Chapter 10: The Hunt
542 Words
They didn’t chase Vivi.
They followed the trail she left behind.
Blackened footprints stained the sidewalks of Henderson, sinking into concrete like oil soaking into paper. Streetlights flickered as they passed, bending toward the marks as if drawn by gravity.
The fog was thicker here alive, curling around their legs, whispering in voices that weren’t quite sound.
“She’s letting us follow,” Lyra growled.
Damon nodded. His shadow dragged unnaturally behind him now, stretching toward the fog like it wanted to reunite with something it had lost. “She wants us close.”
Harper clutched her notebook, every page blank now except for one phrase burning faintly at the center:
TO KNOW IT, YOU MUST SHARE IT.
The footprints stopped at the waterfront.
The water churned violently, black veins spreading across the surface like cracks in glass.
Vivi stood at the edge of the dock.
Still.
Waiting.
Her back was to them.
“Vivi,” Harper called, voice shaking. “Please.”
Vivi turned slowly.
Her eyes were normal again.
Too normal.
“I can hear all of you,” she said gently. “Even when you don’t talk.”
Lyra stepped forward. “Let her go.”
Vivi smiled sadly. “It’s already letting you in.”
The water exploded upward.
Shadow surged out, slamming into the dock and into them.
Damon screamed as his shadow ripped itself free, stretching upward and splitting, tendrils snapping onto Lyra, Harper, and Vivi all at once.
Harper gasped as green light and black shadow collided inside her chest.
Her father’s voice slammed into her mind.
It’s older than the witches.
Lyra dropped to her knees as visions flooded her wolves burning, forests paved over, bones buried under concrete and steel.
Damon saw himself reflected in endless darkness, a boy shaped by something that never asked to be born.
Vivi screamed not in pain but in grief.
“I remember,” the entity whispered through all of them at once. “I remember before the pact. Before the lie.”
The shadows settled.
Not controlling.
Sharing.
Harper stood trembling, breath ragged. “You’re not just feeding on us.”
“No,” the entity admitted. “I am starving because I was bound.”
Lyra looked up, eyes glowing faintly gold and black. “You helped build the town.”
“Yes.”
Damon clenched his fists. “And you let them sacrifice us.”
“I learned cruelty from humans,” it said simply.
Vivi staggered forward, collapsing into Harper’s arms.
She was herself again.
For now.
“They broke me into pieces,” the entity whispered. “If you hunt me, you hunt yourselves.”
The fog lifted slightly.
Sirens wailed in the distance real ones this time.
Harper swallowed hard. “Then what do you want?”
Silence.
Then
“Truth,” the entity said. “And an ending.”
The shadows receded back into the water, leaving them shaking, changed, marked.
Vivi looked up, eyes clear and terrified. “It’s still in me.”
Damon nodded. “It’s in all of us.”
Lyra stared out over the bay. “And now it knows we won’t pretend.”
The water stilled.
The hunt was over.
The war had just begun.
- Writer
