Chapter Ten
“They’re back.” The mighty Gudarīks’s voice wavered.
Astrid’s fingers crept toward the teleportation scroll tucked into her back pocket. Whatever had the power to unsettle him was exactly the sort of thing she should avoid. “Who’s back?”
“Humans.” He growled, lowering to all fours. Powerful haunches rippled and tensed for explosive movement. As uneasy as he seemed, the pose screamed fight rather than flight, and Astrid took an instinctive step back. Ending the day as collateral damage couldn’t be lower on her list of things to do. “They were here last night,” he continued. “I spent all night and most of today looking for them, but they disappeared.”
Disappeared... Such a thing shouldn’t be possible. At least, as far as she knew, no one hunted by him ever escaped to tell the tale. What breed of humans could just vanish?
No wonder he was disturbed.
Johanna had mentioned poachers the other day, hunting wolves up north, and the possibility that they might cut down this way. A group such as that would be adept at evading detection, but enough to shirk the supernatural, as well as the law? Improbable, but maybe not impossible. The skill set could be just similar enough.
And then there was that cigarette-smoking man with his tactical gloves, and the eerie quality of a predator as he stalked her back to her cottage. A man used to hunting.
It’d be just her luck if she’d unwittingly shown mercy to a poacher.
But poacher or not, that man should be dead, as any human daring to stay after dark.
Unless his paltry offering spared him.
Unless he vanished.
She glared in the direction of the noise. Whatever, or whoever, this was, and however they were doing it, she had to know.
“Can I come with you?”
Dispatching trespassers was a gruesome business but far be it from him to decide what the witch should or should not see. “If you wish.”
“Just one moment.” She dipped in and out of her cottage, exchanging the cookie plate for an ax, a pair of snowshoes, and a thermos. Something hot and herbal steamed up from the lid. Tea probably. “Go on. I’ll follow.”
Though his skin prickled and muscles twitched, spoiling for a fight, for once he didn’t rush off into the trees to chase down his prey. He had a companion now, one that wouldn’t be able to keep up if he ran.
As he waited for Astrid to strap her feet in, a sharp pang settled in his chest. Something as simple as waiting on another would be commonplace, mundane, hardly worth noting, for any being other than him.
He swayed from side to side, steady as the pendulum of a cuckoo clock. The pull of the hunt beckoned him onward, but his promise to stay with the witch pulled him back.
She glanced up, and tracking his movements, moved her fingers faster.
That stilled him. It wasn’t impatience making him restless, just two competing natures. That she might misconstrue the two bothered him. He was a bit rusty on socializing, yes, but even time hadn’t completely erased his manners.
“Ready.” She sprang to her feet, hefting the ax over her shoulder.
As they wove through the trees together, Gudarīks was hyperaware of Astrid at his side and the amount of space he took. Companionship was nice in a distracting kind of way. Making sure she had enough room, that he didn’t cut her off or bump her into a tree. When he thought about her, he thought less about them.
The closer they got, the stronger the stench of unwashed bodies and cigarette smoke became—just as potent as before, but his anger, and the hunger that always followed, didn’t seem quite so bad.
If the cosmos gave a damn about him, she’d be just as confounded by these trespassers as he, and not because he had any complexes about being the deadliest, most unflappable creature in the forest. He desperately could use a sign that he wasn’t losing his grip on reality. He spent so many lifetimes with only his thoughts for company—maybe avoiding others wasn’t good for his health. Even if it was good for theirs.
Seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Failing to track a rowdy group of humans in the forest he knew down to every rock and root. If his faculties were slipping, maybe he wasn’t immortal after all, and this was the beginning of the end.
Mind first, body next.
On the days when he longed for hibernation, the thought of falling asleep and never waking up was almost a comfort. But now the notion of losing his mind and dying struck him with an alarming panic.
“How many do you think there are? Can you tell from here?” The witch’s questions jolted him from his dark speculations. Weapon in one hand, sipping tea from her thermos with the other, Astrid was a study in contrary multitudes.
Lifting his head, he sniffed. Every being was distinct—their own base scent, taste, and sound—often very subtle differences setting them apart, but if he concentrated, he could pick them out from one another.
“Five. Maybe six.” Five distinct scents but six voices.
The fur at the back of his neck rose. Was this sixth voice familiar because he heard it in the group last night, or was it familiar for another reason?
He sniffed again, strained his hearing as the shrieking laughter and boisterous singing continued to rise in pitch.
Now five and five.
He shook his head, for all the good it would do to reset a breaking mind.
“Split them half and half?” Astrid smirked, murder and humor in the same breath. She twirled her ax with a dexterous embellishment that reminded him of the marauding warriors that razed and pillaged these lands centuries ago.
“I’ll try to save you one.”
He hadn’t meant it as a joke, just a statement of fact, but she chuckled, nonetheless. Such a rare treat, her laughter, when all he otherwise provoked were screams. It soothed rather than stoked his fury, reminding him of a far and distant past.
Once upon a time, he wasn’t a stranger to easy conversation and companionship. Those were happy times. For a little while.
An old pang flared in his chest.
When they neared the campsite, he crept ahead, each step soundless.
The revelry abruptly stopped.
He lunged then, out from between the trees to catch them before they escaped, but the campsite was abandoned. For all that not an inch of snow was left untrampled, there wasn’t a single person in sight. And it was quiet. Dead quiet.
“Not again,” he growled, taking a frustrated swipe at the ashen remains of a fire.
Unaffected by his outburst, Astrid crouched beside him, ax laid in the snow at her feet, and tugged off her mittens to sift snow through her fingers. Her brow furrowed.
“What do you sense?”
“They were dancing, celebrating. No surprise there.” She shuffled forward, scooping up another handful of snow, and stilled. A troubled look fell over her features. “There’s powerful magic at work here.”
“Can you identify it?”
“A communications spell, maybe? But much, much more complicated than scrying.”
Uncapping her thermos, Astrid poured out its steaming contents, then held it between her hands, murmuring an incantation. Frost spread out from her palms and fingers, cooling the container. “But if anyone would know, my mother would.” She began filling the thermos with snow.
Perchta. An on-again, off-again resident of his forest for a millennium and a half. While they coexisted amicably for all that time, he couldn’t really claim to know anything about the ancient hag, but he reckoned she’d want to know about magic users who appeared and disappeared at will, eluding even him. Especially him.
It rankled his nerves to know they’d done it again.
At least he wasn’t losing his mind.
Screwing the lid on tight, Astrid said, “I’ll bring this to her and see what she makes of it.”
Standing with a creak of joints, she continued to move about the site, periodically dipping down to sample the snow. “It’s old, group magic, that much I can tell, and that the casters are human, which is especially interesting.” She picked up a cigarette butt from the ground, turning it over between her thumb and forefinger, frown deepening. “Did you by any chance come by a man smoking one of these two nights ago?”
Though stamped out, the offending thing still reeked.
He dispatched a trio of brightly dressed hikers then and pardoned a local hunter from Baden-Gottsdorf. But there had been one other.
A man offering cold, cured meat with a smile on his lips and fetid smoke on his breath. Not a favorite offering by any means, but an offering was still an offering. In hindsight, the human had been far too calm and collected, just a hair shy of insolent.
It might’ve been a mistake to show leniency.
He should’ve recognized the man’s scent, even masked as it was by the foul things he sucked into his lungs, but he hadn’t considered that the human might dare return to the forest.
Or never leave.
“What is it?” Astrid stared up at him, worry growing.
“I did see him.” Evidently, so had she.
“And he’s...”
“Alive.” He rubbed a hand behind his neck, then quickly dropped it. Ach, too human. “I thought the cold, salted meat was actually tasty.”
“All these years tracking and hunting and all I’d needed to do was make a market run.” She rolled her eyes, tone both teasing and exasperated. “I could’ve been setting aside cold cuts from Frühstück.”
“If it’s any consolation, it’s more about intention. I would’ve tasted the insincerity.” And now that he was thinking about it, the man’s offering had been oddly devoid of emotion, as if he’d felt nothing during the exchange. Not even lightly seasoned by stress, let alone fear.
“Do you think this is his?” She held the cigarette butt aloft, perhaps for him to sniff, but he scented it just fine moments ago.
He nodded. “I don’t think he ever left. Can’t fathom how.”
“There’s cloaking magic, but this is something more.” She stuffed the cigarette butt into her pocket, lips pinched. “I thought most human magic had died out centuries ago, but there’s at least twenty separate sources pooling together as one here. Whatever it is, it’s not like anything I’ve ever felt before, which really isn’t saying much. I’m only thirty-five. But I think...”
She stopped abruptly.
“What is it?” He went to join her. And that’s when he smelled it.
The cigarette stench had distracted him.
“Blood,” she said, pointing to a trail of red droplets leading off into the trees.
Red eyes glinting like fire stared at him from the deepest shadows of night. A blink later, and they were gone.
He shrank back with a low rumbling growl and pushed Astrid behind him, shielding her with his body. Protect. Protect. Protect.
In his periphery, the witch snatched up her ax, ready to hack and cleave.
A ringing filled his ears, his vision narrowing to hyperfocus on that spot amongst the trees. Every muscle tensed to strike.
Gudarīks.
Gudarīks.
Someone was saying his name. There was a light tug on his arm, but it felt so far away.
“Altes Geweih!”
Behind him.
He whirled around, and Astrid ducked down, just missing the swing of his antlers. “Gudarīks, it’s me!” She shouted, throwing up an arm to block her face, while the ax-wielding one was poised for a vicious uppercut.
Heart hammering, he skittered back, a cold sweat trickling down the length of his spine. Stars above, he almost gored her. “Are you okay?” His words came out shaky and breathless.
“I’m fine.” She lowered her ax slowly, letting the head come to rest on top of her boot. “You missed.”
She’s fine. Everything’s fine.
He nodded. To himself, to her, he wasn’t sure.
She leaned her ax against a nearby tree.
“You’re shaking.” Slowly, she drew near, like she was approaching an injured, cornered animal. First, her hands slid over his arms, then across his back, pressing them chest to chest. A hug, this was a hug. “What happened?”
“I thought I saw something, but only for a moment. I don’t know why I reacted like that.”
“It’s okay.” She patted his back, soothing instead of running. Why wasn’t she running? “This is a weird situation.”
And getting ever weirder.
“Did you see it? The red eyes?”
Astrid didn’t answer at first, heartbeat ticking up a fraction. With reluctance, she replied, “None but yours.”
Gudarīks buried his face into her hair, breathing in its light floral scent. Even if his mind was playing tricks on him, this was real. She was real. And he held on to her just a little bit tighter, letting her solidity coax him back into his mind and body.
But not too tight. He didn’t want to hurt her.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered.
Astrid held him until the shaking stopped and his heart settled back into its natural resting rhythm.
He was slipping, just as he feared, but not completely. Now he had confirmation that the vanishing humans were real, and not an elaborate figment of his imagination.
“We should go look,” he said, reluctantly withdrawing. Already, he missed the firmness of her touch, and the delicate sweetness of her hair. “See where the blood leads.”
“You sure?” She searched his eyes, concern still lining her brow. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
“I have to know.”
He led the way onward, cautious and head on a swivel, but they didn’t have to go far. The trail cut a straight path, stopping only a few meters away, and ending in a crimson patch of snow. Far too much blood had been spilled for its owner to have survived, but not so much that he thought there was more than one slain.
There were no drag marks or a body. Gudarīks looked up, half expecting to see a drained carcass hanging above them. But there was just an empty tree canopy and a star-filled sky.
What had the humans slaughtered? And where was the rest of their unlucky victim?
Crouching down, he touched his fingers to the bloodied snow, then his tongue, letting his acute sense of taste guide him to answers. Fear. Agony. The feeling, rather than the word, echoed on repeat: Why? Why? Why? The source wasn’t human. From the corner of his eye, Gudarīks watched Astrid frown as she picked up a tuft of gray fur, the skin still attached.
As the truth sank in, rage rippled through him.
Wolf.
“Endangered” was the word the forest rangers used to describe the species’ declining population.
“What is it?”
“They slew a wolf.” Fury bristled across his skin and threatened to raze his control. He sank his claws into the earth to keep himself rooted in place.
There was a fierce clench to Astrid’s jaw, but her voice remained calm. “They’ll know no mercy when they’re found.” And something told him that she intended to participate in executing that vengeance.
What a glory it would be to watch her slay the forest’s enemies, but right now it fed his anger, every inch of him trembling with it.
If he wasn’t careful and didn’t try to leash his emotions, the egregious killing would set him off onto a rampage, hell-bent on destruction and too far gone to have any thought as to who or what got in his way. Astrid didn’t deserve that. And neither did his forest or its inhabitants.
Tearing his eyes from the spilled blood, he muttered through gritted teeth, “Who would do this?”
Astrid’s expression was grim. “Poachers. A friend of mine from the park service mentioned there’ve been reports of them up north. I suppose our mutual, cigarette-smoking acquaintance is one of them.”
Normally that answer would satisfy him. “Poachers who also happen to know powerful magic? And can vanish into thin air?”
Doubt crossed her face. “Yeah, that’s odd. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I’ll warn her. Make a trip down the mountain in the morning.” Her gaze dipped to his buried claws. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m starting to feel a little wild,” he admitted, head tilting with an involuntary twitch. It was followed by a tremor that overtook his arms. He needed to get himself under control.
The proximity to blood wasn’t helping.
Tucking her thermos inside her coat, Astrid stood, holding out her hands to him, palms facing up. “Why don’t we go somewhere untainted and sit down for a bit?”
The way she gently but firmly made the suggestion sliced through his anger, a voice of reason while he scrambled for his.
Extracting his claws from frozen ground, he took her hands, and she pulled him up.
“Come,” she said, only letting go of one to retrieve her ax. “There’s a pond nearby I like to visit when I need to think and am sick of staring at the same four walls.”
Although he knew which pond she spoke of, he let her lead the way, finding comfort in the steady tug of her hand. So small—two of her fingers pressed together were the width of one of his—but not frail. Subsisting in the forest kept her grip strong, and there was a rough patch of calluses that lightly scraped his palm, not unlike his own.
He saw the chopped piles of wood outside her cottage and the carefully tended garden, had tasted her baking and the meat procured from her hunting efforts, felt the sting of her spell craft.
These were not idle hands.
Did they ache as his did at the end of a long day?
But where his touch burned hot, hers was cool. Smooth, where he was furred. So many similarities but so many contrasts too.
Their walk to the pond wasn’t far, but it provided just enough distance between them and the campsite for new scents to wash away the wolf’s suffering.
Snowcapped pines encircled the pond, its frozen surface unblemished save for the few places fallen branches jutted out of the ice.
Astrid brushed snow off a log and sat, patting the spot beside her.
He joined her, dead wood creaking softly under the combined weight. But it held.
Tipping his head toward the sky, he glimpsed a shooting star streaking by.
The universe owed him a wish, and he wished for the safety of all that he loved.
One would think that a beast such as himself wouldn’t know what it felt to love. But he loved this forest, his home, and every living creature inhabiting it. There was a time when he loved a group of humans, too, dedicated his existence to protecting them...
Until they reached too high, let greed and senseless cruelty rule them, and it festered into something evil.
Guttural screams. Flayed flesh. Chanting before a fire so tall it singed the branches of nearby trees.
His mind slammed shut, leaving nothing but a dark, empty hole in memory.
The thing he couldn’t, or didn’t want to remember, was long, long ago—some thousands of years in the past. That locked door in his mind creaked and splintered and tried to wrench itself open almost a century ago, when more great evil poisoned the land. Evil acts always brought him back to this, too terrible to bear remembering.
For a time, they just sat in silence, finding peace in the cold and quiet solitude of a winter’s night. In all his existence, had he ever just sat with somebody? He couldn’t recall that he had.
“I don’t like to let anger or hunger rule me,” he said. “If and when I devour, I want it to be because I choose to do it.”
“Do you often get to choose?”
“Control is a precarious thing, especially when living a life driven by hunting instincts, but yes, I mostly feel like the choice is mine.” Until a set of fiery, red eyes unraveled him completely. Something was brewing in his forest, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was several steps behind. And he didn’t like that it reminded him of evils past. “Why didn’t you run?”
“I saw that you were afraid.” Astrid stared out at the pond’s glassy, frozen surface; hands braced to either side of her, curling with the curve of the log. But with just a little more scrutiny, he saw they were clenched, the knuckles bone white and nails digging into dead wood. “Memory makes prey out of all of us.”