It’s a long walk. Our phones have stopped working, and we don’t know if it’s been thirty minutes or two hours since we started. Have Melissa or Hawaiian Shirt alerted the others to our disappearance or kept quiet?

We push on doggedly and finally step into another cavern larger than the one we left. And it’s familiar.

It’s the cavern where Hemslock and his men sacrificed Goatee.

But something has changed. The misshapen human forms made of roots have been reduced to burnt ashes and smoke, the tang of it fills my nostrils.

The massive tree still takes up the center of the cavern. But broken roots hang overhead, and crushed ones lay underfoot. Twigs and branches are piled high where the corpse used to be, a gaping hole in its chest. The heart that the actor fed the altar is now several feet away, no longer beating.

Chase sucks in a breath. “Oh, God. Why did they burn it?”

“Because they wanted to diminish the Diwata’s power.” I stand before the body, gazing down at what remains of it—its shriveled form, its eyes that have not closed, even in death. I had not known this man—if he was one of the earlier sacrificial victims, or if it was ever even human—just as I still don’t know the identity of the corpse in the balete tree outside. “It rejected Hemslock’s offering,” I say. It was why the Diwata attacked Hemslock instead of obeying his commands, though I doubt the man was even aware of it.

“You mean it rejected Karl Rosmussen’s heart? Karl isn’t one of the sacrifices?”

“It appears so.” And I point.

Goatee’s body is sprawled on the small stone altar. His eyes are open, though there is nothing left for him to see. There is a bloody hole in his chest, where Hemslock had carved out his heart.

“Should we…do something?” Chase asks nervously.

“The Diwata rejected the sacrifice,” I say. “That’s why He didn’t take the body away like He did the producer’s.”

“But why wouldn’t He accept?”

“Because there are others on the island that would make better offerings.”

As if on cue, roots slither out from underneath the stone altar. They wrap around Goatee’s body, spinning it into a thick cocoon of twisted branches. Speechless, we watch the roots shift from the altar, fixing the undead seedling on a spot several meters away and flowering almost immediately from the top down. Soon the plants have taken over the corpse, forever trapping Goatee’s body within the banyan, swiftly covered by the ever-moving, restless makahiya. It looks no different than the other balete outside.

“Those plane crash investigators were digging all over the island, looking for bodies,” Chase says. “But they never thought to check inside the trees. Oh, God…”

I look at the slowly forming tree that had once been Goatee, knowing that I should feel pity, although I do not. “Yes,” I say quietly. “Oh, God.”

Askal begins to growl, his haunches now raised. I look to see what he’s angry about, and freeze. “Don’t move, Chase,” I say harshly. “Don’t step on them.”