Chapter 1 #2
“There ought not be. Anything that bloodthirsty isn’t welcome on this side of the veil.
” I shiver as a trickle of terror creeps up my spine at the thought of something none of our ancestors have faced, or perhaps that shiver is the dampness my dress continues to suck up from the ground.
At least it’s not blood drawing up my legs.
I’m not missish, but I am aware of my limitations.
“Perhaps . . . a depraved man.” Father offers the idea in a sort of comforting lie, although I cannot tell which of us he’s trying to comfort.
I continue my study of the body, prodding the corpse’s pockets with the steel rod. If the killer is a faery, as we both suspect, the steel will help protect me from contaminants. The rod hits a thick bump in one pocket, and I lever it out where it falls on the wet ground.
No choice but to touch it, I lift and unwrap the thick wad of banknotes that are enclosed in a length of leather and tucked into a pouch. The money is still dry. “This was not a robbery.”
I rewrap it in the folded piece of leather and hold it out.
Father takes the bundle. “Beasts use no coins. A man would’ve taken it.”
I nod because there’s no doubt now—not that the wound traits left much room for doubt. We are dealing with a faery, one we cannot easily identify, one that ought not be in our world. “Do we tell Queen Morag first or . . . ?”
My father makes a face I can’t read and pulls out a bag of finely crushed salt. We both carry salt bags at all times. I suspect a lot of citizens do, but we must. Some creatures have toxins that will infect or poison a person, sometimes fatally.
I hold out my hands. Often, we don’t sanitize until after we are through investigating, but if this beast is unknown, the risks are equally unknown.
What we think of as “curses” these days are often simply faery contamination.
The risk is rare, but I’m not interested in falling to something so mundane.
Father pours salt over my hands to decontaminate them.
I suspect we’ll repeat that process a few times today because he keeps the salt bag in hand as I reach into a skirt pocket and pull out a set of glass vials and droppers.
He says nothing as I collect some of the meager lingering blood from the wound, a fluid sample from the eye, and a generous sample from each blood pool.
Father’s gaze darts around us as if the beast might linger, as if he expects attack.
I shiver again, wondering whether he has the strength to fight something that nearly beheaded a man with one blow, but wandering thoughts serve no purpose in the moment. He will, or he will die—and the duty will fall to me.
Silently, I finish gathering the samples and put them in a steel box my father holds out.
“Wound flesh,” he reminds me.
I accept the silver knife he provides and cut a swath of skin from the edge of the wound. This, too, I bottle and drop into the box. The blade is silver so as not to burn away any faery saliva or blood, but the box is steel to contain any lingering venom or unidentified contaminants.
The box clatters as Father closes it. He sounds hopeful as he says, “You can use your laboratory when we are home and update the journal. If there are no other victims, we can hope it was just the forest beasts mauling a drunkard.”
I flinch. “That seems . . . unlikely.”
Arguing with him never ends well, and we surely both realize that this is a faery. Everything we have noted in our study of the body makes clear that this is not the work of any man.
Is he afraid? I cannot ask, but I suspect he reads my expressions more astutely than either of us would like.
He glares as I stand and face him. All he says, though, is, “Cut a furrow into the ground around the body.”
I pull out the sword at my hip, grateful it’s not my preferred one, and the Hunter grabs up several bits of the man that were scattered around, bringing each back to pile beside the rest of the body.
It’s a macabre sight with a detached hand and severed lower leg atop the oddly folded legs and nearly severed head.
I am grateful not to have to do that part.
Touching the dead always makes me feel anxious, as if their state of decay is going to infect me the way faery blood can.
Some types of death can linger on the body, like a miasma clinging to the lifeless heap.
Hunters are invulnerable to many things, but I am not yet the Hunter.
I start to clear the area outside the furrow as Father heaps leaves on the body until it is completely covered.
The dead man and his assorted injuries still hum and buzz softly from the increasing number of insects drawn to the now larger heap of decaying flesh.
The ground is wet enough that I almost expect the leaves won’t catch fire, that they’ll smolder and sputter, but unlike any regular person, the Hunter can call magic.
Father whispers a word as he rests the palm of his hand over the damp leaves.
The mound ignites. Magic does not need to obey the limits of damp leaves or wet earth.
It comes to my father’s hand like something miraculous, and in moments, the ground crackles.
Smoke rises, a fetid cloud of wet leaves and bloodless man.
The urge to gag returns, and I take another step back. I don’t want to be bathed in the smoke of the dead. That, too, feels unclean somehow.
My instinct is to watch the woods to be sure no stray spark sets fire to nature, but within the circle, my father’s magic burns everything. Only there. Only what’s inside the circle. The flames will not leap beyond the barrier or spread too high or far. Hunter’s Fire never does.
We stand in wait as the victim of something awful is reduced to nothing more than shards of bone and teeth.
Whatever magic fire the Hunter summons burns at a temperature that makes me wary of the power I must one day brandish.
The Hunter is a weapon, a blade made of flesh.
That much power is terrifying to contemplate.
If my sister were threatened, if my mother were in danger, are there lines I would refuse to cross?
No wonder the identity of the Hunter must be protected, my fears whisper.
The thought must be one every Hunter will face, but when I look at the magic that will become my own when Father dies, I worry that I am not strong enough to wield it safely.
Sometimes I wonder whether my father keeps me locked out of his heart for that very reason.
I adore my mother and my sister, and that is all the room I have in my heart for vulnerability.
That is one of the lessons I don’t think Father meant to teach me.
I do not fear only the creatures that threaten us; I also fear the depths of my own rage if my loved ones were imperiled.
To hunt the monsters, a Hunter must be deadly in ways that terrify me still.