CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cedar ran. The night coursed by him, through him. His
claws punctured dirt, tearing, rending the earth with each stride.
The mountain thrummed with life, with movement, with living things
that should be dying things. The need to kill rolled over him in a
hot wave.
No. He had to find
the boy. Cedar pulled against the beast, against instinct that
leaned a hand over his throat.
The beast whispered:
Track. Kill. Devour.
Cedar focused on the
boy. Clung to that one goal to drown out the blood need. Repeated
it like he was repenting a sin. Track the boy.
Hunt the boy. Find the boy.
The beast twisted
against his hold. Snarled at his thoughts, his litany. It was all
Cedar could do to think through the hunger, to remember a need that
was not bent by fang and claw.
Save the boy.
He followed jagged
jackrabbit trails through the brush across the fields. The boy was
not here. Not on this mountain. Not in these hills, nowhere near
enough for the wind to bring him his scent.
Town. The tuning fork
slapped against his chest as he ran, a single pure tone humming in
beat with his footfalls, music only his keen ears could hear. The
Strange were here. Not near, but close enough the tuning fork
whispered of their presence.
Kill.
Cedar stumbled as the
blood need pressed against his hold.
No, he thought,
taking back control. He would find the boy.
The wind rose as
night deepened, dragging cold fingers through his thick fur and
prickling against his skin. He shivered at the invitation, the
freedom, the rightness of the night around him. No chains to hold
him down. No locks to keep him caged. He could run forever and
belong only to the night.
The boy, Cedar
thought.
He was at the edge of
the town now, and slowed. The press of humans living too near one
another wove a thick blanket of odors. Softly, carefully, through
patches of shadow and moonlight, he crept into town.
The blacksmith’s shop
beneath the water clock tower was dark and stank of coal. He didn’t
like coming so near the shop and tower. The slosh of water, ratchet
and clatter of gears, stink of oil and grime, were too much. There
were too many smells, too many noises to hide the sound of killing
things, of footsteps, of bullets slid into chambers, of breath
caught before a finger squeezed a trigger.
This was no place to
hunt. This was a place to be killed.
Cedar stopped,
fighting his dual nature.
Instinct said
run.
Reason held strong to
one thing only: Find the
boy.
Cedar reined in his
fear and made his way along the edge of a split-wood fence, then
the side of the street to the Gregors’ shop. The stink of ash and
metal and grease stung his nose and fouled all other scents. He
took two cautious sniffs, then crept around the back of the
shop.
He could smell the
sweat and booze of the blacksmith here, the second sugary scent of
his wife, and other people he needn’t name. His mouth watered. The
overwhelming need for blood washed through his veins, took over his
thoughts.
Cedar held against
it, though he knew he could not hold for long. He sniffed the
ground, working his way closer to the house. The beast was gaining
strength the longer he denied the hunger. Quickly. He needed to
find Elbert’s trail quickly.
The boy’s scent was
strongest here, though still faint. The child had been gone too
long, his scent rubbed away by other living things.
Cedar stood on his
back legs, paws on the lower windowsill, nose at the
wall.
The silver tuning
fork swung forward and rapped the wood.
The single sweet note
soured with the song of the Strange, too loud in the night, too
loud in his ears, twisting in harmonies that made him want to
growl.
The song was thick in
the air. The Strange had been here. He sniffed for the Strange’s
scent and found it, an oily earthiness and rot, and beneath that,
the faintest scent of the boy.
The Strange had taken
the boy, covered the boy’s scent, carried the boy. And he knew
which way they had gone.
Cedar dropped back to
all fours and turned, muscles bunched to run, to howl, to hunt. To
kill.
A figure across the
street paused. “Mr. Hunt?” a voice called softly.
Cedar froze. Man and
beast warred. Man won.
“Mr. Hunt?” The
figure across the street came closer.
He knew that voice.
Knew that figure. Miss Rose Small.
But how did she know
it was him? Maybe she was teched in the head, and thought all wild
animals were people from the town. Even if that were so, what would
be the chance that she would call him by name? What was the chance
she would know he was behind the wolf’s eyes?
Rose had a handful of
bolts and wires and washers. As she stepped into a pool of
moonlight, the hunger pushed over him again, dragging against his
reasonable mind.
Kill.
She sucked in a quick
breath, her hand flying up to touch the locket around her neck, the
cogs and gears and wires chiming to the ground. “Are you quite
well?”
Sweet blood, sweet
bones, flesh to tear, heart to pierce.
Cedar pulled against
the beast’s need, struggling to keep control.
Rose Small did not
look like Rose Small.
To his man’s eyes,
she was the woman he had seen just yesterday. But through the
wolf’s eyes and the veil of the curse that brought both minds
together, Miss Small was a woman filled with a glim light. It was
as if she contained sunshine and summer, and all the stars glinting
in the sky.
There was something
of the Strange about her. Even the tuning fork hummed softly, not
the sour song of the Strange in the windowsill, but a song much
like he had heard back in the Madders’ mine.
Miss Rose Small was
not wholly human, a condition he reckoned she had not yet
discovered.
She stepped out of
the moonlight, and took to looking like herself again. She was
bundled up in a long coat, but her bonnet was pushed back off her
head. She’d obviously been out in the night, strolling the streets,
ducking beneath limbs and crevasses to collect up nails and bits of
wire. He wondered what she did with those bits and bobs, wondered
if she devised matic and tickers and other such
trinkets.
“Do you need
assistance, Mr. Hunt? A doctor, perhaps?” She didn’t come any
closer, though she wasn’t far enough away to be safe from
him.
He inhaled the scent
of her. His hold slipped slightly, and the beast within him
whispered, Kill.
Cedar pushed against
the beast.
She did not smell
like the Holder the Madders wanted him to find. She did not smell
like the Strange who had taken the boy, and she did not smell like
the boy. Standing here was doing nothing more than wasting
moonlight.
Find the boy. Cedar took a step backward, two.
Three.
Miss Small nodded,
just that easily accepting him as a wolf. “I see that you have
things to do and a need to be doing them. I don’t want to keep you,
Mr. Hunt. Good night to you.”
Kill, the beast in him whispered
again.
Cedar silenced the
voice with one word: Hunt. Before the
moon set and dawn burned the beast out of his bones.
He ran, out into the
fields. Not following the boy’s trail yet, looking instead for
blood and meat to sate the beast’s hunger and give him back his
reasoning mind. And he found it, in a calf who had staggered away
from its mother, too frightened to cry out before Cedar lost
control over the beast, and tore out the animal’s
heart.