by Lizzy Ford
The Native swirled his cloak off and draped it over a low tree branch, maneuvering it with practiced skill. He created a small tent out of its folds then knelt, impervious to the cold snow, to place a pelt made of rabbit fur and felt on the ground at the base of the tent.
He shifted back and motioned to the wolf, who obediently entered the makeshift cave he created for her. She paced in a circle several times before settling.
The Native rose and sprinkled the outside of the cloak with handfuls of snow. When the lines and structure of the tent were difficult to distinguish from the rest of the snowy tree trunk, he clapped snow from his hands and started towards the quiet village.
Each step increased the pulsing of heartbeats, and his fingers quivered as they brushed the hilts of his knives.
Like most villages close to a large city, this one consisted of traditional Native housing and what remained of the town that used to stand here during the Old World. Traditional housing was used for living quarters, while the surviving buildings from the Old World covered in withered vines served as community gathering places and storage facilities. Electricity glowed in one window, where many of the village’s occupants appeared to be.
The tapping became a discordant thumping. Too many heartbeats were in the building for him to consider entering, so the Native kept his distance and quickened his pace as the heartbeats began to beat hard enough to cause pain.
He entered a narrow street lined with semi-permanent abodes, wincing. Stopping in the middle of the street, he sought to center himself and hopefully, take the edge off the pounding in his brain.
Someone spoke from the door to one tent, and he turned. A little boy the same age he had been when they came for him stood in boots, cheeks already rosy from the frigid night and uncertain gaze on him.
“English,” the Native said gruffly. His tribe’s language was not spoken on this side of the continent, or anywhere he had ever been.
“You are a guest?” replied the boy in halting English. “For the wedding vows?”
“Yes,” the Native lied without hesitation. “I am hungry, and I need medicines.”
The little boy appeared to be processing his words for a moment before he nodded. “Come,” he said and stood aside, holding open the door.
The Native entered the warm interior brightly lit by a fire at its center and lamp with a pink bulb. The boy was alone, which did nothing to help the Native’s pounding head, not with the proximity to the rest of the villagers.
He removed his cloak and scarf and sat beside the fire.
“Wait. I bring food,” the boy said and then ducked out of the tent before the Native could reply.
He tossed the long braid of his hair over one shoulder. The tent was too quiet and warm. Without a distraction, the beating in his head took on a pitch that alerted him he was close to the edge. Each person’s heartbeat held the power of a strike and he was being pummeled to his limit. A familiar sense came over him, that of sliding out of himself, away from the pain. He closed his eyes. His breathing became labored, his clothing tighter, the pounding deeper, as if each person’s heartbeat slammed into his spirit.
“Soup,” the boy said.
The Native opened his eyes and realized how far he’d fallen out of himself again. He straightened from his slump.
The little boy handed him a bowl of thick venison soup and a cloth napkin loaded with fry bread and bite-sized sweets from the celebration. The scents alone were enough to ease the beating of his brain.
The Native wolfed down the soup, ignoring the spoon the boy placed beside him and drinking it straight from the bowl.
The child squatted across from him, watching curiously.
The Native lowered the bowl and wiped his mouth with a sleeve before setting the empty dish aside. The stew slid through him, warming him from the inside out for the first time in weeks.
“You are hurt?” the boy asked and pointed to the Native’s leg. “What is wrong?”
“No. I need medicines for a friend,” the Native said. He slid his left leg, which was misshapen and clad in black leather, under the length of the long coat he wore. The child’s question left him no doubt as to his innocence. An adult would know what his black leg meant.
“Medicines,” the Native said.
The boy rose and went to one of the boxes stacked on one side of the tent.
The Native ate all the sweets and breads while he watched the child sort through several satchels and jars. After a moment, the boy frowned.
“More soup,” the Native said and rose. He held out the bowl. “I will do this.”
The boy nodded and took the bowl, happily skipping out of the tent and into the snowy night.
The Native went to the trunk and began filling his satchel with jars of poultice, clean bandages, and a bottle of penicillin.
The pounding in his head increased in intensity, as if a hundred guns were shooting through him, and he hunched his shoulders. The sense of sliding out of himself returned, along with the faint whisper of spirits emanating from his black leg, where the dark magic had trapped them. For a long moment, he stood, neither fighting the sensation nor surrendering, but gauging his chances either way.
Singing came from outside the tent. The party in the central compound had moved into the neighborhood where the people of the village lived, marking the end of the celebration.
His fists clenched, and the satchel fell to his hip. Sucking in deep breaths, the Native’s fingers twitched closer to his weapons. His skin and clothing were growing too confined, and he snatched his cloak and scarf and draped them on.
“Two soup,” the boy said, entering the tent, his high-pitched voice at odds with the deep pounding. He held out two bowls proudly.
The Native grabbed the bowls. The beating was becoming too much for him to withstand, and he left the tent. Stumbling, he careened into someone he could not see through his pain and dropped to his knees, splashing the soup. Pain lanced each thought and every breath. His body swelled, tearing the stitches of his clothing, and he dropped the bowls completely to grip his head.
The Native flung his head back and roared, a sound that was neither human nor animal but something in between.
The singing around him fell silent. As usual, when he shocked a crowd, there was a collective pause, as the hearts of each person skipped or slowed. And then they began again simultaneously, smashing him with a singular, jagged strike of unbearable agony.
Obsessed by the need for silence, the Native let the pain transform him. His clothing fell away in shreds, but the winter did not reach his skin through the thick layer of fur that raced across his body. This time, when he roared, the sound of a beast left his lungs.
The spirits whispered more loudly, competing with the jarring heartbeats. The Native lashed out to stop the maddening pounding. Blood splattered his fur and filled his mouth at the dizzying movement. The heartbeats were soon accompanied by screams, both of which lessened the more he freed the spirits possessing him to act.
He tore through the wedding procession and guests. With so many dead, the pounding eased without releasing him completely from the spell, and he smashed through tents to silence those lives, too, before chasing down the few who tried to run.
In the end, long after dark fell, the spell released him, and he collapsed in the middle of the now silent village, sucking in ragged breaths, human once again.
Silence … it was all that brought him peace and relief. Not one heartbeat filled the space around him for a thousand feet, and he relaxed in the snow, too fevered from his activity to feel cold. He dozed, waiting for the final flickers of pain to subside. After some time passed, he roused himself and stood.
Now that the village was his to pillage, he took his time selecting the best and warmest clothing and raiding the medicinal supplies. The Native removed hunks of meat from the village’s meat locker before stopping by the central building where the ceremony had begun to partake of the sweets and soup.
; When his energy was restored, he left, hauling his treasures on a sled behind him.
“Wolf,” he growled when he neared the makeshift tent where he had left his guide.
She did not appear. Assuming she was asleep, the Native dropped his plunder nearby and went to the opening of the tent.
“Wolf,” he called again and dropped to one knee to peer into the tent.
His guide was gone.
Unable to believe his eyes, the Native stared at the empty space and then reached in to pick up the rabbit fur, as if his massive canine could fit beneath it. He sprang to his feet and searched the snow around the tent, his vision as sharp in the night as it was in the day. Snow had begun to fill in his footsteps, but shallow dents remained.
“Here.”
The Native’s head snapped in the direction of the little boy’s voice. He went still, uncertain how a child had sneaked up on him.
No heartbeat pelted his brain.
Tilting his head, the Native gazed intently at the little boy from the village. The child smiled, and his cheeks remained rosy. The only difference between earlier and the form before him: the deep, black gash across the child’s chest, from where the Native had ripped his lungs out with a single stroke.
“This is their trail,” the boy said and pointed. There was no accent in the spirit’s words, no hesitation, as there had been when he spoke broken English in the village.
The Native approached warily. He had never seen a spirit this clearly, only heard their whispers.
The shallow indentations of two people on foot were beside the boy. One pair of footsteps led them to the tent where the wolf rested, and a second pair led away.
The Native knelt to observe more closely. No paw prints were present, indicating the she-wolf was carried away. He could not imagine his guide going with anyone willingly. If anything, becoming a mother had made her even less tolerant than he was of other humans. She had been sent for him and allowed no one else near her.
He breathed in deeply without smelling fresh blood. His guide had a bandaged leg wound, and the trace of old blood was in the air.
They had not hurt her. At least, not here, or within a thousand yards of here.
He glanced towards the sky. The stars were hidden, but his internal sense of time told him he had been in the village for several hours, long enough for the snow to conceal all but the beginning of their path.
“How long ago did they leave?” he asked the spirit that lingered nearby.
“Two hours,” the boy replied.
The Native’s heart began to race, and familiar heat flushed through him as his body prepared to transform in response to his ricocheting emotions. He stood, peering into the forest in the direction the footsteps had gone.
Who had taken his guide?
Did they know what he would do to them, once he found them?
He calmed himself, aware he needed his human mind engaged.
“You should hurry,” the spirit called. He had moved twenty feet away at the blink of an eye. The boy disappeared.
His plunder forgotten, the Native began to run in the direction the footsteps had gone. They ended abruptly, a quarter mile away, and were replaced by the unmistakable scent, deep hoof prints and cold scat of two horses. The men had mounted up and then set off towards the west.
The spirits were whispering again, insistent and mournful he had failed to protect the sacred guide granted him.
The harder the snow fell, the faster he went, fearful of losing all traces of those who stole his guide. In the distance, he heard the shrieks of the Ghouls. They could not sense him, but for the sake of saving time, he would have to avoid rather than confront them, if he wanted to follow the tracks of those he now hunted before the snow completely covered them.
Chapter Thirteen
“Have I told you how bad this idea is?” Marshall Cruise hissed. “Even for a Hanover?”
“Five times so far,” Arthur Hanover replied. The heir to the ruling dynasty in Lost Vegas adjusted the bundled wolf in his lap with a grunt. The pregnant beast weighed over a hundred pounds and glared at him with golden eyes whenever he shifted her into a position she did not like.
At the moment, the fingers of one of his hands were trapped beneath her body and as numb as his nose and cheeks. Snow fell in silent sheets, too thick for them to ride faster than a walk.
“We saw what that monster did to our people, to the people of those two villages,” Marshall continued.
“I know.” Arthur glanced at the wolf. It was a rare day when he was not fully confident in his decisions, and today was one of those days. “We stick to the plan. If you do not like it, go back. I did not ask you to accompany me.” Even as he said the words, he understood his chances of surviving alone were nonexistent.
“I came for the sakes of all our friends, not just Warner. He is probably dead by now, too,” Marshall said quietly. “No one can survive this alone.”
“We have!” Arthur snapped.
Marshall sank into sullen quietness.
All traces of Warner, Arthur’s protector and lover, had long since vanished.
They had followed the tracks of his friend, until they intersected with the sometimes human, sometimes bear prints of the skinwalker that had indiscriminately slaughtered the entire party making up this year’s Winter Hunt. Warner’s footprints had been lost in the final snowstorm of late winter, and Arthur had followed the skinwalker in the hopes of being led to a nearby village where he would find his lover.
The skinwalker indeed led them to a village – and then slaughtered everyone in it.
No trace of Warner remained. Neither had they found his body, which gave Arthur hope that his friend had escaped the beast a second time. Warner would know to head to the city, but Arthur was at a crossroads. The very creature that had slaughtered Arthur’s soldiers, and the village, also threatened Tiana.
The decision to pursue the threat was not an easy one, and Arthur made it knowing he may never see Warner again. It was easier to convince Marshall to follow the skinwalker. The Cruise heir believed this to be a mission of vengeance, and in a way, it was.
They trailed the skinwalker into four villages. Half of those the skinwalker entered were graveyards by the time he left. All but once, Arthur and Marshal had arrived to the village in time to witness the skinwalker departing, accompanied by the wolf, the only living creature that appeared immune to his carnage. The animal was of importance to him, and Arthur had hatched a plan to lure the skinwalker into a trap of their devising.
Justice was called for. But Arthur’s secret hope was to prevent the vision replaying in his sleep every night, where this very skinwalker pursued his sister across the plains. If Marshall chose to claim this was revenge to the residents of the affluent Lost Vegas outer city, then he was welcome to. As long as they stuck together, Arthur did not care what the philosophical son of the wealthiest man in Lost Vegas believed.
“He could’ve made it back to the city by now,” Marshall said.
“I hope so,” Arthur murmured.
“I’m impressed by how much you care. It shows you to be a different kind of person than your father.”
Not this again, Arthur thought. He rolled his eyes without admonishing his companion. He had exhausted his desire to counter Marshall’s well thought out arguments about how terrible the Hanover dynasty was for the survival of Lost Vegas. So his father was a tad aggressive in sending people to the stakes, but the Hanover’s were the reason the city survived the past four and a half centuries. When his father was gone, and Arthur was in charge, he could change things. It was only a matter of time.
Marshall’s radical solution, overthrowing Arthur’s father and the ruling council, sounded as rational to Arthur as his father burning everyone with deformities. He had stopped listening to Marshall’s ramblings.
The wolf’s head snapped up, and she planted her legs against the horse’s body, wriggling.
Arthur stopped his horse and dropped the re
ins to try to grab the furry black animal, but she leapt free of the horse and landed in a puff of snow beside him.
“Burn me!” he muttered and flung himself off the horse to recapture the she-wolf.
“Arthur,” Marshall’s voice was quiet, urgent.
The wolf bounded a few steps away then lowered herself to the ground, preparing to pounce.
“Stay mounted, Marshall. She almost attacked you last time,” Arthur said and circled his horse. The wolf appeared to accept his presence where she would not Marshall’s.
“Arthur!”
Irritated, Arthur twisted to see Marshall in the darkness. Between the white snow, and white clouds, the night held an eerie glow. The only sound was that of horses snorting and the wolf’s low, deep growl.
Marshall was pointing into the forest, his jaw slack, and a knife in one hand. Arthur looked towards him then back, realizing the wolf and his companion were both facing the same direction.
Shifting around the trunk of a tree, so he could see what they did, Arthur’s breath caught in his throat.
Skin and hair whiter than snow, eyes and lips blacker than hell, sharpened fangs too large for their lips to cover, the ethereal monsters from nightmares floated more than walked, not twenty feet away from Arthur’s position.
“Ghouls,” he breathed.
Silent, except when hunting, the nocturnal predators were believed to have been awakened during the Age of Darkness, after falling into hibernation during the early days of mankind. Unlike most predators, which could survive off of multiple kinds of meat, the Ghouls hunted humans exclusively, rendering the insatiable creatures the largest threat after nightfall and the monster in nearly every ghost story Arthur had ever heard.
Arthur did not dare reach for his weapons, or even to breathe. By the silence behind him, from the direction of Marshall, the Cruise heir had paid attention to the briefings given to them about how to handle a Ghoul encounter. The only way to survive once the Ghouls spotted someone: flee.