Chapter 7 #3
One of the insects buzzed past his head. Fucking mosquitoes. He lit up his dermoire, and several of the bloodthirsty bastards popped as if they’d landed on an insect zapper.
Skoll looked at him in surprise. “I thought Sems needed physical contact for their power to work.”
“They do,” Blade said. “I’m special.” Sure, zapping bugs was a sidekick kind of power, but it came in handy.
Jon looked back at them, his night eyes glowing with the faint yellow light common to most shifters. “How’s your night vision?”
“Excellent. Both of us,” Scotty assured him, but she didn’t mention that hers was better than Blade’s. “Blade can also blend into shadows.”
Not as well as his father, but yeah, the ability to camouflage himself came in handy now and then. More often than Mace’s ability to sense souls like his mother. But she could see them, and he couldn’t.
“Great,” Jon said. “But we still need to be careful.”
“No shit,” Blade muttered, remembering why he didn’t like the guy. “Like we don’t know to be careful.”
“Wasn’t my teammate who walked into a trap,” Jon drawled.
Scotty barked out a bitter laugh. “He’s got us there.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The guy was still a dick.
The trail dropped down into a muddy creek bed dotted with fresh moose and wolf tracks.
Crouching, Skoll studied the tracks. “It’s a young moose. And lame.”
“How many wolves?” Scotty asked.
“Six.” Skoll looked off toward where the tracks disappeared into the woods. “That moose had better hope the wolves catch it before the wendigo does.” He blew out a breath and stood. “And then the wolves better run too.”
As if Skoll’s words were a trigger, something screeched, and a shiver shot down Blade’s spine.
Scotty summoned her sword. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Jon replied, “but it didn’t sound friendly.”
The forest went still. Unnaturally still.
Off in the distance, a wolf howled, a sound that spoke to Blade on a level so deep he couldn’t explain it, even to Scotty and Mace. And while Stryke and Rade probably understood, he never spoke to either of his brothers about the werewolf part of them, inherited from their mother.
He hadn’t spoken to Stryke about much at all over the last fifteen years, and Rade was…
Rade. Getting him to string more than a dozen words together was hard enough when you weren’t discussing something private and personal.
And Crux hadn’t shown any signs of having any werewolf DNA yet, but neither had Blade, Rade, or Stryke until after their Seminus transitions into maturity.
So, yeah. Blade had dealt with his inner beast alone for his entire life.
Sure, he could talk to his mom about it, but she couldn’t understand what it was like on the nights of the full moon, when his blood ran hot, and he was restless and feeling like his skin was shrinking…
but he was trapped in his Seminus body and couldn’t do anything about it.
As infants, he and his brothers had been immunized to prevent them from shifting into nightmare beasts with the prey drive of a werewolf but the sex drive of an incubus.
Runa couldn’t relate to that, nor could she relate to the psychic connection he had with his brothers—a connection Stryke had broken a long time ago.
Recently, he’d repaired the link with Crux and Rade, but Blade had opted out.
He listened to the wolf again, and his hackles rose. The canine was sending out a warning.
Skoll sniffed the air, tension making the tendons in his neck stand out in stark cords. “Do you guys smell that?”
“Smell what?” Scotty asked. But right then, Blade caught a whiff of a familiar metallic tang.
Blade swung around. “Blood. A lot of it.”
“Could be the moose.” Jon’s fingers curled around the hilt of the machete at his hip.
Skoll scowled. “Whatever it is, it’s old. Has a hint of rot.”
Blade caught the stench of decay as the wind shifted, bringing a breeze that also smelled of moss and water.
Skoll checked the map. “We’re out of Nathan’s trap boundary. This way.” He gestured for them to follow, and they crept through the brush, leaving the worn wildlife trail behind them.
They moved slowly and carefully, Skoll in the lead, Scotty and Blade following, and Jon bringing up the rear. The odor grew stronger and more acrid, making Blade’s eyes water. Scotty looked like she was about to gag.
“Don’t move!” Jon hissed. “It’s right the—”
Something big, with flashing claws and dagger-like teeth, exploded from a thicket and slammed into Jon. They tumbled down the embankment, crashing through the brush in a tangle of thrashing limbs.
Jon battled the creature as he fell, desperate to keep its mouth away from his throat.
Ugly, formerly human, the thing’s shredded clothes hung off its thin, skeletal frame, but that’s where the resemblance ended.
Its unhinged jaw gaped wide, its huge maw filled with sharp, blackened teeth that dripped with stringy saliva.
Blade half-jumped, half-slid down the slope after Jon.
He body-slammed the thing, barely saving Jon from having his face bitten off.
The monster snarled and lunged for Blade, but he was ready, armed with a branch as thick as Scotty’s thigh.
He struck out, knocking the creature into a tree with a satisfying crunch.
Scotty followed up with a throwing knife, catching the creature in a sunken, black eye. The thing screamed, and in the blink of its other eye, it disappeared into the brush.
“Son of a bitch,” Scotty breathed. “Was that a wendigo? Did it bite you?”
Panting, his skin glistening with sweat, Jon frantically patted himself down for injuries. “I’m fine,” he said, but his voice shook as hard as his hands. “I’m fine. Really. Couple of scrapes from the brambles is all.”
Blade knelt next to him. “Let me check you out. Don’t want you spontaneously turning into one of those fucking things.”
“Right.” Jon eyed a scratch on his hand. “You’d love to chop off my head.”
Maybe a little.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to put down an ally after they changed.”
The grim reality of what they were all facing settled over them like a shroud. But the good news was that Jon’s wounds were minor and most likely caused by the tumble down the ravine. Blade had them healed within seconds.
Skoll returned from fetching Jon’s pack from where it had gotten hung up on a tree limb during the fall. “I’m digging the healy-healy,” he said, as he tossed the pack to the ground next to Jon. “Maybe we should get a Seminus demon on our team.”
Blade snorted. “Like any Sem would want to work with you assholes.”
“Other way around, man,” Jon muttered. “Other way around.”
“Hey,” Scotty called out. “I found something.”
Skoll and Blade helped Jon to his feet and joined Scotty at the top of the ravine, where the wendigo had attacked Jon.
“What the hell is th—?” Skoll recoiled, caught his heel on a root, and would have repeated Jon’s tumble into the ravine if Scotty hadn’t caught him.
Blade shoved a tangle of leafy branches aside. A partially eaten skull, one eye dangling from its socket, stared back at him. “It’s a human head.” He glanced at a lump a few yards away. “And a torso.” That, too, had been ravaged, the internal organs strewn about, the ribs broken, the spine twisted.
“Ooh, lemme see.” Holding her breath, Scotty got in close and poked the head with a stick. She loved the gory shit. “Must be one of our missing persons.” She used her comms to get some images for later victim identification and reports.
“We need to find this thing,” Blade said, but Scotty was already on the move, heading north in the direction the creature had gone.
They’d barely started after her when something ahead of them screamed—a grating, bone-chilling sound unlike anything Blade had ever heard.
The sound came again, this time from the east. Then another, this time from the northwest. And another from behind.
“It’s four wendigos,” Skoll said, his voice low. Shaken. “Fuck me, there are four of them.”