When several heartbeats passed without Fiona uttering a sound, the weight turned into a strong sense of foreboding. I snapped my eyes open to see Fiona’s beautiful face pulled into a tight grimace, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed with concentration. With one hand, she held my wrist tightly. With the other, she continued her circles, using her nails to scratch along my palm.
“Ouch, that’s starting to hurt.” I tried once again to pull my hand away, but Fiona’s grip was like steel. “Fiona, let go!”
But she seemed to be caught up in some kind of trance, her body swaying, her lips moving in silent speech. My eyes grew wide and my stomach lurched. The room got darker, the lanterns grew dimmer. What the hell is going on? The chill was back, gripping me fiercely as I tugged on my arm, increasingly frantic for escape.
And then Fiona gasped, her skin flushed as she slowly opened her eyes. Her look was haunted.
I instantly ceased my struggling to stare at her.
“The hunter seeks you. Your life is in danger.” Her voice was gruff, aged, her eyes vacant as if she was lost in her own world, not really seeing me, yet staring right at me.
Her words sounded like a death sentence. I felt the blood drain from my face as I raised my free hand to cover my mouth. Dread washed over me. “What?”
“You are being hunted. Beware of the beast. He comes for you.”
Tears welled in Fiona’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She did nothing to stop them as she uttered her final foretelling of doom.
“You are marked for death.”
Chapter Two
Hunted
I yanked at my hand and finally broke free, the momentum pushing me back so hard my chair almost toppled over. I stumbled to stand, my body shaking, my legs weak.
“No! You can’t say that kind of stuff—you can’t talk about death like that!” I bolted through the closed tent panels, my mind reeling at the bizarre words that kept repeating in my head.
You are marked for death.
The humid night air assaulted me when I exited, sucking my breath away. I panted as I tried desperately to get my heart to slow and my nerves to calm. That woman was crazy. No psychic in their right mind would give a prediction like that. Who would want to know something so dreadful? I stumbled a few paces away, then scanned the noisy fair grounds, the flashing lights and yelps of pleasure doing nothing to relax me.
Where’s Rachel? She said she’d wait right outside the tent.
Someone jostled me and I turned, expecting to see my friend and ready to blast her for making me venture outside of the safety of my home, but strangers surrounded me. I spun around, disoriented and lost in the hectic movement of the crowd and enveloped by the loud, claustrophobic noise.
I squinted, raising my hand to shield my eyes from the glare of the carnival lights. My awareness sharpened as the noise truly became clear. Screaming. But not the usual, happy reveler type of screaming. No, this was more like screams of terror. I turned again, scanning the crowd that continued to bump and push past me. This wasn’t a slow moving group of partiers. This was a panicked exodus. All of these people were running away from something. And there I stood, dumb and still, being pushed and shoved, lucky to be standing at all.
“What the eff is going on?” I whispered, narrowing my eyes into the darkness beyond the carnival lights as the last of the group moved past, ignoring my unmoving form. I should be running too. But confusion rooted me in place. The carnival sounds seemed to have stopped, the only noise coming from the people who’d already escaped, their screams echoing behind me.
An eerie feeling of disquiet settled over me—a sense of being watched.
In the distance, glowing orbs blinked into existence, twin yellow bulbs floating in the darkness that surrounded the outer boundaries of the carnival. I narrowed my vision even more, until I locked onto those two bright beacons. I took a hesitant step forward, then another, all the while staring in confusion, my mind puzzled, reason fleeing.
I shivered. The orbs matched my movement. For every step I took forward, they did the same, until finally as I lowered my hand from my brow, the pulsing lights of the carnival revealed what the orbs truly were.
My scream remained trapped in my throat as I jerked backward, stumbling before my body tensed and my legs locked. I wanted to run but found myself standing, foolishly still once again—this time frozen by fear—my gaze riveted on the gigantic wolf moving closer to me.
Vomit surged with my fright, a disgusting lump in my throat that I struggled to control.
The wolf’s yellow eyes glared at me, its teeth bared as it sniffed the air, and then licked its long tongue across its nose.
I didn’t know much about wolves, but I knew enough to guess that if I spun and ran, the beast would be on me in seconds. The thing was so huge its head was higher than my waist, and I was a tall girl. I’d never seen a dog, even the big breeds, who matched this animal in size.