The party's artificial glow lingered behind Alex like a fading bruise. Back in his cottage, the silence was a roar. He spread Sheriff Walker's implied coordinates over the 1847 map and Kiera's list. The northeast sector. It overlapped with a dense cluster of old, collapsed logging roads and—significantly—was less than a mile from one of the remaining primary Ward posts.
The Covenant wasn't just hunting a stray Moon-Touched. They were baiting one. Weaken the ward in a controlled area, use thermal imaging to locate the anomaly, then move in for a clean extraction. It was a field test of their methodology. A proof of concept before they turned their full attention to the main prize: the Blackwood bloodline itself.
He couldn't do this alone. The thought was a cold stone in his gut. He was a journalist with a flashlight and a growing collection of terrifying truths. He needed someone who knew the woods, who understood the enemy, and who wasn't bound by the town's conspiracy or the Covenant's science.
There was only one candidate, and he was a gamble.
The next morning, under a sky the color of wet slate, Alex drove to the edge of Millfield where the tidy yards gave way to scrubland and, beyond that, Thomas Jenkins's property. It wasn't a farm, not really. It was five acres of stubborn self-sufficiency: a weathered cabin, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden gone to seed with the season, and a workshop that smelled of wood smoke, oil, and hot metal.
Jenkins was at his forge. Not some picturesque anvil-and-hammer setup, but a serious, gas-fired furnace. He was drawing a length of steel rod from the coals, its tip glowing a vicious orange. He didn't look up as Alex approached.
"Come to get your story straight, or to get yourself killed?" Jenkins growled, his voice competing with the hiss of the furnace.
"Both, maybe," Alex said, raising his voice over the noise. "The Covenant is making a move. Tomorrow night. Northeast sector. They're going to try to capture one of the Moon-Touched."
Jenkins's hands, clad in heavy leather gloves, stilled. He plunged the steel into a quenching tank with a violent sizzle, sending up a plume of acrid steam. He turned, pulling off his gloves, his face grim under a sheen of sweat. "Who told you?"
"Does it matter? It's happening."
"It matters if it's a trap for you, boy." Jenkins walked to a battered workbench cluttered with tools and oddments. He picked up a twisted piece of metal—another Ward post fragment, Alex realized, this one melted and warped as if by intense cold rather than heat. "They're methodical. They don't leak information by accident."
"I trust the source," Alex said, thinking of Walker's conflicted eyes in the garden.
"Trust is a luxury we can't afford." Jenkins tossed the fragment down. It clanged dully. "But… the northeast sector… there's a pocket there. A place the old maps called 'The Weeping Hollow.' Underground springs keep it warmer. The strays—the Moon-Touched—gravitate there when the wards weaken. It's a sink for the curse." He fixed Alex with his pale stare. "If they know that, they're further inside our secrets than I thought."
"We have to stop them."
"We?" Jenkins let out a harsh bark of laughter. "You and what army, son? The sheriff? The Blackwoods? Sebastian's busy negotiating his daughter's surrender, and the town is busy counting their promised silver."
"You know the land. You have… skills." Alex gestured at the forge, the well-worn tools, the hardened look of the man. "And you cared about Lily. This is what they're doing to people like her. Turning them into lab rats. Is that what you want?"
Jenkins's face darkened. He didn't answer for a long minute, his gaze distant, seeing things Alex couldn't. "My sister," he said finally, the words rough. "Elara. 1978. She was a botanist, like Lily. Thought she could find a symbiotic balance with the forest. She wasn't Blackwood, but she spent too much time in the wrong places on the wrong nights." He pulled open the collar of his workshirt. A horrific, ropy scar, old and silvery, clawed across his collarbone and down his chest. "I found her in the Hollow. The change was half on her. She didn't recognize me. Tried to tear my throat out." He closed his shirt. "The old Committee… my own father was on it… they 'treated' her. I was told it was a sanitarium. I found out years later it was a grave."
The raw pain in the old man's voice was a physical thing in the workshop. "I'm sorry," Alex said, the words inadequate.
"Sorry doesn't bring her back. But stopping these Covenant bastards from turning more Elaras and Lilys into experiments… that might count for something." He sighed, the anger seeming to drain out of him, replaced by a weary resolve. "Alright, journalist. You've got my attention. What's your plan? Charge in with your notebook and a stern look?"
"We disrupt the extraction," Alex said, ideas forming as he spoke. "We don't have to fight their whole team. We just have to spook the quarry, ruin their clean capture. Make it messy. Make it fail. If their field test is a disaster, it might buy time. Show Sebastian that the Covenant isn't omnipotent. Give Kiera… give all of us… more room to maneuver."
Jenkins grunted, a sound of reluctant approval. "Disruption I can do. But we'll need more than good intentions. Their toys will include suppression gear. Sonic emitters, tranquilizer rifles calibrated for non-human physiology, probably armored vehicles that can handle this terrain. We have…" He looked around his workshop, then back at Alex. "…surprise. And home-field advantage. And this."
He walked to a locked steel cabinet bolted to the wall. He spun a combination dial and swung the door open. Inside, mounted on racks, were a dozen crossbows. But they were unlike any Alex had ever seen. They were sleek, matte-black composites, with complex cocking mechanisms and thick, short bolts. The tips of the bolts were not broadheads, but glass ampoules filled with a swirling, silvery liquid.
"Silver nitrate suspension, in a colloidal gel," Jenkins said, lifting one carefully. "Delivers on impact. Doesn't need a heart shot. A good hit in a muscle group will deliver enough agony and systemic shock to break a focus, maybe even reverse a change if it's early. It's not a cure. It's a… severe discouragement."
"You made these?"
"I've had a long time to prepare for a war everyone else pretends isn't happening." He handed a crossbow to Alex. It was lighter than it looked, but the weight felt deadly, purposeful. "Can you handle one of these without shooting your own foot off?"
Alex hefted it, finding the balance. "I'll manage."
"We'll see." Jenkins began pulling other items from the cabinet: compact gas masks, ear protection, blocks of a putty-like substance. "They'll likely use sonics or aerosolized suppressants. We'll need these. And we'll need to even the odds. They'll have technology. We'll use the land."
He unrolled a topographical map on his workbench, staining it with grease-smudged fingers. "The Weeping Hollow. Here. Only two ways in for vehicles: the old main logging road from the east, and a narrower track from the south. They'll secure both. We go in on foot, from the west, through the granite scree. It's a bitch, but they won't expect it."
He pointed to a spot on the map. "There's a bluff here, overlooking the hollow. Good vantage. We can observe, then decide our moment. If they've already bagged their target, we create a diversion—I've got some percussive surprises that'll sound like a small rockslide. Spook everything in a half-mile radius. If they're still hunting…" He tapped the crossbow. "We give the quarry a fighting chance."
It was a plan. A desperate, dangerous one. But it was action.
"What if the Moon-Touched we save… is Lily?" Alex asked quietly.
Jenkins's face hardened. "Then we save her. And we deal with the consequences after. But you need to prepare yourself, boy. If she's been Changed, and for this long… she may not be the girl you remember. The person might be buried deep. Saving her body might not mean saving her."
The warning was necessary, a splash of cold water. Alex nodded, gripping the cold stock of the crossbow. "Understood."
They spent the afternoon preparing. Jenkins showed him how to load, arm, and safety the weapon. They packed light but purposeful kits: the crossbows, a half-dozen bolts each, the gas masks, water, first aid, Jenkins's homemade explosives, and climbing gear for the scree slope.
As they worked, Jenkins talked. He told Alex about the different "strains" of the curse he'd observed over decades—the brutish, feral Moon-Touched who were all rage and pain; the cunning, almost intelligent ones who seemed to remember fragments of their human selves; and the Blackwood line itself, whose transformations were more complete, more powerful, but often carried a dreadful, ancient control.
"The forest isn't just a place," Jenkins muttered, wrapping detonation cord. "It's an actor. It remembers the pact. It resents the wards. And it hungers. The Covenant, with their machines and their arrogance, are poking a sleeping bear with a live wire. They think they're conducting an experiment. They might be setting off a chain reaction."
Dusk was settling when they finished. They agreed to meet at midnight the following night at a remote trailhead, then approach the hollow on foot to be in position before the Covenant's predicted move in the pre-dawn hours.
As Alex drove back to town, the crossbow wrapped in a blanket on the passenger seat, he felt a strange calm settle over him. The paralyzing fear of the unknown was gone, replaced by the focused anxiety of a known, approaching threat. He had a weapon. He had an ally who was, in his own gruff way, a legend. He had a purpose.
He stopped at his cottage only to change into dark, durable clothing and stash his research and the damning archive photos in a hidden, fireproof case. He looked at his reflection in the dark window—a man preparing for a hunt he was never meant to be part of.
His phone buzzed. A single text, from Kiera's number.
"The cage is polished. The key is in the hollow. Do not be seen."
Confirmation. And a plea.
He replied: "We'll be the thunder."
He had no idea if their desperate plan would work. But as he looked out at the Blackwood, a vast, dark shape against the twilight, he knew one thing for certain: he was done being a bystander. Tomorrow night, he would step into the story, not with a pen, but with a silver-tipped bolt. And he would either buy them all more time, or become another name in the town's hidden ledger of the lost.