Chapter 9 – Darkness

The hair on the back of Syl’s neck stood on end as those words rippled through the crowd. Enna, at last, broke through the circle and immediately crouched beside Galli to examine the man’s injuries.

“Wait,” he gasped. “It… followed… me… back. Running… the whole… way…”

“Hunters!” Vacksin roared, and the crowd fell back. “Arm yourselves!”

Syl and Dena still had their weapons strapped to their backs and their bows came out in a smooth motion.

“I want lookouts around the village,” Velena said to Vacksin, who passed the orders on.

“We’ll watch from up here,” Syl called down, holding up her bow. The muscles in Vacksin’s neck bulged, but he reluctantly nodded.

“What are we looking for? It’s pitch black out there,” Dena said, an arrow already nocked.

Dena was right. Even the silhouette of the trees in the moonlight was barely visible. The abundance of torches in the village ruined her night-sight.

And yet… and yet one particular area of darkness drew her eyes.

Even though she couldn’t see anything, her gut told her there was something straight ahead of her. Waiting. Watching.

Watching her.

“Do you see it?” Syl asked Dena in a whisper.

“What did I just say?” Dena asked back, her voice lowered to a whisper at Syl’s tone. “I can’t see a thing. Wait… what do you mean ‘it’?”

“Right there, fifty feet in,” Syl explained. She squinted at the darkness, but her eyes were useless.

Nothing moved out there. There wasn’t even a breeze.

She focused on that spot as if the darkness would part simply through force of will.

It didn’t.

But it did focus back on her. And with it came a malice so strong she could almost taste it on the air. It rolled over her tongue and stuck in her throat like it had a mind of its own. As she fought to keep from retching, whispers on the non-existent breeze skittered into her ears.

Hate.

Burn.

Destroy.

“Did you hear that?” Syl asked. Did she really hear that? Was it her imagination?

“Hear what?” Dena asked nervously. “What’s going on Syl?”

“It wants us all dead,” Syl said. Imagination or not, she had to put her feelings into words. “It’s not hunting us for food. It’s hunting us… just to kill us.”

“What are you talking about?” Dena asked, concern in her voice. Not concern about the thing out there in the darkness. Concern for Syl.

Syl was about to try to explain it, but a hint of movement silenced her. She’d definitely seen something that time. She took a tentative step forward on the roof. She stopped cold when her gaze met the hate-filled eyes of the Lake-Wolf, practically glowing in the darkness. How could the others not see them? Why weren’t arrows raining down on the beast?

Her hands trembled under the intensity of that gaze. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. The hunter had found its next prey.

Her.

“I… I don’t know what’s going on, Syl. But if you know where it is,” Dena said, pulling her bowstring taut, “I think you should shoot it.”

The sound of Dena’s voice snapped Syl out of the spiralling terror freezing her. Opting to stop thinking about what she was feeling, Syl forced her body to act. The memory of the pounding drums filled her mind while the strength of the Ka-Sho filled her arms.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

She dropped into the ready form for En-Da as the drums played. With the first beat, she drew back her bowstring. The second beat released the arrow, and a third beat had another arrow nocked and ready to go as Syl changed the angle for the next shot.

Dena’s arrows trailed after Syl’s less than a second later, her eyes focused only on the angle of Syl’s bow. Dena didn’t know what they were shooting at, but that didn’t stop her from following Syl’s lead. Six arrows pierced the night with uncanny precision before another hunter noticed the commotion.

Despite that accuracy, none of their arrows scored a hit on the Lake-Wolf. It streaked unseen through the woods, moving unbelievably fast, with each arrow was always a heartbeat behind it, the feeling of hate the only way Syl could track it.

By the time Syl’s fifth arrow was away, it was out of range, and she relaxed her grip on her bow.

“Did we get it?” Dena asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Syl answered.

“How were you even able to track it? I just followed you… but I have no idea what I was shooting at.”

“I…” Syl started, but didn’t get to finish as Vacksin clambered onto the roof.

“What were you shooting at? Did you hit it?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Syl answered both questions at once, and Vacksin didn’t like that.

Surprisingly, the man kept his comments to himself. “You four,” he shouted down to four hunters who ran over. “Grab torches, we’re heading out to check on what our little dancer was shooting at.

“You’re going to show us where it was. And this better not be another of your games,” he said quietly so only the two girls could hear his words.

Syl and Dena waited for him to climb down before Syl started to move.

“Don’t mind him. I believe you,” Dena added.

Syl shook her head. But do I even believe myself? She went over the hate and bloodlust she’d felt coming from the woods, and the more she did, the more she had to wonder if it wasn’t all just her imagination. How could she hear or feel what a Lake-Wolf was thinking? And, was a Lake-Wolf even capable of that kind of thought?

The questions bounced around her head as she climbed down from the house and met the group of hunters. One of them handed her a torch and offered a slight nod. At least they weren’t all following Vacksin’s lead when it came to opinions of her.

“You okay?” Reylo asked as he approached with his bow.

“Yeah, thanks for asking,” she said.

“Enough chatting,” Vacksin bellowed. He had a torch in one hand, and his one-bladed Sho-Val in the other. “Let’s go.”

He wasn’t as inspiring as Lorac was, but he was the next in line for the role of lead hunter. If what Galli said was true, the whole village would have to get used to him barking orders.

Syl didn’t wait for Vacksin. She jogged out to where she thought she’d seen the Lake-Wolf. It was disorienting in the darkness, but by using the house she’d been standing on as reference, she found her first arrow firmly lodged in the side of a tree, with Dena’s only a foot below it.

“You missed,” Vacksin pointed out.

“Two more arrows over here,” one of the other hunters said, and gestured to another tree.

“And here,” said a second hunter.

The trail of arrows followed exactly where Syl and Dena shot at the Lake-Wolf. They were in the right spot.

“Any tracks?” Vacksin asked.

The hunters with the torches crouched to inspect the ground while the others kept their bows drawn.

“Anything?” Vacksin asked when he didn’t get a reply as quickly as he would have liked.

“Nothing over here,” the hunter who’d found the second set of arrows said quietly. He gave Syl an apologetic look, and she nodded her understanding and her thanks. He was just telling it like it was.

“More arrows over here,” a female hunter’s voice called from a bit further off. “No tracks, but there are some wet leaves…”

“What do wet leaves matter?” Vacksin shouted. “We’re looking for tracks! Something we can follow this beast with. Or,” he turned to Syl, “at least prove it was here.”

“I know what the wet leaves mean,” Kule said seriously beside Syl.

Every hunter nearby looked at him. As the silence stretched on, Vacksin finally asked the question. “And what would that be?”

“Syl scared the piss out of the Lake-Wolf,” Kule said with confidence. “Happens to Rogar all the time.”

“Hey!” Rogar said, again ignored, as Vacksin stormed up to Kule and grabbed him by the tunic.

The muscles in Vacksin’s arm bulged as he lifted the younger—and smaller—man to his tiptoes. “Do you think this is a joke?” he yelled in Kule’s face. Spittle flew from his lips and a vein on his forehead throbbed to the point of bursting.

For his part, Kule looked surprisingly calm. “Syl said she saw it. Which means it was here. It’s not here now, so it ran away. It ran away because it was scared.” The explanation seemed perfectly logical in Kule’s eyes.

“Vack,” one of the hunters from his party broke in. “Put the kid down. The Lake-Wolf is the enemy here.”

Kule’s eyes didn’t leave Vacksin’s until the older man finally gave him one last scowl and unceremoniously dropped him. Without another word, Vacksin turned and stormed toward the hunter with the wet leaves.

“Thought I was going to going to be the one pissing myself there,” Kule admitted when Vacksin and his hunting party were out of earshot.

“Thanks for sticking up for me, Kule,” Syl said, and gave him a quick hug.

“I… just… yeah, you know,” Kule stammered, at a loss for words.

“Dena, are these your arrows?” Edar asked and pointed to each of the arrows less than a foot below Syl’s.

“Yeah,” she answered.

“So you saw it too?”

Dena looked to Syl before she answered. “No, I just followed Syl’s lead, like we practiced.”

Leeze gave a soft whistle. “That’s amazing. You didn’t even know what she was shooting at, and you were this accurate?”

“Not like it helped,” Dena shrugged. “Doesn’t look like we even grazed the Lake-Wolf.”

“If one was even here,” Edar said so quietly that only Syl heard him. When she gave him a questioning look, he just shook his head and looked through the canopy to the clear sky high above them.