Chapter 20 Voice from the Woods
Daisy ran. Not the careful, calculated crawl of an alley rat with time to plan, but the reckless, full-lung sprint of prey with death at its heels.
The forest closed around her, thorns and low branches whipping her arms, the ground a chaos of roots hungry to trip her. The menagerie was alive, breathing her scent, mapping every ragged gasp and heartbeat through the canopy. The trees here were ancient, gnarled, bark slashed with claw marks older than the city itself. Moss sucked up every drop of her blood, painting her trail for anything that followed.
Behind her, the shouts of handlers ricocheted through the trees. Somewhere, an inhuman screech split the dawn, guttural and wrong. They’d unleashed something, maybe one of the hybrid beasts Daisy had glimpsed in the shadow cages. She pushed herself faster, lungs tearing at the air, feet numb with cold. Every instinct screamed that her only hope was to keep moving.
She leapt over a fallen log, hit the ground hard, and skidded through a nest of poison thistle. The sting was immediate, hot as fire across her thighs. She gritted her teeth and kept moving.
The red-eyed rat led the way, a darting shadow at the edge of her vision, always just ahead, always watching. When Daisy faltered, the rat waited, then zipped off, never giving her more than a heartbeat’s rest.
There was a heartbeat where the world went silent except for her own pulse. Then: a voice, cold and perfect, not heard but felt.
‘Blood calls to blood.’ The Ancient One has waited centuries for your return.
Daisy’s legs buckled. Her body didn’t just stop; it spasmed, every nerve locking up like she’d been hit with a city baton. She crashed into a sapling and slid to the dirt, hands scrabbling for purchase.
The voice in her skull was ice and flame, and it didn’t wait for her to catch up. It was a presence, immense and coiling, filling every crack in her soul with heat. The words had no echo. They simply existed, and then they were her.
She tasted iron and smoke. Her mouth flooded with saliva. The spiral on her wrist burned white-hot, and for a second, Daisy thought she’d gone blind; the woods vanished, replaced by a vision of endless sky and fire, and wings that blotted out the sun.
She forced herself to move. The world snapped back, trees and moss and the sharp sting of thistle. She gasped, rolled to her feet, and nearly vomited from the jolt.
Ahead, the rat waited. Not a rat now, its spine lengthened, legs stretching, ribs splitting in two. It staggered upright, head lolling on a too-long neck, face a blur between rodent and something almost human. The eyes stayed the same: red, knowing, unforgiving.
“Move,” it hissed. The sound barely came from its mouth; it vibrated through the roots and into Daisy’s bones.
She followed. There wasn’t a choice.
The rat-creature ran in zigzags, never touching the same patch of earth twice, leading her deeper into the oldest part of the forest. Here, the air went blue and thick, wards layering the ground like the city’s richest velvet. Daisy felt everyone, she’d grown up crawling through the city’s security nets, but these were older, stranger. Each step forward was a gamble with whatever lived under the surface.
Her legs screamed for rest. The world blurred at the edges. Daisy didn’t care. She heard the shouts of the handlers fade behind her, replaced by a rising hum, a gathering charge in the air.
They hit the hidden section of the forest so abruptly that Daisy almost tripped over the boundary. On this side, the light was different, filtered through branches so dense that not even the wind could get in. The warding was stronger, too; it buzzed in her teeth, set her new scales tingling under the skin. The spiral on her wrist glowed even through the crust of dried blood.
The rat-creature stopped at the edge, breathing hard. Its ribs heaved in and out, bones shuddering under skin so thin it was almost translucent. It fixed Daisy with both eyes, unblinking.
“They’ll find you if you stop,” it said, voice raw, breaking between words. “But you must stop. Now.”
Daisy collapsed to her knees, panting. The air here was colder, every breath like sucking glass. She looked up at her guide, taking in the new shape. Human hands, rat claws; a face that couldn’t decide if it wanted to snarl or beg. Daisy wondered, for a split second, if this was what the menagerie did to everything it caged.
“What are you?” she asked, voice shredded by the run.
The creature’s mouth split open, too wide, showing teeth that shifted and doubled. “Guide. Watcher. Punishment.” It paused, shoulders rippling under torn skin. “Sometimes, friend.”
“Am I safe here?” Daisy pressed her hand to the spiral, felt it pulse under her touch.
The rat-creature shook its head. “Never safe. But closer now.” It gestured deeper into the trees, where the light bent wrong, and the air tasted like old metal.
Daisy staggered upright, legs quivering. “What’s waiting for me?”
The thing cocked its head, as if the question were a joke. “You know.”
Maybe she did. The psychic voice, The Ancient One, the thing the handlers feared, wasn’t just calling. It was expecting her. Daisy’s mouth went dry.
“Come,” said the rat, now loping ahead, its gait a painful stutter of old wounds and barely-mended breaks.
Daisy followed, because that’s what she’d always done.
They cut through a tunnel of bramble so thick the world went black, then emerged into a hollow choked with nettle and glass shards. Daisy ducked, cursing as a ward-line caught her shoulder, the pain lancing hot up her neck. She felt the spiral sear against her skin, and the air flashed red.
The voice returned, softer this time, coiling around the wound: You are almost home, little one.
Daisy wanted to scream, wanted to spit and run the other way. Instead, she wiped the blood from her shoulder and kept moving.
At the center of the hollow was a ring of standing stones, each carved with spirals so ancient they had almost worn away. The rat-creature stopped just outside the circle, backing away as if afraid to get closer. Daisy stepped inside, the world humming so loud she couldn’t hear her own breath.
The pain in her wrist became unbearable. She looked down, saw the birthmark split and oozing red, but the blood didn’t drip; it traced the spiral, curling outward in a perfect line.
She was inside the memory now. The forest fell away. She was somewhere else: a chamber lined with stone, a throne of bone, a presence coiled and vast above it all. She saw through other eyes, old and pitiless. She watched some version of an ancestor approach the throne, each bearing the spiral, each kneeling in terror and awe.
The dragon’s eye opened. It filled the world, and its voice was everything.
Blood calls to blood. You are the gate, and the key.
Daisy came back to herself on the ground, knees cut open, breath gone. The rat-creature hovered over her, eyes wide with terror.
“Are you alive?” it whispered.
Daisy tried to answer, but only managed a nod.
The handlers’ voices echoed in the distance. The rat-creature glanced back, urgency in every line of its mangled body. “You must go. Now.”
Daisy staggered to her feet, the spiral still glowing, blood still running in that impossible, perfect line. The ring of stones had shifted; at the far end, a crevice opened, just big enough to crawl through.
She looked back at the rat-creature. “Will you come?”
It bared its teeth, a gesture Daisy took to be a smile. “No. My part ends here. Go.”
Daisy dropped into the crevice, the cold stone tearing at her palms, and crawled into the dark.
Behind her, the rat-creature watched, eyes unblinking, until the stones closed, and she was gone.