Primal Heat 05 - Darkness Reborn

stench that overrode all other smells, and the ominous, deathly silence. What do you think is in here?
    The source of the evil , Sarah said. It has to be.
    Then we better be ready. The darkness seemed to pulse and swirl through Kane, a cold, clammy sensation of fingers trying to peel off his skin ever so carefully.
    "I don't feel anything weird," said Thano. "What about you?"
    "Nothing," Ryland said. "The air is just regular. I'm scenting trees and some scrub brush and rodents. An owl."
    "You get the frog off to the right?" Thano asked.
    "Yeah, and the fly it just ate."
    Kane swore under his breath, straining to pick up the scents that his teammates were smelling, but his senses were overwhelmed with the thick, pungent fumes of sulfur and rot. He could hear nothing, except the sound of his team. Not a single flutter of feet. Not a whisper of an owl. Nothing but silence that was so loud that it seemed to beat at him. Shit. Why was he sensing things the others weren't? Sarah? What do you smell?
    Smell? The woods. Dirt.
    Something began to pulse inside Kane, a dark foreboding. What do you hear?
    I hear a whisper, like two giant pieces of sandpaper rubbing against each other.
    He shot a sharp look at her, but it was too dark to see her face. Merge with me. He reached out with his mind as they continued to skid down the shale slope. Sarah instantly opened to him, and he wove their minds together, enabling each of them to see and hear what the other was experiencing.
    Oh, God, Kane. That silence is horrible. Sarah put her hands over her ears. It hurts.
    He heard the rasping that she'd mentioned, and it sent chills rippling down his arms and over his spine. He jerked suddenly, realizing that he could feel it on his body, that the scratching sound was from something that was rubbing against him. He swore and slapped at his arms, trying to clean them off. Thick black sludge peeled from his skin, tearing from his flesh like glue that had adhered to him.
    Sarah jerked back, her face barely visible. "What's that?"
    "No idea." It was creeping up his legs now, like tendrils of black smoke wrapping around his legs. He kicked his foot, and it got even thicker around him.
    "What the hell's going on?" Ryland slashed at the black vines with his machete as they tried to grab Kane. He tore through them with his blade, but even as he did it, more seemed to come out of the air, wrapping around Kane.
    "Shit." He scraped more of it off with his flail, and then Thano was attacking it as well, all three warriors slashing at the black smoke that kept wrapping tighter and tighter around Kane, like living tattoos sinking into his flesh.
    "Shit." Thano finally stopped, leaning on his halberd. "It's faster than we are."
    Sarah's eyes were wide with horror. "Does it hurt?"
    "No." But Kane could feel it seeping through his skin, like thousands of microscopic needles piercing his flesh. The malevolence was thick and tainted, and his skin crawled from the sensation of it closing around him. "Let's keep going."
    Thano raised his brows, but didn't bother to question him. Ryland just nodded, and they began to move forward again.
    Kane swatted at the back of his neck, and he felt something fall off his skin and drop to the earth. "Shit. Something bit me."
    "I'm not getting anything," Thano said. "I always thought you looked like you tasted better than the rest of us." But his voice was grim, with none of the levity he usually had.
    "Let's speed this up," Ryland said. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this."
    As a unit, the team broke into a jog. Kane kept his hand on Sarah's back, letting her set the pace and keeping her close. The skin on the back of his neck prickled, and he jerked around, searching the darkness, but finding nothing. "We're being hunted."
    "I know," Ryland said. "I can feel it."
    "Stupid bastards," Thano muttered. "Don't they know that we're the good guys? We do the hunting."
    "It's the Calydons," Sarah said. "They're hunting me."
    "They're hunting all of us," Kane replied. His brands were burning, warning him of the danger coming in all directions, and he clenched his fists, his mind rapidly assessing their situation and trying to come up with a solution. "Sarah," he muttered, stepping in front of her. "Get on my back."
    Without a moment of hesitation, she grabbed his shoulders and leapt up, locking her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, after handing him the other flail. He made sure she was secure, then he muttered one