Excerpt from World of Shadows by Emily Rachelle
I‘m running, tripping, clawing at the trees around me to climb back up, losing my grip on the slippery moss. My breath rips out of my chest and throat, grasping oxygen desperately. I never look behind me—I‘m not running away, I‘m running toward. Toward what I don‘t know; I pray that it‘s home. A tree root catches my foot and I tumble down. My body flings arms over legs over feet as I fail to protect myself from the roots and twigs that tear my skin. The scant moonlight disappears as the sticks do, and suddenly I‘m rolling over cold, hard dirt with no light whatsoever and no idea where I am. I collide with a cool dirt surface. Light like that from candles reflects off the dirt around me, causing it to look reddish and alive. Slowly, I push myself off the floor and look around me. I‘m alone in a tiny dirt room that looks like a hollow cube, with nothing on each wall but a single tree-branch torch. In front of me a low-ceilinged dirt tunnel stretches out,