Pelting through the forest, high in the trees, jumping from branch to branch, they made their own private highway. Torben was fast, but Iver was faster. Always had been, with the other’s bones as heavy as an ox’s—or a human’s—Iver thought, pulling ahead. He quickly left his cousin’s son behind, all but sprinting through the treetops after his prey.

Fast; this one was damned fast. He would be though, wouldn’t he? They had been warned.

Vidar, another cousin, gave a whooping cry just up ahead, in the peculiar ululation of his clan. It echoed through the forest like a bird’s cry, except that it included information on direction and speed. Iver adjusted his course slightly, then caught up with and surpassed his cousin.

“Remember what they told us,” Vidar breathed, as he flew by. “We’re not to take it ourselves. Run it to ground; the lord will finish it.”

And the lord will reward, Iver thought, and laughed.

“Cassie! Cassie!” I could hear Gertie’s voice, but I couldn’t respond. Because the pace of the images beating against my mind had just sped up again, as if frantic to tell me all they could while they could. But they came so fast, and were so jumbled up, that I barely knew what I was seeing anymore.

A blonde woman, young, lying among the green moss of a forest floor, a pale dress spread about her, with blood on her lips; a dark, satyr-like creature, cornered against a wall, fear on his face as a dozen shadows closed in; a snarling cat, huge and muscular, like a saber-toothed tiger, only black and beautiful, leaping with claws extended; a bewildered giant, with honeycomb in his hand, staring around at an alien world.

“Cassie!” I felt a slap across my face, harsh and stinging, but it brought me back. The fog of memory cleared, the intrusive thoughts leaving my mind as the arrow fell from my hand. “Can you hear me? Damn you, answer me!”

I looked up into Gertie’s worried face, from a half crouch by the hillside, and wordlessly shook my head.

“What did you see? Can you tell me?”

“They’re hunting us,” I whispered, focusing on the only through thread in all of that. “They’re hunting all of us.”

She looked confused. “Who? Pythias?”

“No. Demigods.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

It’s a hunting l-lodge,” I said, my teeth chattering. “The castle, I mean. Aeslinn moves it from place to place, through a s-series of portals he’s established. He hunted in Faerie for a while, but started running out of easier p-prey, so he switched it up. He lured the fey he wanted to target to Earth and k-killed them here. Their magic didn’t work as well in our world, and th-they didn’t know anybody to call for help—all of their friends were back in F-faerie.”