Chapter 2 Theo
THEO
There’s someone new in Veritas.
Veritas was finally dead. I was free.
That freedom has lasted for seventeen years, just me and the woods and my cabin. When hikers come through, I kill them, and that’s enough to sustain me. I don’t even have to die, like I did whenever the killing moon called me into Veritas. Small kills, simple kills. They’re enough.
Even though the houses have come back.
I watch them being built through the trees.
They’re going up one by one, even though they all look the same: big, glittering houses with walls of windows like eyes that look out at the lake.
I realized quickly enough that it’s not a town.
Just a single row of houses, so unlike any of the houses I’m used to seeing this high up in the mountains. Vacation homes.
I can sense the humans moving around them, though.
I can sense their comings and goings, all their unique, human scents on the wind.
I’ve mostly been able to ignore them. They’re strangers, and they aren’t trespassers, since they all stay on their side of the lake.
Most importantly, they aren’t Veritas, and it was Veritas that killed me. It was Veritas that killed my mother.
It’s a particular scent that alerts me to the newcomer.
I’m making my rounds along the edge of my territory, looking for signs of hikers or campers or other would-be explorers—anyone I might need to watch out for over the next few days.
I don’t find anything, but when I make my way toward the eastern side of the lake, the wind gusts, and it brings a scent like a rose garden.
Sweet and honeyed, with an underlying storminess like freshly fallen rain.
I stop, sniffing the air, and turn toward the lake. I’m still safely hidden in the woods, but I can see glimmers of the water through the trees.
The wind gusts against, bringing another wash of that oddly appealing scent. This second time, I sense the humanity within it. Someone new is out on the lakeshore, over in the place that’s no longer Veritas.
Although I shouldn’t—it’s still daylight—I creep forward and stop just at the edge of the treeline, scanning the horizon to see if I can find the scent’s origin.
The other side is far enough away that it’s hard even for me to see, despite my excellent vision—vision made for predation, as my father told me when I finally found him.
Not in Ohio, like my mother’s letter said, but farther north, in New York. That was a long, long time ago.
Still, my excellent predator’s vision sweeps along the glossy toy houses and then settles on my target.
A woman.
At first, I think she’s sitting on the pier of my young friend Oliver, who lives across the lake with his family and is the only human I let roam around on my territory.
But then I realize, no, she’s next door.
She has her feet in the water, and her head tilted back, like she’s looking at the clouds striating across the sky.
The wind blows her brown hair away from her shoulders, and when it moves into the light, it flames copper, like sunset on the water. I suck in a breath.
She’s beautiful.
When was the last time I considered a human beautiful? Not since I was a human, or thought I was one. Not since a beautiful human girl smiled at me and told me there was a party and then laughed as I slid into the darkness.
My skin tightens. This woman—who is not Maggie Stone, who in fact looks and feels nothing like Maggie Stone—pushes herself up to standing but keeps squinting out at the water.
Her legs are long and shapely, leading up into lush, curved hips.
I feel something ache in the back of my jaw. I don’t know how to put a name to it.
The woman turns away, ducking down to pick something up from the pier.
Trash, it looks like. A bottle of something.
Then she walks back down the pier to the house it’s attached to.
This house has been empty for a while, as I remember.
To be honest, I don’t pay that much attention to which human lives in which house.
I only know that they’re there, the houses and the humans.
And I only care that they stay on their side of the lake, away from me.
Still, I feel something like longing as the woman walks away, hips swaying a little, bare legs gleaming in the soft-falling sunlight.
For the first time in decades, I want to know a human’s name.