Chapter 4: The Lake at Dawn
The cabin smelled like dust and old fear. I pulled my jeans up, fast, not bothering with the button until I was standing. Niko was already at the window, the one that faced away from the trail, wrestling with the frame. It was painted shut, layers of it, years of neglect sealing the wood together.
He grunted and threw his weight against it. The frame gave with a crack that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet.
We both froze. Listened.
Nothing moved in the trees.
"Go," I whispered.
He shoved the window up and swung a leg over the sill. I followed, dropping into the wet grass on the other side, my boots sinking into mud. The air was cold and smelled of rot and standing water. The lake was somewhere ahead. The map Maya had folded and refolded a hundred times was burned into my memory.
Niko took my hand. We ran.
The forest was lighter now. Gray light bleeding through the pines, not dawn yet, but close. Close enough to see the shapes of trunks and the gaps between them. Close enough to avoid the worst of the undergrowth, though branches still caught at my sleeves and scratched across my face.
I kept my mouth shut and my feet moving. Every snapped twig felt like a beacon. Every breath too loud.
Niko moved ahead of me, picking the path, and I followed like his shadow.
The ground began to slope down. The trees opened up. I smelled it before I saw it, that cold mineral bite of fresh water.
The lake spread out before us, flat and pale, reflecting a sky I couldn't see yet. The opposite shore was a dark line of pines. The water was so still it looked like glass, like it had been waiting all night for us to arrive.
Niko pulled me close, his arm wrapped around my shoulders, and I leaned into him, letting my heart slow.
It was quiet here. Too quiet.
"That log," I said. "Leaning against the fallen one. I think that's where he said."
Niko nodded, and we moved along the bank, staying low, staying close to the treeline. The mud sucked at my boots. The cold seeped through the denim.
Ethan came out of the trees like a ghost. He was hunched, moving with the careful silence of a man who'd been trained for this or had spent the whole night learning it. His hunting knife was out, held low, and his face was pale in the gray light.
Behind him, Maya. Her face was blotchy, eyes red-rimmed, dark hollows punched under them. She looked like she'd been crying for hours, and then had stopped crying, and then had run out of anything else to do.
They dropped behind the fallen log, and Maya lifted her head when she saw us. Her mouth opened, and no sound came out. Then she was across the mud, her arms around me, squeezing so hard I felt my ribs shift.
"Oh god," she breathed into my shoulder. "Oh god, you're alive."
"Where are they?" Niko asked.
Ethan's jaw was set. He didn't look at us. He was watching the treeline over our shoulders.
"Somewhere out there," he said. "Plenty of time to make camp, sit around a fire, and get carved up like dinner."
Maya pulled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "They followed us for a while. Then they stopped. We waited, and they didn't come."
"Did you see them?" I asked. "Even once?"
"No." Ethan's voice was flat. "One sound. Something moving in the brush. That's it."
Niko's arm tightened around my shoulders. "So they're still out there. Waiting."
The lake was still. The pines were still. Everything was still, except the four of us, huddled together on the muddy bank, waiting for the dark to move.