Esha and Aurora moved away from the group, striking ahead on their own. Their black familiars stuck close to their sides. If they’d stayed with the group, they’d have sapped their fellow warriors’ strength and speed and magic. By forging ahead, they could cut a path through the monsters, weakening them for an easier kill, which both were handy at delivering.

“Dark in here,” Ana muttered to Cam. It was as if night were only minutes away, and too cold and too silent.

They led the pack, with Aerten, Cadan, Diana, Warren, Vivienne, Harp, and Fiona surrounding the witches. Dead leaves and twigs crunched beneath their boots. A heavy tension shrouded them.

“There’s nothing here,” Vivienne whispered.

She was right, and it made the hair on Ana’s arms stand on end. There should be monsters of the wood, creatures enchanted by Druantia into protecting the oaks. Instead, there was silence.

As if they were waiting to strike.

Perhaps Esha and Aurora would be able to repel them all until the group reached the center of the wood, where the witches would cast a spell to make the oaks break at their trunks.

Eerie whispers tickled Ana’s ears as they crept deeper into the forest. Silence had turned to the rustle of oak leave

s. It almost sounded like words. Were the souls of the Dryads speaking to her?

She strained to hear, but instead of whispers, a sudden shriek echoed through the forest. She slapped her free hand to her ear. Her fellow warriors stiffened, turned in tandem toward the shriek that came from the west. Another joined it, and another, growing ever closer. Ana clutched her bow and nocked an arrow.

“Caoineag,” Cam said.

Highland banshees, foreseers of doom. To hear their cry meant death or tragedy for the listener.

Ana’s gaze scanned the forest, looking for whatever monsters or attack the banshees prophesied. But instead, three horrifying women swept down from the trees to the west, wingless but possessing command of the air. They were gaunt, skeletal things with stringy hair and tattered dresses. The magic here was darker than even she’d expected, for the Caoineag were only meant to be heard, not seen. To prophesy doom, not deliver it.

Yet Druantia had given them form and rage and set them upon anyone who dared enter the forest. Ana aimed her arrow at the nearest Caoineag. Shot. Watched in horror as the banshee kept flying toward them, arrow protruding grotesquely from its chest. She reached for her quiver to nock another arrow, but a tree root snapped up from the ground and tripped her.

She crashed to the ground. In her peripheral vision, she saw Cam’s arrows fly at the Caoineag. Ana heaved herself to her feet and reached for another arrow, but before she could shoot the banshee that was nearly upon them, Diana leapt from her place in their group and charged the Caoineag, swinging her sword at its neck. Its head tumbled to the ground.

Only then did the wailing horror disappear in a wisp of smoke. Cadan and Warren took their cue, charging after the other two and swinging their swords to decapitate. The banshees fought back, sentient enough to recognize their sister’s fate and fight it. A great bloody gash appeared on Warren’s chest from a swipe of its claws, but after a struggle, his sword hit home and she turned to a wisp of smoke. Cadan’s Caoineag followed. Vivienne and Fiona worked as a team, doubling up on one banshee at a time.

Silence fell, but for the briefest second. The banshee’s howl ripped again through the trees. But instead of a banshee swooping out of the west, a horde of short, grotesquely muscled men poured from behind the oaks on all sides. They had long arms and wild red hair. Ana fired in tandem with Cam, slaying two of them. But two more poured out from behind the oaks in their place.

“They’re Pechs,” Cadan yelled. “They’ll crush you if they get their arms around you.”

Fireballs flew through the air, thrown by Esha and her sister, while bursts of colored magic shot from the witches’ hands, throwing the Caoineag off-track. Swinging swords took heads while Ana and Cam fired arrows through hearts.

But the Caoineag never stopped wailing and the Pechs never stopped coming, as if there was an endless supply of them.

“We need to keep moving. We’re close to the center,” Ana yelled. She could feel it, a tug like that which she’d experienced in Otherworld when she felt compelled to seek out her family. If they could just keep moving through the Pechs, fighting them off as they traveled. “I think—”

A root reached up and tripped her again, catching her ankle so that she fell hard onto her hands and knees.

She cursed and pushed herself to her feet. The trees tripped only her, the roots snapping out of the dirt to reach for her legs. She kept a wary eye on them as their group made slow progress to the center of the forest, toward whatever was pulling at her. Were there fewer Pechs? Or perhaps it was her mind, tired and terrified and hoping for an end.

And then she saw it. A great oak, split down the middle by lightning. One side dead, the other alive. That was what had been calling to her. That tree, specifically.

“Here!” she yelled, and the group ceased their slow forward movement, still fighting the Pechs. Though she wanted to go to the tree, to explore it, she and the other warriors would have to up their game now that the witches would be casting a spell to destroy the forest instead of defending against the Pechs.

The witches formed a small cluster in the middle of the group, joined hands, and faced outward toward the forest. As they chanted their spell, Ana and the rest began to shoot and stab and throw fire at the Pechs, barely holding them off. The Caoineag continued to wail, louder as the branches of the oaks began to tremble.

A symptom of the spell? Ana had no idea, and was too overcome by Pechs to dwell. She’d shot so many already, and they still came in such great numbers that there would be no end to them. Not until the spell was broken.

“It’s not working!” cried one of the witches. “The spell won’t hold!”

Shit. They had no backup if the spell didn’t work. Cam had been right; the forest was far too vast and the defenses too strong for them to cut the trees down by hand. Magic was the only way, but it wasn’t working.

Ana had no idea what to do, and the Pechs were driving her farther from the group. She’d been cut off when four had charged her. There was a hole in their defenses now, and she was surrounded on all sides by advancing Pechs. They stalked toward her, arms outstretched and ready to crush her.

Tags: Linsey Hall The Mythean Arcana Paranormal
Source: readsnovelonline.net