“Turn here, “ Jung Jihoon instructed.

Seungho eased his foot off the accelerator and turned the battered and scarred SUV down a long narrow track that was barely wide enough to accommodate the car.

They had spent the last thirty minutes driving north out of San Francisco, listening to the increasingly hysterical radio reports as a succession of experts gave their opinions about the bird attack on the bride.

Global warming was the most commonly cited theory : the sun’s radiation interfering with the birds’ natural navigation system.

Jihoon directed them north, toward Mill Valley and Mount Tamalpais, but they quickly left the highway and stuck to narrow two-lane roads.

Traffic thinned out until there were long stretches where they were the only car in sight.

Finally, on a narrow road that curved and turned with sickening complexity, he had Seungho slow almost to a crawl.

He rolled down his window and peered out into a thick forest that came right up to the edge of the road.

They had actually driven past the unmarked path before Jihoon spotted it.

“Stop. Go back. Turn here. “

Seungho looked at his sister as he eased the car onto the rough, unpaved and rutted track.
Her hands were folded in her lap, but he could see that her knuckles were white with tension.

Her nails, which had been neat and perfect only a few hours previously, were now rough and chewed, a sure sign of her stress.

He reached over and squeezed her hand. She squeezed tightly in return.

As with so much of the communication between them, there was no need for words.

With their parents away so much, Soyeon & Seungho had learned from a very early age that they could only really depend on themselves.

Moving from school to school, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, they often found it difficult to make and keep friends, but they knew that whatever happened, they would always have each other.

On either side of the overgrown path, trees rose high into the heavens and the undergrowth was surprisingly thick. Wild brambles and thorn bushes scraped at the side of the car, white furze, gorse, and stinging nettles, wrapped through with poison ivy, completed the impenetrable hedge.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, “ Soyeon murmured.

“It’s just not natural.” And then she stopped, realizing what she’d just said.

She swivelled around in the seat to look at Jihoon.

“It’s not natural, is it ?”

He shook his head, suddenly looking old and tired.

There were dark rings under his eyes, and the wrinkles on his forehead and around his mouth seemed deeper.

“Welcome to our world,” he whispered.

“There’s something moving through the undergrowth,” Seungho announced loudly. “Something big…. I mean really big. “

After everything he’d seen and experienced so far today, his imagination started working overtime.

“It’s keeping pace with the car.”

“So long as we stay on the track, we shall be fine, “ Jihoon said evenly.

Soyeon peered into the dark forest floor.

For a moment she saw nothing, then she realized that what she’d first taken for a patch of shadow was, in fact, a creature.

It moved, and sunlight dappled its hairy hide.

She caught a glimpse of a flat face, a pug nose and huge curling tusks.

“It’s a pig-- a boar, “ she corrected herself. And then she spotted three more, flanking the right-hand side of the car.

“They’re on my side too, “Seungho said.

Four of the hulking beasts were moving through the bushes to his left.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. “And behind us. “

Soyeon, Fei and Jihoon turned in their seats to stare through the rear window at the two enormous boars that had slipped through the undergrowth and were trotting along on the path behind them.

Soyeon suddenly realized just how big the creatures were- each one was easily the size of a pony.

They were hugely muscled across the shoulders, and the tusks jutting up from their lower jaws were enormous, starting out as thick as her wrist before tapering to needle-sharp points.

“I didn’t think there were any wild boars in America, “ Seungho said, “and certainly not in Mill Valley, California.”

“There are wild boars and pigs all over the Americas,” Jihoon said absently.

“They were first brought over by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. “

Seungho shifted gears, eased off the accelerator and allowed the car to move forward at a crawl.

The road had come to a dead end.

The barrier of bushes, thorns and trees now stretched across the path.

“End of the road,” he announced, putting the car into park and setting the emergency brake.

He looked left and right. The boars had also stopped moving, and he could see them, four to a side, watching.

In the rearview mirror, he could see that the two larger boars had stopped too.

They were boxed in.

What now, he wondered, what now?

He looked at his sister and knew she was thinking the exact same thing.

Jihoon leaned forward between the seats and looked at the barrier.

“I believe this is here to discourage the foolhardy who have travelled this far. And if one were exceptionally foolish, one might be tempted to get out of one’s vehicle. “

“But we are neither foolhardy nor foolish,” Fei snapped.

“So what do we do?” She nodded at the boars.

“I haven’t seen this breed in centuries. They look like Gaulish war boars, and if they are, then they are virtually impossible to kill. For every one we can see, there are probably at least three more in the shadows, and that’s not counting their handlers. “

“These are not Gaulish. This particular breed has no need of handlers,” Jihoon said gently, the merest hint of his Korean accent surfacing. “look at their tusks. “

Soyeon, Seungho and Fei turned to look at the tusks of the huge creatures standing in the middle of the track behind them.

“They’ve got some sort of carvings on them,” Soyeon said, squinting in the late afternoon light. “Curls. “

“Spirals, “ Fei said, a touch of wonder in her voice. She looked at Jihoon. “They are Torc Alta ?”

“Indeed they are,” Jihoon said. “Wereboars.”

“By wereboars, “ Seungho said, “do you mean like, werewolves ?”

Fei shook her head impatiently.
“No, not like werewolves…”

“That’s a relief,” Seungho said, “because for a second there I thought you were talking about humans who changed into wolves.”

“Werewolves are Torc Madra,” Fei continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “They’re a different clan altogether. “

Soyeon stared hard at the nearest boar. Beneath its piglike features, she thought she could begin to see the shapes and planes of a human face, while the eyes-- cool and bright, bright blue-- regarded her with startling intelligence.

Seungho turned back to the steering wheel, gripping it tightly.

“Wereboars… of course they are different from werewolves. Different clan entirely,” he murmured, “how silly of me.”

“What do we do?” Soyeon asked.

“We drive, “ Jihoon said.

Seungho pointed at the barrier. “What about that ?”

“Just drive,” the Alchemyst commanded.

“But ….,” Seungho began.

“Do you trust me ?” Jihoon asked for the second time that day.

The twins looked at each other, then back at Jihoon, and nodded, heads bobbing in unison.

“Then drive,” he said gently.

Seungho eased the heavy SUV into gear and released the emergency brake.

The vehicle crept forward.

The front bumper touched the seemingly impenetrable barrier of leaves and bushes … and vanished.

One moment it was there, the next, it was as if the bushes had swalled he front of the car.

The SUV rolled into the bushes and trees, and for a single instant everything went dark and chill, and the air was touched with something bittersweet like burnt sugar … and then the path appeared again, curving off to the right.

“How ….,” Seungho began.

“It was an illusion. “ Jihoon explained.

“Nothing more. Light twisted and bent, reflecting the images of trees and bushes in a curtain of water vapour, each drop of moisture acting as mirror. And just a little magic, “ he added.

He pointed ahead with a graceful motion.

“We’re still in North America but now we’ve entered the domain of one of the oldest and greatest of the Elder race. We’ll be safe here for a while. “

Fei made a rude sound. “Oh, she’s old, all right, but I’m not so sure about great. “

“Fei, I want you to behave yourself, “ Jihoon said, turning to the young-looking but ancient woman sitting beside him.

“I don’t like her. I don’t trust her. “

“You’ve got to put aside your old feuds. “

“She tried to kill me. “ Fei protested. “She abandoned me in the Underworld. It took me centuries to find my way out. “

“That was a little over fifteen hundred years ago. If I remember my mythology, “ Jihoon reminded her.

“I’ve got a long memory, “ Fei muttered, for an instant she looked like a sulky child.

‘Who are you talking about ?” Soyeon demanded, and then Seungho hit the brakes, bringing the heavy car to a halt.

“Wouldn’t be a tall woman with black skin, would it ?” Seungho asked.

Soyeon spun around to look through the cracked windshield, while Jihoon and Fei leaned forward.

“That’s her,” Fei said glumly.

The figure stood in the path directly in front of the car.

Tall and broad, the woman looked as if she had been carved from a slod slab of jet-black stone.

The merest fuzz of white hair covered her skull like a close-fitting cap, and her features were sharp and angular.

High cheekbones. Straight, pointed nose. Sharply defined chin. Lips so thin they were almost nonexistent.

Her pupils were the color of butter.

She was wearing a long, simple gown made of a shimmering material that moved gently in a wind that didn’t seem to touch anything around her.

As it shifted, rainbow colors ran down its length, like oil on water.

She wore no jewelry, though Soyeon noticed that each of she short blunt fingernails was painted a different color.

“Doesn’t look a day over ten thousand years old,” Fei muttered.

“Be nice,” Jihoon reminded her.

“Who is it ?” Soyeon asked again, staring hard at the woman.

Although she looked human, there was something different, something otherworldly about her.

It showed in the way she stood absolutely still and in the arrogant tilt of her head.

“This, “ Jihoon said, a note of genuine awe in his voice, “is the Elder known as Gyuri. “ He pronounced the name perfectly.

“The Goddess with Three Faces,” Fei added bitterly.

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Changed from Eunjung to Gyuri since i think she fits the character more :D hehe. Hope you guys won't mind.

Hope you guys liked this chapter. Cause the next few chapters are gonna be longgggg. Woooo :P hehe.

Have you guys heard of the tsunami(s) in Japan/Hawaii/Phillipines ? Heard it was .. VERY bad. And it's heading towars New Zealand, if im not wrong.

Any of my readers that are from the affected areas, always know there are people praying for your safety !! ^-^ <3

STAY SAFE, MY LOVELY READERS :D <3