Page 53 of Ruled By Fate

The forest was dark and misty. Not a warm dark, typical of a Virginia summer — a cold, biting, horrible dark, in which tree branches loom, and every little sound makes your heart run like a rabbit from a fox.

The shaggy-haired man strode through the woods as though this didn’t affect him. He was wearing a tattered shirt and pants, no shoes. Brie couldn’t see his face. She kept trying to turn and run the other way, but her body followed him like a balloon tied to his belt loop, pulled against her will, tethered by an unseen force.

Where are we going?

She became aware of movement skittering around them in the woods. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t struggle. She could only float, watch, and be pulled wherever the man took her.

They reached a clearing in the trees. In the middle stood a black goat with stained, silver horns which gleamed menacingly in the moonlight. Brie shuddered to think how they came to be stained.

“Is this it?” the man asked.

“This is the place.” The goat seemed to speak inside her mind, purring the words in a low, skin-crawling voice.

Brie tried again to free herself or even move, but to no avail. When the goat turned and led them to a road, she suddenly realized where they were and struggled even harder.

But she was paralyzed.

The man knelt and placed his hand on the ground, pulling in a deep breath.

Suddenly, the sun was rising from the west.

Then it was noon. Then morning. Cars zipped past them in reverse. Birds flew backward through the sky. An eagle released a squirrel into a tree, and all its blood flowed back into its veins.

Back and back, the sun went, further and further, for three days, until it was Brie’s car on the road. Brie’s car, completely whole and standing next to Cameron, right before it was ripped apart into a million pieces and left in the road as he disappeared with a flash.

The man rewound time and played this scene several times before going back even further. Cameron walked backward from the horizon, holding her in his arms, and placed her on the ground before putting her backpack near the flaming wreckage. The explosion was an implosion. The car roof stabilized. They spoke for a moment. She pulled a punch out of his face.

The blonde man chuckled hard at that, re-watching it several times before moving on.

Cameron placed her upside-down in her car.

Then he was walking backward through a sea of shadowy monsters, balls of light streaking from their chests into his hand before he disappeared entirely, and the monsters all stood up and flew backward into her car, seemingly repairing it as they went. One put the ripped-up trunk back on its hinge and flew in reverse into nothingness as the others followed suit.

Finally, her car was whole, intact, and driving backward. That’s when it happened. Like a crack in the universe itself, a light suddenly obliterated everything else from view. It flashed for a second and was gone.

The shaggy-haired man rewound and watched this scene so many times Brie’s eyes burned, and colors flashed across her retinas as though she’d stared too long at the sun.

The goat walked right past her and stood next to the man. “We have a problem.”

“I can see that.” The man seemed to pause, then took in a heavy breath. “I need to speak with my father.”

The goat nodded. “It will be arranged.”

The skittering noises in the woods grew louder and louder. Brie struggled harder and harder to get away as dozens of giant spiders with faces like men poured out of the tree line and swarmed around the goat. She sucked in a breath, trying to scream.

The goat turned slightly. “We are observed.”

Just as the man was about to turn around, Brie woke up in a cold sweat, hyperventilating and screaming for Cameron.

? ? ?

It was four in the morning. The horror of her nightmare had wholly erased all the freedom and fun of the previous evening’s escapades. There was mascara smeared under her eyes, her hair was disheveled, and she had a generally hollow look about her like she hadn’t slept in days.

Cameron kept making her tea. None of the cups he brought her tasted remotely like tea. They all tasted like fruits, flowers, or medicines. This one to calm her nerves, that one for a sense of well-being, another for her headache. He’d even prepared a brew made of some of his fabled basil root for her blood pressure.

She drank whatever he put in front of her. She didn’t care anymore.

I am being hunted. And whoever it is, is on the right track.

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