“Make a pact,” Taavi growls out, nodding to me. “And bind it.”
“I’ve only just gotten down and you’re after me?” Scarecrow Bro says, turning that disturbing visage of his towards Taavi. “Awfully bossy, for a guardian.” Brushing his hands off on his pants, he turns those gold eyes up to mine, and I feel my heart skip a few beats.
Whoa.
“On my word, I swear not to raise hand nor spell at you and yours for at least three days, provided you don’t raise either toward me first. Do we have a deal?”
“Deal,” I say, reaching out to shake his hand. Scarecrow Bro very carefully pulls the fingers of one glove until it’s resting in his palm. He extends a ruined, scarred hand toward me.
Swallowing down a lump, I reach out and take it, feeling this surge of power pass between us, just like it did when Bain kissed me, or when I kissed Taavi. Magic. Fingers tingling, I draw my hand back to my chest as the scarecrow sits back up again, examining his own hand with a shrewd expression.
“We’ve done as you asked. Now, talk.” Taavi steps forward, arms crossed over his bare chest.
Scarecrow Bro sighs heavily and gives the dog-man a look.
“In due time, my friend. In due time.”
He reaches up with his gloved right hand, pulling at the ends of his fingers, as if he were still wearing a glove on the left hand. I give Taavi a look, but he isn’t paying me any attention, his brown-eyed gaze focused solely on the scarecrow.
The skin at the tips of his fingers comes loose, and I choke back a sound of surprise, stepping back into the cornstalks as he moves down the row of digits. When he peels his wrinkled skin off of his hand, I almost puke, snapping my lids closed until I hear him let out a blissful sigh.
“Much better,” he murmurs, more to himself than to either of us. When I open my eyes back up, I find him staring at an unblemished hand with bronze skin and long, matte black fingernails. He reaches up to his head, pulling off his straw hat and tossing it aside before stands up in front of me.
He’s a lot taller than he looked when he was strung up there, almost as tall as Taavi.
His scalp is a ragged mess of burn scars, hairless and pink-tinged. I imagine that under all that paint, his face looks much the same. Without skipping a beat, the scarecrow reaches up and digs his fingernails into the skin on the side of his face.
As Taavi and I watch, he peels that away, too, over his lids and nose and lips, tossing the ruined skin aside like a mask.
What’s underneath it takes my breath away.
“Ahh, much better,” he purrs in that husky voice, reaching up to ruffle his shiny dark hair with the fingers of his gloved hand. “So much better. I feel like a new man.”
He smiles at me, and I gape, staring at one of the most handsome faces I’ve ever seen, with a full mouth set in an infuriating smirk, long lashes, and a face that’s half-covered in the swirling black lines of tattoos.
Taavi growls and steps close to me as the scarecrow walks in a small circle around us.
“Don’t mind Taavi,” I tell the scarecrow with a shrug of my shoulders. “He only bites when I tell him to.”
“Oh, I’m not scared of him,” the scarecrow says in that husky voice of his. “There’s only one thing in all of Oz that I’m afraid of.”
“And that is?” I ask as the man stops in front of me, and very carefully reaches down to unbutton his blue jacket. He tosses it aside to reveal a scarred chest underneath, digging at his skin near his abs with his nails, and then peeling that away to reveal a body worthy of a Men’s Health cover shoot. “Dorothy?”
“Fuck no,” he snorts with a laugh, dropping the thin sheet of scarred flesh to the ground like a snake shedding its skin. The man leans in close to me, his breath warm against my ear. “I’ll let you in on a little secret: the only thing I’m scared of … is a lit match.”The Creepy Road Through the Even Creepier Forest“What’s your name, anyway?” I ask as we hop the blue fence back to the Y.B.R. just as the sun dips beneath the horizon. Within seconds—seconds—the other scarecrows are at the fence, watching us. Scares the ever-living shit out of me, I won’t lie, but other than a low growl from Taavi, neither he nor our new friend pay them any mind. Their eyes, however, these glowing blue orbs, are likely to haunt me until the end of my days.
“Stryker, the Vain and Arrogant,” he says, without a shred of humility or shame. He smooths his hands down the wrinkled, bloodied blue coat with the bits of straw stuck to it. The way his mouth wrinkles up in distaste tells me one, that his name is likely pretty damn accurate, and two, that he’d much rather be wearing something—anything—else.
