Ghost Walk

CHAPTER EIGHT

The wind promised blood.

The coyote’s stomach growled in anticipation when she smelled it.

The coyote wanted nothing more than to return to her den before the sun came up, but she had a long way to travel before she could sleep.

The blood called to her. She intended to answer.

It had been a long, weary, and demoralizing night. At dusk, she’d risen from her den to hunt and forage. First she encountered a small dog that had strayed far from home. The coyote gave chase, but the dog was faster. It escaped. She decided not to pursue it. Panting, she drank cold water from a creek and looked for the darting, silver forms of fish. The stream was empty. She flipped a rock over with her paw and found a tiny crayfish. She snapped at it, dancing around to avoid the angrily waving pincers. The coyote devoured the crayfish in one bite, but the small morsel simply fueled her hunger.

Her wanderings had then brought her to the edge of the forest. The coyote sneaked through the backyard of a nearby farm house. She was careful. Cautious. The sounds of humans came from inside the home. The coyote stayed alert, listening for any sign that they were aware of her presence. After deciding it was safe, she crept undetected to the front porch. A fat, yellow cat lay on a lawn chair, licking its paws. The coyote’s muscles coiled. She tensed, preparing to charge, but the feline spotted her and leapt from the porch. The coyote dashed after her fleeing prey, across the yard and down a one-lane dirt road. Trees lined both sides of the driveway, but the terrified cat ran straight. The chase ended when the cat ran out into the main road and was crushed beneath the wheels of a tractor-trailer. The truck didn’t stop. The coyote watched from the bushes along the side. Twitching, the cat let out a pitiful, gurgling mewl. Then it stiffened and lay still. Steam rose from the body. The coyote stepped forward, drooling at the sight and scent of the fresh innards splattered all over the pavement— the rich liver, the tender intestines, an eyeball, warm blood. Before she could feast, another car came along. Then another. Their wheels thumped over the carcass, further spreading the gore. The coyote darted out into the road and snagged a shred of intestine, but oncoming headlights chased her back into the bushes again. Not wishing to suffer the same fate as her prey, the coyote left the area.

She came across a deserted campground and knocked over the garbage cans, snorting through their spilled contents with her snout. She found a few scraps—French fries, a pizza crust, and half of a hot dog—but not nearly food enough to sate her hunger.

The coyote felt sad—a lingering shame that couldn’t be cured with sleep or food or water. She was a hunter. Her kind were predators, unmatched by any other animal in these woods except for the black bear. And yet here she was now, nothing more than a scavenger. No better than a raccoon or a possum, stealing from trash cans, eating humanity’s refuse just to survive. Every year, the humans came farther into the woods, chasing away the other wildlife, and reducing her kind to this.

She missed her mate. She’d met him during her second winter, when the moon was full and yellow and new-fallen snow covered the ground. The scent of her heat had called him to her. He was strong and lean and large, standing over the other males that answered her call. She remembered his pelage colors: gray washed with streaks of black, with beautiful tan and reddish markings running down his legs. His ears had been erect and his tail full.

They’d rutted on the frozen ground, their body heat melting the snow around them. The coyote howled her passion to the full moon when her mate’s teeth nipped the back of her neck, holding her in place. Four months later, safe in their den beneath an overturned tree, she gave birth to a litter of seven pups. Her mate had gone hunting while she nursed and cleaned their young. He’d paused along the stream bank, looking back at them once over his shoulder. He had seemed so proud.

Then, while she waited for him, the human thunder that was different from sky thunder echoed across the forest. She knew what that thunder brought with it.

Her mate never returned. She waited four days, but he never came back.

She’d raised the pups on her own, as best she could, teaching them how to hunt and track, where to shelter and when to sleep, what was good to eat and what would make them sick. Most important, she taught them about man.

So, when men arrived a few months later, and shot her with something that made her sleepy, the mother coyote’s last thought before losing consciousness was that her cubs would escape. They’d know to run. To flee from man, just as she’d taught them.

When she awoke, there was a small metal clamp in her ear, and her young were gone. She sniffed around the forest floor. Their scent was mixed with the stench of humans. She cried out for them but there was no answer. The coyote waited but her cubs didn’t return. They had vanished. Just like her mate.

She missed their yips, barks, and howls. Missed their warmth. The way they crawled all over her when they were playing. How they tugged at her ears with their sharp little teeth or snuggled against her when it rained. Their individual scents.

Scent…

The coyote’s memories faded as she caught the scent of blood again. It was stronger this time. Perhaps an injured deer or a wounded dog. It was too heavy, too thick, to be from anything smaller. Whatever the source, it was near.

But so was something else. Something without a scent. Something…dangerous.

She just didn’t know what.

Parting the field grass, she peered into the woods. The coyote’s nocturnal prowling had brought her here, to the edge of a bad place. She had never been here before, had never strayed so far from her usual area. But after the failed cat hunt, she’d smelled the blood and followed it. Now she felt alarmed. This place was wrong. Menacing. She knew it instinctively, as did the rest of the animals in the area. The trees were different. The air was different. It was dangerous to proceed.

And yet, the blood-smell called to her, promising a feast if only she would enter.

Whimpering, the coyote stepped out of the field and into the shadow of the trees. She sniffed the air, cautious. Now she caught a new scent in addition to the blood: burning leaves. She paused, but sensed no signs of fire. Her ears twitched, alert for the slightest sign of activity. The forest was quiet. No birdsongs or insect conversations. The ground vibrated slightly beneath her paws, as if something deep inside the earth was turning. It felt unnatural. Not of man, but not of nature either. This was something else, something that was neither. The coyote wanted to run. Instinct and common sense told her to flee, but her stomach rumbled. She took another tentative step forward, and raised her snout. The woods smelled like humans. There had been many of them here recently. Signs of their presence were everywhere: downed trees, gasoline and sweat, urine, footprints, threads from clothing snagged on branches. She considered this new information. The humans had been here, and nothing bad had befallen them. Perhaps the danger was overstated.

She smelled the blood again. It was fresh. The coyote drooled. Hunger overrode her caution. She darted forward, following the scent toward the center of the forest.

While Rhonda got rid of the car, Richard went hunting. He traveled far to find a deer, since they were afraid to enter the proximity of the hollow. He’d left the forest, crossed through the harvested remnants of soybean and corn fields, and found another patch of woods where the game was plentiful. He climbed a tree and perched among the branches, patiently waiting. When a doe finally appeared, he shot her through the neck. The crack of the rifle echoed over the hills. The doe thrashed and snorted as her lifeblood jetted from her body. Then he hauled the dead animal back to the hollow. He gutted the carcass and spread the entrails and internal organs all over one of the sigils, careful not to touch the stone directly. Using the barrel of his rifle, he wedged the animal’s heart between the ground and the stone. He grunted in frustration. How much easier would this be if Nodens had the strength to move the stones itself? If Nodens could just use the rifle to pry them free? But the sigils sapped Nodens of its strength, and thus, it had to rely on these methods.

Rhonda arrived shortly after, dripping with the stink of the river. Finished with his task, Richard disposed of the deer’s body. He dragged it far away and buried it, digging the grave with his hands. After he’d returned, his fingers torn and bleeding, Richard withdrew into hiding, along with Rhonda and Sam.

They watched from the darkness, waiting for something to take the bait.

The coyote’s uneasiness grew with every step, but so did the gnawing in her stomach. Her nose twitched again. Her tail hung limp and low, tucked firmly between her legs. Her senses warned her to flee, but she couldn’t. She was compelled now. Driven. No matter how strong her fear, she couldn’t ignore the promise of the meal, borne on the night breeze. It was waiting for her just ahead.

She padded across a vast wasteland of ash and charred wood. The ground sloped steadily downward into the burned-out remnants of a hollow. She stepped over a dry creek bed filled with ashes. It was dark here—darker than the rest of the woods. In this place, the night seemed to gather, as if drawing together. It reminded the coyote of her den beneath the overturned tree. The place she’d shared with her litter and her mate. The hollow was like that—a den for darkness.

The coyote felt far from home.

She turned to flee, to find safer ground, but then she saw it. A pile of fresh deer innards lay splattered on and around a nearby rock. Liver, kidneys, intestines—all covered in a thick, rich coating of blood. The guts were no longer steaming, but the flies had yet to discover the remains and the blood was still fluid, rather than congealed.

Dispensing with caution, the coyote approached the rock in four quick strides. It didn’t occur to her to wonder where the rest of the corpse was. Her pink-white tongue shot out, lapping experimentally at some drops of blood on the nearby ground. She licked her lips, and then dug in, chewing and swallowing as fast as she could. Famished, she ravaged the organs without thought or care to anything other than filling her belly. When she’d consumed the solids, she licked the rock clean. It wiggled back and forth at her ministrations, and made her tongue tingle. She barely noticed. Her attention was focused on another morsel sticking out partially from beneath the stone.

The deer’s heart.

She pawed at the ashen ground, digging a hole around the heart. Then she pushed at the rock, straining hard until it toppled out of the way, revealing a small depression. She gobbled down the heart in four quick bites and was swallowing the last shred when the darkness rose out of the hole and she heard her mate and cubs.

They called for her inside the swirling blackness. Mesmerized by this unexpected reunion, she stepped closer, yipping with excitement. Too late, the coyote realized that although they looked like her brood, their smell was different. She froze.

This was the something else—the bad thing she’d sensed before.

The darkness surged toward her and the coyote howled.

And then the sun greeted a new day, filling the land with light.

But the light did not penetrate the hollow.

There were only three stones left and less than forty-eight hours until the walls between worlds collapsed.