Cold Copper

Chapter Twenty-three

Cedar landed hard on his shoulder and hip. He gritted his teeth against the pain spearing through his side and leg. He’d broken a rib for sure, maybe done worse to his leg. He pushed up and out from under his brother, his head pounding. Even though it was cold enough to see his breath coming out in steamy gasps, his skin was on fire.

He struggled to get on his feet, but couldn’t do any more than rise up upon his knees. Every inch of his body hurt more, much more, than it should. His mind slipped between conscious thought and raw hunger to kill.

The curse wrapped around him, broken free from Father Kyne’s hold, stretching his body, twisting him into the shape of the beast. Changing from the body of a man to that of the wolf had never been a painful experience.

Until now.

Cedar yelled as the curse broke the spell and claimed him again, turning him into a creature that hungered for the blood of the Strange.

But even with the curse in full force beneath the power of the moon burning bright, the thin chain he wore that the Madders had given him months ago managed to separate just enough of his thoughts that he retained the barest vestiges of logic. Still, he had very little control over the beast.

Control that slipped.

The world broke apart into color and fragments of trails and scents: shattered bits of all the things, living and dead, that had passed this way.

Above it all, the scent of the Strange was strongest, tangled though it was in the smells of Wil next to him and of the wildflower scents of Mae from where she stood with the horses.

Mate.

The beast demanded he run, hunt, and rend the Strange until they broke and bled.

Wil was on his feet next to him, and like him, wore the skin of the beast. They would hunt, together. They would kill, together. It was what they were made for. It was all they breathed for.

To kill the Strange.

Cedar howled and Wil lent his voice to his brother’s song, to his rage. There was a Strange nearby. A familiar Strange. Cedar growled. That Strange stood, just on the other side of a fallen tree. It held a ribbon in one hand.

Cedar could smell its fear, could hear the sour song that bled from it into everything it touched. He knew the Strange understood what he was. Knew the Strange understood he was death to its kind.

But still it stood there, not attacking, not running. It lifted its hand with the ribbon, as if making sure Cedar knew it carried a human token, a child’s ornament.

And then it ran.

Instinct curled and exploded in his chest. He would hunt it, track it, run it down, kill it.

Wil was right beside him as they pounded across the snowy terrain. Through the forest and over hills, across a field spread wide beneath the moonlight. The Strange ran faster, always just ahead of them, leaving a trail so strong Cedar could have found it with his eyes closed.

And then he heard water, a river flowing hard beneath a layer of ice. He knew that river. He had been here before, here where the road split in two, branching toward the city of people and away through a stand of trees to the frozen river.

Danger. The beast knew it was a trap, and so did his logical mind. He stopped, hidden in the shadows, Wil at his side. They waited, watching as the moon slipped in and out of the clouds at the horizon.

The moon would soon set. Dawn was only a few hours off. Though the curse was still strong, Cedar could already feel the power of it fading.

There was no reason to wait. They should kill the Strange.

But something held him back.

Danger.

The Strange was waiting for them. Waiting on the bank by the frozen river. Waiting to kill.

Cedar moved out of the shadow, drawn by the unbreakable need to kill the creatures that tread the earth. He held near the curve of the path, slipping silently through brush. This was a trap. He knew it must be.

And as he neared the river, he heard more than the song of the Strange. He heard children crying in the night, calling out for mothers and fathers. Calling out to be saved.

Wil heard it too, and whined softly, his ears flicking forward and back.

Because even though they heard a hundred children calling, crying out, there was only one child they could see.

A little girl, maybe three years old, barefoot and shivering in her nightshirt, her hair braided at each ear. She clutched a tattered blanket close to her chest and walked across the snow-covered stones as if she were blind or sleepwalking, following the sound of children’s voices straight to the icy river.

The Strange stood upon the ice, the pink ribbon pinched between its fingers and trailing in the predawn breeze. It stared at Cedar, watching his every move with those odd eyes.

He growled, but the Strange did not move.

It waited.

When Cedar had the clarity of a man’s mind, he would say it was not afraid; certainly he no longer smelled fear on it. Nor did it seem set to attack the child. When he had the clarity of a man’s mind, he would say the Strange was waiting for him to understand. It was desperate. And sad.

But the beast warred with his thoughts: Save the child or kill the Strange.

“Help,” the Strange whispered. Not asking. Showing.

The wind rose with the early light, bringing with it more than the sound of the children calling, crying, begging. That wind brought with it the scent of the Holder.

Cedar jerked his head up and took a backward step.

The Holder was here, and as the Strange pointed at the ice, he knew the Holder was there, in the river, hidden beneath the ice.

Calling the children.

The little girl was almost at the river’s edge.

Save the child, his logical mind demanded.

Cedar ran for the girl.

Just as the Strange ran for her.

She collapsed before either reached her. But it was the Strange that somehow whisked her up and, faster than the wind, pulled her away from the river and ice and ran away with her into the forest.

Cedar dug claws into the frozen ground, twisting to catch at the Strange, launching after it.

But the sun broke the horizon, lifting the curse. He writhed in agony as his flesh and bone once again snapped, shifted, and compacted, forcing him too soon into the shape of a man.