Unbound (13 page)

Nicole just looked lost, though she did suggest hunting the pigeons then keeping them in the freezer for a later meal.

Ranger thought she’d spent too long out in the mountains if she thought there was any point fussing around with feathers trying to eat pigeons when there was perfectly ready access to things like these delectable marrow bones, and bacon, or a nice side of beef, or chickens already plucked by the butcher and ready for roasting with some garlic and onion and breadcrumb stuffing.

After breakfast, he headed out into the yard and waited by the shriveled sticks of the dead tomato plants. Eventually, Michelle came out and joined him.

“What are you doing sitting out here?” she asked, leaning against the doorjamb with the shoulder that ended abruptly in no arm. “Come back inside. It’s freezing.”

Ranger looked pointedly up at the mountains, then back at Michelle. She looked too.

“Of course you weren’t here for a social visit. Figures.”

He whined and wagged his tail.

“It’d be like that, wouldn’t it? And of course it has to be me that goes with you and not your sister, never mind she’s spent the better part of nine years in the mountains with you already.
Fine
.” She huffed. “I’ll get my coat and put my boots on. Wait there.”

The wolf waited for her, watching a raven sitting on the garden fence. Wolves and ravens often worked together. Ravens gathered at kill sites, drawing wolves to the kill, and in turn the wolves opened the carcasses for them when their beaks and talons weren’t strong enough to tear through thick leathery hides.

Ranger didn’t recognize this particular raven, which had a rather distinctive deformity. Its right eye was milky blue, its skull misshapen, and it was missing a patch of little feathers on the right side of its face. Other feathers around the wound had grown back in a stark, snowy white. He wondered how it could fly properly if it was half-blind. Wouldn’t flying require better than normal depth perception?

The raven cawed and took flight with a clap of wings as Michelle stepped back out.

“Come on, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They hiked into the woods on the other side of town from the cemetery and the Old Hemlock Grove, heading down valley. The sky was clear and the sun was shining, although it was bitterly cold. Their breaths steamed, and frost glittered on the frozen grass and along the edges of fallen leaves. Puddles that had lingered after the recent rainfall were iced over completely. The trees were mostly bare now, just a single crunchy red-brown leaf clinging stubbornly to a naked branch left here and there.

“Weather forecast is for snowfall tonight,” Michelle said. “There’s a front coming in this afternoon. Wherever you’re taking me, we should try and be back before then. I don’t really feel like getting caught out in a blizzard.”

The wolf threw back his head to scent the air, and now that he was looking for it, he could smell the dusty scent of snow upwind. Claire had been right, then. Snow soon.

Ranger and Michelle wandered across gentle hills, passing through birches and maples and heading on up onto higher ground, where they encountered spruce and pine and fir.

The cold front from up north rolled in early, bringing with it frigid wind and ominous cloud just after lunch time. The mountains suddenly seemed dark and foreboding, the branches of the trees scraping together like old bones. Michelle shivered.

“Where are we going?” she asked Ranger, but she must’ve known by now. There was only one place they could’ve been going, having come this far, in this direction.

They came upon outcroppings of rock, lichens growing all over them. A long-dead bull moose, its bones picked clean and bleached white by exposure, one palmate antler twisted and broken off, lay in the scraggly grass beneath a fir tree.

Ranger’s skin felt too tight, prickled along his spine.

The Leshy rose like an enormous boulder from amongst the trees, taller and broader than any man. From a distance, it could’ve been mistaken for just another rock formation, for it was a mossy gray-green, furry hanging lichens clinging to its body like fur, with a twisting matted beard and hair. All Ranger could focus on, though, was the glowing yellow of its eyes, staring out like hot coals from beneath a heavy shadowed brow-ridge.

It smelled like clay and moss and the crystal clear mineral water that came bubbling up from a deep spring behind the Old Hemlock Grove, and the pus that leaked from old elk’s infected teeth.

“
Little wolf cubs approach the Leshy,
” it intoned in a voice like stones grinding together and trees groaning under the weight of the wind. “
What do the cubs want?
”

It was not quite a god, though it had probably been alive for thousands upon thousands of years, and it held sway over the forests in which it lived. It was not a demon either. Perhaps it was some form of very ancient nature spirit that had become attached to one shape, because it hadn’t changed in millennia, although it had moved from the forests in the heart of Europe westward across the sea. Maybe it was a member of the fair folk, twisted up by age.

It definitely wasn’t a troll. It was too big, too old, and too intelligent to be a troll.

No one alive today really knew what it was anymore.

“
The wolves’ souls are black as tar,
” it said. “
These wolves are among the last of the cursed ones. They tried to kill a god!
”

If it were amused or angered by their sin, it did not show it.

Michelle shot a terrified glance at Ranger as the Leshy took a slow, ponderous step towards them. Ranger knew that the Leshy was actually very, very fast. It could move as quickly and quietly as any bear, covering great distances at enormous speeds. Ranger tried very hard not to notice the claws on its hand-paws, longer and more lethal than any bear’s, and kept his eyes firmly on its eyes.

“
What do they want?
” the Leshy repeated.

Michelle cast another frantic glance in Ranger’s direction.

“We, uh, we wanted to talk to you,” she stammered uncertainly, before adding: “Please.”

“
The wolves want to talk to the Leshy. What could the Leshy possibly tell the wolves
?”

She stared at Ranger, who flicked an ear in her direction, and then she swallowed and took a deep breath. “People are dying,” she said, looking pained.

“
All things must die. Not even souls are eternal,
” the Leshy said, and it sounded almost bored.

Michelle’s face was screwed up, her fingers clenching and unclenching, and she kept looking between Ranger and the mountainous spirit creature. “No, they’re being killed. Something really bad is killing them. I – we – think they’re being sacrificed.” Ranger twitched his tail once to let her know that she was doing perfectly, she was asking the right questions.

“
Ah.
” The Leshy made a drawn out noise, an exhalation that sounded like an avalanche of pebbles skittering down a scree slope. “
Those deaths.
”

“Do you know anything that could help us?” she asked.

The Leshy made a grating noise. Ranger’s heart lurched up into his throat and his muscled tensed, until he realized that it wasn’t growling at them, it was laughing.

“
The little wolf cubs ask for help,
” it said. “
Should the Leshy help? What does the Leshy get if he helps?
”

“We’ll plant a tree in your honor,” Michelle said immediately. “It’ll be an oak.” That was what they’d always been told to offer the Leshy, should they encounter it at any point while they were roaming in the mountains outside of the town. It was an odd creature, not like normal spirits or the fair folk that could be appeased with small offerings of milk or bread or honey left on the doorstep overnight, or a sacrificial cow. The spread and continuation of its forest, though – that could be bartered for.

“
The Leshy will give the wolf cubs the acorn,
” it said, and Ranger heard Michelle sigh in audible relief. “
The killer the wolves are seeking consorts with demons of bones and shadows. They will free the White Wolf of the Woods and kill Her for Her souls. This, the Leshy knows. The Leshy does not know why the Horned God is in the town, or why His souls wander at night. The Horned God is supposed to be bound down.
”

The Leshy scratched its side, dislodging a shower of debris from beneath its lichens, before bending down to pick something up off the forest floor. It shambled toward them, lurching from side to side, one clawed paw-hand extended in front of it, and Ranger skittered backwards. Michelle froze where she stood, her face drained of color, beads of sweat standing out on her brow.

She smelled like acrid terror.

The Leshy made an impatient sound, jerking the paw-hand it was holding out in front of it. Michelle flinched, then seemed to understand, because she held out her hand palm-up, her pale fingers trembling. The Leshy dropped something into her palm.

Reverently, she brought the thing in her palm up to her face to look at it, then she unzipped her jacket pocket and slipped it inside.

“Thank you,” she stammered. “I’ll plant it come spring.”

“
Good,
” the Leshy rumbled.

She turned to peer over her shoulder at Ranger, who padded closer again, willing his hackles to go down.

“Uh,” she started, then closed her mouth with a click and took a deep breath in through her nose before she tried again. “You don’t know the killer’s name, do you?”

The Leshy growled – and it was definitely a growl this time, there was no mistaking the sound it made, it was like an approaching earthquake. “
What are fleeting mortal name-sounds to the Leshy
?” it snarled, and Ranger caught a flash of yellow, tombstone-like teeth from beneath its moss-beard. It seemed to swell as it drew its shoulders back and lifted its head, yellow ember-eyes burning.

“Sorry!” Michelle barked, stumbling backwards. “I’m so sorry, I should’ve known. I didn’t mean any offense.”

“
The black-souled wolf cub should know,
” it said, imperiously. “
The Leshy accepts the wolf cub’s apology, and suggests the wolf cubs be wary of the old ones.
”

Michelle frowned, looking puzzled, but she didn’t ask any more questions. Instead, she inclined her head in a bow. “Thank you for your assistance,” she said, humbly.

“
The wolf cubs should leave,
” the Leshy said. “
The Leshy grows tired of their presence.
”

Ranger turned on a paw and started trotting away from the Leshy’s place. A moment later, he heard Michelle’s boots crunching on the leaves behind him and knew she was following him. They walk-jogged in silence for half an hour, until they crossed a narrow creek and the first few snowflakes began to drift down around them to melt on the grass, and Michelle let out a long, shaky breath.

“I can’t believe you made me do that,” she said. “Why didn’t you take Nicole, or Eli?”

Ranger dropped back to walk beside her, nuzzling at her jacket pocket.

“He gave me an acorn. I guess I’ve got to plant it in the Old Hemlock Grove in spring.” She sobbed, once, but no tears tracked down her cheeks to drip off her chin. It must’ve been a fright thing, rather than actual sadness. “I can’t believe we’re even
alive
. Oh my god, why, Ranger?”

On Friday morning, Detective Bower let Ranger out the back door shortly after breakfast. The wolf padded around the yard, marking icy trees and shrubs idly. There were six or seven inches of snow on the ground which had settled overnight and more was sifting down from the leaden gray sky. School had been cancelled, according to Sacheverell, who spent breakfast time on his phone with Eli, discussing what video games Eli should bring with him when he came over later.

A pair of vixens appeared at the edge of the woods at the back of the property and came scampering and play-fighting across the snowy meadow behind the yard, gekkering noisily. They were still young, had the large paws and big ears and long slender legs of foxes that were neither kits nor yet adults, but in the intermediary phase somewhere in between.

One of the foxes was red-brown, like a streak of old blood on the snow, with a bushy black tail with a white tip. The other fox, slightly smaller, was creamy colored, with a line of orange-gold fur down the center of her back, dark ears, dark tearstains on her face, and a necklace of woven holly branches and berries around her neck.

Ranger lay down in the snow to watch them play, feeling momentarily content.

The pale fox wearing the holly rolled onto her back with a shriek, baring tiny, sharp white teeth, and the red fox pounced on her with a noisy chatter.

The musky smell of fox came to him as the foxes came closer, along with the flowers-ozone-ashes scent of fairy magic – wild magic – which wasn’t old or new but had always been and always would be. The red vixen broke away from the pale fox and bounded over to him, wagging her tail in a doglike manner, her ears slicked back and her lips pulled back in the facsimile of a grin.

He leant forward to touch noses with her, sniffing, then rubbed his cheek against her, almost knocking her off her feet. She gekkered at him, then pounced on his paws and leapt away, trying to encourage him to play.

The other fox, the pale fox with the holly, the one that smelled like wild magic – the fairy fox – circled around him to jump on his tail. He twitched it away from her, and she sneezed, then scampered up his back, her little claws digging into his fur.

He snapped at her, baring his teeth playfully, and she dodged away from him, chittering.

The back door of Granny Florence’s house opened and Sachie stepped out onto the porch, wearing a heavy jacket with jeans and sneakers, his nose pink and cheeks pale like the snow.

“Ranger!” he called across the yard. “Eli’s coming over now. Are you gonna come back in, or are you gonna continue whatever this weird woodland scene is that’s going on out here?”

The fairy fox and the red vixen froze in the snow and stared at Sachie, ears flickering backwards and forwards. A second later, they skittered away into the forest again. Ranger got to his feet, shook the snow from his coat, and wandered up the porch steps and inside, where he flopped down in front of the warm embers in the grate.

After a minute, Eli came in, rubbing his hands together and stamping his feet, and Sachie locked the door behind him. He smelled like wood smoke and coffee and wet dog.

“I brought the latest
Gryphon Epoch
game,” Eli said cheerfully, brandishing a somewhat battered game case.

“Great,” Sachie said. “I’ll go grab my laptop and we can hook it up to the TV. It shouldn’t take too long to install, should it?”

“Nah, ten minutes maybe,” Eli replied, then paused. “As long as your computer isn’t really terrible or something.”

“I just got it before we left Boston, and it’s got great specs. It’d better be okay.”

Ranger hauled himself to his feet and wandered upstairs after they got the game started. It was too loud, the shouting of the animated dragons and men and griffins wearing on his ears. He hopped onto Sachie’s bed, circled once, and lay down with a sigh to enjoy the peace and quiet and watch the snow falling outside the window.

The wolf considered the words of the Leshy. Be wary of the old ones. He wondered what the forest spirit had meant by that. The Council of Elders? The fair folk? The trees themselves? Or the ancient demons, the ones that had been around since the dawning of the world, that had existed as long as the gods themselves?