Chapter 34 - Behind Me

— Ylva —

We were riding back from Greysky.

It had been a bit of a let down.

They had started the whole things with guns blazing, but the moment we snuck in and began disarming them, they surrendered. Even our enemies are becoming meek. Where are all the good ones gone?

As far as I knew, there had been no artifacts, no werewolf trafficking either. They were building a collection of sand and earth from various mystically powerful locations around the world, to use in rituals.

We did all of this for a series of jars of dirt.

Those jars seemed to have worried the Brotherhood, and the collection had been said to be significant. At least a decade’s worth.

I guess what it was used for was not really good, but it was not my most glorious battle.

“Why are we not taking the same route?” asked a Brother named Bernard.

“We’re trying to go around the empty land,” said the driver.

“What is an empty land?” Bernard asked.

“It’s a territory avoided by everything because of things hanging out there.

“It’s not empty if there are things there,” said Bernard, but the driver was interrupted before he could answer back.

“Road ahead blocked, there has been flooding in the area, we have to double down and go the way we came,” said a voice on the comm system.

The driver cursed.

All the trucks in our convoy slowed down and turned around.

“We came that way, why is it a problem to return that way?” asked Bernard.

“Because we’ll pass through the empty land after nightfall.

I suppressed a shudder.

There are a lot of things that thrive in the darkness. We may be well equipped to fight quite a large variety of nasties, but there are things much harder to deal with than others. Some immaterial things can’t be hit by anything material, others fight with will, or with the mind itself. Whenever there is a place that is commonly avoided by mortals, there’s generally a reason for it. But when the place is avoided by the supernatural crowd as a whole, that is not good.

There’s always something bad enough, or nasty enough to believe it can handle anything, so when those avoid somewhere, it’s for a good reason.

There were a few places that felt odd to me, when we drove through the first time, but the sun can have a purifying effect. When the darkness will hit, then it’ll be a different game.

“Where is this empty land?” asked Bernard.

“Two clicks ahead,” said our driver.

Everyone in the truck got silent.

The sun was barely visible above the mountains on our left. It took maybe a minute or two for it to hide below the horizon.

I tried to keep my eyes ahead.

Some things will leave you alone if you don’t notice them. It’s a strategy I’ve used more than a few times already.

As the light faded out, a massive shadow rushed pass us in front of the road. With my nerves so tight, I nearly jumped out of my skin, and only controlled my reaction at the last moment, as I realized no one else in the truck reacted. I scratched my arm as if this was all I’d wanted to do in the first place, but a dark mass far ahead, before which the shadow passed, twitched.

It had looked like a rock, but it moved, two long limbs rose on either side like enormous spider legs, and pushed it up. Beneath it, there were legs. The limbs were abnormally long and skeletal. The arms that had helped it stand up nearly dragged the ground, and from the torso, rose a head. And its eyes looked straight at me.

I closed my eyes instinctively.

I did not want to be noticed.

Whatever had been that thing, it had been cloaked in a massive amount of wrongness. I just knew that it had no place here on earth. I waited for what I thought would be long enough for us to pass it by, then waited a few additional seconds just to be sure, before I opened my eyes again.

I tried not to check for anything weird on the side of the road, and focus on the road itself. I saw nothing in my peripheral that was abnormal, but I felt the hair all over my skin rise up.

Something was wrong.

My breathing accelerated on pure instincts. There was a stench in the air that had nothing to do with smells and everything to do with fear. My gooseflesh intensified and I began to hear a strange rasping sound.

It was getting closer.

From behind.

And the sound came from inside the truck.

No one reacted, so I deduced that it was nothing they could see or hear. Being part Valkyrie, there are a lot of things I can perceive that no werewolf can on their own.

The sound crept in closer from behind me. The rasp guttural and louder now.

I suppressed a shiver climbing up my spine in a panic. If I showed any signs of acknowledgement whatsoever, I don’t think I’d be able to fight it, especially in close quarters.

The stench intensified. It reminded me of rotten corpses and spoiled eggs. The rasping was nearly next to my ear now. I saw blackness in my peripheral appear next to my left cheek. And a smile nearly as wide as the head itself aimed at me. The flesh crusty and slimy at the same time, the eyes wide and without eyelids.

My stomach contracted on itself in pure revolution.

No one saw anything.

That thing was nearly on top of those behind me. I heard one of them rub at his arms as if he was cold, but that was all the reactions any of them showed.

Wolves.

I dropped my backseat down, probably pushing on the thing behind me, turned on my right side and laid back with my eyes closed for a pretend nap.

I couldn’t let anyone know, I couldn’t say anything. At the first sign I’d seen it, it would strike.

It was testing me. I could feel horrible appendages caress my skin, taunting me. I wanted to puke.

It went like this for nearly an hour, until the stench subsided, but I didn’t dare move until we reached the airport.

I was doing a terrible bodyguard job right now, but there was enough warriors in this truck to handle any situation.

I had to protect myself.

When the car stopped, I was afraid to open my eyes, but I had to.

I went straight out, without looking behind me, just in case, and walked straight to the plane.

I saw Mishka look at me strangely, but I didn’t give him time to say anything, and he didn’t push forward.

That idiot is cleverer than he looks.

Once in the plane, I finally let out a breath I’d been holding all that time, emptying my lungs for the first time in hours.

People slipped inside the aircraft one after the other.

I was not sorry to leave this freaking place for good.

Fuck this place.

As I moved to the side, to allow someone to sit by me, I saw a dark shape crawl the ground around the tarmac through the plane window. Its head popped up as my eyes connected for the briefest of seconds, and I rapidly turned my back to it, as the plane began to move.

This was a damn Other.

Fuck!

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