glanced toward the truck. The headlights beamed over her bedraggled condition. Long, dark, tangled hair and palest skin. She clutched her dirtied hands against her chest as if to hold on to the thin black fabric that barely covered her limbs from breasts to above her knees. Her legs were dirty and her feet almost black.
She couldn’t be a resident from the area. Out for a midnight walk looking like that? Or had she been attacked? Savin hadn’t passed any cars in the area, which ruled out a date-gone-bad scenario. That left one other possibility. She had come from Daemonia. Maybe? Corporeal demons could wear a human sheen, making them virtually undetectable to the common man.
But not to Savin’s demon radar.
Shifting into Park, Savin spoke a protective spell that would cover him from head to toe. He was no witch, but any human could invoke protection with the proper mind-set. The demon within him shivered but did not protest, thanks to the morphine. He shoved open the door and jumped out. His boots crushed the gravel as he stalked around to the other side of the hood.
“Where in hell did you come from?” he called. Daemonia wasn’t hell, but it was damned close.
The woman’s body trembled. Her dark eyes searched his. They were not red. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She looked as though she’d been attacked or ravaged. But demons were tricky and knew how to put on a convincing act of humanity. And yet Savin didn’t sense any demonic vibes from her. He could pick a demon out from a crowd milling in the Louvre at fifty paces. Even the ones who had cloaked themselves with a sheen.
He stepped forward. The woman cringed. Savin put up his hands in placation. With the sigils on his forearms exposed, he advertised what he was to her. Just in case she was demon. She didn’t flee. Nor did she hiss or spew vile threats at him.
Now Savin wondered if she had been hurt. And perhaps it had nothing to do with what had just gone down in the lavender field. Had she been assaulted and fled, or had some asshole abandoned her far from the city?
“It’s okay,” he said firmly. “I’m not going to hurt you. My name’s Savin Thorne. Do you need help?”
“S-Savin?” The woman’s mouth quivered. She dropped her hands to her sides. “Is it... Is it really you?”
He narrowed his gaze on her. She...knew him?
“Savin?” She began to bawl and dropped to her knees. “Savin, it’s me. Jett.”
Savin swallowed roughly. His heart plunged to his gut. By all the dark and demonic gods, this was not possible.
Twenty years earlier
Savin grabbed Jett’s hand and together they raced across the field behind their parents’ houses. The lavender grew high and wild, sweetening the air. Butterflies dotted the flower tops with spots of orange and blue.
Jett’s laughter suddenly abbreviated. She stopped, gripping her gut as she bent over.
“Wait!” she called as Savin ran ahead. “I’m getting a bellyache. Mamma’s cherry pie is sitting right here.” She slapped a hand to her stomach. “I shouldn’t have eaten that third piece!”
Savin laughed and walked backward toward the edge of the field where the forest began. The dark, creepy forest that they always teased each other to venture into alone. Neither had done it. Yet.
Today he’d challenged her to creep up to the edge and touch the foreboding black tree that grew bent like a crippled man and thrust out its branches as if they were wicked fingers. If she did, he’d give her his Asterix comic collection. Fortunately, he knew she wouldn’t do it. Jett was a chicken. And he teased her now by chanting just that.
“I am not!” she announced as she approached him, still clutching her gut. Her long black hair hid what he guessed was a barely contained smile.
“You can’t use that excuse to get out of it this time.” Savin planted his walking stick in the ground near his sneaker. The stick was one he’d found in the spring and had been whittling at for a month. He’d tried to carve a dragon on the top of it, but it looked more like a snake. “Girls are always chicken!”
“Am not.” Jett stepped out of the lavender field and stopped beside him to stare into the forest that loomed thirty paces away.
The trees were close and the trunks looked black from this distance. Savin nudged Jett’s arm and she jumped away from him and stuck out her tongue.
“I don’t need your comic books,” she said. “Anyway, I’ll get them all when we get married someday.”
Jett was the one to always remind him that they’d get married. Someday. When they were grown-up and didn’t care about things like comic books and creepy forests. Which was fine with Savin. Except he thought maybe he should kiss her before that happened. And actually love her. Jett was a girl with whom he raced home from school, ran through the fields and played video games. They spent every day with each other. But love? Right now that sounded as creepy as the forest.
“Whatever.” He stubbed the toe of his sneaker against the walking stick.
“Why don’t you go in there?” she cooed in that cotton-candy voice she always used when she wanted him to do something.
It made Savin’s ears burn and his heart feel like bug wings were fluttering inside.
“Maybe I will.” He took a step forward and planted the stick again.
Looking over the forest, he thought for a moment he saw the air waver before him. Did something flash silver? Of course, a haunted forest might be like that. He didn’t dare say “maybe not.” So he took another step, and then another.
And he heard Jett’s gasp behind him. “Savin, wait—”
He turned to see Jett’s brown eyes widen. She pointed over his shoulder. When he swung around to face the forest, Savin didn’t have time to scream.
Sucked forward through the air, arms flailing and legs stretched out behind him, he dropped the walking stick. Cold, icy air entered his lungs, swallowing his scream. Yet beside him he heard Jett’s scream like the worst nightmare. The world turned blacker than the cellar without the lights on. And the strange smell of rotting eggs made him gag.
Of a sudden his body dropped, seeming to fall endlessly. Until he landed on his back with a crunch of bones and a cry of pain.
He lay there, silenced by the strangeness of what had happened. Had a tornado swept him off his feet and into the depths of the dark forest? Had the sky opened like a crack in the wall and sucked him inside? What was he lying on? It felt...squishy and thick, and it smelled like the worst garbage.
“Savin?”
Jett was with him. He sat up, looking about. The landscape was brown and gray, and a deep streak of red painted what must be the black sky. His fingers curled into the mud he lay on, and he felt things inside it squirm.
“Jett?”
“Over here. Wh-what happened? What is that!”
An
