Chapter XI
XI
A scream pierced the snowstorm.
The sound was a jet of hot blood across the tapestry of my altered senses.
I flew through the snowdrifts, moving with Sarmodel’s supernatural speed. To the animals of the forest, I must have seemed a black flurry in the night, like the shadow of a shrike. In my wake, I left eddies of vapor.
I came to rest in silence, poised in the shadows outside the camp. Through the trees ahead I could see the fire, dancing high on its fuel of fragrant spruce.
And beside it was the writhing silhouette of the kill.
Too late.
It was not a human voice I had heard screaming, but the final cry of Aherin.
The gelding fought with the last of his strength against the death that had come for him.
He had collapsed to the ground and his legs cycled weakly, kicking embers from the fire.
Hunched over him was a naked creature of monstrous aspect, covered in ropy muscle and tufts of pale, ragged fur.
In the flickering light, it might have been a man grown to huge proportions, with its long limbs and pink, newborn skin.
The face, too, was manlike, bare about the eyes and nose with patchy fur that thickened like a beard along its jaw and down toward its throat.
But there was nothing human about the bristly ruff and the sparse mane that ran down its back, or the clawed toes that gripped Aherin’s hind leg.
There was an unnerving pubescent aspect to the creature, like a pup not quite come into its full coat.
Grayish fur clumped densely across its shoulders and around the groin, but the muscular arms and legs were still ruddy and smooth.
It was lean and wiry, but the broad skull and thick joints hinted at a strength as yet undeveloped.
It cradled the horse like a lover, with its jaws closed around the gelding’s throat. One powerful arm tugged and worried at something I could not see.
With a moan, the monster threw back its head, tearing out the delicate channels of Aherin’s blood and breath.
It raised its eyes and saw me—knew me.
I stepped into the light, steam pouring from my sleeves and billowing out of my collar.
The beast watched me, panting. Aherin, loyal to the last, struggled no more. Apart from the sound of the fire, the camp was utterly silent.
Be rid of it before it shows its true face.
Eyes as black and glistening as roe followed my hand as I raised the musket.
“That’s enough, Jacques.”
“Professor.” The creature’s voice was thick with red lust, but he still spoke with my young companion’s Occitan accent.
He sat back slowly and I could at last see what he had been doing.
One arm slid wetly from within Aherin’s belly, glistening red to the shoulder.
The horse’s innards spilled steaming onto the ground behind it.
In his clawed hand, the monster brandished Aherin’s enormous heart.
“The throat and the heart, just as you said.” He smiled at my revulsion and bit silently into the organ.
Sarmodel hissed in my ear, his ferocious strength ebbing slightly. Sebastian, I can’t do this forever. Kill him, now!
How?! My gun and my hunting knife would be of little use against whatever Jacques had become. Worse, he was crouched right in front of my cart, where my silver blade and Arcane supplies were lying useless. If I get any closer, it’s my heart he’ll be eating.
Then think of something else. Quickly!
The creature spoke again, rolling his tongue around morsels of heart meat. “I wonder, Professor, what you are thinking. So often you say nothing, but your eyes are eloquent. What strange congress goes on inside that arrogant head?”
“I am wondering how long you think you can maintain yourself in this form, and what I should do with you afterward.”
Jacques’s laughter came from the monster’s throat.
“I would expect nothing less. Shall I tell you what is in my thoughts?” He stood, rising to his full height.
He was well over seven feet tall, and every inch was taut with power; even with Sarmodel’s help, I would be no match for him.
The creature was aroused by the kill and reached down to wrap crimson claws around his protruding manhood.
“In my thoughts, I hear a voice that tells me to have you as my father did. It tells me to spit you here like a hog before I kill you. Shall we see if my cock is to your liking, as his was? Would that please you?”
I knew he was trying to unnerve me, but I was speechless all the same. I edged away, stepping closer to the concealing shadows of the forest.
He knows about Antoine?
What does it matter, Sebastian? Kill him!
The monster laughed again. “So, it is true! How did he like it?” He tore a mouthful from Aherin’s heart as his other hand worked its pleasure. He was drunk on it all—the kill, the touch of his own flesh, my confusion and fear. “Was he the buck or the doe? I wonder. Will I taste him in your throat?”
“Be silent!” I took a few more faltering steps backward, feeling the snow-filled darkness close behind me. The monster’s black eyes never left me.
“Come, Professor. Do you think to run from me, and so refuse my earnest advances?” He smiled with red, pointed teeth. “You will die before your second step, and I will be squatting over your bones by dawn.”
I took another step, and another.
Sebastian, I am fading!
The creature swallowed the final scraps of the horse’s heart and licked the blood from his fingers with a curling tongue. “Well? Have you no answer? No cunning words?” He laughed again. “Then come to me!”
Before his breath had cooled, the creature leaped.
A lot happened in the next second.
Without my augmented senses, I would surely have died, with the barest awareness of fangs at my throat and the warmth of my own blood on my skin. But my careful steps had placed the fire between us, and as fast as the monster was, Sarmodel was faster.
Now!
My hands moved with demonic speed as I cast the contents of my powder horn into the air. I spoke four Abject syllables and the creatures of the forest screamed as one.
With Arcane sight, you might have seen, for a sliver of that busy moment, the particles of gunpowder align into a quivering net of eldritch symbols and infinitely vanishing fractals above the flames—a net into which the monster plunged headlong.
With Mundane sight, you would have seen only the greenish explosion that followed.
The beast was thrown back against the trunk of the fallen spruce, howling as his ragged fur blazed.
I followed him over the flames, quick as thought.
With the last of Sarmodel’s strength, I wrenched a burning log from the campfire and struck: twice on the skull and then—for spite—a third time in the creature’s “earnest advances.”
It was enough. The monster shuddered and gave a low, wheezing growl. His black roe eyes closed and he was still.
And suddenly I found myself standing ankle-deep in horse guts, struggling under the weight of a smoldering branch.
I collapsed to my knees, dropping the log.
Thank you, my love, I said as my sight began to fade.
My Guest retreated, his power spent. His voice was faint. What’s mine is yours. Now try not to die.
The darkness came swiftly.