Jade Verdance's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Jade Verdance came to Brackenmire to find out why the horses were rotting. Now one of them wanted to eat her. It burst from the tree line at a gallop, jaw hanging loose, black foam ropes swinging from its teeth. Its ribs showed through peeling gray hide. Where its eyes should be, two wet sockets leaked something dark. Jade froze on the open path. She had a notebook and a phone. She had no fence, no gate, no weapon. She knew horses. She wore their faces on every shirt she owned and had ridden since she was six. This one moved wrong. It slammed a hoof down and screamed, and the sound was not a horse sound. Jade backed away slow. Her green curls stuck to her sweat. The horse tracked her by the noise of her boots. Her dog moved first. The German shepherd planted himself between Jade and the horse, low and stiff, service vest bright against the mud. He barked once, sharp. The horse swung its ruined head toward the sound. That bought her a second. Jade grabbed the shepherd's harness handle. "With me," she said. She ran. A purple mansion rose ahead through the trees. Its walls shone violet, its roof scaled like a cat's eye, its front doors tall and arched. Jade did not care who owned it. She cared that it had walls. Her boots hit gravel. Behind her the hooves hit faster. She needed the horse to look away, just once. Near the doors stood a lawn figure of a man, dark and stiff, soot scattered black across the ground at his feet. Jade tore the figure loose and hurled it sideways. It crashed into a hedge. The horse whipped toward the crash and charged the noise instead of her. Jade hit the doors with her shoulder. They gave. She and the dog spilled into a bright hall. A purple pool glittered across the floor. She kicked the doors shut and dropped the latch. The horse struck the other side. Wood cracked but held. It struck again. Then it stopped. Jade slid down the door to the floor. The shepherd pressed against her, panting. Her hands would not stop shaking. She had known Brackenmire's horses were sick. She had not known the sickness could hunt. Through a tall window she watched the horse stagger in a circle on the lawn. Its head dropped. Its legs folded. It lay in the grass and did not move. Something dark spread out from under it into the soil. Jade pressed her face to the glass. Where the black seep touched the ground, a stalk pushed up fast. It opened into a purple flower with a single eye at its center. The eye turned. It looked straight at her. Jade stood. Whatever was rotting the horses had just watched her run. Now she knew where to start.