Silas: A Supernatural Thriller (39 page)

Nick rushed forward on all fours. It looked like his misshapen mouth was trying to form words, but only grunts came out. I brought the knife up as he leapt at me and it plunged into his shoulder. He let out a blood-curdling shriek and fell atop me. The knife fell from my hand.

I kicked my legs, trying to get him off me. Nick reared back and clawed at my face. I closed my eyes and punched him as his fingers dug into my cheeks, my mouth, my neck. My windpipe constricted and I couldn’t breath. I felt claws grow from his fingertips and pierce my flesh. Blood seeped onto the barren ground. My efforts to fight him off were useless.

Suddenly, his massive weight was lifted off of me. I gasped as air filled my lungs. I heard growls and an animal cry of pain. I rolled over and looked up.

Silas was on Nick’s back. They were both almost completely back to their usual selves now, and Silas’s canine teeth sunk into the side of the budding wolf’s ear. Nick shook wildly and Silas flipped about like a rag doll. Nick finally snapped his neck forward and Silas went flying, taking a wolf’s ear along with him.

When Silas landed in front of me, he was back to being a dog. He rose on his haunches and faced the monstrous wolf. A frightening, guttural rumble escaped his throat. I scampered to my knees and put a hand on his back. He glanced at me sideways, seemingly staring at the fluid that trickled from the wounds in my neck. Still baring his teeth, he took a step backward.

The wolf Nick stared us down. Blood gushed from his massacred ear, rushed over his face, and dripped down his nose. The disk hung from his thick, furry neck, swaying, taunting me. He paced in a circle, measuring his prey, while my boy and I huddled together. I grabbed hold of Silas, who seemed like he wanted to charge. He barked incessantly. The sound rang in my ears. With the pain from my bruised and battered body already causing a headache to spike behind my eyes, I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming.

I gradually got to my feet and backed away. Tugging Silas along with me by the thick mass of loose flesh on the back of his neck proved difficult. He seemed like he
wanted
an altercation, no matter how many times I told him to calm down.

Still Nick pressed on us, one step at a time. His massive paws dug into dry, packed earth, kicking up a cloud of dust each time a paw struck the ground. I wondered if he would get bored with the proceedings, seeing as it felt like I could actually see our shadows grow in the expanding daylight, but he didn’t. His yellow eyes seethed with anger.

One of the dust clouds the wolf kicked up drifted too close to his muzzle. Nick opened his mouth, raised his head, and then sneezed, causing a veil of sand to fall over him. He sneezed again, and the veil grew thicker. I wheeled around and started running, dragging Silas behind me. I didn’t think about it, I just went. In the back of my mind I knew it was a futile effort – with his immense size, Nick would probably catch us in seconds if he chose to pursue.

Which he did.

I heard a loud rumbling followed by a massive weight that struck the bag on my back and sent me flying. I hit the ground and rolled, expecting the beast to be upon me any second, tearing for my throat, but nothing ever came except a shriek of pain. I forced my sore arms to prop me up and glanced toward the sound.

“NO!” I cried.

Silas ran circles around Nick. He seemed so small compared to the colossal wolf. His jaws snapped, biting our attacker on the knee, the tail, the neck. He was noticeably limping, and a large patch of his rear end glistened. Yet still he persisted, nipping at Nick with every opportunity he found. It seemed like the wolf had slowed down. His defenses – a slash of the claws, a snap of his jaws – hit nothing but air.

I knew Nick
wasn’t
slowing down, though. He was simply measuring Silas’s movements, looking for his opportunity to strike. Silas, driven by a primal need to protect his companion, wasn’t much for strategy. His rotations were predictable, following a set pattern. Before I could yell out Nick surged ahead. His teeth grabbed Silas by the hind leg, and with one massive jerk he flung Silas into the air, like a killer whale does to a seal. I heard the crunch that followed once he hit the ground.

Nick didn’t hesitate, storming after my boy and biting down on his head. Silas let loose with a frenzied stream of yelps and whines. Blood oozed down his neck, both his own and that from Nick’s ruined ear. The massive wolf stood up. Silas’s legs, though still kicking, seemed to lose steam.

I panicked. My eyes darted around, searching for something,
anything
, to use as a weapon. I spotted the knife, lying just out of my reach, and made a dash for it. No one stopped me when I picked it up. There was nothing to hinder my progress when I spun around and launched myself at the beast that crushed my precious boy’s head in its mouth. And not a force in the universe could prevent me from plunging the knife deep into Nick’s muscular, fur-covered back.

Silas dropped limp to the ground when Nick reared up on his hind legs. I was thrown to the side, landing on my bad hip with a thud. The knife still jutted from the spot I’d stuck it in, glimmering in the sunlight each time Nick spun around in an attempt to get it out. Luckily, his gyrations were taking him away from me. For the fourth time in five minutes I struggled to my feet and ran for my wounded boy.

Silas was a mess. He’d gotten himself up on all fours, but his hind legs quivered. The dirt below him was covered with red, his face a mess of puncture wounds, and I saw a crimson gash leaking white fluid where his left eye should have been. I wrapped my arms around him and he nuzzled into my chest, letting out a whimper when his wounded face rubbed against me. I felt his blood saturate my coveralls, but didn’t care. My boy was hurt. For all I knew, he could’ve been dying.

A chorus of wails and screeches broke us apart. I glanced about, terrified, thinking that Nick was charging again to finish the job he’d started. But that wasn’t what was going on, at all. In fact, what I
did
see was worse than that.

From the carcass of the buried VW bus emerged a crowd of ten people. Their hair was long, their bodies a mess of scars and tattoos. Tattered remnants of everyday clothing hung off them. They peered in the direction of the
Crystal
Mountain
. I followed their gaze, only to see Big Guy running toward us, flanked by a platoon of his underlings. I swallowed hard and again backed up. This time Silas didn’t fight me, following my lead on trembling legs, his breathing raspy and strained.

Big Guy dashed not for us, but in the direction of the still-flailing Nick. The Mercedes hood ornament hanging from his lip bounced from side to side as he ran. When he was close enough he leapt high in the air and landed square on Nick’s back. One of his arms disappeared beneath the wolf’s chin, the other grabbed the knife embedded in his back by the hilt and tore it out. With one violent motion he forced Nick’s head back and slashed the knife behind him, slicing through a good portion of muscle on the huge beast’s thigh. Nick’s hind legs gave out and he crumpled. Big Guy lay atop him, pressing his weight on the struggling creature until Nick finally stilled.

The other
Tao-Kin
scurried up to the scene. One male took a thick rope and tried to loop it around Nick’s head. He lost a finger in the process due to Nick’s desperately snapping jaws, but his friends were there to assist him a moment later. Soon the wolf was bound and muzzled. Big Guy’s muscles relaxed. He slid off the beast and stood towering over the scene, hand on hips. I stared on, a mixture of gratefulness and terror paralyzing my legs.

Very slowly, Big Guy turned to us. He glowered first at me, then at Silas. His colossal hand rose up and he pointed a damning finger at us. He then flicked the hood ornament, which created the
tink
of a wind chime, and turned his back. He and his kin tied Nick’s legs together and began to drag him away by the rope fastened around his neck.

For a few desperate moments my brain cried out to the poor creature. I heard Nick’s muffled cries of terror and felt for him, for what was going to happen
to him. He didn’t deserve to be strung up like the wolf-girl, to be berated and taunted and then finally murdered in the most horrible of ways. Then I thought of Bridget Cormier, of her bruised and violated body, and decided to push those feelings of pity from my mind.

I knelt before Silas, who rocked and groaned as if lost in a dream. I winced when I saw the remains of his beautiful left eye. “Can you do this, boy?” I asked. “Can you run with me?”

He replied with a pathetic, stifled woof. It amazed me that even though he had to be in a great deal of pain, his tongue still lolled out and his good eye still held a glimmer of the adoration he always displayed. He nudged my knee and then looked behind me, where the marauders were still in the process of dragging Nick away. He yipped.

I nodded. “I know,” I said. “He’s going to get what’s coming to him.”

He yipped again, this time sounding stronger and impatient.

“What is it?” I asked.

Silas gestured with his head, scattering droplets of blood into the air. I wiped away the beads that fell on my cheek and stood up. I didn’t know what he wanted. “What’s wrong?” I said. Silas grunted, dropped his head, and walked away.

I watched as he hobbled across the dirt and came to a stop at the red stain where Nick had been overtaken. I went to him and looked down. There, in the middle of a lake of blood the parched desert floor greedily absorbed, was the
Cragton
Disk. The glossy silver construction shimmered, vibrating the very air around it. I reached down and picked it up, my fingers tingling when they wrapped around it. I removed the rope and shoved the disk in my pocket, alongside the key Ben had given me. I sighed and my heart rate slowed.

“I think we should leave now,” I said.

Silas gave me another of those drained yelps, and together we shambled into the blinding sunrise.

60

When we crossed from the
Deadlands
into the blowing fields of rough grasses and dying trees, we paused. The sun was high in the sky, baking us with its heat, and Silas looked much the worse for wear. He’d started to sway while he jogged and seemed ready to collapse. He’d lost so much blood I was worried he wouldn’t make it.

I took our remaining bottle of water from the rucksack, along with a stale slice of bread and the last of the magic pain pills Ben had given me. Pushing the pills into the hard dough, I rolled it into a ball and fed it to Silas, who gulped it down in a single bite. I then offered him the bottle. For a moment he lifted his front legs as if to grab it, thought better of it, and sat down and panted instead. A cramp of sorrow came over me when he made that motion, but I did my best to quash it.

He lapped up the water as I poured it, and we were off again. My chest, legs, hip, and mouth were sore, and the puncture wounds in my neck stung, but in no way did I regret giving Silas those final few pills. He was in much worse shape than I, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to go on without him.

This time the going was much slower. The bottoms of my feet barked at me, especially the one I’d hurt a couple days before, and the wounds in my chest throbbed. My energy level plummeted and I could only move at a stagger. Silas, however, seemed to gain some much-needed pep. He stopped limping and his tail wagged as he moved on ahead of me, acting the guide, as usual. I did my best to keep up, every so often casting a glance over my shoulder at the hazy lands we’d just left. Though they’d left in a hurry, I remembered Big Guy’s ominous gesture and feared he and his posse would be coming back for us.

The day dragged on. The massive red sun crawled across the sky. Silas kept his frantic pace, dashing ahead, retreating to gather me, and then dashing ahead once more. It made me so happy that he seemed to have recovered from his injuries, but every time he came within view and I saw that seeping void on the left side of his face I knew it was only temporary. I had to restrain the urge to sit and rest so we could get where we needed to be before he ran out of steam.

Time seemed to slow with each beat of my heart until a wondrous sight came across my vision – a horizon line littered with closely-packed trees. I grinned, breathed a sigh of relief, and urged my feet to move faster. Silas ran ahead, disappearing behind the impenetrable wall of trunks before reemerging with vines draped over his back. By the time the grasslands transformed into the lush underbrush of the oncoming forest, I was moving at a brisk jog and virtually singing with happiness.