Page 23 of An Invocation of Monsters

I scoffed, pulling off the T-shirt and tossing it aside. “I think I can manage.”

His eyes almost bugged out, and he froze in place. I felt horribly awkward for a moment, especially since I had zero interest in appealing to him. The bikini was a few years old, and I’d been too busy selling the house to worry about replacing it.

Now I wished I had.

As though to cover his embarrassment, he coughed and looked away, then turned and sprinted for the end of the dock, leaping into a perfect cannonball and swamping Willow.

I was going to have to do the same thing. Odds were good they were joking about the water being warm; it was cold enough outside to not make any sense. I braced myself for the incoming icy shock, took a deep breath, and sprinted for the end.

Kase had moved out of the way, and I leaped a full six feet to the dark water, toes first.

It didn’t feel like landing in liquid.

It felt like piercing a membrane, the water squeezing me as I plunged into darkness. Bubbles spumed violently around me, tickling my bare skin, and the sunlight overhead went out completely.

I held my breath, still sinking, panic locking me up tight when I saw a glimmer below me.

Far, far below me.

In the pitch-black depths of the lake, something was moving.

My body jolted into motion immediately. I clawed at the water, kicking my way upwards and releasing a cloud of bubbles. My lungs were already burning, the need to take a breath—to swim or run as fast as possible—consuming me.

I broke the surface, spitting out water and dragging in a ragged breath, but the sun was still gone.

There was no sign of Kase or Willow. No dock.

The sky was full of stars, the dead of night, and they all swirled in a vortex, emptying in a vast dark abyss overhead.

And the gently lapping surface of the warm lake was glowing in luminescent colors, violent and emerald smears of color sticking to my skin.

I cut towards the shore, trying not to let cold panic infuse my limbs, and when I felt smooth pebbles underfoot I crawled out of the lake. My hair swung in wet clumps, glowing with the phosphorescent colors.

The Lodge was… no longer the Lodge.

I stared at the strange ruins where it used to be. Stone archways were arranged in a circle, and the forest was…

It was primordial, ancient. I had never seen trees like this; they dwarfed giant sequoias, the veins in their leaves shimmering with flashes of pale green light.

“Am I dead?” I whispered, pinching my arm hard.

I didn’t wake up. The monstrous trees swayed gently; a ball of pale foxfire drifted through the ruins.

I dug my nails into my arm hard enough to draw blood, and this insane dream still didn’t disappear.

Maybe I had hit my head on the dock when I jumped. Maybe it’d fractured my skull and I’d drowned.

But if I was dead, how could I still feel the warmth of the water? How could I smell the scent of ancient forest, sap so fresh it almost burned my nose?

Slowly, I stood up, my ears pricked for the sound of predators in this prehistoric world—but surely, if I were already dead, I wouldn’t be worried about predators?

There was nothing but the sound of wind and water, the rustling of the trees.

It was like Earth had never existed.

I took a step towards the ruins, then another. In this quiet, each footstep on the pebbles sounded as loud as someone clanging pots together.

But nothing came to investigate.

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