Wil, who had always been laughing.
Wil, who had always been trusting.
Wil, who had died at the beast’s fang and claw, his fang and claw.
Cedar stuck his nose as high in the air as he could. Too many scents in that wind. Too many glints and hints of creatures, both living and dead. Wil. The bit of the world, the scent, that was uniquely Wil was there; he was certain of it. And it was not an old trail.
Wil was near the scent of the boy’s blood. They might be somewhere near each other. Not that it would have mattered. Cedar ran. Not for the boy he had promised to save. Not for the Holder he had promised to hunt. Not for the Strange the gods had cursed him to kill.
Cedar ran to find the brother who had been dead all these long years.
He was wild with that thought, that fear, that hope. Wil. Alive. Wil. Here. Wil. In this land, on this soil. Wil.
Instinct whispered trap and caution and death, but Cedar was getting better at silencing the voice, smothering it. He would find Wil, find this scent of him and follow it into the fires of hell if need be. He would find his brother.
Brush rushed past, limbs whipped and lashed, the sharp fear of prey, large and small, lifted on the wind, carried by pounding heart, hoof, and paw, as Cedar ran through field, hill, and valley, even his great speed too slow for his racing thoughts.
And then the wind shifted, bringing with it the heavy stink of the Strange. Of old blood and dark metals. Of broken things strung with pain.
Of Mae Lindson. The witch. The beautiful golden-haired widow who stirred his heart in ways he could not admit even to himself. Her scents, her terror, and, more than that, her pain thick on the air, stronger than the boy’s scent, stronger than the scent of his brother.
Cedar slowed, instinct finally winning over desperation. He’d go carefully into this place of death, tread softly, and kill swiftly.
Kill, the beast echoed.
The widow Lindson’s house was near enough he could smell the fire from her hearth and the sweet spice from her herb garden. He peered through the night. Should he cross the field to her house?
No, the scent of Mae, of the boy, of his brother, came from the stand of trees.
Cedar slipped beneath the sheltering boughs, immersing in the deeper darkness.
Ahead, he heard a mule bray and a woman scream. Ahead, he heard the growl of a wolf. A male—his brother.
Wil.
Cedar ran to the edge of a small clearing in the trees, and saw with his own eyes a vision out of hell.
The widow clung to her mule as the animal bucked and reared. Something the size of a child crawled at odd angles over the beast, clinging like a spider to a wall, biting Mae, scratching, pulling, slapping.
And near a tall tree, not much more than a shadow himself, stood that Strange, Mr. Shunt. Too tall, too cold, fingers made of needles and blades and hooks, fingers tapping impatiently over the leather leash held in one hand.
At the end of that leash hunkered a wolf, ears flattened in fear, in hunger, eyes the brown of old copper. His brother, Wil.
It felt as if the whole world spun itself into the wind that battered at the treetops. Too many images, too many memories, warred through his mind. Wil’s blood spread across stone and grass. Wil’s mangled corpse. The taste of blood and flesh in his mouth. He had thought it was Wil, had known it had to be Wil. He had seen Wil change, twist beneath the curse just as he had changed. But then the blood hunger, the dark beast’s need, had cast its thrall.
And he had lost all control.
Cedar was a learned man. He had not considered it before, too wild in his grief, but there was a chance, narrow, slight, that he had been so crazy from pain, from the change, from the cursed blood hunger, that he had not recognized his own brother. There was a chance that the wolf he had killed that first night he’d become the beast was simply that—a wolf.
He’d not stayed to bury it. Caught in the clutches of a high fever, he’d wandered incoherent for days.
A heartbeat, a breath, was all it took for those thoughts to rush through Cedar’s mind.
And then the hot urge to kill the Strange gripped him again.
For the first time, Cedar agreed.
Mae Lindson fell from the mule, a yell of anger and pain filling the night. She scrabbled for a weapon—the gun turned by the Madders’ ingenious hands—but the creature, the boy that was not a boy, caught it up first.
Mr. Shunt let loose the leash on the wolf. “Punish her, or I shall punish you,” he hissed.
The wolf growled again, baring his teeth, his eyes shifting from Mae and the boy to where Cedar crouched, hidden in shadow.
“Now.” Mr. Shunt flicked his fingers, and the wolf snarled as if fire had sparked beneath his skin.
Cedar could smell the pain. Every nerve in Cedar’s body told him to stay away from the Strange. Stay away from the collar snapped around his brother’s neck. Stay away from the boy who was not a boy, who held the shotgun high and humming at Mae’s chest. The boy who laughed while she bled.
But Cedar was not about to run.
Kill.
He rushed out of the sheltering brush, launched himself at the boy who was not a boy.
He caught the Strange boy and chomped down on his head, jaws pumping to crack it open.
The Strange boy screamed, yowled, beat at him with hands that were stronger than any grown man’s. Cedar bit harder.
There was no crack of bone. No burst of blood. Nothing soft and savory beneath the Strange boy’s hard exterior. The boy tasted of old flesh and copper coil and burned wood. Cedar growled. He shook the Strange by the head, and snapped its neck.
It was still laughing, plucking at Cedar’s eyes, fingers sharp and stabbing.
What did it take to kill a thing like this?
Something struck Cedar from behind, throwing him to the ground in a tangle of fangs and claw. Wil.
Cedar pushed away and stared straight into his brother’s eyes, at the madness of pain caught there.
He had a second, a breath, to rejoice. Wil was alive!
Then Wil launched at his throat, jaws catching his fur as Cedar twisted away.
Kill.
No. This was his brother. He would not harm him. Cedar snarled, hackles raised, head low in warning.
Wil lowered his ears, teeth bared in challenge.
There was no reason of a man in those eyes. There was only hunger, kill, and pain.
Blood hunger pushed at Cedar, but he would not attack his brother. Cedar growled in warning. Mr. Shunt snapped his fingers, the sound of flint against steel. Wil yelped, the stink of pain heavy on him.
Mr. Shunt had more than a leash keeping Wil kowtowed. He was using the collar to cause him pain.
Wil worked a slow circle to Cedar’s left. Cedar glanced at the boy that was not a boy. Most of its face was gone, stripped away as if bark from a tree, leaving a fish belly–smooth surface where eyes and nose should be. A crack ran straight through the head, behind which peeked glints and spikes and spokes of gears and cogs. A rotted-flesh stink radiated out of the crack in its head, and the slash where its mouth should be was now an open maw where small black bugs skittered and oil seeped.
The witch, bloody and bruised, her hair free as spun gold in the moonlight, picked up the shotgun and snapped it to life.
At the sight of that gun, Cedar knew it meant his death. Knew it meant his brother’s death.
Run, Cedar thought, run, run, run.
Wil rushed him, biting deep into his flesh.
Cedar howled in pain and fought his brother, no longer thinking of the collar, of the gun, of anything but being free of this attacker.
Kill.
He fought back, tearing at the wolf, as the wolf tore at him. Fangs, claws, jaws. Blood over muzzles, clogging nostrils. There would be an end to this fight, and that end would be death.