“I’m the guy who’s gonna end you,” I told her. “Just like I ended your friend back at the cabin.”
She chuffed in laughter. “Impossible,” she said.
“Lot of that going around,” I told her, making a show of looking her up and down. “But look at me — and at the runes that kept you from entering the lovely lady’s cave — and tell me if I’m bluffing. Oh, and by the way, Jain and Magnusson send their best — or, rather, they would if they weren’t dead as well.”
Doubt crept into her eyes, her voice. “You lie!”
“You’re right,” I said. “I do. But not about this.”
At that, she threw her arms wide, and let out a roar that shook the trees, and blew my hair back from my face.
And then she attacked.
She was smarter than her friend, didn’t blindly pounce like he did. Instead, she first uprooted a full-grown tree with her uninjured left hand ,roots popping as Topher’s shoulder had, and dry dirt sounding like rain as it pattered to the ground beneath, and hurled it at me with all her might, her own bulk following close behind. I dove aside, too late. The trunk drove hard into my shoulder blades, and I ate dirt. Honestly, that tumble probably saved this meat-suit’s life. The dog-beast sailed clear over me, rolling on one shoulder and springing upright in one fluid motion, once more facing me. On all fours, she was the size of a goddamn Clydesdale. Only every bit of her, from snout to what appeared to be a gnarled, half-formed fleshy tail, appeared designed to kill.
I shook the cobwebs from my brain and found my feet. She approached me slowly now: threatening, unconcerned. I backed up to maintain the distance between us — twenty feet, maybe less — but it was no use. Her every step — powerful haunches flexing, hot blood-tinged breath pluming iron-scented in the night — brought her closer.
My eyes locked on her, my feet carrying me ever backward, I stumbled and went down hard. Like a goddamn amateur. Like some fucking horror-movie-teenaged-twenty-something-bottle-blond. That’s when she leapt. I knew then I was screwed but good; no getting out of this one, Thornton. So I clenched shut my eyes, tensing for the killing blow, and thought of Guam.
I’ll tell you, I don’t know if it’s all the hiking or what, but that Zadie chick has got some muscle on that tiny frame of hers. And she’s damn quick, too. But then again, maybe I would have been as well, had I just watched my only shot in hell of leaving these woods alive just up and quit.
Tiny hands bunched the shoulders of my jacket within their grip, and yanked me backward. My eyes sprung open as I slid along the forest floor. A fraction of a second later, the dog-beast landed in the spot that I’d just vacated: too late, because Zadie’d dragged me back into the shallow cave.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, incredulous, as if the news surprised me. “You?”
“Yes. You’re not Nicky, are you?” she asked.
“He prefers Nicholas.”
Her eyes glinted with good humor. “No offense,” she said, “but so do I. Not so fond of being tied up.”
“Nicky’s got some audio files that argue otherwise,” I told her. “You ever make it back to camp, you might want to see about destroying them.” And though the light in the cave was dim, I could swear she colored at that last.
“So can you really kill this thing, or was that bullshit?”
“I can,” I said. “I think. Hey, how’s it feel to find a real, live monster?”
“Not great,” she said. “This was always Topher’s dream, not mine.” She smiled, then, not with any real cheer, but with sadness and fond remembrance. “For what it’s worth, I told him not to leave the cave. Once he got free from his restraints, I mean. But he wouldn’t listen. He said he hadn’t devoted his whole life to finding evidence of beasts like these only to go home empty-handed now. He said he’d rather die.”
“At least he found what he was looking for,” I offered weakly, as if the words would comfort her in the slightest.
“Yeah,” she said, eyeing his cave-side remains. “And I lost what I was looking for.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, and I meant it. After all, I thought, the image of Elizabeth rising unbidden in my mind, I knew exactly how she felt.
A huff of breath announced the creature’s presence outside the cave. I looked up to find it hunkered down on its haunches, its eyes staring back at me in the near-dark. Even crouching as it was, the damn thing was taller than my meat-suit at full height. Curled up to fit inside the cave, I felt pretty damn insignificant by comparison.
“Fe, fi, fo, fum,” I muttered. The creature snorted in what I realized was laughter.
“I smell more than blood,” it told me. “I smell your fear. Your desperation. You’d given up, hadn’t you? If your lady-friend hadn’t saved you, you’d be dead right now.”
“Nah,” I told her. “Worst case, I’d be sipping Mai Tais on the beach. And she’s not my lady-friend.”
The creature sniffed the air. Her black canine lips parted in a smile. “Of course she’s not; I can smell her scent all over this one. I suppose she and I have each taken something from the other now, then. The only difference is, I will soon get you back. Perhaps for her impertinence in stealing you away from me, I’ll make her watch while I disembowel you.”
Zadie scoffed. “For my impertinence, sure. What was your excuse for making me watch you kill my boyfriend?”
“His death was not my fault!” the creature bellowed. “For one thousand years, my brother and I have subsisted without killing a soul — taking only what we needed to sustain ourselves and no more. First from the animals of this vast continent, not so uninhabited as we’d hoped when we happened upon it in our self-styled exile from humanity, but absent enough of people we could, for the most part, avoid temptation. Then from those who settled here, tasting, sure, but never killing. The same can sadly not be said of Jain, nor of Ricou, both of whom we were forced to turn out centuries ago on account of their… unfortunate lack of willpower. But then you arrive,” she said, jabbing a clawed finger in my direction, which bounced off the plane of the cave mouth as surely as if it had just met a sheet of plexiglas, “and all we’ve worked toward goes to shit. Lukas is dead. My fast is broken. And I fear that after such delectable game as this,” she said, licking clean her gore-strewn lips with her wet, black tongue, “weaning myself back off it may well prove troublesome.”
“You could avoid the issue altogether,” I told her, “and let me kill you here and now.”
She mock-pondered my proposal for a moment, bobbing her monstrous head from side to side. “It’s true,” she said, “I could, provided you’re capable, which I doubt. For if you were, why have you not yet struck?”
“Ask your brother,” I goaded her.
“Lukas,” she enunciated carefully, as if speaking of him pained her, “was struck by your makeshift bomb when you attacked. He went up quick, and was no doubt quite weakened by the flames. Still, I hold out hope that, given time, he will recover; I shall bury him beneath the garden to allow him to knit himself in peace. For he and I have naught but time. As for the others, perhaps they are truly dead, or perhaps you’re but a flim-flam man, lying to buy yourself time. But I assure you, I have plenty of it to spare; if I wished, I could just sit here and watch you two slowly die of cold and of starvation, and then go on my merry way. The idea does have its appeal. But I confess, my earlier meal has left me oddly peckish, and edgy, and eager for more… I’d forgotten how succulent the meat and brain of your kind can be. So I fear instead,” she said, raising her ruined right hand to show the jutting bones, “I’ll simply have to sacrifice my good hand, and hope that between the two of you, there’s enough sustenance to make me whole once more.”