(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 43; ruined

He was gone.

There one minute, and the next, just... gone.

Tisper stood at the edge of the road, watching the foliage of the dark forest, rattle and quiver in the wind. Quentin had disappeared into shadows, shoved his way between fir branches, and any sight of him was eaten up by the lush growth.

Bailey and Elizaveta followed after. Then it was Izzy, looking back with her blue, almond-shaped eyes. "Um..." was all she said. Then she was gone into the darkness behind them.

"Matt, come on!" Tisper pulled at his arm. "We have to follow them."

"Are you kidding? Tisper, they're wolves. They know what they're doing. We don't."

"Matt, it could be Jaylin," she strained.

Matt looked torn, stuck to the distance between the tree-line and the pavement.

"Relax, kid." Leo leaned through the back seat window, thick arm folded over the frame. "I'll watch the car. Not much help treckin' through the land with a bum leg anyhow."

Before he could even agree, Tisper was dragging him behind, bulldozing through the rough wings of the firs. It was dark here—darker even than the night road where they'd left Leo. Tisper could see nothing but the silhouettes of trees—their bark ripped and ribboned by something big. Something surely terrifying. She held Matt's sleeve in a death grip, slipping over mossy stone, searching through the dark for a sign of the others. A sound, even. The longer she heard nothing, the more her heart wrenched in her chest.

"Which way did we come?" She spun, twirled one way and then the other. The trees all looked the same, each a monument to the next.

Matt turned around too, searching for a sign of the rode, twisting around in a cold sweat. "Shit, Tisper."

"It's not my fault!"

"You're the one who dragged us in here! I think the road's back that way."

"This way," Tisper pointed in a different direction. "I remember that broken branch."

"There's broken branches all over!"

"Stop yelling," Tisper squalled back. "You were a boy scout, right? Make us a compass or something."

"How in the shit is a compass going to help if we don't even know what direction we came from?"

"I don't know! I don't know, okay Matt? I—"

A hand shot out from the dark, slender fingers sealing her words in. Tisper bristled at the palm muzzling her mouth, chills creeping up her bare arms like goose skin.

"Shh." When she recognized the voice behind her, and the scent of her sweet perfume, Tisper sobered of her anxieties. "We don't know that we're alone here," Izzy whispered. "Come on, quietly."

Her fingers fell from Tisper's mouth and Izzy took her hand instead, leading her through rough brush and all of the spidery little tree limbs that snagged her by the clothes and hair, and scraped crudely against her bare skin. Tisper hated the wilderness. Hated it. For every step, she swore she was crawling with spiders and beetles and earwigs galore.

But all of the things going on were so much bigger than bugs, so Tisper didn't bother to wipe the crawly feeling away. She reached behind for Matt instead, just to make sure he wouldn't get lost; a three-person chain as she felt his fingers slip between her own. She did miss that about Matt. He had the warmest hands.

Somehow, in the jet black thicket, Izzy knew the darkness like she spoke its language. She'd say things like "watch your step" and "mind the moss" and Tisper and Matthew would skirt around the invisible hazards, clinging on tight to one another.