Chapter 91: The forest of death
Damon ran through the twisted undergrowth of the forest, his golden fur slick with sweat. The air pressed against him like a living thing.
The smell was the worst of it. Every breath carried the stench of decay, but he kept running.
The trees grew tighter as he pressed deeper into the forest. Their branches wove together overhead, choking out what little light the sky still offered. The bark was black and split, oozing a tar-like sap.
He saw a decaying body in one of those trees. The flesh was mostly gone but patches of leathery skin still clung to the skull, stretched tight over the bone and its eye sockets were empty.
Damon lowered his head and kept moving. He knew not to trust the silence of the forest.
Slowly, he came onto a fog that was spread from every direction. It was thick and yellow and when he took a step into it, he hissed, stumbling backward. He could smell his own fur singeing.
What the fuck? He thought.
There was no option of going around the fog because it enveloped the path from side to side. He would have to go through it.
He took a deep breath and walked into the fog.
It coiled around his legs and licked at his flanks with tongues of acid. Every breath he took seared his lungs. His eyes streamed and his vision blurred but he kept running through at full sprint, bursting through the other side, into a clearing.
His fur had burned away in patches, revealing angry pink skin beneath. Pain radiated through every part of his body.
When he raised his head up, he was looking at the mouth of a cave, half hidden beneath a curtain of dead vines.
He stopped at the entrance.
He did not know why. There was no scent that marked this place as different from the rest of the forest but something in his chest pulled tight at the sight of that opening, and he knew that what he was looking for was inside.
He shifted.
The transformation was slower than usual, his body exhausted and his muscles screaming. He knelt on the cold stone, naked and shivering. Reaching for the leather satchel specially fitted with wolf straps that had remained secured to his back, he pulled out his clothes. Once dressed, he drew the knife he had packed and walked in
The darkness in the cave was impenetrable.
He moved by touch, one hand on the damp stone wall, the other holding the knife before him. The air grew colder the deeper he went. The rot smell faded, replaced by a metallic scent.
Soon, he saw light coming through a crack in the cave walls.
It was not sunlight. It was too blue for that and it pulsed faintly. Damon followed it until the cave opened into a chamber.
He stopped short, his eyes not believing what he was looking at.
The chamber was vast. On the walls and on the ceiling hung the plant.
Widow’s bloom.
The petals were white as bone, each one veined with silver that caught the strange blue light and threw it back in a thousand directions. The stems were black and lined with thorns. The blooms themselves were small, no larger than his thumbnail, but they grew in clusters so dense they looked like morning dew.
Damon took a step forward.
In that moment, a low thrumming vibration pressed against his eardrums.
He staggered back, his eyes darting from one end of the cave to another.
Surely, it could not be them?
He peered closer at the flower and saw that the stems he had assumed were black were just dozens of the gravewasps coating them.
Every wolf child grew up hearing stories about the gravewasps. Their sting carried a venom that could drop a full-grown Alpha in under a minute and there were hundreds of them. He had thought it a myth!
Damon scanned the chamber. The Widow’s Bloom grew thickest near the center, where a raised stone platform held a cluster larger and brighter than the rest. That was the one. He did not know how he knew but he simply did.
He took a breath.
He only had one chance to grab that stem and make a run for it and even then, he knew he might not be able to make it out without the gravewasps swarming him immediately.
He moved anyway, his boots finding spaces between the sleeping gravewasps. The humming filled his skull but he kept his eyes fixed on the center cluster.
Then he lost his footing.
The humming stopped immediately and one crimson eye opened then another until dozens of blood red eyes were staring at him.
Damon lunged, his hand closing around a stem of Widow’s Bloom. He ripped it from the stone and turned, running out of the cave just as the insects rose from the ground in a black wave.
The gravewasps swarmed him before he reached the mouth of the cave but Damon did not stop running.
He burst from the cave mouth with the swarm at his heels. The yellow fog had cleared and now he was staring at a field with dozen of bones and dead men scattered about.
He knew he could not outrun them so he took a dive to the left and stumbled upon a pool of water.
He did not think before he ripped the satchel from his shoulder where he had tucked away the Widow’s bloom, tossed it to the ground and threw himself in the water.
Damon remained underwater, holding his breath while the gravewasps swarmed above him.
His chest screamed for air but he remained in the water, waiting for the gravewasps to leave.
Slowly, after what seemed like an hour although it could not have been more than a few minutes, he watched as they began to drift back toward the cave.
Damon pushed out of the water, gasping for air. His body shook so badly and his teeth rattled.
He got out of the water and crawled to where he had tossed his satchel.
I have it, he thought, I have it and now Ayla would be...
He tried to stand but his legs would not hold him. He stumbled forward, his heart beating too fast in his chest. One hand clutched the satchel and the other reached for his neck where he felt a sharp pain.
He hadn’t escaped them after all. One of them had stung him.
Damon dropped to his knees, clawing wildly at his throat.
The world tilted all around him as he lost consciousness.