by Rowan Casey
“He’s like a kid himself in many ways,” Dani said.
“I see,” Sophie said, her dark eyes focusing on Dani now.
“We’re leaving as soon as whatever is out there killing hikers is dead,” Dani added with a deliberately casual shrug.
Sophie made a non-committal sound at that and returned to watching Perce and the two kids playing. There was nothing menacing about her aura, no clouds, only interest in her eyes.
Dani dropped it. She hoped that Bertha wouldn’t be unhappy if her brother seduced her granddaughter, but Sophie was clearly an adult and Dani couldn’t bring herself to fight this battle for Perce. Perce clearly wouldn’t want her to, anyway.
There was taking care of her brother and looking out for him, and then there was meddling and manipulating. She knew she crossed lines sometimes, she couldn’t help herself. Dani did her best to let Perce live as normally as they could, given who they were, how they’d been raised, and his incredible penchant for getting into trouble.
“You know how many are in town looking for that bear or whatever it was?” Dani said after a minute.
“Maybe a dozen strangers around? It’s hard to say since this time of year we get plenty of fishermen and hunters anyway.” Sophie rubbed her hands on her pants. Her nails were dirty and her wrists had the kind of thickness that bespoke hard work.
“There’s a bounty?”
“Sure, though not a legal one, technically. I’m sure the Game people would rather handle this themselves, but two people killed has the town pretty riled.”
“You knew them? The people who died I mean.”
Sophie shook her head. “No, just heard about it. They weren’t from here. Seems dangerous to go after whatever it is though. You two don’t even have guns, do you?”
“Don’t need guns,” Dani said. She and Perce had been trained to hunt with knives and bows and slings since they could walk, it seemed like. Their mother had considered guns a crutch of a weak society, though they’d learned enough about shooting that they could if they had to, and so they could safely handle a gun. It didn’t hurt that Perce was preternaturally quick on his feet or that Dani could sense when danger was near.
“That good at hunting, both of you?” Sophie looked skeptical.
Dani knew the picture she and Perce must make. Her with her blonde hair pulled into a pony tail, wearing a sundress she’d immediately changed into after getting here, Perce with his boyish face and goofy manners. They likely looked more like they were about to start fixing a church picnic than hunting down a man-killing bear or the like.
“I’m all right at it,” she answered. “Perce though, he’s like an idiot savant when it comes to woodcraft. It’s like he taps into a higher power.” Which he kind of did, through his connection to his Knight or whatever it was. Dani still wasn’t sure what she thought about Grimm’s revelations. She knew firsthand the supernatural was very real, however, so she wasn’t about to question things too much.
“Huh,” Sophie said, a half-smile curving her lips as she looked at Perce. “Good with kids and he can hunt.”
“Stays light here a long time,” Dani observed, very much needing a subject change.
“Sunset won’t be until after ten. There’s blackout curtains in your rooms, of course. Sunrise comes a bit past three in the morning.”
Long days meant plenty of natural light to track in. She and Perce could get started early.
“We’ll likely head out around four then,” Dani said, thinking aloud. With a little luck, they could be on the trail from the slain moose long before other hunters stumbled out of their beds.
“We won’t be up yet and nothing in town will be open, but I’ll make up some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for you and set the coffee pot to brew early. Just reset it if you will before you leave?” Sophie offered Dani a shy smile.
Dani shifted her weight, unsure what to make of this woman. She’d never really had a friend, so she wasn’t sure if she was reading Sophie’s friendly overture correctly. When Mama was alive, they weren’t allowed to play with anyone except sometimes if they were in church for Sunday service, they could play a little during Sunday school. Dani hadn’t been to a regular school and by the time she was old enough to drive and escape to the tiny town nearby, none of the girls wanted anything to do with her. The boys had been more interested, but Mama had forbade makeup or dresses or dating, and Dani figured out quickly that the boys weren’t interested in the same things that she was.
Forming attachments wouldn’t help, anyway. She had a destiny, and powers she didn’t really understand. And now it was on her to help save the world. Her and Perce. That’s how it was, that’s how it would stay.
Dani smiled back at Sophie. “Thank you,” she said. She stood up. “I’m going to get a shower in.” She glanced at Perce again. He was in a fenced yard with lots of distractions. How much trouble could he get into?
The sun was a shy blush on the horizon as Dani followed her brother down the road in the early morning. It felt strange to be up in growing daylight when it wasn’t yet four a.m. Her belly was full of peanut butter sandwich and coffee. She had both her hunting knives strapped to her waist and leg, and her compact folding survival bow in its carry case over her shoulder along with broad-head hunting arrows.
She had decided they would start at the place the moose had been killed and go from there. Perce hadn’t argued for once, though he’d looked like he was thinking about it just for appearance’s sake. They still didn’t know what exactly they were hunting or if it even was the right choice for the quest Grimm had set them on, but it felt right to Dani.
Right, and yet…in the pit of her stomach, she felt fear.
She’d shut Perce down when he tried to talk about the Questing Beast legend again, but it was foremost in her mind. Her mother had called the beast the family curse, had claimed that it had taken their father’s life. Mama had claimed a lot of things. Like that demonic forces were hunting her, looking to take her children away for their own hellish purposes.
Dani pushed those thoughts away along with her memory of the demon in Grimm’s meeting room. She ran alongside Perce, her long legs keeping up with his as they fell into a familiar pace. This, being out in the woods, following the clues and signs an animal or person had left, this was familiar. It was what they had been raised to do.
The moose had been moved, its carcass probably carted off somewhere away from town where it wouldn’t attract predators or disturb the road’s occasional traveler. Blood still stained the dirt and gravel and the footprint they’d seen the afternoon before was undisturbed despite the clear evidence of multiple human boots moving around the area.
The underbrush wasn’t too dense as they moved quietly away from the road, following the tracks and sign of the beast. As the canopy grew closer together, the fern and brush fell away, shut out from the sunlight by the bigger trees. They found small signs, broken twigs, half prints in softer loam. Whatever they were tracking was large, it couldn’t, or didn’t, bother to move through the woods without leaving a trail.
“It’s moving parallel to the town,” Dani said to Perce after a while. They crossed small brook, the water barely a trickle this far into summer, following a print that showed the creature had done the same.
Perce sniffed the air and shook his head. “Wait here,” he said, disappearing quickly into the woods, moving with a speed that Dani couldn’t match.
“Sure,” she muttered. “I’ll just wait here.”
Her brother was in hunting mode and it was about as useless to argue with him or try to direct him as it was a bloodhound. A bloodhound might be smarter, Dani thought.
She slid her bow from its case and got it ready, making sure the arrows were accessible. Her bow was custom, a present from her mother just before she died. The draw weight was over seventy pounds and with her hunting arrows, she could stop a deer dead before it knew what was happening. She had to hope she could at least slow down a demon. Birdsong
had mostly died down from the dawn cacophony but still echoed here and there in the trees. Somewhere to her left a squirrel was angry and chattering away about it. These were good signs. If a predator were near, or something was very out of place, the forest would tell her.
Perce materialized out of the gloom as silently as he’d left.
“There’s a pack of wolves out there. Tracks are fresh, made last night,” he said. “It’s weird.”
“What’s weird?” Dani schooled her breathing for patience.
“The wolves seemed to have joined the beast. Or they’re going behind it. Their tracks cross and mingle. That rotten egg smell is everywhere ahead.”
Dani glanced upward. She’d been keeping track of their direction by natural feel and her compass watch. They were a couple miles outside of town at most, she figured, and it was likely seven or eight in the morning by now. Tracking wasn’t fast business. She touched her chest where the pentagram medallion rested and said a quick mental prayer.
Perce loosened his knife in its sheath and they continued through the wood, following the trail of their prey. Dani wasn’t sure they could take on a wolf pack, but wolves weren’t generally looking for trouble with humans. It was summer, they wouldn’t be hungry. Wolves didn’t like other predators in their territory, so Dani had hope they were after the demon and would do some of the work of killing the thing or at least weakening it.
“How many wolves?” Dani asked Perce as she bent to look at a scuff that could be a partial track. She hadn’t seen any spoor, which struck her as odd at this point. That was usually the easiest way to track a predator. Wolves like to mark territory. So did bears. Yet she’d seen no scratches or rubbing trees.
“Small pack, I think,” Perce said. He rubbed the blond stubble on his face. “Five or six. They’re big, though.”
Dani stood up. A welcome breeze ruffled the damp hair on the back of her neck where her ponytail wasn’t quite able to contain it all. The faint smell of sulfur tickled her nose and she drew an arrow in response, acting on instinct.
“Perce,” she hissed.
He was already moving forward, knife drawn. Dani pushed her back against one of the bigger spruces. The woods here were old enough that the lower branches had mostly died off, but she still didn’t have a great view deep into the trees. Hunting with a bow in a forest meant either setting some kind of trap like a salt lick or knowing where your prey was. Or being sneaky enough to creep up on it.
The breeze was blowing the sulfur smell into them, which meant they were downwind of whatever was out there. That was good. Dani had to hope it hadn’t scented them.
Movement drew her eye as a dark body about the size of a German shepherd sprang nearly silently from the trees to Dani’s left. Perce shouted something but all she heard was the blood in her ears as she brought the bow up. Slick black flesh, glowing yellow eyes, a maw gaping with rows of impossible curving teeth. That was all Dani had time to make out before she shot.
The monster, for it was no wolf she’d ever seen, twisted out of the way of her arrow with blurring speed. It skidded to the side, its charge stopped by having to dodge. Dani dropped her bow and drew her knife. She didn’t dare look to her right where Perce had engaged another one of the monsters. The creature snarled and charged again.
A gunshot rang out and the wolf-like hellbeast’s shoulder exploded with black ichor. It screamed like the fey Banshees Dani’s mom had described in their bedtime stories and bolted back into the woods. Out of the corner of her eye, Dani saw a dark blur as the beast that had been after her brother did the same.
She turned toward Perce. He was crouched, his knife covered in black blood, but she saw no bleeding from him.
“You okay?” she started to say.
Then the second gunshot rang out and Dani felt a strange heat in her left leg.
She looked down, wondering why she was on the ground. She didn’t remember falling, only the feel of her butt hitting the earth. There was blood on her leg and she tried to wipe it away but it kept coming.
“Perce?” she said. The woods over her seemed far away. She’d never felt pain like this before, not even when she’d fallen out of a tree on their tenth birthday and broken her arm. Her thigh was on fire and the bleeding wouldn’t stop.
Triage. She had to stop the bleeding.
“Dani, shhh, it’s okay,” Perce was saying. He caught her by the shoulders and started dragging her backward. Why was he moving her? Dani shook her head. Don’t move the injured. Rule one.
Another rifle crack told her the answer. Someone was still shooting at them.
Dani wrapped a bloody hand around her medallion and focused on her own aura. Light, pure and golden, flowed out around her, engulfing her and Perce.
It was hard to breathe and concentrate through the pain. She had to keep them safe. She had to keep Perce safe. She had to…
Chapter Four
Perce pulled Dani farther into the trees away from the direction of the shooter as her light faded. The shooter hadn’t fired again after the third shot missed, but he wasn’t going to risk attending to Dani’s bleeding until he knew nobody was coming to put more holes in his sister. They’d have to go through him, first.
“Stay with me,” he told her over and over. “Just stay with me.”
She was still conscious, but in that half-dream state she went into when she was using her powers to their max. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her lips pressed into a white line in her tanned face. She couldn’t keep the spell going long, the golden light already fading away.
Perce yanked off his belt as he kept scanning the woods for signs of movement. He’d seen what he thought were two men moving in the trees moments before the second shot, the one that hit Dani, had sounded, but he saw no movement now. The woods were deafening in their silence. He made a quick tourniquet around her leg, checking for an exit wound as he did so.
There was one. Perce didn’t know if that should relieve him or not. The bullet had ripped through thigh muscle and while the wounds were bleeding and ugly, the blood wasn’t spurting, just flowing. He made pads out of his shirt and adjusted the belt to act as a pressure bandage.
Dani was still breathing, but her face had relaxed and she didn’t respond to his soft calling of her name. She’d blacked out. Perce checked her heartbeat. It was there and still strong.
Sniffing the air, listening to the silent wood, Perce knew he’d have to risk the hellhounds, as he thought of the monstrous non-wolves, coming back around. He hoped they were giving whoever had shot his sister a hell of a welcome instead.
Shouting rang out from the direction the hellhounds had run and then gunfire that was definitely further off now, seeming to confirm Perce’s hopes.
No time like the present to get the heck out of there. Perce scooped up Dani, hoping she stayed unconscious so she wouldn’t have to feel the pain of every jolting step he took. With a last glance behind him, Perce started to run.
All he hoped was that the tiny town had a doctor. Nothing could happen to Dani. Nothing. He was supposed to keep her safe. If he failed…Perce shoved the thought away. There would be no failure.
“You’re gonna be just fine, Dani girl,” he whispered to her. “I’m going to get you all patched up. And then…” he didn’t voice his last thought aloud.
And then he was going to hunt down the man who shot her and make the bastard suffer for every drop of precious blood his twin had spilled.
There was a small one-doctor clinic, if it could be called that. The doctor lived in town, but didn’t have a formal place of practice there. As soon as Perce emerged on the edge of town near the gas station, he had people call the doctor and help him get Dani safely back to Bertha’s for treatment.
Sophie helped him get Dani onto the bed and the doctor, a scrawny man with deep tanned wrinkles and a calm demeanor, arrived just after Perce laid his sister down. He’d refused to let anyone else help him carry her.
Dr. Zhou took some convincing that Per
ce wanted him to treat Dani’s wound right here, right now. Not wait for a helicopter transport to a hospital or some nonsense like that. Not unless her life was in danger.
“It’s a through and through,” Dr. Zhou said as he set an IV into Dani’s arm with careful, practiced precision. He had scrubbed up in Bertha’s kitchen and apparently wasn’t fazed by doing emergency work in someone’s home. Perce guessed that the Yukon was much like the backwoods of Colorado. People did what they had to and made do. The doctor used a local anesthetic to numb the wound.
“That’s good,” Dani murmured. She’d come awake on and off during Perce’s mad run through the woods.
“Can you get the bullet out?” Perce asked.
Dr. Zhou turned and looked at Perce with the all-too-familiar mix of confusion and wondering if Perce was messing with him. He was a professional, however, and the expression was gone almost as soon as it manifested.
“The bullet went all the way through the muscle. Without an X-ray, I can’t promise there’s no bone damage, but it doesn’t appear that way.”
“Stitch me up, doc,” Dani said. “I’ll be okay.”
“You lost some blood. I can stitch this, but you’ve got to let the IV finish, and no moving around. You should really get to a proper clinic soon.”
“Perce,” Dani said. “I’m okay. Get out, give the doctor room.”
He didn’t want to leave her, but Perce knew that tone. There was nothing he could do here.
“What happened?” asked Sophie for the third or fourth time as Perce walked past her and into the kitchen to scrub his twin’s blood from his hands and arms.
Bertha corralled the children and took them out to the back, holding the toddler in her arms. Perce could still hear her voice as she spoke to them, but couldn’t make out the words at this distance. He stared down at his bloody hands.