They were now deceased exiled gnomes.
“I thought you said this wood was the most dangerous you’d come across,” Penny said, her voice soft to match the false tranquility of the wood. Her eyes continually scanned their surroundings and her hands stayed near her chest, ready to work magic.
“It is,” answered Emery, who’d drifted closer to her and stayed there. “This trip has been unnaturally quiet.”
“Is it because we have a larger crew?” Penny startled and her hands jerked. A strange sheen spread through the trees before winking out. “Oops. I thought I saw something.”
“I saw it too. And maybe the size of our party has scared some attackers away, though from the stories I’ve heard, a large party is usually an invitation for the wood’s more cunning inhabitants. They take it as a challenge.”
Penny looked back through the line. “Everyone is still here, right?”
“Still here. No one has eaten anyone else,” Andy replied.
Emery leaned around Charity to see her side of the wood. “It doesn’t make sense.” His brow furrowed before he scanned his side again.
“The elves?” Charity guessed. “It seems everyone in this place is terrified of them.”
“For good reason.” Emery scratched his face. “But if they’d taken over the wood, someone would have stopped us by now.”
Penny tensed as they crossed the tree line, the path opening up as it led up a gradual incline toward a small mountain. Trees and brush still dotted the way, but the early morning glow bathed them in soft light, chasing away any dark shadows or easy hiding places for predators.
Charity sighed softly, giving in a little to the tremors racking her body and the fatigue that made each stop arduous.
“We’re almost to a secluded resting spot,” Emery said, and if it wasn’t for the comforting smile Penny gave her, Charity wouldn’t have known he was talking to her.
“I’ll be okay,” she assured them, wondering how Devon was faring. He probably wasn’t showing his fatigue, trudging on with the confidence that befitted an alpha, but he was just as tired; she could feel it.
Emery was true to his word. Not even an hour’s trudge later, he held up a fist and slowed. Everyone slowed with him. Well, almost everyone. Charity, having shut off her brain to try to ignore the throbbing in her shaking legs, bumped into the back of a yeti built of what felt like bricks.
“Sorry,” she murmured, backing up.
A small outcropping flanked by brambles ended in a bench broken down the middle, each end sticking into the air. Scraggly bushes and spindly flowers—or weeds?—pushed in around it, the least inviting resting spot Charity had ever seen, and that was saying something, given where she’d grown up.
“This isn’t going to fit all of us,” Penny whispered.
Emery walked into the gardener’s nightmare anyway, looking deeper into the brambles and kicking at the skeleton flora around the bench. Apparently satisfied, he went right—and disappeared.
“But…I don’t sense magic.” Penny rushed forward. Charity moved to follow, but Cole lumbered into her way and Steve pushed in behind, blocking her.
She gritted her teeth. What she wouldn’t give for full health.
Penny got to the bench and turned, looking the way Emery went. A big smile lit up her face. “It’s an illusion.”
Emery reappeared. “No, it’s just a little path you can’t see from the main road.”
“This is a road?” Rod looked ahead before glancing behind.
“Thieves’ highway, road, whatever.” Emery gestured them closer.
“How many people know about this little outcropping?” Devon asked. As Charity expected, he didn’t look tired at all. In fact, to the undiscerning eye, he might be gearing up for a marathon. What a faker.
“Enough to ensure I put up a good ward.” Emery motioned everyone in again. “It’s safe enough for us to rest. We need it.”
Devon scanned his people. “Choose whatever form you want. Let’s get settled and get some shut-eye.”
When Charity neared him, he took her hand and peered into her eyes.
“How are you?” she asked to get the jump on the conversation.
A grin ghosted his lips. “Right as rain. Ready to do acrobatics. You?”
“Wondering how fast I can get to sleep.”
He nodded and stood by as his people followed Emery and Penny beyond the bench, disappearing one by one. “I caught a whiff of vampire in that wood,” he said quietly. As soon as he and Charity were alone together, he turned away from the bench, peering through the trees to the wild land beyond. “Yasmine didn’t smell it, though. Neither did Rod. But since Penny…” He slid his hand across the top of her butt and hooked it low on her hip. “My senses are boosted, somehow. The scent was faint—I couldn’t tell the level—but I’d swear it was vampire.”
“Is that unusual?” She leaned against his solid chest.
“I don’t know. I’ll ask Emery about it. It could be nothing. Vampires haunt the dark places like any other creature in the Realm. But here, within the elves’ jurisdiction, they usually mind their manners.”