Horseman (Sleepy Hollow High #1) by Golden Christopher & Gilmore Ford Lytle

Author:Golden, Christopher & Gilmore, Ford Lytle [Golden, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Daring Greatly Corporation
Published: 2012-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

I

Aimee tried to make herself move, tried to run from the dark secrets the tree shared. They couldn't be true. At least . . . they couldn't all be true. Friends and family alike were not what she expected, hoped that they would be, and the world around her seemed like it wanted nothing more than to crush her beneath a tide of misery.

She heard herself whimper, felt her teeth biting into the soft flesh of her lower lip, and shook her head as the skin broke and hot blood ran across her tongue. Maybe it was the sudden lance of pain in her lip or the tears in her eyes or simply the sickening feeling of being violated in her heart and soul, but she finally managed to move.

Aimee stumbled, her legs weak, and fell on her back in the damp leaves around the whispering tree. She shivered more than the chill evening air could account for and blinked rapidly, disoriented.

"Stasia?" Her voice sounded winded, strained, and she made herself gasp in a deep breath. "Stasia?"

Her friend didn't answer. Aimee looked around and tried to shake the echoing cobwebs of dark thoughts from her head — She has used you . . . When you need her, she will not be there to help you — only partially succeeding. But when she saw Stasia, her thoughts became clearer.

Aimee had been much closer to the tree than Stasia. Now, though, Stasia wasn't near the tree, but on it. Her body was completely off the ground, a thick branch wrapped halfway around her waist. Even as Aimee caught sight of this horrible scene, the wood creaked and the branch tightened and lifted Stasia off the ground. Something thick and black slithered from the depths of the big knothole in the tree's bark, dripping a heavy, foul-smelling sap as it slid up Stasia's ankle. It curled around her calf, pulling her foot toward the darkness in the gaping maw of a knothole. The black pit had grown; Aimee was sure of it. She had no trouble believing her friend's entire body could be pulled into the thing with little effort.

Stasia's eyelids fluttered as if she were drugged and she made soft whimpering noises. Her face was streaked with tears, her lips trembling.

It had lulled them somehow, and now the tree was going to kill Stasia. When you need her, she will not be there to help you. There was no way in hell that Aimee was going to let anything happen to her friend.

"Let go of her!" The words burst from her lips in a scream that scraped her throat raw. Aimee ran to Stasia, her fingers grabbed at the bark, and she nearly pulled away, disgusted to feel that it was warm and damp. The rough bark tried to catch her skin, to cut into her fingers. She pulled as hard as she could on the branch that held Stasia, throwing her weight into the struggle, but all she got for her efforts was a friction burn on her fingers and a slight swaying of the limb.

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