Chapter Thirty-Four #2
Imani skidded to a stop ten yards from the base of the rocky climb in the mist ahead.
She had hoped that an obvious cavern would spring into view as she got closer, but up close all she saw was precarious footholds with too much distance between them and a steep climb with shadows above that might conceal passageways to underground caverns. But they also might not.
Imani scanned the area for other movement, from the top of the cliff ahead of her to as far back as the distant hollow tree. She and her family were the only living beings in sight.
Three snow-covered boulders stood near her in a crooked line of successive height, the shortest about six feet, the tallest twice that, all of them partially covered in snowdrifts that had sloughed off from above.
Even these closest boulders looked too steep to climb without rope, much less the higher rocks, which looked slippery from ice.
She had ten feet of black paracord wrapped up in her emergency kit—good for anything from trapping and fishing to hanging materials for a shelter—but it wasn’t enough for rock climbing.
Imani wished an obvious entryway could lead her to Mom, but the Beast could not have stayed hidden out here if it were that easy to find.
Now she better understood why Dad hadn’t wanted to bring them this way. These rocks had never looked promising. They might be closer to Mom, but Imani had never felt farther away from her. The cliff was a monstrous wall between them.
Where had Mom’s voice come from? Had she been closer to the creek after all?
Dammit. No matter what they did to find her, it was never enough.
“Mom?” Imani’s call fell from her lips before she could stop herself, compelled by her certainty that her mother was close enough to hear her. She wasn’t shouting, but she had raised her voice. “Are you here?”
Snow flew up near Sharise as she glided closer, only a dozen yards away. Sharise fell over, losing control of her snowboard.
“No!” Imani shouted, hoping her voice could scare off an attack.
She expected to see the Beast swallow Sharise from below, but Sharise quickly righted herself and got back on her feet, signaling that she was fine.
She had just lost her balance. Since the grade was shifting from downhill to sharply uphill, Sharise pulled off her snowboard and left it behind to hold the rifle instead.
She raised her finger to her lips for Imani: Shhhhhh.
Imani gave herself a slight push from the snow-covered boulder to glide a bit closer to her sister. “Dad gave you the gun?” she whispered.
“For you,” Sharise whispered back, more like mouthing the words. “He said to wait.”
“We should look for tracks—” Imani began.
But the words caught in the roof of her mouth, her tongue stilled.
She realized that her hand was vibrating where she had touched the boulder, which had been solid, yes, but it had yielded to her palm beneath the snow, far softer than a stone should be.
More like fur and bones. Her body knew something was wrong with that boulder before her mind caught up.
Imani didn’t have to look behind her. She knew.
“Sharise—stay back,” she said, her voice loud enough to stop her sister’s march.
“What?” Sharise asked. Imani’s terror was mirrored in her sister’s face, her features hollowed with fear. She took a step back.
“Shoot it,” Imani said.
Sharise yanked the rifle up higher, swinging it so recklessly that Imani thought her sister would shoot her instead of the Beast.
“Where is it?” Sharise screamed, half sobbing.
A chilling sound rose behind Imani’s ear, like a giant, scolding squirrel. Chittering. Loud.
Given more time, Imani would have told her sister that the Beast had camouflaged itself in the snowdrifts propped against the boulders.
She had skidded her snowboard to a stop directly in front of it—the shaggy pile closest to her was more Beast than snow—and it had observed her in silence.
She had just made her worst mistake of the day. Of her life.
With a yell, Imani turned with her ski pole raised high, ready to spear anything that moved behind her.
Then snow sprayed everywhere, her ski pole yanked itself free, and Imani’s thoughts melted into a wall of white.
Terrifying winglike flaps flicked open in a blur, impossibly wide, impossibly fast. Imani’s scream tore at her throat, bouncing across the cliffside.
The rifle fired, but it was a sound from a dream. A memory of another existence.
The Beast swallowed Imani inside of its tight flaps, snapping them shut, blotting out sound and most of the light.
She saw connecting rivers of blue veins on pale pink flesh exposed beneath thinner clumps of white fur, but little else.
Her face was encased in fur that tickled her nostrils and scratched her tightly pinned lips.
The confinement of her face triggered Imani’s fear of asphyxiation, and she writhed until she could breathe in gasps free of sour-tasting fur.
Then she was bouncing, flung up and down, back and forth, like riding a bronco.
The Beast was racing away with her inside of it!
She must have started to curl herself into a ball before the Beast took her because she was frozen in that pose now, arms and legs pinned while the movement jounced her.
When her teeth clacked together after a jolt, she bit her tongue hard.
Her tongue flared with pain, but nowhere else hurt.
No bites. No crushing weight. Imani realized that the folded wings created a pouch that blunted sharp edges and impact that might harm her as the Beast barreled on its twisty path.
It was carrying Imani the way a mother would carry a child, swaddling her in its demonic flaps.
This was how it had carried Mom away from the car!
This was how Mom had survived her journey from the lodge.
Imani’s thoughts tumbled, hard to snatch and hold, but unlikely relief coursed through her.
This pouch felt warm from the Beast’s body heat, blocking out the cold.
The air she sucked in to breathe felt thin and hot.
Buried in the musk of this odd animal, Imani thought she smelled remnants of the perfume Mom had been wearing last night, borrowed from Mazelle Washington’s vanity table.
I’m not going to die, Imani thought. Mom isn’t dead.
Her screams turned to wild laughter. And then back to screams.
She tried to collect herself the way she did on the Crazy Coaster at the L.A. County Fair, beating back her panic when a ride spun too fast or swept her up too high: This will be over soon. Either she would run out of oxygen or the Beast would take her to its nest. One or the other.
The jittering movement felt like climbing for a while, then the Beast changed direction, heading downward, tipping her upside down. But its embrace was so tight that Imani’s position didn’t shift, aside from her sloshing brain creating waves of dizziness.
Imani’s stomach lurched. She was sure she would throw up. That smell was in here too, she realized; Mom must have vomited from the jostling. Or her fright.
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Remembering how much she hated throwing up helped moor Imani to herself again, apart from this impossible swaddling within this creature that should not exist.
As if she’d spoken an incantation, the wild motion finally stopped.
The creature was sliding on solid ground in the familiar motion that had created the tracks she had been following all morning, skating a bit this way and then that way in a creeping motion forward.
Imani realized that its entire weight must be resting upon her if she was hugged to its belly, but she didn’t feel the weight at all.
She didn’t feel any movement from legs beneath her.
It was practically levitating! No wonder it sometimes barely left ruts in its wake.
“It’s magic,” Imani whispered to herself in her cocoon. This was the simple answer to every question racing in her mind.
She had never experienced magic beyond birthday party card tricks and illusions.
But now that she was wrapped inside this being she could not explain any other way, she recognized magic on sight.
Fright gave way to wonder as every aspect of this creature fascinated her.
Its pale flesh. Its spiky fur that could also lie down as flat as a wet sea otter’s.
Its tight clasp within winglike flaps that didn’t look big enough to sustain flight.