkled. “Ew… Feels supple.”

I hesitated to ask why that might be. Was there some kind of rare bird species inhabiting this area that could have shed such a thing? If there was, I sure didn’t want to come face to face with it. Now that the thing was out of the water and I was looking closer, I could make out the reason the tip looked so sharp—there was a gnarly hook attached to it… It looked predatory.

Our gazes slowly raised, in unison, to the treetops above the creek, as if expecting to suddenly spot the owner of the wing perched among the branches and glaring down at us with red demon eyes.

Lauren gulped. “I, uh, think Mr. and Mrs. Churnley should see this.”

“I agree,” Angie said, her voice slightly hoarse. “If there is some kind of weird animal living around here, they ought to know.”

Our eyes returned to the wing, and silence reigned once again. Judging by my friends’ expressions, it wasn’t just me who found the idea of lugging this back with us through the woods, bringing it back home, creepy.

I cleared my throat, realizing we had wasted too much time already. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but the atmosphere suddenly seemed a lot darker than it had only a few minutes ago.

“Let’s get going,” I mumbled.

I slipped on my shorts and top over my dry-ish swimwear, and we hurried to pack up our things—Angie and Lauren not bothering to waste time drying off, just wrapping a towel around themselves. That left my towel and two of the other spare ones we’d brought with us to use in carrying the wing. We wrapped them around our hands to prevent direct contact. Angie lifted our bag over one shoulder, taking her turn to carry it, and we gingerly grabbed hold of the wing and started to tug it away from the creek.

I knew I was stupid for getting spooked over this—there was probably some perfectly rational explanation for what the wing was—but somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes watching us as we trekked our way back home.

Chapter 3

“What on earth?” Mrs. Churnley gasped.

We reached the house just as the last slivers of light were disappearing from the sky. Panting and sweating, we lugged the wing into the center of the kitchen/dining room and dropped it on the wooden floor. My hands were aching from having clutched the thing for so long; extra strain had been applied from squeezing tightly to keep the towel in place.

“Yeah… We really don’t know,” Angie said, wiping her brow with a towel.

Mr. and Mrs. Churnley rose from the table where they’d been sipping iced tea and hovered over the wing, their faces set in utter confusion.

“Any clue what it is?” I prompted.

“It looks like a giant bat wing!” Mr. Churnley exclaimed, voicing my initial impression of it, his eyes bugging with awe.

“Where did you get it?” Mrs. Churnley demanded, bending down and slowly reaching out to touch it.

“Lauren, uh, excavated it from the bottom of the creek,” Angie replied, the shadow of a smirk on her lips.

“My, my, my,” Mrs. Churnley blustered. “I have absolutely no idea what it could be, or why it would be sitting at the bottom of the water. It definitely does look like a wing, though.”

“I’ll go visit Mr. Doherty tomorrow,” Mr. Churnley said, making his way back to his seat, his eyes remaining glued to the specimen. “Bring him here to take a look at it.”

“Good idea, cupcake,” Mrs. Churnley said. “Maybe he’ll have a better idea. In the meantime, girls, maybe stay away from the creek?”

Lauren let out a dry laugh. “I do think so, ma’am.”

We eyed the wing a few tense moments longer, before Angie made for the staircase. “Not sure about you, Lauren and Riley, but I’m pretty exhausted after all the fresh air and surprises we’ve had today.”

Lauren and I nodded, saying goodnight to the old couple before following Angie to the staircase. Once in our bedroom, we collapsed in our beds. I was exhausted after the day’s events, and all the physical activity I wasn’t used to, but at the same time, the last thing my mind felt like doing was shutting down. It was still downstairs, stuck in that kitchen, mulling over what the heck the strange wing belonged to.

“I wish we had internet right now,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. I lay on my back, facing the shabby ceiling.

“Yeah. Could’ve Googled… “giant bats of Texas”, or something…” Lauren mumbled, trailing off. I could hear the fatigue in her voice. Unlike me, she did sound ready to drop off. I guessed that cool water had really gone to her head.

Angie, taking the hint, switched off the light, and we lapsed into silence, listening to the distant murmuring of the Churnleys’ conversation downstairs, then the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. They were probably moving the wing to one corner of the room, where it would wait for us till morning… Then came the creaking of stairs, the Churnleys retiring to bed.

Lauren’s first snore of the night filled my ears, followed shortly by Angie’s, and I turned over on my mattress to face the open window, to which I was closest. The moon’s rays filtered through the thin curtains, casting pale light upon my face, and a gentle breeze caressed my skin.

I closed my eyes, hoping to begin coaxing myself to sleep, and slowly, my thoughts pulled away from the externals—from the weird wing, the creaky old farmhouse, and this crazy vacation I found myself on with my two best friends—and withdraw deeper into my subconscious, and the thoughts that I had locked away there, waiting for me just beneath the surface.

It wasn’t a surprise that my parents were the first among those thoughts. Their faces, drained, and looking… so much older than the day I’d left home. It was a memory of the last time I’d seen them face to face—a little over a month ago, before my eighteenth birthday, when they’d appeared illegally outside my school, claiming that they just wanted to see me. That they’d brought me a gift. Jean had already arrived to pick me up, so I hadn’t stood there behind those school gates, facing them, for long. But it was long enough to receive their little brown parcel in my two shaking hands, and the sight of them remained burned in my brain as if it were yesterday.

You should see them, a small part of me whispered, as it often did when the lights were out and the night was still. They’re your parents, and they won’t be around forever, especially given their lifestyle. If you deny them even a simple meeting after all these years, and something happens… you’ll live with that for the rest of your life.

My parents had conceived me late in life, and I was a shock to them as much as I was to the doctors, when my mother checked into the hospital with a stomach complaint. My parents would both be sixty-one next year and were already riddled with various medical issues.

It was nights like this when I felt like a terrible person. I hadn’t even opened the gift they’d come all the way to my school specially to give me. It still sat under my bed at home, where I’d shoved it to try to forget about it… because I feared what it would hold.

Because I knew what it would hold.

Its contents were the same as the last little brown parcel they’d sent me, six months prior. I’d rattled it to check; it sounded like photographs. Opening the previous set had left me a trembling mess. There had been almost twenty of them, snapshots of a little blue-eyed girl, ranging from two to five years old, a toothy grin always plastered across her face—often eating ice cream or some other treat—and enveloped in the protective arms of her parents.

It was as if they thought sending me these photographs could rewrite history. Erase the childhood they had given me—everything that had happened in between the moments when a smile crossed my face for the camera—and replace it with the one they were presenting… and make me feel guilt. Make me seem like the monster.

The worst part was that it had worked. I hadn’t been able to sleep that night, and barely functioned the next day at school. I’d suddenly found myself battling with doubt. I hadn’t even remembered them taking photos of me as a kid, and I’d been nine when I left home. So very young. Could I have been exaggerating things, in my immature little mind? Could there have been another side to things that I just couldn’t see? They were my parents, after all. Surely they loved me? Why would they have bothered to take pictures of me if they didn’t care?

Thankfully, Jean had been there for me when I returned home from school that day. It had been a difficult conversation for her to have with me for sure, because on the one hand she didn’t want to demonize my parents, but on the other, she cared deeply for me, and she didn’t want me suffering further because of a toxic relationship. In the end, she had simply stated facts: the police had found them guilty of physical, alcohol-fueled abuse and consistent neglect of a minor. They had gone to jail for it.

After she’d calmed me down, I had been able to remember why I was staying away from them, remember that it wasn’t out of hate or vengeance, like they might have me believe. I wasn’t doing it because of them, but for me. It would be a lie to say I didn’t resent them at all, but that had faded, like a scar fades with time. I was keeping my distance because I was carving out a new life for myself. By genetics and upbringing, I was fated to follow the same path as them—just like so many young adults with dysfunctional childhoods who fell by the wayside later in life. But, by God, I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. I wasn’t going to be the repeat of an old song; I was going to be the damn definition of avant-garde.

That’s why I avoided talking about my past life with my friends—even Lauren and Angie. I never told them that doubts still haunted me from time to time. Because they were my future. The people I had chosen to let mold me, with their happy childhoods and bright futures. They were part of a painting I was creating, stroke by painstaking stroke, of a beautiful spring morning, and I didn’t want any black ink seeping into it.

I wasn’t sure the niggling doubts would ever fully go away. Maybe one day I’d actually feel ready to face my birth parents again, but I couldn’t pressure myself—or allow them to pressure me. They’d made their choices, and I’d been forced to make mine.

A sudden grating noise broke through my thoughts. It sounded like the gate bordering the yard outside. My first thought was that it must be one of the Churnleys, but why would they be leaving the house’s compound at this time of night? And I hadn’t heard any creaking stairs either. My eyes shot open, and I turned to look over at Angie and Lauren. They were both still sound asleep.

I slipped out of bed and crept closer to the window, looking out in time to see a tall, dark masculine silhouette moving with alarming speed toward the house.

The next thing I knew, there was a loud bang downstairs, and the dogs erupted into barking. Lauren and Angie woke with a start, eyes wide and gazing around.

“Wh-What was that?” Angie murmured.

I was already halfway across the room. “Shh! Stay there!” I hissed.

My brain was in a haze of panic, and all I knew was that my instincts were telling me to keep quiet. If this person was a burglar, then we should just let him come in and take what he wanted, rather than try to fight him off. There was literally nothing to take anyway—which made the situation even more bewildering. Who would break into an old shack like this? Whatever the answer, for all we knew he was armed.

The Churnleys’ door opened as I reached the landing, and Mr. Churnley stepped out wearing nothing but a long nightshirt and underwear, his eyes bleary.

“Which one of you—?” he began, but I quickly held a finger to my lips, cutting him off.

“What’s going on?” Mrs. Churnley emerged wearing a cotton nightie, her hair in curlers.

“Someone broke in,” I breathed. “We need to stay quiet.”

“Riley?” Angie whispered from behind me. She and Lauren were standing in our doorway, looking pale and utterly terrified.

“J-Just stay where you are,” I repeated, barely daring to breathe as I inched toward the staircase, a shaken Mr. Churnley following me.

“What the devil,” he cursed beneath his breath. “My guns are downstairs.”

I prayed none of the floorboards creaked too loudly beneath my feet as I lowered myself and craned my neck to look down in between the banisters, trying to catch a glimpse of what the intruder was doing.

From my mostly obscured view of the kitchen, I caught a blur of black sweeping past the edge of the dining table—heard rapid footsteps pounding across the floorboards, and then, to my confusion… head outside. The gate groaned seconds later.

My heart was in my throat, and I stayed frozen in my position for several moments, wondering what on earth had just happened. Had I heard what I thought I’d heard? Had the intruder seriously already left? It remained quiet downstairs—save for the barking of the dogs—so I could only conclude he had.

“I think he’s gone,” I managed, my voice raspy as I rose to my feet. My knees felt shaky from the shock and the adrenaline still coursing through me, so I kept gripping the banister for support.

“Maybe he heard us wake up,” Lauren said, her voice uneven.

Swallowing hard, I proceeded down the staircase, and the others followed. Arriving in the kitchen/dining area, we analyzed the room, looking for signs of disruption and anything that might be missing.

Nothing looked immediately out of place. The chairs were still drawn neatly around the table; all the kitchen cupboards and drawers were closed. He’d been down here for barely a minute, and clearly hadn’t had time for any rummaging around.

Then what had he been—

“He took the wing!” Mrs. Churnley suddenly exclaimed.

Everyone stilled, scanning each corner of the room.

Indeed. The wing was gone.

Continue reading Hotbloods on November 26, 2017.

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