Griffin's hands slid down my arms. Our fingers laced together.

"We'll figure this out," he said, though there wasn't much conviction behind the words.

A camper sobbed somewhere behind us.

Sol was trying to organize everyone into groups.

Mateo had climbed onto a picnic table. He waved both arms. "Everybody breathe! Nobody gets to panic until I've had a chance to panic first!"

A few nervous laughs popped up here and there.

Harold bellowed something about gathering in the pavilion.

No one seemed interested in listening to anyone anymore. The camp had devolved into a hundred frightened people making their own frightened decisions.

Then Alvin frowned toward the tree line. "Does anybody else see that?"

It seemed no one was going to answer him until Nicole muttered, "What the..."

I followed her line of sight. The late afternoon sun shone golden across the quad. Long shadows stretched eastward from every cabin, bench, and misshapen totem.

But the shadows beneath the pines moved slowly sideways. They slid from trunk to trunk like spilled ink searching for somewhere to collect.

"I don't like that," a boy to my left said.

Neither did I.

Griffin's hand tightened around mine. From the corner of my eye, I saw his medallion flash and I felt the pulse echo in my own. His eyes glowed completely gold. No one could mistake them for normal human eyes.

"Everyone," he said with quiet authority, "needs to back away from the trees."

Nobody had time to argue.

A woman burst from the forest, not exactly running toward us. Running away from something. She wore an old-fashioned, soot-stained dress and carried a toddler tight against her chest.

I know her.

She stumbled into the bright sunlight and stopped. Her terrified eyes took in the group, and for one single heartbeat she looked unmistakably real.

I gasped in recognition.

The hair was different, dark brown and curly instead of spiked and purple, but it was the sarcastic camper from the owl cabin.

The toddler in her arms turned his head. His face was soft and round and streaked with soot. His little mouth opened to let loose a terrified wail, but no sound came from him. Instead, a boy to my left screamed.

The sound jolted through me.

His eyes looked a thousand miles away. Each movement of his mouth matched the toddlers.

"No." The woman shook her head violently. "No, no, no!" Her body flickered as if bright firelight and a thick layer of smoke had sprung up between us.

The toddler vanished first, dissolving into curling wisps of black that rose toward the sky and dissipated to nothing.

The woman screamed.

The girl with the purple hair echoed her.

Both of them reached for their hair and pulled. Both collapsed into the kind of sobbing grief that had once nearly broken me.

Then the boy to my left and the purple-haired camper both collapsed.

Reflexively, I snagged an arm around the boy and lowered him to the grass, sinking down beside him. Mateo caught the girl and held her against his chest like a baby.

Griffin's hand found my shoulder. "We need to move back."

The world spun around me. Spots popped in my vision and my fingertips tingled.

Am I going to throw up?

"Emmilyne, we need to move back, now," Griffin said, grabbing my shoulders and hauling me to my feet.

Beyond him, I saw the woman behind the wall of smoke. Her gaze remained locked on the forest and the shadows beneath her feet stretched outward like long black fingers creeping across the grass toward us.

"Right now," Griffin said. He snatched the boy up from the grass and threw him over one shoulder like he weighed no more than a light pack and pushed me toward the parking lot. A hundred others crowded together, all of us drawing toward one another and away from whatever was coming out of the woods.

Evan took a step in the wrong direction, as if lured toward that darkness.

Jada grabbed him by the back of his shirt and shoved him toward Mike.

The shadows reared up and smacked into her. They surrounded her body in a dark, swirling mass and then absorbed into her skin.

Jada arched backward. Her mouth opened on a breathless scream. For one awful second, her eyes went completely black.

And then I was standing in the ancient village, surrounded by choking smoke that stank of charred wood and flesh. Children cried and women screamed. Men shouted orders, contradicting one another.

The chapel bell clanged. Its hollow metallic reverberations felt like they'd shatter my bones.

Griffin hooked his free arm around me and drew me against his chest. "Emmilyne?"

I blinked up at him.

We were standing in the quad at Camp Black Crow.

"I'm okay," I lied. Of course it was a lie. How could any of this be okay? None of us would ever be okay again.

Jada dropped to her knees, choking on the smoke that poured out of her mouth.

The wolf totem cracked open, a wide gash opening where the animal's heart would be.

Sol dashed forward and pulled Jada into his arms. "She's alive!" His voice shook.

The smoke curled around itself and formed into the woman again. She scanned the crowd and then, with no warning, launched herself toward Evan.

Griffin moved.

One second he stood beside me, supporting me. The next he was halfway across the quad, snatching Evan off the ground and twisting away from the shadow woman's reaching hands.

Then he was a hundred yards away from her, faster than our human eyes could even track. He'd moved so fast it looked like he'd teleported. In the next heartbeat, he was back among us, setting Evan on his feet.

Evan, the most resilient kid in the universe, gaped up at him. "How?"

Griffin didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the tree line where more figures stepped from the swirling shadows beneath the pines.

Dozens of men, women, and children poured out, all made of smoke, all looking panicked and grief-stricken.

The crowd retreated another few steps. Nobody needed to be told.

The shadow figures kept coming. An old man stumbled from the trees clutching a lantern made of nothing. A teenage girl in a long wool dress followed him, looking wildly over her shoulder. A boy no older than ten crashed through a patch of ferns and fell hard onto his hands and knees, but none of the plants moved.

They looked terrified.

The old man pointed toward the woods and shouted something in a language I didn't know. His words echoed strangely through the clearing, like he'd tossed them into a deep well.

Half the campers flinched.

Alvin staggered back. His hand flew to his chest.

"Alvin?" Leah grabbed his arm.

His face had gone paper-white. "I know him," he said in something between a whisper and a whimper.

The old man turned and time stood still as the two men stared directly at each other. "Brother?" he asked in that foreign language.

But I understood him.

Alvin understood him. He made a choking sound and took a staggering step forward.

The old man dissolved into smoke and Leah caught Alvin with a grunt.

The smoke didn't disappear. It raced sideways across the quad.

Campers ran, but the blackness wrapped around one girl's ankle, dragged her down and wrapped around her.

"They're burning!" she screamed. "My babies are burning!"

Every new shadow that crossed the clearing increased the chaos.

A woman appeared, carrying a basket and a thirteen-year-old boy ordered the men to let the horses go.

A hunter with an axe met the gaze of a camper from the Deer Cabin and she ran to him, begging him to forgive her for marrying another. A little girl with tangled braids spun in a slow circle and a boy from the Bear cabin lurched toward her shouting at her to never submit to the Romans no matter what they do to him.

My pulse hammered.

The medallion beneath my shirt burned against my skin.

Griffin held me tight, my back against his chest, his hands steel bands on my upper arms.

"Find Tereza," the wind carried the low, male whisper to every corner of the camp. "Find her and I'll free you."

My muscles seized. I stood paralyzed as the name rippled through the semi-solid forms.

"Tereza."

"Where is Tereza?"

"Find Tereza."

Then one pair of solid black eyes turned toward me and pointed. "Tereza."

"Tereza" the others whispered.

"Tereza."

"It's Tereza."

Griffin's fingers dug painfully into my arms. "Emmi?"

But I couldn't answer. Couldn't move. Terror paralyzed me until I couldn't even draw breath.

One by one, every shadowy head turned toward me. None of them ran now. None of them panicked. They all stared.

A terrible silence fell.

The campers drew away from me in tiny steps that seemed involuntary.

Griffin's body stiffened behind me. "I've got you."

Then the voice on the wind rumbled over the world. "Tereza."

As one, the shadows surged forward.

Campers scattered, screaming. Counselors shouted over one another.

The first shadow reached for us.

Griffin shoved me behind him and hit it head-on. The impact sounded like steel on steel.

Headlights flashed at terrible angles. Metal crunched and glass rained down on my face. Mom's scream cut off abruptly.

I blinked back into the present in time to see the shadow-man fly backward through the air. He struck the deer totem hard enough to shake the entire structure. Another small piece of the antlers tumbled to the ground.

Griffin stood like a wall in front of me, feet planted wide, hands balled into fists.

Another shadow rushed him.

Then another.

These weren't monsters. They weren't even soldiers. They looked like terrified people trying desperately to reach salvation.

One grabbed his arm. Another reached for his throat.

Griffin tore free of them. The muscles in his shoulders bunched. He tossed bodies away from him with unimaginable strength. He shoved them with such force they tumbled across the quad.

A huge man that towered over the others reached past Griffin.

He reached for me. "Tereza."

The desperation in his voice made me sway on my feet.

Griffin spread his arms wide. "Stay behind me."

The command wasn't loud, but it left absolutely no room for argument.

The shadow pressed forward.

Griffin caught it by the neck, staggered backward a step, then leaned in and tore the thing's throat open with his teeth.

Black smoke poured from the wound.

Griffin gagged and coughed up shadows that ran down his chin. With a roar, he hurled the now-limp form away from him.

It struck the bear totem. Wood cracked. The entire structure tilted further on its base.

"Watch out!" Sol leaped forward, shoving a small group of campers out of the path of the falling totem the moment before it hit the earth hard enough to rattle my bones.

The shadows paid no attention at all. They swarmed us, rippling past Griffin, over him, under him.

A woman in a wool dress grabbed my shoulders and yanked me toward her.

I stood on a hillside beneath a gray sky. The village burned below me. People ran through the streets.

Then Griffin ripped the shadow away from me and I was back at the camp.

I stumbled and he caught me. He threw one hand out toward the roiling darkness and shouted. "Stop!"

And they did.

They stopped running. Stopped fighting. A hunter, a mother, a child, an old man, a priest, all of them stared at Griffin with uncertainty written across their faces.

The clearing fell eerily silent. Even the campers stopped screaming and sniffling.

A single shadow straightened. It was the old man Alvin had recognized. He studied Griffin with hollow black eyes, then dropped to one knee.

"Dekinais?"

The name echoed across the quad.

"Dekinais?" another echoed.

Then another, and another.

"Leave her," Griffin said, breathlessly.

The old man rose and began backing away. The others followed, inching away from us.

Griffin's hand twitched in my direction and I grasped it, knowing somehow he needed something to ground him. His grip on me tightened painfully.

In the periphery of my vision, I saw campers and staff members gaping at us. It seemed like they were barely paying attention to the shadows now. Their attention was focused entirely on the man commanding them.

A shiver rippled through Griffin.

I stepped closer to him and looked up into his unearthly golden eyes.

The old man's gaze darted toward me. "Dekinais, free us. You have Tereza. Free us."

"Be gone," Griffin said.

The grief on the man's face nearly broke me. I'd never seen devastation like that in my life.

A woman behind him dropped to her knees. "Dekinais, I beg—"

But her words dissolved on a gust of wind as her form and the forms of all the others began to fade into nothing at all.

Within moments, they were gone and uneasy silence settled over Camp Black Crow.

Every eye was on Griffin and me.

None of them looked relieved.

Griffin didn't move or speak. His chest rose and fell in quick, harsh breaths.

It was Kirat who finally marched away from the group and stood face-to-face with him. She held her body as rigid as his, her chin high, her fists at her sides as if she'd have a prayer of fighting him, should he choose to attack.

"You need to fucking explain yourself right now."