Legion's Arc

Chapter 2 of 22

Diana ran through the dark pines all night. She left the pack, the tent, everything but the shirt. She held it against her chest and did not stop. The moss dripped on her shoulders. Her boots slid on wet roots. When the sky turned gray, she smelled woodsmoke and stumbled toward it. A ring of tents sat in a clearing. Three men crouched by a low fire. The biggest one stood first. He had a thick beard and a rifle already in his hands. He looked at Diana like a problem, not a person. "You're not supposed to be out here," he said. His name was James. Behind him, a younger man in a hunting vest cleaned a pistol without looking up. That was Seth. A third man, lean and sharp-eyed, watched the trees over Diana's shoulder instead of watching her. That was Brandon. "Something's in these woods," Diana said. Her voice shook. "A swarm. Rats. It has a face." The three brothers went still. Seth set down the pistol. Brandon stopped watching the trees and watched her. "You saw it," James said. It was not a question. "It let me go," Diana said. "It turned away from me. I don't know why." James traded a look with his brothers. Something passed between them that Diana could not read. Seth's jaw tightened. Brandon's hand dropped to his belt. "It doesn't let people go," Seth said quietly. "It didn't let ours go." Diana waited for more. None came. They would not tell her what they had lost, or why three armed brothers were sleeping in the woods hunting a monster. But she saw it in their faces. Grief, worn hard into something else. James pointed at the bundle in her arms. "What's that." Diana's hands closed around the shirt. "It's my husband's. He came out here for firewood. He never came back." She swallowed. "I think that thing knows where he is." Brandon laughed once, without any warmth. "That thing is where he is." Diana did not understand him. She wanted to. But James was already moving. He kicked dirt over the fire and grabbed his pack. "You'll take us back to where you saw it," James said. "You want your husband, we want the same thing gone. That's one road." Diana looked at the checked cloth in her hands, the only piece of Mark she had left. She thought of the black eyes in the swarm. The way it had thrown itself into the trees instead of at her. It had chosen to spare her. These men wanted it dead. "All right," she said. She did not tell them what she'd seen in those eyes. Seth strapped shells across his chest. Brandon checked his pistol. James shouldered his rifle and nodded her toward the pines. Diana had run all night to escape the monster. Now she was leading three hunters straight back to it, holding the one thing it needed to become a man again.