Chapter Ten

The woman watched me quietly after the scream had died on my lips before she cackled once, like a firecracker going off.

“Celebrating already? Party's hardly even started yet.” The woman chuckled in a sinister voice, as she shook the black talon of one finger at me, somehow seeming closer than she was before I’d blinked.

“Who the fuck are you?” I panted, feeling my canines extend as I took a cautionary step back, my heart, beating bruises under my skin. The light seemed to leave the woman’s face as she cranked her neck sideways with loud snapping sounds.

I knew then who she was. The Wild, Wicked Hag of the Mountains.

I could tell from the way her body seemed to undulate freakishly, a stain to the normal eyes.

She had to have been nearly a millennia old, but she hardly looked her age, the skin on her face-what I could see of it as the forest canopy blocked the leftover burnt-sepia light the rising moon provided- was a fine-lined coffee brown.

The hag clapped, nodding her head in the si