The swarm of grasshoppers emerged from the meadow in a dark, rattling cloud. They formed an impenetrable mass, rolling across the landscape like an avalanche—insects leaping, flying, racing, and consuming everything in their path.

The five of us dashed through the trees, pushing past branches and rocks and fallen logs. Trying not to stumble. Trying not to die.

"Just grasshoppers?" Mason raged.

My feet crunched over twigs and needles, and the forest blurred by in a stretch of browns and greens. The swarm nipped at our heels, the backs of our necks, gaining distance on us with every passing second.

A locust pounced onto my calf. It drove its mandibles deep into my skin and started to burrow under my clothes and into my flesh, but I hacked at it with my knife before it could disappear beneath muscle tissue.

I could already feel the blood seeping through my pants.

The swarm advanced, filling my periphery, and I hated to think that I was running for my life from critters the size of my thumb. They wouldn't follow us to the ends of the earth would they? Because I couldn't run that far.

We needed to get out of range somehow.

"How do we throw them off our tail?" I shouted, wincing as another airborne monster sliced my cheek open—only a few inches below the crow's mark.

"There!" Will pointed to a mossy area ahead that smelled like rot and sulfur.

A swamp.

It was the last place I would ever have thought my refuge, but I didn't hesitate.

We plunged into the water.

It was sickly warm, surprisingly deep, like a pool of Mother Nature's sweat, and I had to force myself not to gag and drown from my own disgust.

The demonic grasshoppers flew over our heads, leaping back and forth from bank to bank. I sank to my chin, covering my head with my arms, flinching as the locusts tore into me. I thrashed to get them off, eyeing Will and Mason as they fought off the predators with their knives. Styx stood on solid ground, swinging a tree branch around at the swarm like a baseball bat.

I never thought I'd say it, but I desperately wished for the murder of crows to reappear and take these territorial bugs off our hands.

"What do we do?" I hissed at Will, our idea guy.

He grunted, bloody nicks appearing on his face and neck. He tilted his head at me. "How long can you hold your breath?"

My eyes widened.  What, he wanted us to pretend to drown?

"You think that will work?"

"It's worth a shot."

Mason fisted a pair of locusts by his ear and threw them to the other side of the swamp. "I'm not dunking my head in this cesspool—"

"On three!" Fudge decided, already halfway underwater. "Hold your breath as long as possible! First one up takes watch tonight."

"Are you deaf? I'm not—"

"Three," Will and I said together, and Mason swore as the four of us dropped into the murky depths.

I kept my eyes shut, listening to the dying thrum of flying insects. I held my breath long enough for my heart to start pounding painfully, but compared to the crickets' assault, the swamp offered a sweet reprieve.

Finally, Will tapped my arm, and we surfaced together, gulping down air and wiping the water from our eyes. The swarm had thinned to all but a few determined stragglers on the edge of the pond. The rest of the demons had grown bored with us and retreated to their hunting ground.

We'd survived.

"Gross," Mason complained, wiping the algae off his face. "Just...gross. How many parasites do you think I just swallowed?"

"It's a good look on you, Mason," Fudge teased. "The outdoors."

Will eyed me suspiciously. My brow lifted at the accusatory expression. What?

"Is there a reason you're groping my leg?"

I gaped at him, hands flying up to prove my innocence.  His eyes widened, and he looked down into the water, visibly disconcerted.

Something brushed against my own leg then. Something long. Something slick.

My stomach lurched.

"Snakes."

It was too murky to see them, but something in the swamp had begun to stir, producing odd currents and unnatural ripples. Lured by the blood and sweat on our bodies.

"Snakes?" repeated Mason, searching the water around him in wild panic. "Are you kidding me? Why is everything out to kill us?"

It didn't take long for me to spot it—a black ribbon on brown glass, at least six ugly feet in length. Before I could alert the others, it dove back under the surface to conduct its attack, and I bit my cheek.

Snakes didn't scare me. Few critters did, really. But something I feared more than anything was being forced to navigate a threat blindfolded. Being stuck in place, waiting for a surprise attack, powerless and pitiful.

I loathed not being able to see or expect my enemy, and right now, I couldn't see a thing.

The water shivered beside me, and I held my breath, apprehension gnawing at my nerves. If the snakes were anything like the grasshoppers, I had a feeling we were in for a very dangerous swim.

"Where are they?" Mason mumbled. "I can't see a d—"

He vanished below the surface in one chaotic splash.

Gone.

Fudge screamed his name, staring helplessly at the ripples, and I started toward them, swearing profusely at Mason's ineptitude. But then something seized my ankle and tugged—violently, with intent.

Unprepared for the ambush, I lost my footing on the mud and crashed back into the swamp water with a startled gasp.

Beyond the flurry of bubbles and the murky intestines of the swamp, I could see them—dozens of jet-black snakes darting around like spurts of ink and oil. 

With Tom's knife, I hacked at the tail squeezing around my leg, and black blood billowed up from the wound, wisps of liquid smoke around me.

Demons.

Just as I'd feared.

Mason writhed in a den of snakes a few feet away, completely surrounded. They mobbed him like minnows around bait, constricting him, weighing him down.

Pulling him to the deep.

I swam through the maze of reeds and algae, snatching black bodies and slicing their bellies open with a sub-aquatic languor. My lungs yearned for oxygen, but I pushed forward, muffling my body's screams of protest, ignoring the fire in my chest. Squinting against suspended sediment, muck, and organic matter, I cut through reptilian flesh as fast as I could, trying not to mutilate Mason as he flailed about.

It cost me a few nasty bites on the wrist, but finally, I could make out pale arms pushing upward.

He'd escaped.

I kicked out to follow him, but the snakes began hounding me in a tangle of long, slick bodies—preventing my escape, avenging their fallen. The ones I sliced apart were quickly replaced by their brothers, and they latched themselves around my legs, aggressively biting into my skin. Not to defend themselves, but to kill.

My eyes stung miserably from keeping them open for so long, and I blinked rapidly to maintain a shred of visibility, converting my experience into snapshots of blackness, blood, pain, and pressure.

I thrashed to get them off, but the snakes held on, contracting around my arms, legs, and torso. The water itself seemed to drag me down and keep me there, thick and heavy with plant life. My dark hair hovered around me in suspended coils, and I watched my pack slide off my shoulders and float up without me.

Desolate. Helpless.

More bubbles escaped from my nose, constricting my chest cavity and placing even more stress on my respiratory system. I twisted desperately to get away, but my vision grew dimmer with every passing second, my strength dissipating.

I was pinned to the mud. Sinking into the murk. Dying.

No. My eyes fluttered at the thought. Not like this.

You can't die like this.

I shuddered once—twice—and then, against every sensible voice in my head, I gave into the pressure and let my breath out.

My body tensed, preparing for the pain of the inhale. Preparing for the end.

Not like this...

The corners of my vision started to blacken when a beam of white light erupted next to me, sweeping over my face and drowning body. Miraculously, the snakes scattered away, and a hand grabbed a fistful of my shirt, pulling me upward through the reeds.

I broke the surface, coughing, hacking, choking.

All lovely sounds.

Will wrapped his arm around my waist and dragged me out of the swamp, a swearing and incandescent Mason clearing the path ahead of us. Behind me, Fudge aimed my flashlight at the snakes keen on following us, and they reeled back at the slightest graze of contact, the briefest sting of light.

Leaning on Will, I shuffled with my party to the safety of the woods, grateful to be free of the demonic pests. When I glanced back at the hellish hole in the ground, it had reverted to still pool of water, perfectly normal. Seemingly innocuous.

We stopped running when I promptly collapsed onto a patch of level ground, still clutching my knife. Gritz. My throat felt clogged with leeches. Hopefully it wasn't. That would have been both painful and time consuming to resolve.

Will propped me up against the tree, and I thanked him with my aching eyes.

"Good thinking with the flashlight," I said, practically wheezing between every word. "I can't believe it worked."

Fudge removed a tangle of swamp entrails from my hair. "When Styx appeared, the grasshoppers made this weird circle around her. She was trying to hit them with her tree branch, but they wouldn't get close enough, like her light burned them or something. I thought it might work with artificial light too."

"Smart."

"Lucky." He offered a small, concerned smile. "Are you okay? You were under forever."

I shrugged, eyeing Styx and her throbbing yellow light. She rocked on her heels, like she expected some kind of personal thank you. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not," said Will. He'd raked the wet hair out of his eyes, exposing his hairline and eyebrows. I'd never seen him with his bangs back before. He looked a lot less menacing with a forehead.

He yanked up my shirt sleeves, revealing about a dozen different snake bites and locust wounds—a massacre of my smooth, tanned skin. I hadn't felt much before, riding out the adrenaline, but now that I could see the damage, the throbbing pain hit me all at once.

"Venomous?" I got out.

If they were, I was so dead.

Will squeezed my arm, ignoring my flinch.  Dots of red pooled in areas of punctured flesh. "Not sure. Water snakes here aren't typically venomous, and there isn't any swelling or discoloration yet...but I'd rather be safe than sorry." He took my pack from Fudge and withdrew one of my soaking shirts, ripping it up into long, straggly rags.

I didn't protest. I was accustomed to boys ripping apart my belongings now.

He lightly wrapped the cloth above the observable wounds and any places I'd believed I'd been bit. It would limit lymphatic flow, he said, and hopefully, any death-related consequences.

"Do you feel dizzy? Nauseous?" he asked.

I shook my head, wiping traces of swamp water and demon blood from my brow. Frowning, Will hooked his hands under my knees and pushed my legs to my chest. Then he draped my arms over my kneecaps to keep them level with my heart.

He glared at me. "Are you just saying that?"

"I'm fine. Pester over Mason. He thinks he's going into cardiac arrest."

Mason made some unintelligible dispute and sat down next to me so Will could tend to him as well.

We looked each other over, panting as brown water dripped down our marked-up faces. "You saved my life," Mason muttered. It sounded more like an accusation than an expression of gratitude, but I nodded anyway.

"Let's not make it a regular thing."