Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,73

the way and formed a map in her mind. But even with the shortcut she planned to take, they still had miles to go.

As she ran, she kept thinking about Braeden, her pa, and the Vanderbilts. She kept thinking about what had happened to Clara, Anastasia, and Nolan. She had to defeat Mr. Thorne. She had to kill him. Her only chance lay ahead of her.

She was out of breath and desperately tired. Her legs ached, and her lungs felt like she was breathing through steel wool. She wasn’t sure how much farther she could run. But then she finally saw what she’d been running for.

Gravestones.

There were hundreds of them standing in the silver light of the moon beneath the bare branches of the gnarled old winter trees.

This was the place that terrified her, but she knew she must come.

She ran through the old cemetery. An eerie fog was rising among the twisted branches of the ancient trees and the decaying monuments of the dead.

She looked behind her. The Man in the Black Cloak flew toward her out of the mist, his bloody hands reaching for her.

Serafina ran with all her heart.

She dashed past Cloven Smith, the murdered man.

She leapt over the two sisters lying side by side.

She raced through the sixty-six Confederate soldiers.

She arrived, finally, panting and exhausted, at the small glade with the statue of the winged angel.

Serafina could hear the Man in the Black Cloak crashing through the brush behind her. She had only seconds before he arrived.

Fear flooded through her veins. She became sickeningly aware that she was bringing two great forces together and she was between them. From one direction or another, there was a good chance that death would soon be upon her.

She ran to the edge of the moonlit glade where the old willow lay with its upturned roots. The thick trunk and heavy branches of the fallen master of the forest swirled with ghostly mist. Its delicate leaves, somehow still growing bright green in the winter, glistened with the starlight.

Praying that the great yellow-eyed prowler of the night was out hunting, Serafina found the hole in the ground beneath the roots. She dropped down onto her hands and knees and crawled into the mountain lion’s den.

She came face-to-face with the two spotted cubs, who stared at her with large, frightened eyes as she moved toward them.

“Where’s your momma?” she asked them.

When the cubs saw that it was her, they jumped up in relief. They moved toward her, smelling her and rubbing themselves on her body.

She crawled past the two cubs and curled into a little ball in the earthen den.

Now the trap was laid.

Just as she had done when she crawled inside the machine in Biltmore’s basement, she made herself very still and very quiet.

She steadied her lungs and her heart. She shut her eyes and concentrated, extending her senses outward into the forest.

I know you’re out there someplace, hunting your domain. Where are you? Your cubs are in danger.…

Serafina could feel it. Out there in the darkness of the woods beyond the graveyard, the mother lion paused in her hunting. She tilted her head at the sound of two intruders in the forest. Her forest. Her cubs were in danger. She turned and charged back toward her den with all her speed.

The Man in the Black Cloak came into the angel’s glade and looked around him. “Where have you led me, dear child?” he said, trying to figure out which direction Serafina had gone. He circled the stone pedestal of the moss-covered angel. “Do you think you can hide from me, little rabbit?” he asked.

I’m not a rabbit, Serafina thought fiercely. For a brief moment, she felt a sensation of triumph because it seemed like her plan was going to work. The Man in the Black Cloak would be left standing haplessly in the angel’s glade. He would have no idea where she’d gone. She had disappeared. She had escaped him.

But then she remembered the snow. She had not accounted for the snow. Her tracks led straight to her hiding place. The tracks would betray her.

“Ah…” the Man in the Black Cloak said when he saw the tracks. “There you are…”

He walked over to the den, got down on his hands and knees, and looked inside. “I know you’re in there. Come on out, my dear child, before I become angry with you.”

Serafina tried not to breathe. The Man in the Black Cloak reached deep inside the den, his bloody hand