Ursula rolled her eyes and threw her arms in the air, “When do I ever?” Then she pointed at herself and said, “You know, you’re going to need a bigger boat, metaphorically speaking.”
“Already on it,” he sighed, “but we have an ‘I told you so’ coming.”
Epilogue
The beast shuffled through its cave and knelt to lick water from the rocks as it trickled down into the receiving pool. The pain of hunger was overwhelming, but it had needed to wait until its body could knit itself back together after the damage it had received. Normally, wounds sealed for the beast in moments, but the creature found that having its liver removed resulted in a far slower ability to recover, especially without food. Now, despite the pain, it felt it had recovered well enough from its injuries and it marveled at its returned strength and speed.
As it had rested and recovered, the beast had felt a shift in the forest. As long as it could remember, it had been both hunter and hunted, yet now it felt as though the forest was empty of the other presence that had pursued it for so long.
It was home. It was healed. And now it was alone as the most powerful creature in the forest. The feeling stirred something inside it, perhaps an old forgotten memory of its desire for the subjugation of its victims. Of course, it wasn’t a conscious thought, as the beast was one of instinct, desire and hunger, but those dark drives that had created it in the first place remained an integral part of its makeup and magic.
Tonight it would leave the cave, leave the forest and go back to the place where the food congregated. There it would take what it wanted, what it needed, and it would feast.
A smell entered the cave and interrupted the beast’s musings. It was smoke, but not any smoke; it carried the scent of a campfire, combined with the smell of food cooking along with the campfire’s overpowering scent. The beast knew the smell and understood what it meant. The pain of its hunger flared inside and it was running for the exit and into the woods before its mind even realized what its body was doing.
Desires filled the beasts head. Images of its claws ripping into human flesh, tearing pieces of wet, blood soaked tissue off of cracked bone and pushing it greedily into its maw flooded into its mind’s eye as coaxed the beast to run faster and faster toward the source of the campfire. It could actually taste the blood on its tongue as it drove itself into the woods, until it could see wisps of white smoke floating upward on the breeze.
It was close, it could smell the human now and the smallest aspect of its primitive brain warned it that something might be amiss, but the pain of its hunger surged and forced the beast forward until it could see a figure from between the trees. The human knelt in front of a modest campfire and the beast howled in anticipation of the easy kill while it extended its claws and opened its mouth in preparation of the strike.
A hand, so large that it practically encircled the beast’s waist, caught the beast and abruptly halted its charge with a terrible whiplashing force. The Wendigo found itself airborne from being thrown back in the direction it had come. Its flight was cut short because it had slammed into a large, unyielding tree with enough force to cause a crack to spread through the tree’s trunk.
The Wendigo flopped to the ground and felt as though its mended body had been again reduced to a broken collection of bones and internal mush. Hesitantly it stood and watched as the human at the campfire removed a stick it had been holding and placed a flaming marshmallow on top of a piece of chocolate before sandwiching that between two graham crackers, effectively snuffing the flame in the process.
The Wendigo managed to regain its feet and lunged for the man, but was struck down again by a force greater than any it had ever experienced. Something raked across the right side of its chest, ripping its torso open and snapping every rib along the way. The Wendigo lashed out a hand at its attacker, but whatever force had struck it down was gone long before the beast’s eyes could lock onto it.
The man stood and turned to the fallen Wendigo as the beast started to rise again while its body slowly repaired itself. The creature had only made it to its knees when it was struck from behind and thrown at the feet of the human who nonchalantly took a bite from the S’more he had created.
The Wendigo raised its head and noticed the man had laid things out next to the campfire. Its eyes took in the six white rectangles of fabric, but its mind was just a primal collection of instincts that couldn’t comprehend what they were.
Behind the man another creature ambled out of the forest that was so large the Wendigo’s eyes widened at the sight of it. The same primitive part of the Wendigo that had driven it to hunt and eat now screamed for it to run. Instinctively, the beast understood that it was in the presence of a bigger, stronger predator that was also carrying with it the Magic of Creation, and was on a level of power far greater itself.
Jett looked down on the Wendigo, and didn’t smile as he ate another bite of his S’more. He knew the evil creature didn’t deserve his pity, but part of him was repulsed by the hell that he was about to subject upon the monster.
Jett was six feet tall, but he had to look up when he turned to meet the eyes of the Short-Faced Bear at his side, despite the fact that this massive creature was still standing on all fours.
Jett turned back to the Wendigo at his feet, “Maybe you don’t die, but you’re going to have a hell of a time causing any damage after I scatter you to the far corners of the earth.”
The Wendigo didn’t understand the words, but the meaning somehow made itself known as the its eyes took in the massive Short-Faced Bear. Benjamin, Ursula’s father and the living embodiment of an Ancient Spirit Bear shifted from his full bear form and into the half bear, half human form that he preferred when doing battle.
“Mr. Wendigo, meet Ben.” Jett looked at the white rectangles and asked, “Ben, any particular place you want to start?”
Benjamin’s eyes never left the Wendigo, but he pointed one enormous clawed finger at the rectangle laid neatly on the far-right side of the group. Jett picked up the indicated rectangle of white and read the word that he had written in permanent marker across its side. He sighed, knowing the unsettling nature of what was to follow.
“I should’ve known.” Jett turned back to the Wendigo, but spoke to Benjamin, “Okay Ben. It’s time to make the doughnuts.”
Benjamin’s half bear, half human maw contracted on one side, rising in an amused smirk of astonishingly long fangs as Jett read the single word on the linen game bag.
“Head.”
Author’s Note: Things to come...
Hello Dear Reader,
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for taking the time to read my work and hope you found it as enjoyable to read as it was for me to create for you. You may have noticed that this story is the second book in a series called the Jett Carle Saga. If you happened to have read this one out of sequence, then I’d highly recommend the initial story “The First Ones” to discover how Jett, Ursula, Benjamin and Aurora all found themselves on their current journey. Also, the series doesn’t end here and hopefully you are eager for more! Not to worry, I created this series with the intention to release the next book very soon along with other works of mine you might like to try as well.
On a more personal note, I’d like to take a moment to humbly ask if you could leave a quick, or otherwise, review. It would be greatly appreciated as reviews help new readers locate my work out of the ocean of books available as well as providing valuable feedback toward my future writing endeavors.
The best place to submit your review is wherever you purchased the book OR you can go to my website: Weinbergerbooks.com and click on a link that will take you to a “Review” page.
You can also find me on Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Links to all of these social media sites are conveniently located on my website. If you are interested in my other works please sign up on my Website’s “Newsletter” and get the latest regarding my current books, upcoming release dates, and everythin
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Take care and happy reading!
- Michael Louis Weinberger
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