Wonderland (Deadly Lush Book 2) Read online

  She shook herself. Probably just disorientation from her spill. She had fallen from the sky. It stood to reason she would be a little unsteady.

  Sharpening her focus, she made off into the trees, keeping an eye out for the usual predators or any other forms of hostility that might emerge between here and the eastern shore of the island.

  If she even ended up there.

  She knew which direction the Seraphspan had brought her from, and so that was the direction she pointed herself in as she started off. In a while she would seek out a decent tree and climb it to correct her bearings, but first she had to make it out of this wondrous wintry mess, which, the more she thought about it, really was far too chillingly quiet.

  'Tranquility' had officially become the word for what crept down her spine like a haunted whisper. Nothing that supported life should be this quiet. It was eerie.

  A land of dormant ghosts, she thought – and stepped lightly through the quiet, lest she disturb any dreaming apparitions.

  13 – Dream Echo

  Back through the silvery-barked trees she trekked, their branches all draped in white wisteria-like blossoms. Then came the glittering marshes, a maze of little pools topped with downy aqua lily pads, their dewy, glistening white hairs giving the impression of frost. After that were the white-pollen thickets, the thick vegetation coated in snow-like powder – only snow had surely never caused so much vigorous sneezing.

  Shiloh's awareness grew foggy, and at first she attributed it to some allergic haze from the pollen. But then, far in the back of her cobweb-hampered mind, she began to wonder if there had been some type of venom in those hostile little spores. If their innocent pricks hadn't necessarily been so innocent. Just because the butterfly bites had proven harmless beyond the perforation of miniscule fangs did not mean the same could be said for the snowy needles of Winter.

  She realized, on her second pass through the frosty marshes, that she was going in circles.

  What had the dratted spores done to her?

  The possibility of being stuck in some hypnotic wintry maze as nightfall approached renewed her determination to break free, and she pressed more hastily through the repetitive terrain.

  It cycled again, depositing her back in the marshes.

  This was madness.

  These circles were making her dizzy.

  Gripping her spear, she began to run. As if speed might break the pattern. Something had to.

  Either there was something to the theory, or the redundant landscape had only been a beehive of layers, because Winter’s dreamy clutches began to unravel and fall away at last. The pale reverie blended back into the rugged, vibrant woods she was used to. Hints of the white wonderland still graced the area, snowy blossoms intermingling with the other flowers more often than usual, but overall the effect trailed off, the dormant taint losing purchase as she went.

  But so did she lose purchase on her clarity.

  Stumbling through the trees, she threw her hand up against a sturdy trunk to steady herself. Almost immediately, moss crept out of the crevices in the bark, overtaking her fingers and spreading across her hand. Horrified, she jerked away, tripping in another direction.

  The dizziness grew, knots in trees beginning to spiral and swirl, the rustling of leaves turning to rattlesnake rattles, a thickening presence of mist stirring itself into eddying whispers that whisked into her ears.

  Shiloh tried to shake the whispers, clamping her hands over her ears, but without her hands to steady herself she tripped over a gnarled root and found herself sprawled in the underbrush. It broke her fall like autumn leaves, its sweet smell crushing up to permeate her senses.

  Potpourri, she remembered thinking when she'd first come to Paradise. Bark like cinnamon and rosy, dry petals. Not a bad place to stop and rest. Perhaps she could lay her head down, just for a minute.

  But as her face nodded off toward the ground, the petals turned to worms. The bark to beetles. Aversion shot through her, the urge to scream bubbling up in her throat. But her throat felt thick, as if cotton had been stuffed down her windpipe. Or as if a spider had built its web there.

  Spiders in her throat. There were spiders in her throat.

  All at once she was coughing – coughing and crawling forward, dragging herself through the writhing, scuttling vermin, not even sure where she was going. Just possessed by the need to get away, to get out, to pull herself from the disgusting swarm of unmentionable creatures.

  She dragged herself through the insect underbrush, over gnarled roots, through spider-web-strung foliage until a stream of light broke through the trees and shone down on the haunted shadows, and the worms shriveled up back into petals, the beetles stilling into pieces of bark once more. She peered up at the light, squinting at its brightness. Too white, she thought.

  Rabbit silhouettes poked about in the fringes of the light, nibbling on fallen watercolor-stained blossoms. Shiloh grasped at the tranquility they emanated, trying to still her panic as the blinding light triggered an excruciating headache.

  She pinched her eyes shut, fighting the rising agony–

  As if to grant her wish, utter darkness swallowed the light.

  *

  The forest was quiet. A heavy midnight-dark permeated the trees. Ethereal, violet-tinged mist shifted through the woods, disturbed only by Shiloh's bare, moss-stained feet, treading cat-like through the ferns.

  She wasn't sure where she was going, but her feet seemed programmed with some destination. She treaded through layers of feathery branches, gooseflesh rising at the way their soft, trailing fingers brushed over her shoulders. Not a single cricket chirped in the gloom. The only sound was a strange whisper that stirred to life and echoed past – like a rock skipped over water – chiming wraith-like into the distance. It came again a few moments later, incoherent, whisking by and bouncing off the trees until it faded.

  This went on for some time, the ghostly sound materializing behind her and flitting past. The whispers seemed to be herding her, blazing a subtle trail through the mystical dark.

  They grew quieter as she walked, until her wandering brought her to the edge of a familiar meadow, and she stood at its edge surveying the quiet grassland. The mist was restricted to the trees, the glade moonlit and clear, and aswarm with flickering fireflies. And across the grass, crawling with firefly shadows, were the bunkers.

  Shiloh felt no caution as she continued forward into the meadow. She didn't feel much of anything, really, except a dreamlike numbness that put one foot obediently in front of the other.

  Through the dew-slick grass she wandered, until she came to the first bunker. Without hesitating she grasped the old, rusty lever and grinded it open, pushing her way inside.

  She descended the dark, grungy spiral staircase to the platform below, and crossed the cold stone to a grate-sequestered alcove. Cranking aside the grate, she stepped past the threshold into the rickety lift.

  No hint of claustrophobia.

  Rolling the grate shut, she pushed a crusty old button. The lift descended into even deeper darkness, the sallow glow of the elevator button barely illuminating the shaft’s texture through the grate as the chamber plummeted into the earth. The floor of the lift buzzed against her feet, the grate rattling, the air turning colder.

  Then it slowed, coming to a complete stop.

  Shiloh frowned. The wall of the shaft was still visible through the grate. It shouldn’t have stopped yet. Was she stuck between floors?

  Before the thought could distress her, there was a guttural churning of gears, and the lift rotated and then lurched sideways.

  Shiloh caught herself as the chamber was whisked down some horizontal tunnel. When it slowed again, she could see nothing but blackness through the grate.

  She waited.

  The elevator shaft began to shudder, then rattle, then quake. All at once the lift blasted upward, screeching up the shaft, wheels squealing, grate thundering. Stale air currents buffeted her, pulling at her hair and cloth
es. The chamber ascended faster and faster until it was hurtling at an impossible speed. There was no way the ancient cables could handle such a speed, and no way the shaft could stretch on so long...

  Sparks flew from the workings. The shuddering, banging of the chamber became deafening. Suddenly the darkness was growing brighter, announcing the impending top of the shaft. Panic gripped Shiloh's paralyzed body, the threat of colliding with the top at high speeds making her want to scream as it approached.

  She couldn't, of course – couldn't even whisper as gravity fell away and stole her wind, the whipping vortex sucking dry her voice – and so the chamber ate up its course, shifting gears into another, astronomical burst of speed at the last minute, and rocketed into an explosion of blinding light–

  14 – Venom

  Shiloh opened her eyes to the brightness, blinking against the pale blaze. It was still lancing radiantly through the trees, but no longer beat down on her with that unbearable headache.

  She watched the rabbits for a moment, shaking off the last trickles of the dream. Dizziness still swam through her awareness, but the debilitating unconsciousness, at least, loosened its grip.

  It was the second time she had had the dream. Admittedly it had been a little different this time, but still followed the same premise – she wandered back through Paradise to the meadow with the bunkers, broke into one, and took an elevator ride that ended with the chamber blasting off into the sky.

  Probably insignificant, but something about the rabbits tugged at her memory too.

  The first time she had the dream, she had also awakened to rabbits.

  The combination of recurring elements furrowed her brow in suspicion. Could they really both be a coincidence?

  Something else was shifting in the light, causing it to bend and splay. Not just a thing, but things, figures – albino silhouettes.

  Shiloh struggled to focus past the luminous blaze, holding a hand up to shield her face.

  It wasn't just light, she realized, but mist. The sun beaming down through a pall of fog, which explained its dreamy white quality.

  As for the figures... Their horns materialized first. Horns and antlers, followed by elegant horse-like bodies, until a group of gleaming white stags stood half-cloaked in the misty trees, looking down at her.

  Albino stags. But tall – very tall. Their heads where humans' might have been.

  Because...they were human, Shiloh saw as they stepped forward out of the mist, and her dizzy focus repainted them in their rightful forms.

  Human, and frightful, and the last people she would wish to be discovered by in her current state.

  The Tribal. White only because they had traipsed through the white-pollen thicket, streaking themselves with ivory powder.

  The rabbits scattered.

  Shiloh's neck began to give out from craning to look up at them. Awareness flickering, she felt her face sinking back toward the ground. Worms or not, she wanted nothing more than to bury her face in the underbrush, and sink into potpourri dreams. Or let the bugs overtake her.

  A pair of boots crushed the underbrush next to her face, creaking as the owner crouched down next to her. Tassels dangled from the supple folds of the boots, woven from fine threads that in all appearances seemed to be human hair. Gnarly, strong fingers twined themselves into Shiloh's own hair, pulling her had back up.

  Feeling as though her neck was going to snap, Shiloh forced her flickering eyelids open to meet the Tribal's gaze.

  Mother Eve's wise, fierce eyes glared down at her. There was something wide-eyed about all the Tribal. A way their gazes flared, even when their eyes were narrowed. Shiloh felt the sharpness of that gaze, stared into its snake-like vortex, and felt her skin crawl under its all-seeing hunger.

  Mother Eve tsked her tongue. It even sounded forked, like a snake's. More slithery, more tattered than the average human's. “I dare say, you have not received the warm welcome you were expecting upon landing on the shores of Paradise, have you?” The savage woman's eyes roved over the sorry state they found Shiloh in. “So, then. Allow me,” she proposed, coming back to Shiloh's dazed face. “Welcome to Wonderland. Isn't it a wonder that you're still alive.”

  Shiloh felt the roots of her hair straining, ready to rip from her scalp in the woman's twisting, iron grasp. She shifted uncomfortably, wincing and holding in a gasp.

  Mother Eve's eyes scanned her face, as if reading her pain.

  “You should really think twice before wandering off into the jungle alone,” the bone-colored savage advised ominously, and though it didn't seem possible, her fingers twisted abruptly tighter into Shiloh's locks. “Especially after threatening me.”

  As the pain lancing across her skull intensified, so did the dizziness. Shiloh felt herself fading again – was acutely aware of her helplessness, and the fact that this time, she was utterly condemned. That half-bird, whatever that thing truly was that had snatched her from the Tribal's camp, had inadvertently spared her from her fate the first time, but it had been a thoroughly unorthodox fluke. She would not be so lucky again.

  But as she faded, something caught her attention. A single drop of blood trickled from the wound that glanced across Mother Eve's collarbone – my handiwork, Shiloh thought in one last trace of triumph – and slid bead-like down the powder-coating that dusted the woman's chest. Shiloh watched its progression, crimson against white, like a perfect berry against a pristine landscape of snow. And something strange happened inside her.

  She felt...thirsty, suddenly. No – hungry?

  It was difficult to pinpoint, exactly, but a keen feeling sparked inside her. She became riveted, the dizziness abating, her mind sharpening at the sight of that perfect drop of blood and pulling her out of her haze into a state of hyper-focus.

  The crimson bead trickled down the savage's chest and fell, splashing into the underbrush, and Shiloh watched it soak into a single dry petal, reconstituting it, dark scarlet soaking slowly into its rosy veins.

  Just as slowly, Shiloh's gaze traveled back up until she was staring into Mother Eve's eyes again. Into her soul, it seemed. She could see her reflection in the woman's amber gaze, and it surprised her – but only in some far-off dimension where she wasn't utterly focused, utterly poised, utterly unafraid.

  Her own bloodshot eyes stared back at her – the irises themselves strangely crimson. Bloodshot, crimson, and bright.

  Oh-so-bright.

  She felt the instinct bubbling up inside her, an allusion to the outburst that came just moments after that.

  “I will wander alone into the jungle if that is what I please,” she declared darkly, before she even realized she planned to respond. And then she erupted into motion, an unexpected tidal wave rising inside her, intent on vanquishing everything in its path.

  There was an upheaval that she couldn't distinguish as underneath her or inside of her, but it launched her like a thousand pounds of rearing, wild horse. She broke through Mother Eve's grasp, and the Tribal Queen flailed backwards, caught off-guard. A storm of potpourri came up with Shiloh's violent ascension, strewing in every direction as she came reanimated.

  She flew at Mother Eve while the Tribal woman was still reeling. The other savages were drawing their weapons, quick from well-positioned sheathes, but Shiloh's crudely-crafted spear was in her hands, reclaimed by some unconscious reflex, and she was wielding it like a staff to deflect their blows. She may have stopped short of sharpening it to perfection, but it made a wickedly practical staff.

  Normally, she would be no match for three Tribal, if she was even truly a match for one. But there was a fire in her veins that made her fast and fearless, and aggression was suddenly more of an instinct than survival. Some part of her was acutely aware that this sudden reckless affinity for the fray was likely about to get her killed, but the logic that resonated in her bones sang to the tune that she was a goner either way, and all she cared about in the face of death was taking some Tribal down with her.

  In essence,
it wasn't her that jumped up and wielded her staff. It was a spike of adrenaline, possessing her. A feverish intensity propelling her.

  Swing the staff quick and hard to the left, crack against one set of enemy bones. Whip it back, a blinding flourish, jut it hard into the soft hollow of an unsuspecting ribcage. When had her aim gotten so good?

  Drop the albinos like flies.

  One was switching her weapon to her other hand, her good arm gone limp. The other staggered, the wind knocked clean out of her.

  A moment of triumph spiked through Shiloh – one little window of vulnerability was all anyone needed to deliver a death blow. Mother Eve stood there before her, briefly exposed–

  But it was all too brief. Impaired or not, the other Tribal were snapping right back to her defense. Shiloh's limbs were not her own, speeding to take on the likeness of a manic spider wielding multiple weapons. They blurred until she couldn't say how many limbs she employed. Four? A dozen? A slash opened up on her cheek, from some blow she didn't notice, then another on her arm, her shoulder, across her knuckles... She pushed harder – is that all you've got? – coloring herself bloody as she battered at Mother Eve's defenses, determined to get through if she had to cut herself to ribbons in the process.

  Everything focused into a carnal dance of whirling, hacking, jutting, and swinging. A relentless give-and-take of dodging and striking punctuated by incoherent battle cries, grunts and shrieks – sounds of pain, of force, of exertion.

  She saw everything through a haze. Through cross-hairs made out of dandelion fibers. Clouding her awareness but tunneling her vision.

  Pure reflex saved her from a dozen creative beheadings. Senses taut like never before, twinging at every subtle warning, she cheated death again, and again, and again.

  A long time, she’d cheated death. It was hardly a new trick. It was just time to put all the practice to good use, to pull all the tricks together into one dance – one great finale, if it came to that.