Blood

I blink, trying to gather my senses, but they evade me. It’s like trying to catch a dream as you begin to wake, only instead of a dream I’m trying to catch up to reality.

And it’s slipping.

“Mallory!” I hear someone calling. I can’t recognise the voice. Hell, I can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman. Maybe I just imagined it.

“Oh, Mal, what have you done to yourself?” Asks the voice. A woman I think. “Come on, love. You have to help me. I can’t lift you on my own.”

I blink some more, trying to get my bearings, trying to remember anything other than sick dread and failure.

“Cynthia,” I mutter, realising that it’s her that has found me. A sudden urgency grips me and I feel my hand grasp her.

“Cynthia, we have to go the Wood. They took her,” I say.

Cynthia grunts with the effort of trying to get me to my feet. I try my best to stand.

“We have to get you to the doctor. You’re bleeding all—”

“They took her!” I say, more insistently.

“And I’m taking you to the doctor,” she replies, guiding me out of the ditch. I can barely make out the headlights of her car up on the road.

“But the town is on fire,” I say.

“I know.”

Pain tugs at my ribs and lungs, however I still speak. I have to convince her. “We have to go to Lorna.”

“You’d be no good to her like this,” Cynthia says. I think I can hear tears in her voice. “I’m sorry, Mallory, but I won’t take you to the Wood.”

My foot slides out from under me and I mostly fall, almost pulling Cynthia down with me. She grunts with the pain of my weight, but keeps me from falling all the same. Only then do I think of her baby and realise there’s no way she would go to the Wood.

“Just leave me here,” I say as I get my feet back under me.

“You’ll die. There’s already enough people dying tonight Mallory Fionn, you don’t need to be one of them.”

I struggle to go with Cynthia up the incline, so much so that I can’t ask her what she meant, and by the time I’m at the top, the exertion has pushed the statement from my mind. I try to grasp for some ominous question I meant to ask, but can’t find it.

I’m dropped into the passenger seat of a cold vehicle and listen to the door slam before Cynthia gets in and starts to drive.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Cynthia tells me.

I think she fears that I’m at the brink of death.

I yearn to argue that it’s Lorna that she should fear for, but it would be a waste of breath, and I’m struggling to breathe enough as it is.

The car moves forward and I can vaguely make out the distant flames. If it is the fey, then I fear what purpose they have in taking Lorna. I’ve never seen them act like this before. Never.

The flames fill my mind, taking the form of a wildfire across a field of grass. That image plays with the back of my mind and oddly lifts some of the dread I feel.

“Mallory, if you die I will be very cross with you,” Cynthia says angrily.

Is that what this is? I’ve almost died so many times before, it seems funny to think that a car crash would do me in. But no. I can’t be dying. Not now, not when I’m actually needed.

And so to Kappamor we go.