The four of them waited for the eclipse and, they all silently knew, for the others. As the afternoon turned into evening and the shadows drew closer to them, they all drew a bit closer to one another as well.

Soon, they were sitting in a circle and Thea figured that putting a fire in the middle of that circle was as good a plan as any. She cleared the brush away, found enough stones in the field to make a suitable fire circle, gathered kindling and bark and a few mid-sized branches, and made a fire.

She didn’t ask for help, Jack noticed. And he didn’t think it was a statement of some kind or another. He thought that she didn’t need help, so she didn’t ask for it and that was that.

“Impressive,” this guy Jean Luc said to Thea after she’d dusted her hands off and came back to sit next to her pack, her feet pointing toward the cheerily dancing fire she’d just built. Jack wasn’t quite sure what to make of the guy, but doing what he did for so many years, Jack had developed a bit of a nose for the character of a man. And this guy, Jean Luc? He didn’t seem particularly dangerous to anybody sitting around this fire except for himself. Jack had the distinct impression that the man sitting across the fire from him was in a world of hurt.

The fire danced over all their faces and made it feel later than it already was. Truth was, it wasn’t much past 8 p.m., and it being the summer, the sunset was still in full force. There was still more red to the air than blue. Jack watched the light play over the face of both of the gorgeous women sitting on either side of him, but it was Thea’s face he kept going back to. She had this strange mix of delicate and strong beauty. Like the Eiffel Tower lit up at night, he decided. Intricate and elegant and well designed. But also built to last.

“Did that hurt?” Jean Luc asked Celia across the fire.

“Huh?” she responded. Brilliant response, Celia. She closed her mouth. It was the first thing he’d said directly to her and for some reason, the simple question, the one that she’d been asked hundreds of times, sent all the blood arrowing out of her head. God, this was embarrassing. She was a grown woman. And though she’d always thought he’d been cute when her brothers had watched him on football Sundays, she’d never been a swooner. Or a daydreamer. She’d never dreamed of meeting him or kissing him or… Yikes! Red alert. Whose body was this? She was hot and fidgety and come on, Celia! Get it together! He was just a person! Another human being. There was no reason to be this… butterflyish.

Jean Luc tapped his nose and then pointed at hers, to indicate her piercing.

“Oh, my septum piercing? No.” She almost winced at how final and unfriendly she sounded. Not as bad as my tattoos. It hurt, but not as much as you’d think. Not if your piercer is good at what she does. Yeah, but that’s sort of part of it. Come on! There were a hundred things she could say that would have kept the conversation going. But instead she’d lobbed a ‘no’ at him and the conversation came to a screeching, silent halt again.

Celia opened her mouth to ask him a question back, any question, just something to get the conversation going, show she wasn’t a complete asshole, when something caught her eye in the forest behind Jean Luc’s head. She rose to her feet, squinting, and realized that Jack had risen, too. He was already ten feet away from the fire, peering into the woods.

“Incoming,” Jack called over his shoulder.

Thea stood and walked to his side. Celia wondered if she should do the same, but noticed that Jean Luc was remaining still, by the fire. She slowly sat back down, her eyes trained on the movement through the leaves. Could that be…? No.

There was no way there was a horse picking its way through the brush toward them.

***

 

Caroline Clifton oscillated between wild joy and a sort of chagrined caution. It had been years since she’d ridden a horse, but it had come back to her like riding a… bike. She felt a rising, almost boundless joy leaping forth from her as she and her horse slowly picked a path through the forest. She was thankful that for most of the way, there’d been a fairly reliable horse path. And for the last thousand feet or so, Caroline dismounted and carefully led Rook, her rent-a-horse, through the dimming twilight.

To be alone and in the woods and alongside the animal—oh, God! What a thrill! What unexpected and brand new feelings. Even the low level fear she felt was exhilarating. This was life, this was really… oh.

She stepped forward at the edge of the clearing and saw them. The people. And the fire.

Well, they could definitely see her, too. There was no turning back now. Caroline took a deep breath and stepped forward.

Her horse whinnied and pulled hard at the line in her hands at a sound that Caroline herself was just registering. There was a crashing through the woods and the sound of an engine, a diesel engine?

“No!” Caroline shouted, before she remembered to keep her voice low and calm for Rook, who was stamping and snorting. Trying to back up and away.

There was suddenly a woman standing next to Caroline. Stunningly beautiful and pale. Her dark hair was a smudge against the glowing blue of the evening sky. Caroline could hear the lulling, dulcet tones of the woman’s soothing words to the horse and soon Rook stopped tugging in fear.

But the noise of the engine crashing through the woods grew louder and soon Caroline saw a brilliant, blinding light through the trees. Unnaturally bright, she shielded her eyes. When she looked up again, it was at the same time the engine suddenly cut off, leaving a strange, echoing silence in its wake. And there, at the other edge of the clearing, sat a man atop a four-wheeler, a pack on his back.

He clicked off the headlights of his four-wheeler and hopped off. His movements were fluid yet somehow clumsy at the same time.

“Uhhhh,” the man cleared his throat. Caroline thought that his hair was red, though it was hard to tell in the dark. “Wasn’t exactly expecting this to be a team sport.”

“I was thinking the same exact thing!” Caroline called across the clearing to him. The people in the middle of the clearing, three of them, and the woman at Caroline’s side, seemed to be looking back and forth between the two newcomers. Caroline wasn’t bothered at all by the idea of meeting new people. She knew, somehow just knew, that they were all meant to be there together. Adventure! She thrilled at the idea. “Anyone care to explain?”

But the words were barely out of her mouth before one of the people around the fire, a woman, stood up and gasped. “Look!”

She pointed directly into the sky. There, half risen, was the moon, already a quarter dyed in burgundy shadow.

The miracle of it, the raw natural spectacular sight, had all of them moving closer to one another subconsciously. Caroline didn’t know these people from Adam. But she knew, she just knew, that this wasn’t the kind of thing you watched alone, on the outskirts.

The six of them moved to the middle of the clearing, clumping together, Rook the horse standing just outside the group.

“Wow,” someone whispered, watching the shadow kiss across the moon even further.

“You said it,” someone else said.

All of their heads were tilted backwards, their shoulders brushing one another, which was perhaps why none of them noticed the seventh person step into the clearing.

“I didn’t miss it, did I?” the man called, his hair and eyes so dark, they seemed to simply absorb the shadows around him.

All of them snapped to face him and Thea and Jack found themselves in front of the group. Thea’s jackknife was gripped hard in her hand again. She waited for that feeling that had come over her when she’d met the others, an easiness, a rightness, an exhaled okay. But it didn’t come. She watched the man take a few more steps toward them, halving the clearing.

He was handsome. She could see that clear as day. Unusually, devastatingly handsome. He wore all black, to match his hair and eyes, his jaw was square, his nose, no particular shape. But his mouth? His mouth was cruel and sexual all at the same time. Thea took a revolted step back from this man, as if she were in danger of getting sucked into a black hole.

“I take it that you’re our seventh map holder,” Jack called in that easy drawl of his. But Thea could hear, clear as day, that it wasn’t with the same welcome as he’d called to the others. She thought that if Jack were a wolf, the hairs along his spine would have been raised.

“You could say that,” the man said in a friendly voice that made Thea’s skin crawl. He looked up, over their heads at the moon. “You ever seen anything like that?”

None of them were looking at the eclipse anymore. All six faces were turned toward the new man.

“Who are you?” Thea called. She had the strangest urge to turn and wrap her arms around all the people behind her. They were strangers, really, but not as strange as this other man. She wanted to turn her back on him. Protect the others.

“You said it yourself,” he called back. “I’m the seventh member of your group.”

He’d stopped walking, though, was at least twenty paces from the group. The trees on either side of the clearing seemed to lean in, the light reflecting off the moon at an all-time low, thanks to the eclipse.

Thea could feel the wind off the lake, a mile down shore, like foggy breath on cool glass. She was clammy and chilled. Where had this freezing humidity come from? The night had been dry and warm enough just minutes ago. It was crazy, she knew, but she couldn’t help but feel as if this man had brought this weather in with him.

“You wouldn’t mind, then,” said Jean Luc, stepping up alongside Jack, “showing us the map that brought you here, same as everyone else did.” He left out the fact that the woman on the horse and the redheaded man on the four-wheeler hadn’t presented their maps yet either. But those two didn’t send ice skittering down his spine, so he figured they could pass.

“Sure,” the dark-haired man said, his eyes still trained on the moon. He seemed, by all accounts, to be waiting for something, counting down almost. The man’s hands twitched at his sides as he stared at the shadow pulling over the moon.

Jean Luc glanced up and realized that the eclipse was almost total. He knew, suddenly, gut-deep that the second the shadow pulled all the way across the moon, something bad was going to happen.

The dark man, a strange smile on his lips, took a casual step toward the group, slipping his hands into his pockets and focusing, instead of on the eclipse, on the group of people.

“You all came here looking for that elusive thing that you seek, no?” he said. None of them could have said why, exactly, but it seemed as if there were an unfinished half of that sentence, something that hung in the air. And so have I. But whatever it was that this dark-haired man sought was very different than what they all did. There was something inherently sinister in his words, a promise, almost, of pain? Fear? Suffering?

“Why so somber?” he asked the group, stepping forward, those hands in his pockets, his white teeth flashing. “Isn’t this the culmination of an adventure for each of you? So much waiting? Seven, seven, seven and now you get your heart’s desire? This should be a party!”

He threw up those hands and smiled again and the group of six collectively flinched. Jean Luc found himself standing in front of the little silver-haired punk rocker with the nose ring, blocking her from this creep-o.

“Actually,” said the dark-haired man, leering up at the moon, a sick smile on his face. “Now it’s a party.”

The shadow had pulled entirely across the moon, painting it a deep, lovesick maroon. There was only the light from the stars in the clearing now.

The dark-haired man took two running steps toward the group and ripped his hands out from his chest, as if he were casting some part of himself out toward them.

“Arturo!”

It was a blood-curdling, monstrous roar that came from the trees to their left. A woman was standing there, her hair somewhere between yellow and copper, her eyes flashing with rage. She wore tight clothes and the flash of metal from the weapons she had strapped to her legs and waist, a dagger at each wrist.

The dark-haired man whipped around to face her and if anyone had been watching his face, they would have seen the first human emotion flash across it as he observed who had called his name: joy. But it was gone, almost immediately, dissolved back into deception and hatred. He was still painfully handsome, but in a horrifying, almost godlike way.

The group of six retreated even further. The woman at the trees didn’t retreat. No, she sprinted forward, a machete in her hand and vicious focus lining her face.

The group watched as the dark-haired man lifted his hand and threw at the woman what looked like a wall of blue light. She dodged it gracefully, with a backflip and a roll.

The more rational in the group wondered for a moment what it could have been. A high beam from a flash light, perhaps? But no, it became very clear, very quickly that this was not an earthly light. This was something else.

He did it again, this time with a little more focus and the woman dodged and rolled. But the group felt the heat off the light, they could almost taste its bright flavor on the air. They knew that this dark man, this creature, was creating the light from within himself. He was trying to destroy the woman with it.

Jean Luc, Jack, and the redheaded man all found themselves stepping forward as the warrior woman once again charged the dark-haired man. She got close this time, within slicing distance before he blasted the energy at her again. This time, she didn’t dodge. Instead, off her back, she dislodged what looked like a thoroughly flambéed shield of sorts, that they hadn’t seen before. She crouched behind it and the energy ricocheted right off. Like firehose water off a brick wall.

She screamed, and though it was really a gut-deep, I’m kicking ass sort of scream, the other three men rushed forward, a wall of bared teeth and rage, at the dark-haired man.

He immediately turned his attention from the warrior woman to the three men charging him. Honestly, if his feral, tooth-baring grin was any indication, he’d been expecting this very thing to happen.

He lifted his hands and shot the energy directly into the three men’s hearts. Jack, Jean Luc, and the redheaded man all hit the dirt, curled in on themselves like children. The energy just kept coming and kept coming from his palms.

The men on the ground thought that, finally, they’d have the answer to a question they’d all privately wondered at. This was what death felt like. As if their souls were being messily scooped from their chests.

That blue energy went and went and went until, with a sickening shink! the warrior woman buried a knife straight in the dark-haired man’s gut.

He howled in what was equal parts frustration and pain. He’d so wanted to succeed at this task. He’d so wanted it all to be over. He so wanted to bring one of those foolhardy men back to the nowhere place. Where he could finally, finally, finally…

But it was not to be. The woman, the warrior who he knew well, had ruined everything again, landing that blade in his gut. He slicked it out of himself and couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that his blood was still red. After all the twisted, horrifying versions of himself that existed, his blood was still red. How could it be?

He knew, that for tonight at least, he was beaten. He folded his arms closed, as if he were giving himself a hug, and he was gone, into the shadows, every molecule of himself just disappeared. Of the night and into the night. Gone.

 

***

 

“What the fudge was that?” Celia screamed, ripping her hands through her hair and making it stand on end.

But she realized she was standing alone. Everyone else had rushed forward to the three men on the ground, now lying in varying states of pain and consciousness. Caroline was kneeling next to the redheaded one, Thea next to Jack, and this new bad-ass fighter lady was next to Jean Luc. Celia hovered at the edge of the group; she had no idea what to do or who to do it to. All the reading she’d done to prepare for this, all the theoretical knowledge she’d stored up, and here she was, once more, extraneous and useless.

“We need to get them to some kind of shelter immediately.” That was the fighter woman who said that.

“Do you know what that was?” Thea asked. “What happened to them?”

“Yes,” the woman answered grimly. “And I’m not exaggerating. If we can’t get these men into warm water in the next hour, they may die.” She looked around at the women. “I’m not familiar with the area. Can any of you think of a place where we can go?”

“I can!” Celia spoke up, maybe a bit too loud, but with tremendous, full-bodied relief that she had something to offer. A way to help. “I’ve been staying at my family’s summer house a few miles away. We can go there. There’s enough space.”

She didn’t bother to mention that though it was clean, it was pretty shabby and dated. She didn’t think that particularly mattered at the moment.

“Good,” the woman nodded. “Let’s get two of them on the four-wheeler and the third on the horse.”

The four women hefted the men one by one, leaving Thea, the most experienced rider, to ride the horse with the redheaded man on the back. The warrior woman drove the four-wheeler with Jack and Jean Luc strapped on behind her. Celia gave specific directions as to how to get to the cabin.

Celia and the other newcomer woman with the girlish, bright energy who’d originally rode the horse, jogged through the woods until they found the warrior woman’s Jeep, which she’d parked just a quarter of a mile away.

The plan was for the two in the car to get to the cabin first and to get the bathtubs ready. Celia slid into the driver’s seat, her hands shaking, and gunned the Jeep onto an old, one-lane dirt road that she was pretty sure only the parks service was allowed to drive on.

“Your family’s cabin has three bathtubs? I’m Caroline, by the way.”

“Celia. I’m one of eleven kids. The lake house is big.” She didn’t say that there were actually six bathtubs in the place and it was actually kind of an old mansion, not really a ‘cabin’ or a ‘lake house’.

They bumped along the backroads, using the GPS on Celia’s phone, until three or four minutes later they pulled out onto an old state road that Celia recognized. She gunned it, the back tires slicking and sliding across the pavement as she sped toward the cabin. She had one job to do and she was sure as hell gonna do it.

“Good thing you know the area so well,” Caroline chirped from the passenger seat, sounding and looking flustered and nervous.

“Yeah.” Good thing. Although, strangely, Celia was starting to wonder if that was a coincidence.

***

 

Thea was pretty sure that the skinny guy draped over the horse’s rump was breathing. He looked like he was. She didn’t want to bring the horse into anything over a trot considering the guy was just balancing back there and it was night and she was picking her way through an unfamiliar forest with nothing to guide her but the taillights of the four-wheeler up ahead.

How the hell had she gotten here again?

Oh. And also… what the hell had just happened? Thea was pretty sure she’d just been tossed into a parallel universe where magic existed. Where pretty creeps could shoot lasers out of their hands when the shadow pulled over the moon.

God.

This was really, really different from her normal life. Unbidden, she got a deep, aching loneliness for her homestead. For the white-washed siding and that unexplained cedar smell of her living room.

“What the hell did you get me into, Chet?” she grumbled. If he was on any plane of existence that could hear her, he would have chuckled at the malice in her tone. She and he had been two of a kind. They hadn’t often fought, but when they did, it was a battle royale.

The redheaded man on the back of the horse groaned and when he shifted, Thea put a hand back to steady him.

“Try not to move,” she commanded. “We’re almost there.”             

That last part she was guessing at, but seeing as it had been forty minutes of the prescribed hour, she could only hope that they were close to this cabin.

Indeed, it was only three or so more minutes before there were lights through the trees up ahead. When Rook, the good, steady horse, broke through the tree line, it was onto an overgrown lawn that rolled down toward a large, clear lake that was definitely too small to be a Great Lake. So, they’d gone further inland.

The house was gigantic, actually—four stories at least, and if she wasn’t mistaken, leaning to one side. Vines crept up the sides and it looked as if every light in the house was burning.

Thea ached to know exactly where they were, exactly what had just happened, exactly what she should do next. But, of course, life didn’t work that way and all she could do was the most logical thing. Which was to hop off the horse, tie him to the back porch rail, and heft the redheaded man onto her shoulders.

She had to stoop to deal with the burden of his weight, but she’d carried heavier, more cumbersome things in her life on the farm and she could definitely get him inside.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the two women whom she didn’t yet know dragging Jean Luc off the four-wheeler. He looked to be heavier than they could handle, but one thing at a time.

Celia appeared on the porch, flinging open the sliding door. “Follow the sound of the running water.”

Thea ducked her head once to show she understood and was off, into the house.

If she’d had a moment to look around, she would have seen that it was a very strange house. A labyrinth of sectioned rooms and doors that opened into closets and bathrooms and pantries. It was as if someone had built four floors of open space and then added a door or wall as they went along, however they saw fit.

Thea followed directions and came to the first room where she heard water running. It was a great, clawfoot tub. Thinking of Jean Luc and his weight, she instead went to the next room where the water was running with the man on her back. Another clawfoot tub that was near to running over. She set the unconscious man on the floor as carefully as she could and turned off the water, racing out back into the night.

She gladly took up Jean Luc’s right arm, the only limb that wasn’t currently being gripped by a woman attempting to lift him up onto the porch. Thea’s strength put them over the threshold and they successfully got him into the house and to the front bathroom.

“Get his clothes off and get him in the tub!” the warrior woman yelled.

Celia and Caroline fell beside him and started yanking at his shirt and shoes simultaneously.

Thea and the woman ran back out into the night for Jack. He was heavier than he looked and lanky to boot. He was somehow harder than the other two to get into the house. His elbows and long feet seemed to catch on every doorway.

“Hurry!” Thea couldn’t stop herself from yelling. They were around minute 55 of their hour limit and she didn’t want to waste time asking what the hell happened if they surpassed it.

They dumped Jack in the third bathroom, another clawfoot tub that was almost running over.

“Help us!” a voice shouted from down the hall and they all ran back into the first bathroom where a humongously magnificent Jean Luc lay completely naked on the dingy tile floor. Celia was at his feet, bright red and huffing, and the other woman had him by the arms.

In almost perfect unison, Thea and the warrior woman knelt down and hoisted Jean Luc around the middle. The four of them managed to plunk him in the tub; water poured out the sides and flooded the floor immediately. All but his too-long legs were submerged in the tub and he came up, wild-eyed and gasping.

“What? What! I—”

“No time!” Caroline shouted over her shoulder and the four women were out and into the next bathroom.

They made quick work of the redhead’s clothes, a blue T-shirt with some sort of animated character on it and ripped black jeans. Luckily, he wore no underwear under the jeans. Caroline tossed off his glasses. He was much easier to lift. The tattoos all across his arms and chest and shoulders went technicolor under the water. Just like Jean Luc, he came up, fully awake, gasping and sputtering, his orange hair a shade darker as it dripped with water.

“Only one more minute!” screamed Caroline as the four women peeled into the final bathroom.

Jack, different from the others, was dimly awake as they all piled in around him, tearing at his soft blue shirt and worn jeans. His shoes went and his socks and Thea was the one who stripped the blue briefs from him.

She knew, inherently, that she was witnessing something in his muscular, wiry, golden nakedness that she would think about later. But now, there was only getting this man into the tub behind him.

He went in with his baseball cap still on and stayed under longer than the others. When he came up through the clear, steaming bathwater, his eyes were blurry, but clearing quickly. His mouth quirked into a smile that Thea was already starting to know pretty well.

Jack took one large paw and slicked the water off his face. He shook the wet from his hair and tossed his cap onto the bathroom floor.

“Well,” he said to the four women who now sagged in varying stages of fatigue around his bathtub. “I must have done something right in a former life.”