Unbound (19 page)

“Okay,” Sachie said, too placidly, in a way that made Ranger wonder if the boy thought he was dreaming.

The red vixen squirmed from between the rusty wolf’s feet and ran to Lori, where she wound around the Lori’s feet, gekkering. A ghostly doe with a single spiraling horn stepped out of the trees and into the clearing, floating across the grass on silent hoofs, and a dozen old men and women were milling around outside the circle, murmuring softly between them, their faces wan in the moonlight, their clothes black as pitch and embroidered with wolves in silver thread.

Ranger could see how it might all seem like a surreal dream.

He wondered if Sachie could see the little tree sprites lingering in the branches around the edges of the clearing, or Humphrey the boggart who was sitting beneath the boughs of a spruce on the other side of the circle beside a gnarled goblin with bat-like ears, or the even tinier sylphs fluttering above everyone’s heads, which looked a lot like moths to anyone who didn’t know better.

Runa Merrill came out of the forest. Her feet were bare, and she was wearing a white gossamer gown. In her left hand she carried a brass lantern with an orange light inside that flickered and danced like a flame, but which did not smell like smoke or oil. In her right hand, she carried Absolon Devereaux’s skull, yellowed with age, etched with runes that had been painted over with mulberry juice in ceremony a thousand times.

Absolon Devereaux had died not as a man but as a wolf, and he’d been massive. The canine teeth of his skull were nearly two inches long, and still gleamed dimly in the fairy light. There was a painting of him at the old Devereaux family home that Ranger had marveled at when he was younger, one where Absolon was locked in mortal combat with a possessed grizzly bear. In the painting, he was a great, hulking gray wolf, bigger than the bear was, eyes glowing with hellish fire.

Ranger sat down in the dew-damp grass, and Sachie sat beside him with little prompting from Lori.

Runa Merrill glanced around all of the animals assembled within her circle, and then at the humans gathered around at the edges of the clearing, before she turned her focus to Sacheverell and finally Ranger.

“It’s been many years since we last saw you at one of these meetings, my darling wolf,” she said gently. “It’s good to see you, though I note that you have brought with you an uninvited guest.” She looked at Sachie again, and the boy seemed to shrink down into the grass under the weight of everyone’s gazes.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I just – I wanted to see what the lights were.” He took a deep breath, and said more strongly: “And no one
stopped
me. If I’m not supposed to be here, anyone could’ve turned me away along the way. However we got here.”

“The fault lies not with you, child,” Runa said. “But with Ranger, who brought you to this place.”

“Will he get in trouble?” Sachie asked.

Runa smiled serenely. “No one can hold that wolf accountable, except perhaps his sisters. Do not worry for him.”

“Okay. Okay, good. Because he
shouldn’t
. It was all me.” Sachie reached out to run his fingers through the wolf’s ruff. Ranger shifted so his side was pressed against the boy to lend him warmth.

Runa stepped back. “Is everyone here?” she asked the clearing at large, before she turned her face skywards. “The hour of the witch is nigh. There is much we must discuss this night, while everyone is present to hear and contribute.” She looked at Sachie again. “You are woefully uneducated, my dearest, though not by your own doing. Be that as it may, you will remain silent this night. Sit on your hands and keep your mouth shut as you observe our rituals. If you must, you may ask questions of one of the Council members when the hour is over.”

Sachie nodded vehemently.

A cloud passed in front of the moon, and Runa said: “It is time. Let us begin. To start: the wards around the Old Hemlock Tree are failing. I cannot repair them indefinitely, not even calling upon the Devereaux ancestor spirits to aid me. The curses are too powerful and many. In the past week alone I have taken down a curse of thirteen coyote teeth, another of the foot of a rabbit dipped in bear’s blood, two-hundred-and-fifty-six charcoal beads on dead grass string woven with four strands, and the feathers of a horned owl, all placed around the cemetery. There may be more in the town itself. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been looking anywhere but around the Hawthorn Grove.”

“Found a dead harrier in my garden eight days ago,” Doctor Payne called from the trees beyond the fairy ring. “Heart was gone. Nothing else. Seemed a long time dead, but the animals hadn’t touched it. Not even the insects.”

Runa Merrill made a twisting motion in front of her sternum then touched her thumb to her forehead. The rustling of fabric out between the trees suggested that others had done the same.

“I found a coyote skull painted with a sigil for bad luck between this full moon and the last one,” Abigail Copeland said. “It was left on our front stairs. I think it was meant for my son. Not to mention the deer.”

The pale wolf with the missing foreleg got to her feet and barked, once.

“
Leshy said the killer is working with demons of bone and shadow,
” she said. “
Has anyone noticed demon-sign? I haven’t seen any, but that doesn’t mean it is not there.
”

Sachie elbowed Lori urgently. “That wolf is talking!” he whispered.

“Of course she’s talking,” Lori hissed back at him. “You’re in the middle of a fairy ring, during the witching hour, on a full moon. What did you
expect
? Now, shush. I’m listening.”

“—Thought I smelt sulfur the other day,” Claire Bower was saying. “Demons. Yes, that would make sense. What else did the Leshy tell you?”

Suddenly, the enormous black wolf with the bitten-off tail stirred and got to his feet with a low grumble. “
Enough nonsense,
” he growled. “
You’ve all known what should be done for weeks now, haven’t you?
”

“Who’s that?” Sachie asked Lori.

“For goodness sake,” Lori snapped at him. “My mother told you to sit down and shut up. Can you not behave?”

Sachie leant away from her. “Well, sorry. But who is that monster?”

“Dale,” she said, her eyes fixed on the huge black wolf.

“You mean Dale Devereaux, Dad’s cousin? So there
are
werewolves. Hey, Ranger, we’re in a fairy ring. Can
you
say anything? Oh my god, I’ve wanted you to talk back to me forever, that’d be so cool!” Sachie whispered, fervently.

Ranger whined and slicked back his ears.

“He can’t,” Lori told Sacheverell. “Ranger’s cursed.”

“Oh. Well, sorry boy. It was a nice dream, though.”

“
The skill of hunting and killing demons has been sorely neglected,
” Dale growled. “
Did my mother pass her knowledge on to anyone before she died? Are there any demon hunters left on the Eastern Seaboard at all
?”

No one within the fairy circle or without it spoke up, and Dale made a hacking, choking noise that Ranger realized after a moment was a twisted imitation of human laughter coming out a wolf’s throat.

“
Eight good men and women and children of this town are dead,
” Dale said. “
Two full moon phases have passed since the beginning of this threat, and yet you sit on your hands and do nothing when the answer is right in front of your noses!
”

The animals around Dale started to slink away from him, first the three-legged wolf and her dark sister, and then the ghostly doe with the single spiraling horn on her forehead. The skinny wolf the color of the snow disappeared into the woods. The sylphs flew higher, out of reach, and a couple of the sprites edged back along the boughs of the trees into the darkness.

“Dale,” Runa said. “You cannot—”

The enormous black wolf with the bitten-off tail spoke over her.  “
Before the ninth death, the final sacrifice, before the Winter Solstice, when the killer’s power will be most potent and the demons at their strongest and we cannot stop them, we must unbind one of the gods.
” Beside Sachie, Lori froze, and Ranger felt a sort of swooping dread that started in his belly and crawled up into his throat where it made breathing difficult. There was no way this could end well.

“
Lupa is a benevolent goddess,
” Dale said, lips pulled back over huge yellowing teeth. His top left canine tooth was broken and the stump had gone blackish-brown. “
She would aid us, if we asked it of Her. We are Her people.
”

“You wolves are Her people!” one of the men within the trees called. “Not us.”

“Sachie,” Lori murmured.

Sachie started, as if broken from a trance. Ranger wondered what he’d been thinking about as he stared at Dale. “Yeah?”

“Leave as quietly as you can. Here, take my lantern. Follow the path back to your house, lock your doors and windows, and wake your father. Whatever you do, don’t step outside again until after the hour of the wolf.” She unfastened the rope of grass from around her neck and took the lantern from it, handing the light to him. “Go, now.”

“But—” Sachie began.

“Now, Sachie. This is going to get hairy, and you can’t be here for this. Not as an outsider.”

Sachie stared at her for a moment longer, then nodded and started crawling for the ring of mushrooms, and beyond that the path through the woods back to Tamarack. Ranger slunk after him, ears still pricked to listen to Dale’s ranting.

“
You don’t want precious Lupa to abandon the town?
” Dale asked, a mocking whine in his voice. “
There is another god here in Tamarack, one less crucial to your survival. We all know that Cern is here. Which idiot thought it was a good idea to bring his host vessel back here in such a time of strife, when it would be so much easier to kill a mere child, free to wander as he wishes, than it would to break through the layers of wards surrounding the Old Hemlock Tree?
”

“Dale,” Runa said, firmly. “No. You mustn’t entertain the idea. Cern cursed us.”

“Definitely not,” Madam Watkins echoed from within the trees, and several people agreed with her.

“
But we’re already cursed. What more can He do to us? It would be so easy.
” Dale laughed. “
I can do it right now – he’s here – and I am the Witch-wolf, am I not?
” There was a general outcry of disbelief and horror as Dale threw back his head and howled: “
CERNCERNCERN I release—
”

And then Sachie and Ranger stepped over the ring of mushrooms and Dale’s voice dropped away, replaced by ordinary wolf-song with no meaning, no nuance.

“I can’t understand him anymore,” Sachie said, wonderingly, as Ranger tried to hurry him along the fairy path back towards Tamarack, nipping at his heels and head-butting the backs of his legs. “Why’re you in such a
rush
?”

Behind them, people were shouting, wolves snarling, a fox gekkered frantically. Someone screamed in pain. Dale roared furiously, and suddenly the little fairy fox was at their side, chivvying them along with urgent squeaks.

“I get it,” Sachie said, throwing a frantic glance over his shoulder. “Something really bad is happening back there. Did he unbind Cern?” The fairy fox growled, and Sachie wheezed, fingers tangling in his shirt over his chest. “I can’t run any faster. I can’t
breathe
. I’m sorry.”

Ranger felt his pelt tighten, his fur all stand on end at once. He could hear heavy panting breaths somewhere nearby. More choking-hacking. Dale was laughing at them, running in circles around them even as they tried to flee.

Fairy paths were an odd thing. Ranger once stepped onto one, walked a mile, stepped off it again and found himself twelve miles from where he started. Tamarack was at least five miles away right now, but also no more than a couple of hundred yards. If only Sachie could run without coughing up a lung.

Dale leapt out of the undergrowth, the whites of his eyes flashing in the light of the lantern, saliva dripping from his jaws. Yani, his daughter, the slender gray wolf with the scarred eye was at his side, teeth bared, high-pitched growl rumbling in her throat.

Sachie gasped, stumbled, and ran, and Ranger launched himself at the black wolf. They fought, tumbling off the fairy path and into the snowy leaf-litter. Hot blood spattered a birch trunk. Ranger could hear ravens cawing and the bugling of a great deer, and Sachie’s yelp of terror and hurt.