Chapter 40 Theo
THEO
The old highway map of North Carolina is over fifty years old, but it doesn’t matter. Rockingstead is still here. I didn’t wipe it out of existence like I did Veritas.
Before Chloe said the name of that town, I was consumed by something that I can only describe as terror.
I am very used to the scent of human terror, of course, but sensing it in myself was alarming.
What do I have to be afraid of, aside from others of my kind?
But apparently, there’s an answer to that question:
Oliver. Getting lost. Getting hurt. Dying.
But Rockingstead, I know that name. I know that Highway 74 runs through it, an artery that connects it to Hanging Lake. On this map, that highway is surrounded by woods, and I’m not sure if that’s still true. The last time I was on that road was the same year this map was published.
“What are you doing?”
Chloe’s voice startles me. I jerk my gaze up to her, and my fear tightens again. She was furious at me for what I did six months ago. If Oliver dies because he tried to find me on his own, she might try to kill me again. I wouldn’t blame her.
“I’m going to find Oliver before the cops do,” I tell her. Then I shove the map around and point to the highway. “Can you drive me there?”
Chloe holds her breath, just for a second. Then she nods.
“Take me.”
“Of course, but—” She puts her hand on my arm, and the touch of her palm is warm against my skin. “But I don’t know what we’ll do when we find him. His foster family is looking for him. We can’t just—kidnap him.”
Fear flares in my chest again. “Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I won’t let him die.”
Chloe’s eyes go wide, just a little. I can still sense her confusing combination of emotions—her panic is strongest right now, but her confusion is still there. An undercurrent of warmth, which I think is directed at me. I also get the sense she’s in physical pain.
“Are you hurt?” I fold up the map, shove it in my jacket. “You aren’t bleeding.”
“I’m fine. The snow soaked through my shoes. I’ll just need to change my socks before we go.”
Of course. Well, I don’t want to make it worse, so I scoop her up in my arms again. She holds onto me, her heart fluttering rapidly. “This isn’t necessary,” she murmurs.
I can’t say anything, not with my hands full.
But it is necessary. I don’t want her to hurt.
I don’t want either of them to hurt. And that’s why I lope through the woods as quickly as I can, our breaths puffing out into the air.
She told me she took Oliver’s boat here, an idea that makes my heart twinge strangely. A sign, I think.
I row us across the lake, my muscles aching against the howling wind. When we make landfall at her pier, the reality of the situation slams through me—
I’m leaving my territory for the first time in fifty years. Really leaving it, not just crossing Hanging Lake. Going out into the wide world.
The thought makes my chest squeeze up in that way it does. Fear, I think, as I wait in Chloe’s living room while she changes out her wet socks. This is not something I do. Always, my territory remains in my line of sight, where I can sense interlopers. I don’t stray.
But I’m straying now. For Oliver. For Chloe, too.
She rushes into the living room, her worry announcing her presence as much as her footsteps. “Are you ready?” she asks breathlessly.
I nod.
“It’s gonna be hard to drive,” she says, leading me into the garage. “With the snow and all. But I’ve done it before, up north.”
“I understand.” I don’t tell her it won’t matter much, not when we get close enough to make our way on foot.
Chloe’s car was conveniently tucked away in her garage during the storm.
It’s strange, settling into her passenger seat, breathing in the sudden and overwhelming scent of her that permeates the fabric of the car’s interior.
Just being in a car is strange; another experience I haven’t had for fifty years.
She backs out slowly, tires crunch on the slush that the snow has become in the bright, lemony sunlight. I can sense her fear, as sweet and musky as ever, as we creep down the silent, snow-covered roads. I don’t know if it’s from driving or if it’s because of Oliver. Or both.
“I hope he’s okay,” she whispers. “I wish he had just texted me.”
I put my hand on her knee, and she glances over at me, just for a second. “Sorry,” she breathes. “I’ve got to keep my eyes on the road.”
We creep our way through the woods, and I try not to think too much about the widening gap between myself and my territory. It helps, though, that Chloe is in the car with me. She’s like an anchor, like a piece of my territory that I can hold close.
When we pull out of the winding side road and onto the highway proper, I fumble with the buttons on the car door until the window rolls down, letting in a blast of cold air. Chloe yelps and shoots a fearful glance over at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Scent,” I tell her, then point at the road through the front windshield.
She looks back where she needs to, her fingers right on the steering wheel.
The highway is just as bad as the side roads were, covered in a slushy mix of ice and snow that crunches beneath the weight of her car.
But there’s no one else out, and the wind blasting in through the window carries a wild blend of scents.
Too many, I think with a faint surge of panic.
Too many, and too unfamiliar. I’m used to my peninsula, where I know the tapestry of trees and animals and the lake itself.
Out here, the wild is drenched in humanity, and it makes my blood spark in my veins.
Still, I force myself to concentrate, to sift through it all.
I don’t know if I’ll remember Oliver’s scent, not the way I remembered Chloe’s.
But there are other things I can look for: Fear.
Hunger. Pain. Confusion. Those are the scents my kind are designed to pick out anyway, the scents that lead us to our prey.
The car passes by a green sign: Rockingstead 5 miles. Chloe makes a soft hum in the back of her throat.
“Do you want me to keep going into town?” she asks. “Do you think he would have gotten this far?”
I tap her knee until she looks over at me. “Pull over,” I sigh, and I feel her relief at the words, even if she doesn’t say anything. She slides into a stop on the edge of the highway, the thick, snow-covered woods towering around us.
“Do you—feel him?” she asks, worry tightening her voice.
I shake my head and pull out the old map, folded so that I can see this patch of highway. Fifty years ago, Rockingstead was surrounded by woods, and it seems it still is. I breathe in the air again, desperate to catch onto something useful.
And then, just for a second, I do—a glimmer of childish terror, as bright as the north star. And although I didn’t think I would, I do remember the last time I sensed it.
It was the night of the killing moon.
I scramble out of the car, the wind whipping the door out of my hands. “Wait!” Chloe cries, and I’m aware of the engine dying, of her footsteps on the snow. “Do you have him?”
I stop on the edge of the trees, breathing deep. The terror is in the woods, I can tell that much, carried toward me on a draft of winter wind. “I have to go on foot,” I tell Chloe.
“I’ll come with you.” She glares up at me like she’s daring me to tell her not to.
“I’ll be faster by myself.”
“I want to help,” she counters, the wind whipping her hair into her face.
For a moment, I’m reminded of how she looked the night of the killing moon—the way her face flushed with that same determination as she pointed the shotgun at my chest. But it’s different today.
Her determination isn’t soiled by abject terror and despair. It almost feels hopeful.
So I nod, not really wanting to leave her alone on the side of the road anyway.
Then I take off into the woods, moving as quickly as I can, all my senses on alert as I track that little glimmer of fear.
Sometimes, the scent shifts away from me, blown off-course by the wind.
But I catch it more often than I don’t, and it’s not long before I have a clear trail that leads me deeper into the woods.
Chloe is a constant presence at my back, and her presence is easier to keep up with. Her breath and heartbeats are loud, letting me know she’s not falling behind. I keep moving.
It feels like stalking prey. Not like during a killing moon, where my victims are tucked away in their houses, but when I stalk interlopers that come into my territory.
I always catch their scent and follow it until I find the right time to act.
But there’s so much more urgency here, because with every step, that terror grows brighter, calling out to me like a beacon.
I don’t even know for certain that it’s Oliver, although I can’t imagine there’s another child lost in the woods, drowning in fear.
We weave through the trees, Chloe and I. And then I catch a whiff of blood.
I freeze in place, fear jolting through my system again. Chloe bumps against my back. “Theo?” she asks. “Are you—Is everything okay?”
I sniff again. Yes, blood. Not a lot. I don’t know if it’s Oliver’s. It’s coming from my left, the same direction as the fear. But there’s something else, too. A kind of—quiet.
Like the quiet just before someone dies.
And with that, I run.
“Theo!” Chloe screams, and she runs after me, although I know she won’t be able to keep up. At least my boots leave tracks in the snow for her to follow. Because all I can focus on right now is finding the source of that blood before the silence of death becomes permanent.
I duck through the straggly branches, clumps of wet snow falling in my hair. I’m not used to the snow, but my kind are strong, and I run without slipping or falling, darting between the trees. The scent of blood grows brighter.
Then I see it, a trio of crimson dots against the white expanse. My heart nearly erupts out of my chest, and the terror is now everywhere, as relentless as the wind.
I follow the blood trail, dots here and there, until I finally—finally—catch onto a heartbeat. A child’s heartbeat, as fast and as faint as a hummingbird’s.
I give a wordless shout, the sound echoing through the trees. Behind me, Chloe cries out my name. Then, a second later, she calls out Oliver’s.
The heartbeat quickens.
I surge forward, following the heartbeat now instead of the blood trail.
It’s the loudest thing in the dampened silence of the snowy forest, so thunderously loud that the sound seems to tunnel down until it’s a clear and undeniable path.
I follow that path with more fervor than I’ve ever hunted one of my victims, even though it feels the same—the blood, the fear, the frantic heartbeat.
The only difference is what I’m going to do at the end of it.
Footsteps behind me, the soft, steady huffing of breath. Chloe, trampling through the woods. More blood on the snow. My heart squeezes up in that weird way again.
Then I see a flash of color: Oliver’s backpack, the one he used to store his drawings. I snatch it up and look inside. Clothes. A half-eaten apple.
I move forward, the backpack tossed over my shoulder, my eyes on the snow, until I hear crying.
How many times have I heard someone cry in my life? Too many to count. This time makes my heart break in half, though.
“Oh my god!” Chloe cries. “Oh my god, I hear him!”
I hear him, smell him, sense him. I shove aside a low-hanging bough of pine needles, free of their snow, and there he is, curled up in a ball, his lips tinged blue.
I’ve never felt relief like this before.
Oliver tilts his head up at me and blinks, his gaze unfocused and his breath shuddery.
When he sees me, he makes a small, soft keening sound.
He lifts his hands, but his fingers are too clumsy to speak.
I’ve seen enough anyway. I scoop him up in my arms, pulling him close to my chest. His whole body vibrates, and I can feel the wet patch of his tears seeping through my shirt.
Chloe rushes up behind us, and I turn to face her, Oliver still clinging to me. “You found him!” she gasps. Oliver looks up at her and makes that same soft sound, his tears streaming down his cheeks.
“We’ve got you,” Chloe whispers, brushing his hair away from his face. “Theo’s got you.” She looks up at me, her eyes shining with tears, and I think this might be the strangest situation I’ve ever been in. It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever saved someone’s life.
But right now, in this moment, I want to be as far from death as possible.