The Edge 02 - Bayou Moon by Andrews Ilona

Author:Andrews, Ilona [Andrews, Ilona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Adult, Contemporary, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780441019458
Google: INyUQOZZl58C
Amazon: 0441019455
Goodreads: 7130616
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2013-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

WILLIAM glided through the grove. The cypresses gave way to the Edge pines. Huge pine trunks surrounded him, black and soaring, like a sea of masts that belonged to ships sunken deep under the carpet of blue leaf moss.

Dense thickets crowded the pines, punctuated by the patches of rust ferns. Stunted swamp willows with startling pale bark protruded through the brush like white wax candles. This wasn’t his Wood. This was an old treacherous place, a garish decay and new life mixed into one, and William felt uneasy.

The dog by his side didn’t much care for the wood either. The sleepy-eyed, good-natured idiot had raised his ears, and his brown eyes scanned the woods with open suspicion.

A breeze touched them. They both sniffed in unison and turned left, following Lark’s trail.

Where was that kid going? William leapt over a fallen branch. He hoped with all of him that Lark wasn’t meeting some “nice” monster in the woods and telling him all of the secrets of her family.

A large white oak loomed in the woods, a lone giant tinseled with maiden hair moss. The air currents slapped William with a dozen odors of carrion, some old, some new. What the hell?

With all this carrion, he could smell nothing else.

Cough barreled on ahead. Dogs. Stupid creatures.

William jogged closer.

A dozen small furry bodies hung from the oak’s branches. Two squirrels, a rabbit, an odd thing that looked like a cross between a raccoon and an ermine—something the Edge had cooked up, no doubt—fish . . .

A skinny shape scrambled through the branches above him. Lark’s small face poked through the leaves.

“You shouldn’t be here. This is the tree where the small monster lives,” she said. “This is the small monster’s food, and that’s the small monster’s house.”

He looked up to where she pointed. A haphazard shelter sat in the branches of the oak, just some old boards clumsily nailed and tied to make a little platform with an overhang. A small yellow something sat on the edge of the platform. William squinted. A stuffed teddy bear next to Peva’s crossbow.

Cerise was right. Lark thought she was a monster. A small one. Who the hell was the big monster?

The teddy bear looked at him with small black eyes. Looking at it made him feel uneasy, as if he was sick or in serious danger and he wasn’t sure when the next blow would be coming. He wanted to take Lark and her teddy bear away from the tree, just carry her off to the house, where there was warmth and light. His instincts told him she’d bolt if he tried.

Human children didn’t do this and she wasn’t a changeling. If she was one, he would’ve recognized her by now and Cerise wouldn’t be surprised by his eyes.

William tapped the tree. “Can I come up?”

Lark bit her lips thinking. “I can trust you?”

He let the moonlight catch his eyes, setting them aglow. “Yes. I’m a monster, too.”

Lark’s eyes went wide. She stared at him in silent shock for a long breath and nodded.

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