by Tess Adair
Her disadvantage on this terrain was still uncomfortably obvious to her. Though either jobs or Key missions could take her anywhere in the country (technically, anywhere in the world, though that was rare,) she still usually spent the bulk of her time in urban areas. Or at least areas more urban than this. She could chase a monster across a hundred rooftops, down a hundred alleys, through a hundred train tunnels. But the sliding rock face of a mountain, or the craggy underbrush of a forest? It just wasn’t her home turf anymore, and she could tell it in every step.
Even so, she pushed herself forward—kept running, jumping, sliding, running. Slowing when she needed to rest. Eventually, she reached her first destination and stopped, checking the details to be sure she was in the right place. The ritual site. She was near the site where the summoner had made their sacrifice. Good. She went a little further south, a little further downwind, until she found herself a nice, thick tree to climb. This was where she would wait.
Getting up the tree was easy enough. The lowest branch stood just out of her reach, so she backed up a few feet and took it at a running jump, wrapping her arms around the wood as soon as she had enough lift. After that, one solid kick propelled her body over the top, and a quick twist pulled her upright. Glancing back to the forest floor, she figured she was now about eight feet up. She turned toward the trunk and grabbed onto the next branch, and climbed her way up as far as she could go before the branches would no longer support her weight. When she was sure she’d reached the highest possible safe height, she settled herself in, back against the trunk, and looked around.
The wood at the top had thinned a little, but it was still far denser than she’d like. Visually, she clocked, at most, a 30- or 40-foot radius all around her. So, seeing the beast was unlikely.
That meant she’d have to go a different route for surveillance. As she relaxed her back into the rough surface of bark against it, she imagined a wide, empty field. It felt as though her senses were all around her, spread far and wide—but with one deep breath, she willed them closer. She imagined a million rays of light heading toward a single spot, just ahead of her. One more deep breath, and they converged.
Her third deep breath came involuntarily. Each time she released, she suffered a tiny shock to the system. In a moment, it was gone, and she swam her way to concentration. Hearing came first, so she followed that. Wind-rustled leaves wove in and out of the tittering and crawling of creatures. Most of it was white noise. She pulled air sharply through her nose, familiarizing herself with a base palette of mud and fauna.
Unwilling to risk a glance at a brilliant phone screen, she guessed the time. Sometime after 11:00pm, but unlikely past midnight yet. She had hours left to burn.
At around 3:00am, she finally heard exactly what she was waiting for. Far, far in the distance—the sound of a flute.
A strange, unearthly flute. Or maybe that was the echo. She focused in on it, trying to determine its position in relation to her.
Suddenly, over the flute, she heard a roar. It, too, seemed unearthly. And it was…north. North and east.
Unfortunately for Logan, sitting high up in a tree for hours didn’t do much to keep your muscles warm. She’d made sure to stretch and move regularly, but she wasn’t exactly primed for fighting. As she swung down through the branches, she could feel how cold and stiff her shoulders and hips had gotten. She braced before she hit the ground, landing softly on her feet. Instead of taking off after the beast immediately, she dropped into a deep crouch, pushing into her tight muscles, and listened.
She could hear the beast traveling south. From its careless snuffing and growling and crunching of underbrush, she determined that it didn’t seem to have much mind for concealing its own presence. Perhaps it, too, was yet only stretching its legs.
As she slowly came to standing again, making sure to straighten out her hamstrings, she brought her fists to chest height and swung her elbows back and forth in quick succession. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter to her much if a little cold muscle caused her injury, but she had to make sure she had enough mobility to throw power into her strikes.
Then she started running. She went north first, hoping she could sidle up parallel to it and stalk it awhile. She was pleasantly surprised to find herself navigating the forest floor now with far greater skill than she had two nights prior. Of course, she wasn’t quite up to her city-based level of deftness, but she was certainly making far less noise than her target.
Unbeknownst to the beast, it drove toward her as surely as she to it. She could tell it still had no idea it was being surveilled; it behaved like a monstrously overgrown puppy let loose from a cage. She found its exact location with ease, and began to follow at a discreet distance.
But she didn’t attack yet. The beast was likely at its full strength, and she’d been growing cold and tired for hours. Though the run had woken her up, she knew an imbalance remained, and she hoped to diminish it before she engaged in combat.
It would hunt soon. She intended to observe.
The possibility remained that if it chose to hunt, it might hunt human prey, but she doubted it. She couldn’t be sure, but she had a feeling that its master knew someone had caught onto them. At a minimum, the summoner must have wondered why the demon came home clean of blood the night before—and why there had been no news of another death. Any reasonable master of a beast so powerful would have to wonder if someone other than cheerleader Amy Williams had interfered, if someone else had fought or scared it off before the task was complete. A cautious summoner would wait before sending its beast after a human target again. But Logan knew the time could only stretch so long before control began to wane.
So she watched. Gradually, the beast slowed, grew more cautious. More quiet and subtle. Either the pent-up energy had faded quickly, or hunger had overcome it. She had no way of knowing if the summoner had been feeding the demon, or even if it could eat anything other than a fresh heart.
Though she’d been following it a few minutes now, Logan still hadn’t gotten a good look at the thing. She recognized its smell, and its overall size and shape was consistent with the silhouette of what she’d seen before. But apart from general hulk and dark coloring, she couldn’t say much about what it looked like. On the other hand, she could have written a chapter on what it smelled like. She’d never thought someone could be reminded of something they’d never experienced, but the stench of the creature reminded her, undeniably, of hell.
Ahead of her, she heard the beast stop moving, so she stopped, too. Had it caught a scent? She’d kept herself downwind as a precaution, but the wind could always shift. As she listened, the beast sniffed the air and growled. It had caught a scent. It shifted its weight, likely dropping itself lower, and began to move again.
Now the beast became harder to follow. Once it started the hunt, she understood that it was, in fact, perfectly capable of near-silent movement. Her extra-perceptive hearing was already stretched almost to the max; if she pushed it any further, she’d make herself vulnerable to any sudden cacophony that might occur.
It sped up, but it kept quiet. She tried to smell what it had smelled, but there were too many organic scents, all too undifferentiated. She’d never trained to use her sense of smell for hunting small game. Her only choice was to follow the beast.
It sped up for a moment, then it slowed again. From the shift, she’d say it had dropped into a full crouch. She was still too far back to get a visual, but she guessed that it had come upon an opening in the trees, and now it circled the edge.
She closed in on it, certain that the distraction of an impending dinner would muddle its focus. She crept forward until she could see its outline and the beginnings of details, distorted as they were by dappled darkness. In thin moonlight, she could make out long, shaggy fur rippling over the hump in its back. Then it ducked down again.
With almost no sound, it sprang up and pounced. Something screeched—a funny, tinny sound—maybe a deer. When the beast
sprang and stretched, she got a good view of its hulk. The thing was four, maybe five times larger than she was. She knew she wouldn’t have an angry soccer player throwing spells to help her this time. She had to make her first blow count.
A little height might do it. On the very edge of the opening stood a thick trunk, its lowest branch not even seven feet off the ground—and it stretched south, away from the scene. Even if it looked, the beast wouldn’t see her when she jumped.
The beast was consumed by its kill; it had abandoned silence and stealth in the face of its victory. It didn’t matter if she crouched, so long as she was swift and quiet. As it tore into its meal, Logan closed the distance between herself and the tree with a silent run, ending in a running jump onto her intended branch. Then she was twelve feet up, so she picked a northern branch and climbed away from the base.
Once she was in position, she shifted her leg upward until she could reach the knife strapped to it. The beast roared beneath her, as vulnerable as it would ever be. Its face was buried in the kill. Gripping the knife, she pinpointed exactly where she wanted her hit to land. Then she jumped.
The beast didn’t hear her as she dropped. It had no idea she was there until her body crashed down on it, her poised knife sliding cleanly into flesh. Then it roared, rearing back. It would have thrown her if she hadn’t already locked her legs in place, clinging on. She grabbed the hilt of her knife, which had found home to the left of its shoulder blade, and she yanked. The beast jerked wildly beneath her; she tried to bring her knife down again, but she was rapidly losing her grip. As she pulled up to swing down, the beast gave a mighty shake and dislodged her.
She fell hard on the forest floor, landing on her side with her arms outstretched, the knife flying free from her hand. The fall knocked her wind out, the shock reverberating through her bones. The monster jerked before her, trying to reach a massive claw over its back to where she’d wounded it. The claw fell short, so the beast let it drop. It stood there for a moment. Then it slowly started to turn back toward her.
Her muscles didn’t seem to want to obey her. She wrenched her arm back to her side, tried to locate her next weapon. But it was strapped down—there was no way she’d get to it in time—
The sound of a flute floated down to her ears. She couldn’t say why exactly, but it filled her with dread.
The beast froze before it finished its rotation. Its massive head cocked to the side, turned, as ever, away from her. For a moment, it remained perfectly still. Then it crouched down and ran, heading in the direction of the sound.
Logan’s muscle control came back to her all at once. She sprang into action and bounded after the monster, swooping down to grab up her knife along the way.
Within a moment, she was in full pursuit. The creature wasn’t quiet anymore, crashing along the forest with abandon as it followed the call of the music. Logan didn’t bother to disguise herself, either; if it wanted to turn back on her now, all the better.
They both swept through the forest floor at top speed. Though she still stumbled, the small amount of practice and her massive surge of adrenaline from the drop combined to give her an edge now. The beast was slower than it had been before—likely both from the meal and the injury. As she flew through branches and leaves scratching at her legs, she spied the trails of blood that the demon left in its wake. In the light, it looked black.
She was almost upon it now. She could hear its ragged, labored breathing as she passed an especially large pool of blood. It slowed in front of her, and her excitement soared as she anticipated its defeat.
But then it made an unexpected move. It dodged suddenly to the right, changing course entirely. She corrected and followed it, wondering where it would lead her now.
Within a few moments, she was forced to come to a halt. Her stomach dropped as the beast tore forth from the trees—right into someone’s backyard.
In seconds, her momentum vanished. She watched helplessly while the monster easily outstripped her, even as its pace slowed ever further. For half a second, she geared herself up to follow it into suburbia, maybe with the help of summoned shadows—until the house right in front of her lit up like a little bomb. Lamps with the power of small suns flooded the yard with light, and her still super-powered hearing picked up the small click of a lock beginning to open.
So Logan retained her hiding spot, letting herself melt into the darkness behind and around her. She stayed long enough to watch a man walk out into his yard, the beast slipping ever farther into the darkness beyond. Finally, it was so far she knew she’d never catch up in time. With one last bitterly wistful glance, she turned away.
It was time to head back home. She’d lost for the night. There was no use denying it.
She ran most of the way back, wondering vaguely if there might be anything she could do to feel like she’d actually accomplished something with her time, but nothing came to her. By the time she reached her hotel room, her mind, for all its weariness, remained a perfect blank.
It didn’t matter much anyway. Within a minute of hitting the mattress, she was lost in sleep.
Chapter 7: Power Balance
Her failure the night before washed over her afresh as soon as she woke up, somewhere around noon. As she reluctantly pushed herself into sitting, her only consolation was that it was a Sunday, which meant she had a little more reprieve before her next round of student interviews. Even so, disappointment covered her like a shroud. She wanted nothing more than to get out of this stupid small town. But she couldn’t do that until the job was done.
With a final self-steadying sigh of resignation, she stood up and stretched, taking in the full stilted glory of her stuffy hotel room. She needed a quick fix for her restlessness, so she pulled off yesterday’s clothes in favor of running shorts and a racerback tank top. Then she jumped out the door and into the blazing sunshine.
Even after all this time, it still amazed her how quickly her body could bounce back. When she’d first fallen into bed, she’d felt like one big bruise. Her right thigh and the right half of her torso carried the impact of her fall to the forest floor, while her legs had started to ache from the prolonged running and crouching in trees. But as her muscles warmed during the first few minutes of her up-mountain run, she felt nothing. No pain, no stiffness. When she’d hit the ground the day before, it had been the kind of impact that breaks human bones. She wouldn’t have been surprised if one of her ribs had cracked, the pain temporarily masked by her surging adrenaline. But now? She felt fine.
Apart from her irritation and disappointment in herself, of course. Perhaps her disappointment was unnecessary. As she ran through the events of the night before one last time, she conceded that there was little else she could have done. She’d gotten off an excellent hit with her first volley, but the beast had rebounded anyway. Maybe she could have run after it into the yards, throwing caution to the wind in pursuit of her target. But Knatt wouldn’t have approved, and if the Order really was watching her now, she might have faced censure from them. Besides, it had already proven more adept at fighting her than she would have liked. It’s possible it would have beaten her if she’d caught up to it.
Of course, if another student died because she’d failed to catch it when she’d had the chance, then what did it matter? She might face censure still, and she’d have to live with the knowledge that such a petty threat had allowed her to fail her real duty.
She ran for over an hour, but when she got back to her room, she felt no better than she had when she started. At least she’d gotten her blood running, she told herself. Demon physiology or no, it was best to keep her body at optimal working conditions.
Once she stepped into the blissful shade of her room, she went straight for the refrigerator and grabbed an apple and a piece of string cheese. Then she pulled out her laptop and plopped down on the bed with it. A slight breeze swept in through the ever-open window and stirred her sweaty hair.
Almost without conscious thought, she wen
t to a web browser and tried to pull up her database. Something was gnawing at her. She couldn’t connect, of course. She should have remembered. For a moment, she turned toward the phone on the side of the bed, almost tempted to give the front desk another call. But what would be the point?
Instead, she munched down her food and located her cell phone, which she’d thrown somewhere in the vicinity of the free-standing clothes rack. She checked, but once again, the hotspot refused to flash into life. She checked the time—a little after 2:00pm. Seeing as it was a Sunday, odds were fair that he’d be home. Hungover, perhaps, but likely home.
She scrolled to the last number dialed and clicked on it. Images from her vision mixed with things she’d seen that week and swirled through her mind, leaving a tapestry of half-formed thoughts behind. Had she ever gotten a good look at the beast? She’d been blinded during her first real-life encounter, and when she stalked it the second time, she came up from behind. What did it look like from the front?
The phone rang three times.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite daredevil,” said Alexei as soon as he answered. His voice was smooth and warm, like silk pooling in the sun. “You know, you call a boy twice in one week, he might start to think he’s special.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” said Logan. Her initial impulse was to ask him if he was wearing a suit, but she resisted. “How are you doing, Alexei?”
“Not bad at all,” he purred. “Better now that I’m hearing from you. Are you still up at that—it was a school, right?”
“Yes, it was,” she said with a short sigh. Her failure still seemed to cling to her like a cobweb; frustration bubbled in her chest. “And yes, I am. To be honest, I had hoped to be done by now. I’ve run into the demon twice, and twice it’s gotten away from me. I’d really love it if I could just kill the damn thing already.”