Nevermor (20 page)

Whisper flew
dangerously close to Wren’s ear and darted up toward Rifter to get his
attention.  He turned to go, and then they were all dashing out into the woods,
and it wasn’t long before Wren was left alone in the silent tunnel, forgotten.

1

Who would have
thought that one girl would make such a difference?
  Rifter
wondered this to himself as he led the others away from the refuge.

When he’d seen Wren the first time, he hadn’t known what to think
about her.  No girl had ever found this place.  He’d always guessed it was
because the idea of a world like this didn’t appeal to a girl.  Wren was
different – or desperate.  She said she wanted this dream.  How could he deny
her that?

It was true that he’d spoken to the Pack about her after the first
time.  Some of them had been intrigued at the idea of bringing a girl in, but
after it had all been hashed out, they’d decided that it was a bad idea.  A
girl couldn’t appreciate this place as they did.  As Nix had said from the
beginning, a girl would be a burden.

Rifter had been willing to forget about her – even if his mind
didn’t seem to allow him that – but the very next night, she was there on the
beach again.  He couldn’t believe that it was coincidental.  He had to take her
in.

Even though it
had been proven that she couldn’t fight – that she was practically helpless as
far as defending herself – he didn’t want to give up on her.  He knew there was
something about her that was important.  The sea had approved her for some
reason.  Wren had pierced the veil to get here and he knew she was meant for
something.

He just didn’t
know what.

He was sure that
the others had changed their minds once they had met her, but Nix hadn’t seen
his side of things.  Rifter didn’t like it when they were discontented,
especially in his direction, and now he hoped a hunt would distract their
minds.  This was not the first time he had gone against them, but he always
knew how to win them back.

Rifter put Wren
behind him as if she had never been there to begin with – as if she was not a
subject of controversy between them.  He wasn’t willing to bear any difficulty
that her presence might have brought on.  In fact, the boys all seemed willing
to forget her for the hunt, and even Nix had put the matter aside, looking as
pleased for their excursion as the rest of them were, following Rifter with his
whole self.

This was how
Rifter liked it.  Life was good when they were unified.

There were not
many days that the boys didn’t hunt – whether for food, sport or necessity.  It
was common that they went to the beach at night to ward off the nightmares that
washed in, but other times, they sought out some of the larger beasts that had
managed to get past them on a previous occasion, or had come up on a night when
they hadn’t been on guard.  Whatever the case or the reason, hunting ranked
very high on their list of favorite things to do, and they never wasted much
time doing things they didn’t like.

Rifter led them
through the trees.  He was the leader of the Pack – the strongest among them. 
When he was with them, they all felt a bit cockier, and that showed even in the
way they walked.  When they moved across the land together, they didn’t feel
any need to hide.  They stepped boldly, believing that anything that opposed them
would be struck down.  They were young and strong and
unstoppable. 
They
would never be bogged down by the feebleness of age – would never lose sight of
their goal.

They would fight
hard to keep their freedom.  They would live forever.

“What are we
going to kill today, Rifter?” Finn asked with a sly smile, but it was exactly
what they all had wanted to know.

“Tell me it’s
not just a couple of rabbits for the witch,” Nix said, referring to Wren.  Even
though she was a forbidden subject for now, Rifter smirked.

“You called me
out earlier for being late, and you’re right; I did get sidetracked.  I was
distracted by a trail that led into the marsh.”

“Couldn’t kill
it alone then, aye?” Finn jeered.

“I thought it
might be good for you all to see it for yourselves,” Rifter returned.  “You’re
terribly out of practice, and Finn, you’re getting so damn
fat
.”

“Hey!”

“Must be a big
one,” Sly said.  He was grinning madly at the prospect.  “Tell me: is it more
reptilian than mammalian?”

“You’ll see when
we get there,” Rifter told him.  He enjoyed keeping them in the dark at times
when it came to hunting, and it wasn’t always because he didn’t know the
answers to what they asked.  He often liked to hold back what he knew just to
keep them on their toes.

“I’ll bet I get
the final blow,” Finn declared with confidence, just to stir the rest of them
up.

“Oh please,” Sly
mocked.

“Want to put a
wager on it?” Mech asked.

Finn laughed. 
“Yeah, yeah okay!  I’ll wager my Chimera head against your Lamia tail.  Plus, you
have my watch duty the next–”  He paused to think.  They all had trouble
keeping up with days.  Eventually, he gave up.  “Well, the next time I don’t
feel like it.”

The twins
whispered together over those terms.

“Fine,” Mach
said eventually, “but instead of the Chimera head, we want that ore you found
the other day,
and
we want you to take
two
watch duties.”

Finn rolled his
eyes.  “That sounds just like the two of you: always wanting something more. 
Well that was my final offer, you slugs.  Take it or leave it.”

The twins began
to protest and Rifter smiled a little, but he didn’t say anything to their
bickering.  He would let them go on like that for hours sometimes without a
word.  At others, he was easily annoyed and shut them down quickly, but this
was what he liked about them all.  They made things interesting – much better
than it had been when he was all alone here.  He had tried his best to forget
the specifics of that, but he knew he didn’t want to go back to it.

Whisper was
staying close to him, hovering slowly near his head.  Moving slothfully was a
great pain to her, but she was attentive to him in case he ordered her to do
something.  She didn’t go ahead of him – she knew he hated that when they were
hunting.  She kept herself quiet, and he liked to pretend she wasn’t there
unless he had need of her.  He was doing well with that so far, but when a
light drizzle of rain began, the fairy pulled up his hood in a quick motion, as
if he didn’t know better than to get out of the rain on his own.

“Thanks, Wisp. 
You want to be my mother now?” he said sourly, but he smiled because that
indication always made her angry.  As he’d suspected, his ears were filled with
cursing and other terrible things, but he only laughed.  “Would you shut up? 
We’re almost there.”

He could have
flown on ahead of them much faster than they could keep up, but Rifter knew the
importance of staying grounded at least some of the time.  Just because he
could fly did not mean it was always the best way.  Staying on the ground
usually offered him a better challenge.  There were times when he didn’t like
easy kills, so he kept himself rooted when he was with the others – though he
did often cheat by walking a finger’s width above the earth.

They walked over
the land until the trees changed – until the tall oaks and pines all but
disappeared beneath Spanish moss.  Even as their boots began to sink into the
soft ground, they moved on.  The stink of the sodden terrain surrounded them,
but they didn’t care.  All that was important were the signs they saw all
around them – the broken trees and sinkholes where water was standing.  They
had arrived on the trail that Rifter had spotted before.

“Something has
definitely come this way recently,” Sly said, and at that moment took up one of
the monster feet hanging at his belt and slid his hand into it like it was a
glove.  He had two – one was a scaly, red reptilian hand with black claws, and
the other was a furry paw much like a bear’s, but both had come from
nightmares.  It made his hand much larger and gave him long claws – trophies as
well as his weapons of choice.

Sly knelt down
toward the ground and examined one of the tracts in the soil.

“Trail’s cold
though,” he commented.

“Alright, where
is this thing?” Finn wanted to know.  “I’ve got a trophy to get.”  He walked on
a few steps ahead.

“Don’t be so
brash,” Nix warned.  “We don’t even know what it looks like.”

“It’s just one
more big, ugly bastard!” Mech said.

“Yeah, they all
look the same to me,” Mach agreed.

Whisper settled
on Rifter’s shoulder, folding her wings back.  Doing this helped her relax, and
when she had remained still for a bit, her light would go out so that she
couldn’t be seen.  She spoke to him quietly.

“
I smell it
,”
she said.  “
It’s close
.”

“Whisper says
it’s close,” he told them lowly, holding his sword.

“Where is it
then?” Mach asked, looking around, but all he saw was the marsh.

“Yeah, you
wouldn’t think something so big could hide that well.”  Finn was edging toward
a deep pit of water, testing the bank of mud.

“Be careful,
Finn,” Toss warned, but it sounded like pleading.

“Thanks, mum,
but I’m perfectly capable of—”  His words were cut off, transcending to a
helpless wail.  It happened quicker than any of them anticipated.

A fleshy tendril
shot out of the water and wrapped around Finn’s leg.  Toss was standing near
enough that he was able to grab Finn’s arm before the thing – whatever it was –
could pull him off into the water.  Rifter dashed forward and chopped down on
the tentacle, but it was thick and did not slice cleanly.  That was good
enough, however.  It abandoned the boy as prey and retreated.

“Whisper did say
it was close,” Nix observed, standing aside to observe the spectacle.

“She’s not
usually wrong,” Rifter agreed.

The creature
rose up from the swamp, its flesh slimy and lumpy.  At first glance it was like
a giant toad, slick and gray, but its wide mouth was full of small, sharp
teeth.  It seemed to smile at them.  Its amber eyes were like those of a
crocodile, sinister and evil, appraising the feast before it.

“Ahhh,” said Sly,
slipping on his other glove, “Amphibious!”

“What the
hell
?”
Finn groaned, standing with Toss’s help.  “These things just keep getting
weirder!”

“And it smells,”
Mach added.  Both twins had covered their noses and mouths.

“Stop whining,”
Rifter scolded them.  “This is prime nightmare hunting.  Are you with me, or do
you want to run back home and hide with the girl?  Are you
girls
?”

“Hell no!” the
twins declared at once.

The tongue shot
out again at lightning speed and the twins dove out of the way to avoid it. 
The beast turned a little, but it was not very fast.  Only the tongue was able
to strike with fatal accuracy.

Rifter assessed
it quickly.  “The tongue is important.  Hopefully, it only has one.  If that’s
so, one or two of us can keep it distracted while the others go to work on it. 
Who wants to be bait?”

“Well,
you
are the fastest,” Sly pointed out, slipping away so that they wouldn’t be such
an easy target as a cluster – and also so that he wouldn’t be tagged.

“He’s right. 
Good luck!” Nix said, backing off to choose the perfect weapon for this task.

Rifter laughed
at the way they left him there, as the rest hurried away as well, but he didn’t
hold them at fault for that.  There were consequences to being the best.

“It’s just you
and me, I guess,” he said to Whisper, knowing that this would please her.  She
didn’t like to deal with the other boys when she didn’t have to.  As far as she
was concerned, she owed no loyalty to them.

“
When you’re
ready
,” she told him, knowing what to do.

The beast was trying
to focus on the others as they spread out around it.  It made a few more
attempts to catch them with the tongue.  They leapt out of the way, but the
rapid shots made it nearly impossible for them to aim at it or otherwise get
near it at all.  As much as Rifter enjoyed seeing them fall in the mud, they
wouldn’t get anything done this way.  It was time for the diversion.

“Do it,” he
instructed Whisper.

He let himself
become weightless, lifting off the ground just an inch or two.  The fairy flew
around him in a swirl, zipping so fast that her trail of light seemed
continuous all around him, making him glow.  Just as he’d suspected, the
flashes of light drew the monster’s attention.  Nothing was quite as annoying
to a beast than the lightning-quick movements of a wisp, and Rifter often used
that as an advantage.

The nightmare
looked his way and forgot about the rest of them, just as he’d expected it to. 
He stared into the creature’s eyes, daring it.  If the thing had a soul, he
would have been seeking to melt it.