Yea Though I Walk

by J. P. Sloan

  “I know he’s not here,” I reply. I turn back to Eli. “About that horse.”

  Kate gives him a gentle shove away from me. “You cannot ride in this state.”

  “You think walking would be easier?”

  She gives me a stern lift of her eyebrow, but I ignore her.

  Eli says, “There may be some on the Grangerford ranch. But that’s the opposite direction from where you want to ride.”

  “I have to go east to move west. Isn’t that typical?”

  Kate huffs and swivels in front of me. “I shall take you.”

  “What?”

  “I said I shall take you myself.”

  “Is that something you can do? I mean, you seem exhausted.”

  “I do not know for certain, but we can try.”

  This time I’m the one lifting a halting hand. “No, I’ll need you, Kate. I’ll need you with me to take Magner down. If you use all of your strength carrying me into the hills, then―”

  “Then I must feed.”

  She looks at me with a tuck of her chin, then looks away.

  I hold out my arm.

  When she spots my arm, her eyes grow wide and fill with tears.

  “What is it?” I whisper. “I’ll give you what you need.”

  A sob escapes her throat, and she turns away from me.

  “Kate? Katherina!”

  I turn her toward me to find her eyes cascading, but her lips smiling.

  She groans. “I never.”

  “Never what?”

  “Never drank from you.” She rubs hands over her face, leaving streaks of grime and gore on her cheeks. She sniffles and composes herself. “And I never shall.”

  I pull her close and kiss the cleanest spot of her forehead.

  “Oh, fuck,” Eli grumbles. “You’re going to have to just do this quick.”

  We turn to find him unbuttoning his shirt.

  Before I can suck in a breath to dismiss the offer, Kate sweeps over him. I hold my breath as she curves around him, reaching from behind to put a single finger between his eyes. He drops immediately, and she catches him. With one glance at me through dark orbs for eyes, she takes a gentle stab with her fangs into his neck.

  I turn away, not so much because the scene disgusts me, but because it seems the polite thing to do rather than stare, gawking.

  After a moment, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn to find Eli laid neat on the street, hands folded over his chest. Kate leans near me, wiping the side of her mouth with her thumb.

  “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  She shakes her head with heavy-lidded eyes. “He barely felt it. He will sleep until his strength returns.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “One moment,” she answers with a lift of her finger. She paces away from me, shaking her hands and huffing.

  The clutch of townsfolk huddled near Holcomb’s watch, all eyes staring at us. They saw it. They saw what Kate had done, and more importantly they know what she is. I have no idea whether that’s a relief to anyone, or just another monstrous burden for them to carry.

  I know I’ve made my decision.

  Kate releases a lusty breath and strides forward, her eyes wide and wild. “I am ready.”

  “Very well.” I grip my length of sharpened branch of aspen. “How, uh―how does this work?”

  Kate cocks her head and gives me a mysterious grin. “You have never seen me in my true form.”

  “Haven’t I?”

  “Turn around, please.”

  I try to straighten my spine into a bristle, but the pain in my ribs sends me directly back into a slouch.

  “Why?”

  “Please.”

  I do as requested. I hear her approach. Feel arms slipping around my sides just beneath my own.

  Then, a pair of popping noises, rather like a sheet snapped in a light breeze. A breeze, indeed, kicks up around my sides as a beating sound fills my ears. Thrushes. Strokes.

  Wings.

  Kate pulls up underneath my shoulders. I yelp as a sharp stab of pain lances into my rib cage.

  Her feet wrap around my thighs, crossing near my knees. I feel cocooned. Cradled.

  And we rise in quick jerks of mighty wing strokes.

  I close my eyes, coughing against the smoke, and when I feel enough courage to open them again, I can’t see anything of the town beneath us. It’s as much the thick smoke as it is the height we’ve gained.

  Kate takes us forward, cold wind stinging my cheeks. Tears well up, flushing smoke from my eyes. She keeps a firm grip of me, and as she finds a regular rhythm of flight, she doesn’t jerk my side quite as hard.

  I know this feeling. The night I first fell prey to the Parson, so long ago. The night the rattler bit my leg. That night I felt as if I were being carried away to Hell, and rescued in daylight by Folger. I had dismissed it as a fever dream from the snake venom, but the truth was it was Folger who was the dream. Kate had carried me away that night… away from the very Hell she was carrying me into now.

  I spot a long, jagged line of dark red embers ahead. The burning hills.

  “Where do we begin?” I shout.

  “Where there are no flames.”

  She glides lower, unnervingly so, as I feel the heat against my face. We turn a long circle over the forest, and I crane my neck to look for dark patches where the flames have yet to spread.

  After a while, I roll my head to relax my shoulders, and cast a glance up at Kate. Her face is in the purest gunmetal gray, her cheeks vicious angles slicing up into the wind. Her eyes are completely black, volcanic, endless.

  Her mouth, resting in a casual grin as we fly, pulls down into a tight bow as she spots me watching.

  “Do not look at me.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I cannot keep a beautiful face for you while in this form.”

  “You are beautiful, whatever face you choose to wear.”

  Her arms and legs tighten around me.

  I ask, “Please don’t feel like you have to hide from me anymore.”

  “I do not wish to make you uncomfortable. I do not want… I do not want you to see me as anything but a human.”

  “When I look at you, I see you. Not your face.”

  “I love you, Denton.”

  I suck in a long breath and manage to answer, “I love you, Kate,” before hacking against the smoke. “Now, let’s go find and kill that sumbitch.” I wince. “Sorry. That came out a bit like Odell.”

  She pats my chest with her hand. “I like it when you talk like him.”

  Through a chuckle, I retort, “Is that a fact?”

  We turn another long circle, but the heat and fumes begin to overpower me. I reach to pull my shirt up over my nose, but it does no good.

  “Too close… can’t breathe.”

  She grips me tight and turns into a stomach-twisting dive. My heart skips a beat, returning to answer the knifing pain in my ribs.

  My feet touch the ground, and I stumble forward, trying to regain my legs. I plant my aspen branch, then drop to my ass and catch my breath. When I look up, I find Kate gathering her shawl around her shoulders. I realize, that’s no shawl. This whole time, it’s been part of her body. Such a mysterious creature.

  The brushfire isn’t too close, but it’s close enough to cast an orange glow on her face.

  “Thank you,” I say, my voice more a whisper than anything. “What now?”

  She stands resolute, holding her “shawl” to her arms, staring into the forest.

  I pull in enough clean air to stop my head from spinning, and stand with a little help from my stake. I turn to survey the clearing in which we stand. This place is familiar to me.

  “Did you bring us here for a reason?” I ask.

  She nods. “This is the last place the flames have left intact.”

  I follow her stare, taking a couple steps forward, until I see it.

  The mine entrance.

  “You think he’s
in there?”

  She nods again.

  “How can you be sure?” I whisper.

  “I cannot hear my orphans.”

  e came home, eh?” I ask as I step toward the mine entrance. “How many Strigoi were in there, do you think?”

  “Most rose to the fight. Some remained below… the weak ones. Those I could not trust among the living.”

  “So, we’re walking into an underground city with a giant cannibal abomination and a handful of Strigoi who can’t control their own violence? Outstanding.”

  Kate huffs as she passes me, leading the advance into the dark mouth of the underground Strigoi lair. I squint into the darkness as we descend the entry branch. The floor is slick, and I know there has been no rain here. A long series of claw marks slice along the stone wall at intervals. Some manner of conflict transpired here. I find no corpses as we proceed.

  When we reach the open space, the light of hundreds of lanterns greets me. The orange, flickering walls across the chasm dance in eerie silence. All I can hear is my own breathing and Kate’s footsteps.

  “He is below,” Kate whispers.

  “Can you hear him?”

  She nods and turns briefly to me. Her face is long, her eyes wide and unnervingly troubled. I reach out for her arm and give it a squeeze for reassurance.

  “We’ll end this today.”

  I move to take the lead, but she brushes me behind her as we step down the sharp slope of the rock-hewn ramp leading to the depths.

  A shadow flickers near our side, and I stiffen, gripping the wall to keep my feet. An orphan watches us from behind a carved window opening. It’s cowering. I might say it was shivering. Fear has gripped this creature so thoroughly that it’s outpaced its thirst.

  Kate reaches out and strokes its cheek before lifting a finger to her lips to shush it. The Strigoi disappears into its hole, and we continue.

  “How many, do you think?” I whisper.

  “I cannot say. Not many.”

  “There’s no bodies.”

  “I find that troubling.”

  The ramp continues perhaps twelve stories until it evens out onto a wide ledge. I feel confident enough to remove my hand from the wall and take easy steps onto its surface. The walls here are no longer carved into homes and facades. There are no doors, nor windows. Just stone.

  “What is this place?” I ask.

  “This is where we stopped digging. This is the dark place. The masons will not work any lower.”

  I step to the edge of the chasm, finding it only drops a good twenty feet. I feel drawn to the shadows below, like I’m meant to be here.

  “I know this place. I’ve been here before.”

  “We buried the bones in sepulchers above, but the stone is tainted by the demon’s essence.”

  I grip my stake and lean a little farther over the edge. I can make out the old mine shaft, now a square indentation in the far wall.

  “It was born here,” I whisper. “Perhaps it was always here, waiting for someone to help it escape.”

  Kate sniffs at the air.

  I ask, “Do you smell him?”

  She turns to answer, and as she draws in a breath, her eyes open wide. Her skin flashes instantly into beast gray.

  “Down!” she shouts.

  I’m too slow.

  Something huge slams into my “good” side, shoving me into the plain stone rock face. Lights flash through my vision as my cracked ribs scream. I maintain my grip on my aspen staff, though it doesn’t keep me from falling to the ground. Blood trickles from my brow into my eye. I blink it away as the shock wears off.

  A massive hand slices through the air, slapping against the stone just above me. I brace for impact. The open-handed blow was clumsy, smashing more rock than me. I scramble to my side as it pulls away.

  Kate rushes in front of me, gripping the wrist and latching on with her needle-teeth.

  An otherworldly hiss rushes from the chasm below. From the shadows a figure emerges. My head spins as the image refuses to draw itself into my mind. Long, skeletal arms hang from the gaunt frame of what was once a man. Tatters of old flannel still hang from its bony shoulders, a garland of filthy ribbons criss-crossing skin-draped bones. A long red beard hangs from a jaw that snaps beneath a lengthened skull. There is very little nose left to this face, now as sunken as the eyes, which glisten as pinpoints within the orbits of the monstrous skull.

  Magner stands nearly as high as the ledge on which we’re perched, a good twenty feet. The demon has twisted his form into something that can no longer be seen without a touch of insanity flooding the mind.

  Kate wrestles with Magner’s arm, though with a sneer, he flicks his arm to send her careening over the chasm. She slams into the far wall, out of sight, crumpled in the shadow.

  I shout, “Kate!”

  Which gains Magner’s attention.

  He lurches forward, planting both hands onto the ledge as if to pull himself up. The tiny black dots of his eyes fix on me.

  I pull myself to my feet and hold on to my stake as a crutch. With a wave of my free arm, I shout, “Magner, stop!”

  His frame tenses, then releases, and he holds, peering at me over the ledge.

  I take a step forward.

  “It’s been a while,” I say. “You’ve changed.”

  He blinks at me with a slight cock of his head.

  “Have you looked at yourself? Have you seen what you’ve become? What the demon has twisted you into?”

  Magner pulls a hand from the ledge.

  “I understand, if that’s worth anything to you. I understand you’re in pain. My God, it must be torture. The Hunger? That constant hunger you feel? You see now that the demon within you will never let you feel anything but that constant, ravenous need. You see that, right?”

  Magner tenses his jaw and bows his head just a little. A grumble spills from his throat, probably the best answer I’ll get from this creature.

  I continue, “And it will never stop. Ever. You can eat and eat, but the demon will twist you longer and taller so that you’ll never be sated. You can hide down here in this cavern, sure, but it will stay with you. The hunger will stay. It could take a hundred years before it’s twisted you into something it can’t use anymore.”

  I venture another step closer, lifting my stake into both hands.

  “I can end the torment, Magner. I am the only one who can. If you let me.”

  He steps away from the ledge, and I lift a hand to slow him.

  “You’re living in Hell, Magner. Hell on Earth. And I don’t know if you’ll be damned when you’re put down, but I wager it’d be a gentler torment than you’re enduring now. Come. Let me end the hunger.”

  Magner stares at me for a long moment before bowing his head completely to his chest.

  I grip the stake tight in both hands and step to the ledge.

  Before I can react, his hand whips out and curls its fingers around my arms and chest, pinning my stake against my body, squeezing hard enough to push the breath out of me. I gasp, but can’t draw any air.

  Magner pulls me off my feet and over the chasm toward his face. A deep, quaking chuckle fills my ears.

  After a few snaps of his jaw, his voice rumbles, “The hunger… makes me… strong.”

  My chest heaves for breath as he pulls me toward his maw.

  Behind his head, a pair of wings snaps out into the air. Kate, her face as sharp and severe as I have ever seen it, beats her long, leathery wings, lifting her over Magner. The air fills with a shriek, her horrifying war-cry, malevolent and predatory. She screams in perfect rage, then launches into the back of Magner’s head. A mist of blood sprays across my face, and his grip loosens immediately. I fall free, plummeting down to the bottom of the chasm. My leg folds underneath me as I slam against the oddly soft ground. My hand slaps down into something papery, like dried leaves. When I lift my hand, I find a sheet of leathery skin adhered to my palm.

  All around me lie the corpses of the
orphaned Strigoi he’s killed. Killed, but not devoured. They must not be palatable, even to a Wendigo.

  Above, I see Kate slicing with what are now talons at the ends of her fingers. She rips up large gashes along Magner’s neck. She tears away, as if trying to saw his head clean off his shoulders. I try to hoist my stake, but the shifting of corpses beneath my feet drops me to my side.

  Magner bellows and swats at Kate with his branched hands. She dips down beneath his arm and hacks at him beneath his ribs. A gush of dark blood issues out, rushing down his side as a coil of guts pushes into view.

  She turns quickly toward me. I give her a wave, letting her know I’m intact.

  Unfortunately, that’s all the time it takes for Magner to hammer a fist down onto her wing. Bones crack. Kate’s shriek fills the air once again, this time with guttural pain.

  She tumbles against the rock face, clutching with her talons as she heaves giants breaths. One of her wings hangs limp down her back.

  Magner swings again, but she pushes away, ducking just beneath his fist before it smashes the rock into a spray of gravel and dust.

  Kate lands in front of me. With a blood-chilling whimper, she pulls her wings back into her body, her face paling visibly. Her eyes open, human and filled with agony.

  Magner’s arm is already in the air, hoisting a backhand to sweep against us.

  I plant the stake against the nearest rock face and close my eyes.

  The stone is firm enough. The stake holds.

  The back of Magner’s hand slams into the point. His howl thunders through my chest. The stake slips up out of my grip as he jerks his impaled palm into the air. I watch as he shivers in pain. The aspen is doing its work, but it won’t be enough to kill him.

  Kate reaches up for me, and I grab her hand, pulling her to her feet.

  “Are you all right?” I mutter.

  She shakes her head.

  “I need that stake back,” I add. “It’s our only weapon.”

  She nods and wraps an arm around me. With a mighty heave, she jumps, tugging me into the air. Her hand slices into the rock midway to the ledge. I hear her grunt in pain. Or it could have been me. My rib cage feels like it’s on fire, as do my legs. I don’t know how many of my bones are broken at this point.

  She takes in another breath and leans over to kiss my forehead.