Page 56 of Faun Over Me

Lavender and wintergreen. What had Avery called it? Obsession? Whatever it was, it clogged the woods, the scent no longer a trail but a web. She pushed to her knees, biting her tongue to stifle the scream as a new ribbon of pain wound up her leg.

“Fuck,” she panted, dropping her weight against the tree stump. Her hair snagged in the bark, eyes going unfocused as she fought off the tears, the pain. A slight breeze wove through the glade, wafting away the shopping mall miasma. Not entirely, but enough to clear Cricket’s head. She stretched out her uninjured leg, massaging the calf and inspecting her ankle and hoof.

No breaks, no splinters.

Thank the Gods.

Settling against the stump, Cricket dropped her head back and closed her eyes, just for a moment. Just long enough to catch her breath, to let the worst of the pain fade. Enough to breathe the cleaner air, inhaling grass and moss instead of lavender and wintergreen. Grass and moss, wet earth, and … salt.

She lifted her head, ears pricking as she scanned the glade. High overhead, the moon peered through the pine, painting the world in shadows and clean blue light. Low branches and shrubs filled eye level, densely packed, and impassable unless you knew the deer trails behind the camp. She tripped her gaze from branch to branch to bush, picking out the details: broken twigs and trampled undergrowth. Pine needles bent at an angle, and a lone scrap of cloth caught in thorns.

Nostrils flaring, she inhaled again, dropping onto her hands to crawl forward and catching the scent of salt once again. Salt and fear.

She knew the scent and stink of that fright, as well as she knew her own. And that salt was a sweat she had tasted.

“No.” Staggering to her hooves, Cricket rushed to the thornbush and grabbed the cloth, pressing it to her nose and breathing deep. Her tongue was fat and thirsty in her mouth, dry as bark, and barely able to form the word. “No, no, no.”

Flowers dotted the fabric, a light, summery linen torn from a skirt she knew—a skirt she had seen tangled around soft, sturdy legs.

Her knee buckled. She stumbled to the side, grunting at the throb of pain and barely catching herself on a boulder. Gods, she was so close—close enough to smell Avery’s sweat and her fear. Where had she gone? Which way had she run?

Cricket wobbled in a circle, her back to the deer trail, searching the darkened wood as her ears swiveled, straining to catch any sound: the camp, a frantic heartbeat, panicked breathing. Anything to tell her where Avery might be. To tell her she was safe—

“Found you,” a deeply masculine and predatory voice snarled from behind her. Cricket whirled around, tweaking her ankle and swallowing the cry as she scanned the shadows. Still. Everything was so still … too still. The sort of still that set her hairs on end and sparked the urge to flee.

The shadows shifted just to the left of the deer trail, a mass forming among the trees. Too tall to be human, too broad to be faun. Too muscular to be any of the inhumans she had seen in the camp, even in their shifted form.

Fright held her in place. That wretched instinct every faun had to freeze at the sight of bright lights, though instead of the momentary blindness that came with human machines, this was pure, unadulterated fear.

Moonlight poured over a bone-white face, swallowed by a fold of impenetrable black splitting the skull’s brow in two. The creature heaved through the wood, the ground shuddering as a massive paw stepped into the glade. Cricket took in all of him and pieces of him at once: that skull, bilious yellow eyes, bulging muscle in thick thighs, the claws at the tips of his toes and fingers, the teeth …

“Your human’s given me quite a chase,” he snarled, lips curling back over vicious fangs. A sick, shuddering sigh hissed from his throat, and he prowled closer. “Leading me through the woods in circles. Back and back again, twisting her trail with scraps of cloth.” He tossed a handful of fabric in her direction. Ribbons of cloth fluttered and fell to the ground, identical to the scrap in her hand.

Cricket’s heart sputtered, tripping over beats as adrenaline spiked in her veins. Her fingers quaked, her legs trembled. She gripped the cloth as she gasped, trying to fill her lungs enough to scream for help.

“Why don’t you run, little deer?” the creature taunted.

A whimper was all she could muster, the pathetic sound burbling past her lips and dying just as quickly. He advanced, the moonlight revealing the true terror of the creature … the monster. Twigs snapped beneath every step, the earth protesting against his weight and size as he paced in a slow, predatory circle. Even if she could run, she could never outrun this.

“Your human ran,” he taunted. A hand swept his browbone, fingers tracing the fold in his skull that swallowed the moonlight. No, not a fold, a crack. A snide laugh escaped as a tight bark. “Jumped right out the window. Damn near broke the wall when I hit it. Who knew a girl that soft could be so fast?”

The breeze kicked up again, bringing the scent of the beast to Cricket’s nose: musk and sweat, the sharp tang of exertion. Lavender, and wintergreen. She gagged, eyes watering as she took in the monster with new understanding. “Georgia Man.”

He tipped his head back, arms hanging loose at his sides. An unearthly howl tore from his throat, rattling the leaves and needles overhead. In the distance, a chorus of identical howls sang in reply. Cricket cowered down, her body battling the warring urges to run, cry, vomit, and piss herself.

“You faun are so stupid.” He lurched forward, spittle flying from his muzzle. “So easy to manipulate. How long have you been here, a decade? Longer? And you’ve remained just as back-assward as you were back home.”

“What are you—”

“But you …” He wagged a clawed finger at Cricket, pacing in a tighter circle. “You’re a little cleverer than the rest, aren’t you? Wanting to integrate, raising a red flag about the ‘Georgia Men.’ Crying wolf.”

He snapped his teeth a hair’s breadth from her nose. Cricket flinched back, her hoof catching on a root. The sob forcing its way out of her throat became a cry of pain and she fell against a tree, trembling as those threatened tears finally slipped free.

“Pathetic,” he snarled. “How the faun were entrusted to maintain the wood is beyond me. You’re all so soft.” He held out a clawed hand, fingers furling as if crushing something in his leather-padded palm. Snuffing out a light or a life. “So weak.”

A cry, deep in the wood, jerked him around. His body tensed for just a moment, and then he angled that terrible skull face back to Cricket. “They’re coming, little deer.”

She pressed harder against the tree, blinking to clear the tears from her eyes. Distant lights bobbed and wove through the trees, flashlights and lanterns dancing to the cadence of faint voices.