His Darkest Craving

by Tiffany Roberts

  “Let’s take you home and get you fixed up. How’s that sound?”

  Sophie crooned to the animal, gently scratching behind its ears. Surprisingly, it seemed to relax, nuzzling itself against her chest. “You can be my new little friend.”

  Cruce sped between the trees, passing over ground both ever-changing and ever-familiar. His forest was but a single facet of nature, a reflection of it cast on a scale so tiny in comparison to the cosmos that it was made insignificant in the grand scheme, but it was his. Here, there was balance — chaos and order, growth and entropy, life and death, all keeping each other in check.

  At least when outside forces did not interfere.

  Unfortunately, humans had become both more commonplace and more destructive over the last few centuries. Many seemed to view nature as a thing to use as they wished, a dangerous attitude when combined with their general carelessness and irreverence. Cruce had devoured the essences of many humans since he was cursed. He believed most had been deserving of their fates.

  He could not tolerate those who would inflict undue harm upon his forest.

  Soon enough, he heard them — a group of male mortals, conversing loudly. Cruce remained low to the ground until he was closer to the humans and then drew himself into the shaded hollow of a tree to watch them.

  Four mortals were walking through the woods, dressed in a combination of earthy, natural colors and bright orange vests and hats. Cruce had seen the combination before; many of the hunters who’d come to his realm in the last few decades wore similar attire. Each man wore a backpack, and they all had guns slung over their shoulders. Two were carrying a large red box with a white lid together, one on each side.

  “How much farther, Bill?” asked one of the men.

  “Not much, Kev. Almost there,” another — presumably Bill — replied.

  “Why do we always gotta hike so damn far?” asked one of the men carrying the red box.

  “Why do you have to ask the same question every time, Joe?” Bill stopped and turned to Joe, frowning. “We don’t want anyone to bother us, right? Farther we are from the roads, less chance we have of running into anyone who might ask questions about what we bag out here.”

  “Would you just shut up and walk?” said the man holding the other side of the container. “Otherwise I might as well be carrying the cooler alone.”

  “I’ll make you carry it yourself if you’re gonna be an asshole, Matt,” Joe snapped.

  Their conversation continued in that fashion as they walked; they belittled one another often and seemed to have little patience for each other. Cruce followed alongside them, thinning himself as much as possible to avoid rustling the vegetation and betraying his presence; the diminishing effects of the daylight were for once a boon.

  The humans often spoke of things he didn’t fully understand — tags and licensing, dee-you-eyes, parole officers — but he didn’t need to understand. Their nearness stirred his hunger.

  Their life force was nothing compared to the taste he’d had of Sophie’s, and yet it tempted him. The sense of hollowness inside deepened, and his need strengthened. They could satisfy his hunger for days. Their deaths would allow him to focus solely upon Sophie, perhaps even until All Hallows Eve.

  He held himself back; it would require too much of his reduced strength to drain all four mortals while the sun was up, and they’d not yet shown themselves to be a threat to his realm. Hunters could often serve to correct the balance in the forest, thinning the populations of beasts that had been allowed to rampantly reproduce. It would weaken Cruce in the short term, but ultimately led to a stronger forest by safeguarding against overfeeding.

  Of course, that overpopulation was largely due to humans hunting many of the forest’s natural predators to extinction, so he felt no obligation to give any of them the benefit of the doubt.

  Soon, the mortals found a clear patch of ground and established a crude campsite. They built a haphazard fire, assembled two mismatched tents, and took silver-canned beverages out of the red container. All four drank greedily, tossing the empty cans onto the forest floor around them.

  Cruce’s mood darkened. He did not appreciate the trash humans often left behind, but such was not grounds enough for death. He’d witnessed many of them respectfully gather their leavings and haul them away when they departed in the past.

  The mortals grew louder and increasingly obnoxious as the empty cans piled up. They hurled insults, laughed at each other’s expense, and seemed on the verge of violence on several occasions. Joe produced a small white bottle at one point and squirted some of its contents into the fire. The flames roared and leapt high, nearly engulfing Matt, who’d been leaning close. Joe seemed greatly amused by the situation; it took Kev and Bill’s combined efforts to pull Matt off him.

  The fools would burn down half the forest if they continued with such recklessness. Cruce had never been so eager for the approaching twilight.

  Surprisingly, the mortals quieted down after the altercation. One of them tugged a container from his bag and walked out of the campsite. Cruce followed him and watched as the man entered a nearby clearing and opened the lid to shake out fine seed from the container, scattering it across the ground. When he was done, he returned to his companions, and all four gathered their guns.

  Glancing once more at their still-blazing fire, Cruce trailed the hunters as they left their camp. They took position not far from the scattered seed, crouching together behind a fallen log with their weapons propped up on the wood. One of the men laughed, only to be hushed by his companions.

  Cruce crept closer to the humans and eased himself into a shady patch. Their carelessness was infuriating — his shadows roiled, resisting his efforts to hold a consistent shape — but the late afternoon sun was still too bright to act. He was in no state to chase terrified mortals through the woods after sucking the life from the first. In fact, he would much rather have returned to Sophie, forgetting these humans altogether. They would likely prove harmless; most of them did, in the end.

  But he could not shake his foreboding about this group.

  The humans were surprisingly quiet as they waited; the sun crept closer and closer to the western horizon, but its movement wasn’t nearly fast enough for Cruce.

  He sensed the birds arriving before he saw them — a few curious chickadees at first, but their numbers swelled as they excitedly chirped about the abundant food. Before long, crows and mockingbirds had arrived to partake in the feast, along with a family of cardinals.

  “Can we start yet?” Joe asked.

  “Soon,” Bill said. “Got more coming.”

  Kev turned his head toward Bill. “Same scoring as usual?”

  “Yeah. Double points if you bring them down alive.”

  “Aim for the wings,” Matt said with a grin.

  Sophie called Cruce’s name at that moment; it coursed through him, tingling and powerful, compelling him to go to her. But he sensed no distress in her call, no command. He shoved the sensation aside. Though he didn’t want to spend any more time away from her, he had to address this situation first. He needed to learn if their conversation meant what he thought.

  Any doubts he’d harbored about the appropriate fates for these mortals were crushed when Bill’s signal began their game. All four men fired their guns at the birds, the weapons’ blasts combining into one thunderous boom that echoed through the trees. Cruce felt the damage done to several of the birds. With startled calls, the rest of the creatures took wing.

  The mortals hurried to their feet and fired rapidly into the scattering birds. The booming shots nearly drowned out the panicked avian cries.

  The pain and terror of the animals crashed into Cruce and became his own for a fleeting moment. His rage swept in immediately afterward. He surged forward, directly into the sunlight; it did not slow his advance, but he felt immediately lesser, as though it was his own life force being drained. Growling inwardly, he retreated to the shade beneath the canopy.
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br />   The mortals stopped shooting. For a few moments, the only sounds were the fading echo of the final gunshot and the distant calls of fleeing birds. Several feathers drifted lazily in the air to land amidst the fallen leaves. On the ground, the few fallen birds still clinging to life flapped their wings frantically in vain attempts to escape. They were surrounded by lifeless bodies.

  One of the mortals laughed. This time, the others joined in.

  “Three,” Matt said, “with two still kicking.”

  Kev grunted. “Two and one for me.”

  “Four and two,” muttered Bill.

  “Ten and three!” Joe declared.

  “Oh, bullshit,” Matt and Kev said in unison.

  “You lying rat bastard,” Bill grumbled.

  Without another glance at the still-twitching birds, the humans walked toward their campsite. They made no attempt to collect either the cylinders expelled by their weapons and or the animals they’d killed.

  Cruce maintained his position until the sun finally dipped behind the trees and cast long shadows across the forest floor. He glided over the open ground, stretching his form to encompass the wounded birds. Their mangled wings and bloodied feathers were not a new sight to him, but the carnage struck him deeply because of its pointlessness.

  Death for amusement was an abomination in Cruce’s eyes. Nature could be cruel, could be cold and unforgiving, but everything served its purpose in the natural order.

  Cruce drained the lingering life energies from the injured birds, ending their suffering. Though the power was slight, it rushed through him, pairing with the deepening twilight to strengthen his form, granting him a sense of solidness he’d not experienced in weeks. He gathered himself into a pool of darkness and moved toward the human camp.

  Smoke from their fire billowed into the evening air, and its flames burned higher than before. The mortals were gathered around it, laughing and talking boisterously, sipping their canned drinks.

  “We should get some food going before it’s too dark,” one of them said.

  Vengeance and ravenousness swirled inside Cruce in a raging torrent of fury. As he neared the mortals, he shaped himself into a semblance of the body he’d possessed in his natural state. He pushed himself up with shadowy arms, lifted legs formed of darkness out of the shadows pooled on the ground, and stalked toward his prey.

  “Later,” another human said. “We got plenty of time.”

  “Hey, what the fu—”

  The human sitting on the other side of the fire, facing Cruce, scrambled backward with wide eyes. His companions were slower to react; the man nearest Cruce was twisting to look behind himself as the forest spirit pounced.

  Cruce fell upon the seated human, wrapping him in shadow, and drew in the man’s frantic, terror-fused life force. The other humans shouted and fumbled for their weapons even as they scrambled away.

  They fired their guns. Projectiles blasted through Cruce, unhindered by his insubstantial form, and struck the human in his grasp. The mortal’s life force dissipated abruptly; he was dead. Growling, Cruce launched himself at the next-closest human. The man stumbled back and fired his gun.

  More projectiles harmlessly passed through Cruce. An instant later, a mortal cried out in pain behind him.

  Enveloping the second human, Cruce pulled on the man’s life force; the inhalation of another being’s essence was the closest he could come to breathing. The human screamed and writhed, but his struggles were in vain. Cruce felt himself swelling with new energy as the final, rattling breath escaped his victim’s throat.

  He turned toward the remaining mortals. The injured man was sitting on the ground with blood flowing from his gut, desperately manipulating his gun to load new projectiles. The other — Bill — stared at Cruce for a moment before sprinting away.

  The air was redolent with the smell of their fear. Cruce relished it; terror added a unique, satisfying flavor to their essences, a flavor he’d come to enjoy over the long years. He no longer knew if that enjoyment was a product of his curse or the darkness he’d always harbored.

  Cruce altered his shape to extend black wings to either side and charged after Bill. Thrusting his antlered head forward, he opened his long beak and loosed a blood-curdling call — the cry of a hunting falcon, the caw of an angry crow, the roar of a beast that would no longer tolerate disrespect in its own domain.

  Bill glanced over his shoulder and screamed before his foot caught on a root. He tumbled, crashing over fallen leaves, and scurried onto his back as Cruce leapt atop him.

  Fear-tinged life force flowed into Cruce, sweetened by Bill’s agonized death cries. As the fresh surge of strength filled Cruce, he raked shadowy claws across Bill’s torso, shredding clothing and flesh alike. The consumed energy and the nearness of All Hallows Eve produced a rush of power in him like he hadn’t known in so long; this was as close as he’d been to his old self in nearly two centuries.

  And he hungered for more.

  Casting aside Bill’s corpse, Cruce assumed the shape of a huge wolf and prowled back into the camp. He followed the blood trail on the carpet of leaves to find the final human, Joe, crawling away.

  Joe twisted to look over his shoulder. “Oh, no. God, please, no!” He struggled forward, clawing at the ground, his words descending into senseless, panicked blubbering.

  Cruce pressed his paws onto the human’s back, pinning the man in place. As he leaned forward, his paws changed, lengthening into talons that curled around the mortal’s torso and sank into tender rib flesh.

  Joe writhed in pain. Cruce wrapped a tendril of shadow around the man’s head, forcing it back. When Joe screamed, Cruce poured malleable shadow down his throat, cutting off the terrified cry. He drained the human’s essence from the inside.

  Cruce rose after Joe’s body — as unimportant to the Lord of the Forest as the birds had been to these hunters — sagged lifelessly to the ground. He would leave them for the forest to claim through scavengers and decay, just as they had left the animals they’d killed.

  He assumed his old shape, the shape that could be mistaken for human on dark, gloomy nights, and could almost feel it — could almost feel powerful muscles moving beneath golden skin, could almost feel the reassuring weight of mighty antlers, could almost feel fiery blood flowing through his veins. The very power enabling him to hold his shadows in this shape was so overwhelming it threatened to tear him apart.

  He clenched his fists and raised them above his waist, pushing to feel, to be, but he knew it was beyond him. The curse would not allow it.

  Only Sophie could grant him anything close to the sensations he craved. Only contact with her could give him warmth, pleasure, meaning.

  Cruce turned his back on the fallen mortals and darted through the trees toward Sophie, sped on by the growing twilight.

  Chapter 8

  Though night had not yet fully fallen when Cruce arrived at the cabin, it was dark enough that the lights from within cast a gentle glow on the surrounding grounds. It seemed a strange contrast to the raging fire the hunters had built; this was a controlled light, a welcoming light, a soothing light, and he was drawn to it.

  He recalled the way she’d reacted to his touch before he’d gone to investigate the new human presence in his realm; she hadn’t been pulling away from him, she’d been leaning into him as though wanting for more — just as he’d almost been unable to pull away from her. For those fleeting moments, they’d been experiencing the same thing. They’d been craving the same thing.

  As he approached the porch, he spied her in the kitchen with her back to the window. His excitement increased; he was barely able to contain the energy brimming within him.

  He watched her silently for a moment. Her shoulders and arms moved as she worked on something in front of her, something he couldn’t see. His gaze roamed over her body; the curves of her hips and backside, which swayed subtly as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and the graceful length of her neck. Her plaited au
burn hair hung down the center of her back. He wanted to loosen it, to run his fingers through those silken tresses, to feel their softness. He wanted to feel her softness against him. But, no matter how substantial he felt, he could not truly have that experience yet.

  A few more days…

  He glided up the steps and stopped in front of the window on the kitchen side.

  “Sophie,” he called.

  She turned her head and looked in his direction, but he doubted she could see him through the reflections on the inside of the glass. Her brow furrowed. “Cruce?”

  The sound of his true name from her lips sent a thrill through him.

  “Come to me, Josephine Davis,” he beckoned.

  “Just a second.” She turned her attention back to her task, slowly raising her arms and lowering them. She grabbed a small towel beside her and wiped her hands with it before tossing it back on the table.

  Cruce drifted to the entryway to await her. Several moments later, she opened the interior door, spilling light onto the porch. Though he was directly in its path, the sense of diminishment was minimal; he’d never drained so much life force in so short a time, even at the heights of his ravenousness.

  His gaze traveled over her again, and he was blasted by sudden alarm — the front of her shirt was stained with blood, and her arms and hands were smeared with crimson.

  “What happened?” he demanded, his shadows rising, growing, darkening. “Where are you harmed?”

  Sophie’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? I’m not—”

  He pressed himself to the screen door, seeping through it partially to roil against the invisible barrier marking the threshold. “You are covered in blood, Josephine.”

  She looked down at herself. “Oh! It’s not mine, really. I just haven’t had a chance to change yet.”

  Cruce ran a set of shadowy claws through the air, brushing the line he could not cross, longing to touch her. To assure himself that she was well. Her scent was by far the strongest he could perceive; in his physical form, he could have distinguished the smell of blood by the species from which it had originated, but now he could barely detect it at all. “If not yours, who does it belong to?”