Scarlett Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

They crossed the tree line as the sun dropped. Scarlett led, following the wide drag mark cut into the dirt. The blood trail ran deep toward the center, dark and uneven, like something heavy had been hauled through. Dominic walked a step behind, reading the same ground. For a while the trail was easy. Then the light failed. Shadows swallowed the path. The blood no longer caught any glow. Scarlett crouched and pressed her face near the dirt, but she saw only black. "It's gone," she said. "I can't see the trail at all." She had no lantern. Dominic carried none. Three nights ago a man screamed somewhere ahead, and now the one thing guiding them had vanished with the sun. Dominic knelt beside her. He did not touch the ground. "We lose this, we lose him," he said. Then, quieter, "I've lost trails before. I don't sleep after." He looked at the dark woods and said nothing more about himself. Scarlett refused to turn back. She remembered her grandfather's words. The forest talks if you stay quiet long enough. She closed her eyes and listened. Wind. Then a steady dripping, close and wet. She stood and moved toward it. She found a tree weeping. Red leaves hung heavy, and thick drops slid from them to a pool at its roots. The pool threw back a faint shine. By that weak light she saw the drag mark again, sliding past the trunk. "Here," she whispered. "The bleeding trees. They catch what little light there is." Dominic understood at once. They went tree to tree, each weeping trunk a lamp. The trail held. It led them to a gnarled trunk split by a dark hollow. Blood welled from the opening and ran down the bark like a wound that would not close. The drag mark ended at its base. Scarlett stepped closer. Candles ringed the hollow, black wax with red flames that did not flicker in the wind. Someone had set them there. Someone had knelt here. This was no accident of sickness. This was a place made for a purpose. A crash came from the brush. Scarlett spun. A red shape burst into the candlelight, low and fast, antlers sharp above wild eyes. It stopped three feet away and stared at her, chest heaving, teeth bared. Not a deer. Something wrong wearing a deer's shape. Dominic went still. "Don't move," he breathed. The creature held her gaze a long moment. Then it turned and bolted past the hollow, deeper in. Scarlett saw where it went. The drag trail ran the same way. "It's leading somewhere," she said. Her heart slammed. "Or guarding something." The candles kept burning. The hollow kept bleeding. She had followed the trail to its end and found not the hiker, but a ritual, and a thing that watched. Whatever had dragged him here had done it on purpose. She knew now the curse was no sickness. It was someone's work.