him to change back into human form. As usual after transforming, his clothes were torn and unkempt, his shirt hanging open to reveal the muscular lines of his chest. His dark hair looked unkempt, and hung in front of his eyes. Briony reached up to brush it back out of the way.
“Do you think we got away?” she asked.
“Probably.” Kevin looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know how many other people did, though.”
“No.” Briony bit her lip and looked around, unwil ing to dwel on that for the moment. Not when Jake was stil out there. After a moment she looked back to the werewolf.
“Kevin-”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, not that,” Briony said. “Look around.”
The space around them was free of trees, but interspersed with blooming flowers of types Briony had not seen before. The grass was in better shape than it should have been given the time of year, and even the few trees that sprang up in the space before them looked odd. They were too… vibrant somehow, as though they almost glowed from within. Each was strong and healthy, yet al the trees had a slightly ephemeral look to them, as though there was something about them that wasn’t quite there. In fact, the whole glade look like the world around it never touched it. A smal brook babbled its way through the trees, just deep enough and clear enough for Briony to see smal fish skimming their way along the bottom.
“It’s very peaceful,” Kevin said after a few seconds.
“That’s just it.” Briony walked up to the nearest of the trees. The bark felt solid enough under her touch, but there was nothing rough about it. “After a battle like that, we shouldn’t be feeling peaceful, and yet I do. Then there are these trees. Have you seen trees like this before?”
Briony wasn’t surprised to see Kevin shake his head.
“It’s…” Briony struggled for the words, because something about this place felt vaguely familiar to her. “It’s almost too good to be true. Like something out of a fairy tale. Does that make any sense?”
“As much sense as anything around Wicked. So do you think we should leave?”
“I don’t know,” Briony admitted. “What is this place, Kevin?”
Chapter 2
Sophie Edge stared straight forward as she sat tied to a chair in the back room of the diner, hardly able to bring herself to look at George. At what had been done to him.
To think too hard about the way that one of her closest friends had been turned into one of the undead was to invite either despair or self-recrimination. Despair, at the thought that something like that could happen to even the strongest of them. Self-recrimination because she had not been able to do anything about it. Had not even known about it until it was too late.
Sophie fought against the feelings. They were just what Pietre wanted. That was why he had left George there to guard her while he went off to see to more business.
Sophie would not let him win like that. She had hunted monsters for a long time now. Long enough that this wasn’t the first friend she had lost to them. Long enough to know that she had to stay focused if she wanted to live.
Too long, maybe. As much as Sophie hated to admit it, she was getting old. Her reactions weren’t quite what they had once been. Once, her hair had held no grey, and her body had been supple rather than simply wiry.
Once, the vampires would not have been able to grab her in the middle of a battle. Of course, once, they would not have had to. Once, Pietre would have spoken to her, and she would have gone to him wil ingly.
It had been a shock seeing him again after al these years. Seeing him every bit as handsome as Sophie remembered from her youth. In that way, at least, the passing of time was a blessing. Sophie had the experience now to see him for what he was. There was no way that she would be fooled again.
“Okay. You’l be there?” George was making phone cal s as he waited, setting up the meeting that would trap the other members of the Wicked Woods Preservation Society. Currently, he seemed to be on the phone to Jil , who would have been working in the diner had it not been closed for the evening. Sophie knew that she couldn’t just let George lure them to their deaths