Read The Rabbit and the Raven: Book Two in the Solas Beir Trilogy for Free Online Page B

nada.
    Now the leaves crackled in front of her—she turned back quickly, the hair rising on the back of her neck. “Joe? Come on Joe—this is so not funny.” Her voice sounded overly loud as she tried to convince herself there was nothing to fear.
    Again, nothing but silence. Even the weird little scurrying sounds seemed to have stopped.
    Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted movement, and she whirled toward it. “Joe! Stop being such a—” Michal stopped midsentence. There was a young man standing there. His face was gaunt, handsome, and his eyes were dark, charismatically intense. “You’re not Joe,” she said simply.
    “No. I’m not,” he replied. He stepped toward her and took her hands, pulling her toward him.
    She let him—it didn’t occur to her to do anything but step into his embrace. As he drew her into his arms, Michal stepped through a mess of trailing brambles, grazing her ankles and shins on the sharp, prickly thorns. They were just scratches, but deep enough to bleed. She didn’t feel any pain.
    Then, from off to her side, came a low growl. In her trance, Michal turned to find herself face-to-face with a sleek, jet-black panther with a silky pelt and glowing red eyes. It was staring down at her from the fork of a tree. The fur between its shoulder blades was standing on end, and its muscles were tensed as if it was ready to pounce.
    “Lucia, dear,” the young man purred, “play nice.”
    The large cat leapt to the ground. Lying on the sand next to where it landed was Joe, his blank, glazed eyes staring up at the night sky, his face pale like the full moon. And then Michal saw blood...so much blood. That was when she started screaming.
     
     
     
    Shortly after Michal ventured into the grove, Monroe looked up from writing in the sand and saw hundreds of strange lights. The tiny red, glowing dots were illuminating the hedge, almost as if someone had strung a net of lighted faux holly berries across them. A bit early for Christmas , Monroe thought absently, picking at the driftwood log she was sitting on, her mind unable to grasp what she was seeing.
    She realized that the lights were accompanied by the sound of scurrying feet, and the noise was getting louder. Whatever Marisol had seen in the bushes was back and had brought friends. Lots of them—and they were coming her way. Monroe stood up, her fight or flight response taking over and telling her that flight was the most reasonable course of action.
    Then she heard Michal screaming, and there was no “all systems go”—only a girl frozen and confused by her fear.
     
     
     
    Grabbing Monroe’s hand, Marisol propelled her into motion, moving her away from the bushes as hundreds of black cats poured fluidly through the branches, except they weren’t cats—not quite. They seemed to be, at first, but they moved like liquid and all together as one being—like black oil and smoke at the same time. Then they changed and didn’t look like cats at all, but something else, something unreal with gnarled limbs, black spiky fur, and gnashing teeth; something lethal.
    A ll around Marisol, her friends were screaming, running, trying to get away, but the oily smoke was everywhere at once. The only place to avoid the creatures, the only safe place, was the grove, and yet, how could that be, when that was where the screaming began? But Marisol knew that was where they had to go.
    Marisol and Monroe burst into the grove, clawing their way through thick vines, plowing through the brambles, moving away from the beach without rational thought. Marisol only knew they had to keep going, had to get away from the thing that was coming, that was consuming everything like a dark, hungry fog.
    Ahead of them, more red eyes glowed in the darkness of the grove. Then Marisol saw Michal lying on the ground, her long blond hair splayed out around her, her eyes pleading with them for help, right before she was dragged by her ankles into a tangle of dark