Page 15 of His Darkest Desire

The wisp brightened and made its strange whispers. Understanding teased at the back of Kinsley’s mind, but whatever words the little creature was speaking—and she was certain there were words—remained unknown to her.

She frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re saying.”

As the wisp backed away from her, its touch lingered, tugging gently upon Kinsley’s arm before letting go. That ghostly limb beckoned her.

“You want me to follow you?” Kinsley asked.

The wisp bobbed up and down.

She turned her head and cast it a sidelong glance. “You’re not going to lead me somewhere dangerous, are you?”

Its posture sagged. How could something so incorporeal, so inhuman, seem so sad?

“Don’t do that! Okay, okay.” Kinsley pushed herself to her feet, wincing at the tenderness of her soles. “I’ll follow.”

Perking up instantly, the wisp led on. Kinsley walked behind it, mindful of her footing and using patches of moss to cushion her poor feet whenever possible. When she wasn’t watching the ground in front of her, she watched the wisp, noting the way it bobbed as it floated, almost dancing, the way its body, though amorphous, maintained the same basic shape.

She also noted that it avoided the beams of sunlight breaking through the forest canopy.

I’m willingly following a will-o’-the-wisp through a cursed forest.

And somehow that didn’t feel like the weirdest part of the last couple days.

No, the weirdest—and scariest—part had been last night.

Do not think of him, Kinsley. Just don’t. Not now. Focus on getting out of here.

The wisp’s path wound between trees and crossed over stones, roots, and logs. At any moment, Kinsley expected she’d look up and find the cottage in front of her again. She had no way of knowing just how far she’d traveled in her prior attempts to leave this place, but that cutoff had to be fast approaching.

Yet as they continued onward, the only thing that came into sight was a gradually thickening fog. The wisp grew brighter in the deepening gloom. When they reached the side of a steep hill, the wisp led her along the base. The many rocks and jutting roots forced Kinsley’s attention downward again. The last thing she needed to do was roll an ankle out here.

New sounds drifted to her from afar. At first, she thought they were more whispers from her ghostly guide, but it quickly became clear that they were different.

They were voices. Human voices. Men calling out to each other, their words muffled and made unintelligible by the fog.

Heart speeding, she lifted her head, meaning to cry out for help. Her voice died before reaching her lips, and her steps faltered.

The wisp had stopped before a large object wedged against a tree. Vines and moss clung to it, but they weren’t enough to obscure the shape and silver paint of her SUV. The passenger side of the vehicle was utterly consumed by the fog, which was so thick from that point onward that she couldn’t see into it at all.

Body numb, mind blank, Kinsley staggered forward. “This…this can’t be right. How?”

She reached out and brushed her fingers over the thick moss growing on the roof of the SUV. It looked like the forest was consuming her car. But…it had only been two days since the accident.

Hadn’t it?

Kinsley trailed her hand down the vines hanging over the driver’s side window and drew them aside. The fog had invaded the cab, shrouding the passenger seat, but it didn’t hide the driver’s seat at all. It didn’t hide the shattered glass, the cracked windshield, the torn-up dashboard.

It didn’t hide the thick branch that had pierced the instrument panel or the dried blood clinging to the bark and pooled on the seat. The end of the branch was snapped off not far past the steering wheel, but when she followed the trajectory it would’ve taken, it led to a hole punched through the back of the seat. The surrounding leather was also dark with blood.

Kinsley brought her hands to her belly. “Oh God.”

Her breath quickened, and her heart raced as memories surged to the forefront of her mind.

She remembered the storm. Remembered feeling thunder rumble through her body, remembered the smell of rain, of the forest, of decay and stinging smoke. She remembered being trapped. Pinned in place. Remembered being impaled. She remembered calling for help, pleading for it, remembered how desperately she hadn’t wanted to die…

And she remembered a dark figure. Remembered his scent, his voice.

“It was real. Oh God, that wasn’t a dream… It was real.” Kinsley clutched her stomach. There was no wound, no scar, but the echoes of that pain pulsed beneath her fingertips.

---