That was when Max vomited the water. Doris screamed. David clambered backward, somehow dodging the spray altogether, and leapt behind the protection of the overturned table. Max's eyes opened and rolled into his skull. His back arched and a wail, half-human, half-animal, poured from him as forcefully as the vomited water. The metal cot rattled, scraped and screeched.
"It's early!" David shouted above the din, and was looking toward the nearest window as if it had betrayed him.
"Are you sure, are you sure?" Doris was close to hyperventilation. She looked up at the same window and in her panic said ridiculously, "I don't see the moon!"
David didn't reply. He was fumbling with the holster, pulling out the gun and using the table's edge to steady his hands. The muzzle was pointed at Max, who was writhing as if he would snap his spine. Doris screamed again, using her voice's strength to pull herself together, kneeling like a warrior archer, her bow drawn.
The thing Max was becoming keened back to Doris, then bellowed. Not a trace of human timbre was in the roar. Max's face snapped toward her, his mouth open, the fangs fully formed, too big for the mouth and tearing the lips as they gnashed down. David cried out, and Doris heard the wolven in his own voice as he braced himself wide on his knees and stiffened his arms.
Then the beast burst through.
It erupted like great shards of stone through quaking earth, yet it wasn't breaking through Max's flesh, it was Max's flesh. The snout bulged outward, suddenly matching the fangs, size for size, hair bristling across his body like gooseflesh. His legs wrenched upward. The chains at his ankles snapped as if they had no more substance than table crackers.
His legs reared so, Doris could see the bushy tail, fully formed already, curled against his groin. With a grating screech, the chains binding his wrists disintegrated as his arms seized to his side, the flesh between his fingers fusing, the nails thickening and blackening as they grew.
Max's skull, Max's spine, Max's muscles bulged, swelled, rippled beneath the thick silver fur, until the creature was so immense it was clear no single human could stand against it, didn't have a chance. There was not a trace of Max left, not a single trace. Except the eyes.
The cot collapsed beneath the weight. For a bizarre, timeless second, the beast seemed stunned. Doris was. She felt David nearby, motionless, too, as they were paralyzed in awe, gazing at the awful, terrifying beauty before them. It was the beast who recovered a split second before them.
She heard David gasp out, "Shoot!" as the creature lunged and he fired. The beast collided with the table. Doris was thrown behind the silver barricade before she could release her arrow. She heard the beast's throaty howl, sensed the pain in it, and peered between the table's planks to see the beast leap back onto the narrow protection of the broken cot.
"Did you hit it?" she shouted, as if David were miles away.
"No. I don't think so," he replied. "It's the silver."
Doris looked over to see David peering through the same slit in the table. The beast let out a howl so loud, so full of fury it stung her ears. She pressed her palms against them, but David gave her a rough shake that brought her back to her senses.
"Ready your bow again! Just like we practiced! On the count of three!"
Doris was trembling badly, but she knew what she had to do and clung to that plan as if it were a lifeline cast to her from a high cliff. She gripped her bow, nocked the arrow as best she could, crouched as she was behind the table, almost shoulder to shoulder with David. She heard the beast tearing at the cot's mattress in frustration.
"Now!" David cried, forgetting about the count, but Doris rose with him as one, anyway, the beast flinging itself toward them as if it knew when they would risk emerging.
She loosed the arrow as David's gunfire rang out, but again they were forced behind the table so quickly, their aim was futile. When the beast collided this time, the table legs pushed through the shack's walls, shrinking the space between by six inches. David hit the bottom of the door, it broke free of its rusted hinges and fell atop them.
Wild-eyed, Doris looked up into the face of the beast. The guttural moan told her it was pained by the silver's touch, but the hatred in its eyes -its eyes so human- gave it strength. Black lips curled away from fangs. It gnashed down toward her. She shrieked and shrank under the decrepit protection of the fallen door.
She felt David struggling next to her, screamed again, when the fangs snapped downward twice, thrice, almost clipping her. Then her ears rang with the close report of the gun firing right through the table.
The cry was almost human. Almost. A crushing weight pressed them both flat beneath the door. There was a chilling moment of silence. Doris didn't dare move, her arms close against her ribs, her face mashed cruelly against the floor. Yet worse still were the first seconds after a sudden release of that weight. She was sure the beast had flipped the door away.
But it was the healer tugging her upward, asking frantically, "Are you all right? Doris...!"
She looked around her as if pulled out of a coma. "Where is it? Where is it?"
David had pushed the door through the threshold. The only sign of the beast was a thick splash of blood on the other side of the table. When Doris looked outside the shack, she saw a trail of red patterned over the broken door.
"Like a bridge, like a goddamned bridge," David was saying, his voice a little wild. "It ran right across the unsilvered side of the door when it collapsed on us."
Doris felt clarity approaching once more. "But you hit it! Look at the blood."
David had his gun at the ready, but he leaned against the doorjamb, succumbing to the luxury of closing his eyes a brief moment. "It's not dead."
He didn't have to say more. Doris sank down onto the edge of the table to reach her bow and quiver of arrows. But she stood quickly, afraid that if she rested at all, she might collapse.
"What do we now?" she asked.
"We hunt."
Doris struggled against that for only a moment. Then she shrugged on her leather quiver, tightened the arm brace. She said wearily, because she could barely say it with hope, "Do you think it's dying some place now?"
David stepped down and around the discarded door. "No."
"Can you track it?"
"Not easily. But we have an advantage this time. Come look at this."
Doris came out of the torn doorway and followed David as he moved beyond the cast off light seeping from the shack's threshold. Once they were completely surrounded by night, David motioned for her to stop and pointed skyward at the tree line, where the chalky disk of the moon hovered just above the cedars.
"Now look down," he said, and Doris saw it, scattered across the earth, spattering stones and scraggly plants. The beast's blood glowed under the moon's touch.
The blood trail disappeared into the forest, heading north, toward Tulenar.
Chapter 37
Two Miles South of Tulenar Internment Camp
Night. Full Moon.
Tonight, rage drove the beast as well as hunger, as well as its need to increase. Rage toward the One Lost, rage that it was forced to abandon him and the Chosen, both so close to fang and death. When it fed tonight, it would feed entirely, obliterate the prey, scatter blood and flesh like rubble against heat-baked earth. What it could not do to the One Lost, it would do to its victim. Then later, if it could, if the chance were there to take -after the rich and violent feeding, after the Chosen was marked-it would do the same to the One Lost.
The burning in the beast's left leg was almost to the point of numbness. It would have liked to moan, to whimper in its pain, but to do so might bring calamity. Instead the beast paused to work its muzzle gingerly into the crease, where leg and groin met, and licked its wound.
This was the third time the beast had stopped, managing to staunch the flow of blood a mile or so before. After tending to the place where the silver had entered, it reached its long, red tongue to its upper left haunch, where the silver had exited.
Painful. Immensely painful, but the silver had not lodged, passing completely through. By moon set, the wound would be closed, not healed but well on its way.
It spared only a minute to attend its leg, then limped onward. Much still had to be done and now it all had to happen during this moon. No more time. If the beast was to increase, its time with this host must come to fruition tonight. One last feeding must be had, the chosen host must be bitten and receive.
Even wounded, the beast managed to cover ground swiftly and soon it was at its favorite perch, overlooking the darkened dormitories of Tulenar. The only lights burning were those at the perimeter, illuminating the Army guards, small as beetles from where the beast sat, their fear pungent even at this distance. In spite of its pain, the beast's belly began to tighten with hunger.
It moved with special caution tonight. Only after the Bite could the beast safely pass from the spent host, reborn in new blood, increased in new fear. Wounded so by silver, all its wiles must come into play. The beast forced itself to stand and descended to Tulenar.
All of humanity's cunning couldn't stop the beast from slipping into camp. These foolish ones, their attention fixed upon the wrong fear, could not possibly see the beast, wounded though it was, much less stop it. It knew how to slip into shadow, avoid moonglow and floodlight, its goal all the more easy to achieve since curfew had cloistered the internees within the long, black shelters. Its belly was stabbed by another pang of hunger.
What the beast needed first would be among the handful of young ones that stay within the shadows themselves. Intent on creating their own fear, they, too, avoided the probing eyes of the guards. Their smells led the beast to them as surely as a hound followed the voice of its master. Their anxiety was as rich in the air as was the tang of their false bravado. Their scents culminated behind the Shibai theatre.
The beast came upon them squatting in a circle, whispering harshly, laughing low and anxious as the one the beast sought stirred a stick inside a bucket. The beast ignored the strong, artificial odor of paint and focused on the young one busy at his task.His fear was the strongest, his determination to deny it exquisite in the beast's nostrils. The nights this young male had been forced to endure jail gave the boy's anxiety an edge over all others. All the beast had to do now was wait. Wait for the right moment, for the perfect pitch of fear before striking.
It remained hidden, trying not to fidget with the pain, as the youths rose from their task. They were trying to be stealthy, but to the beast, they were clumsy pups, so intent on their mischief not one of them was aware of the beast edging closer. The young mark lagged a few steps behind the others, struggling against the weight of the paint bucket.
He waddled up to the edge of the stage and wrestled the bucket onto the front left corner. The others clambered up to dip cups into the paint. As each one did, they slung high arcs of white across the stage floor, over the wallboard, out across the audience benches. Unable to contain themselves any longer, a few of the boys whooped toward the sky.
The one so desired by the beast began to laugh to mask his tension, clapping his hands. When one of his companions slipped on a swath of paint and fell heavily, the boy screeched his delight and whirled on one foot.
He froze, face to face with the beast.
Chapter 38
One Mile South of Tulenar Internment Camp
Night. Full Moon.
At first, the rank smell of sage and animal dung on her skin and clothes yanked at Doris's attention. But as she followed David into the depths of the conifer forest, it was the woodland that overwhelmed her. In the glow of moonlight filtered through the shag of cedar and pine, it took nerve Doris hadn't realized she possessed to not stop and stare behind her or to her left or just there, just behind that tree...
She checked her palm like a compass, convinced each time that she would see the silvery pentagram form, warning her too late that the beast was near. Twice her nerve failed her, and she stood frozen in terror, her bow drawn as she stared down a shadow she had been certain, certain was the beast.
A couple of miles back the blood trail, glowing wherever moonbeams converged with it, had given out. David had said that they would be walking blind from then on and to be alert as they approached their goal. Not Tulenar, but the territory in which the beast taunted, then slaughtered its kill.
To try following the beast to camp would have been futile. It chilled Doris's heart when she contemplated the creature's capacity for speed, even when wounded. Tiptoeing along, following the blood trail, she and David couldn't hope to catch up with it before it had struck again. So David had said, before they had even set off from the shack, that they should go instead to the feeding grounds.
What he proposed made Doris ache. He was saying that it was too late to save the next victim. Their failure at the shack had doomed whoever held the dark pentagram of the prey in his palm. Their only recourse now was to try to find the beast in the smaller realm of its feeding ground. If they could save the victim they would, but only after the beast was slain.
So now they approached the boundaries of the feeding grounds. Doris felt naked without a barricade of silver around her. She and David didn't even have the drapes of silver plating shielding their hearts, not daring the risk of moon beams striking it, flashing out their whereabouts to the beast. All they had were the wristbands, the choker, the pin at the throat. Silver arrowhead, silver bullet.
David stopped. He stood, quiet. Finally, in a low voice, he said, "We're here. I don't think the beast has come yet."
Doris struggled to moisten her mouth enough to whisper, "How can you tell?"
"An educated guess. If the beast were still dominant in me, I don't think I'd have made it back yet. Especially wounded."
He fell quiet once more and it was several moments before Doris dared whisper again. "What now?"
"We try another guess. What particular place will the beast favor for this kill?"
Doris didn't answer. She knew David was thinking out loud more than talking with her. She fidgeted, as afraid now of standing still as she was of walking, and tried not to jerk her head toward every pop or crackle coming from the woods.
"In a clearer area," David said suddenly, making Doris startle even though his voice was still low. "It will want the remains discovered in a short amount of time. Like it did with the minister. His body was found quickly, exposed, not far from the first kill's shallow grave. You see how it plots?"
The thought of going near that place, of touching the earth that received Arthur's torment filled Doris with a nauseating dread.
"Do we have to?" she asked, her voice cracking. "God, do we have to go there?"
David remained still, as if listening to the forest instead of her. But he said at last, "Yes, I think so. We should at least have a look."
"David..."
The healer turned to Doris now, apparently alerted by the ache in her voice. "What's wrong?"
She was being foolish. She was being selfish. Perhaps their last chance to kill the goddamned thing was in that clearing and she was as good as begging David not to take her there. She steadied herself, hid behind her old friend, gruffness.
"Nothing. Let's go."
/ / / /
Doris heard herself whimper rather than felt it as she breached the ridiculous ropes and warning signs posted by the F.B.I. She was only vaguely aware of David harshly whispering for caution, felt him tugging at her sleeve like a memory, years and years old. Ten minutes ago she had practically pleaded with David not to take her there. Now she couldn't be kept away.
The place where the police had exhumed Tsuko Ataki's remains lay almost dead center, a depression in the ground. The elements were already blunting off the small, clotted mounds that encircled the grave. By the next moon, it would be hard to believe the dead had ever been there.
It was not so easy to tell where Arthur had lain. The beast hadn't bothered to hide its brutality to him, leaving Arthur exposed, broken and spent. Doris's eyes s
trained in the warped colors of night for some sign, any sign of Arthur's touch.
But it was all this little patch of earth could do to offer up a tuft of scraggly grass here and there. Its brownish cast was gray under the moon. In the span of one month, not a single handprint was left. Not even a precious stain of blood.
The realization that she had hoped all along to find the place, to touch the place Arthur drew his last breath weakened her, buckled her, pressed her down onto the earth. She curled her forehead against her knees, squeezed her fists against her neck and let the sobs shake her until she fell over like a ripened pod.
David came to gently pull her upright. She unwound and let him cradle her in his arms.
"I loved Arthur Satsugai," she said into David's shirtfront. "I loved him. But I was afraid. There were so many reasons we would fail ... I had to guarantee we would. He died without ever knowing. I never told him. He loved me and I was afraid and I never told him I loved him, too. I turned him into an adversary."
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