I run in the direction of Mason’s bellow. I’ve been shouting for him, but I’ve heard nothing.
Nothing at all.
It must be an animal attack. A bear, because I can’t imagine anything else out here big enough to hurt him into silence. No, that’s not true. The even more likely answer is human. I’m just struggling to wrap my head around that because these woods feel so empty.
Nick had driven miles down an empty road. On the mile walk to camp, we saw no sign of anyone else out here.
If it is a person who attacked Mason, what could they have done to make him cry out in pain and then fall silent? I’d have heard a gunshot. If he was attacked with another kind of weapon, I should have heard more. A single blow could knock him out, but he wouldn’t have had time to bellow in pain first.
A bear doesn’t seem like the answer, either. Any animal attack, again, would take longer. Mason’s bigger than me. A three-hundred-pound black bear could kill him, but not so quickly.
So what—
I brake suddenly, and my feet twist. In a year, I’ve shot up four inches and put on thirty pounds. Operating my new body is like playing a familiar
video game with a new controller. Just when I think I’ve gotten the hang of it, I try to stop and nearly trip over my own feet. I drop to one knee before I catch myself, poised there in a sprinter’s starting position, hands on the ground as I lift my nose to sample the air, and when I don’t smell him, my eyes narrow.
I stopped because I’ve realized the answer to my problem. There’s no logical solution to the puzzle of what attacked him. The answer, then, is “nothing.” Nothing attacked him.
Mason is playing me.
What I heard was horror-movie fodder. An exclamation. A scream cut short as the monster rips out its victim’s heart.
Mason strode into the forest and enacted a horror-movie sudden-death scene, one guaranteed to bring any decent person running. I’ve already proven I’d fall for it, having tracked him into the woods to make sure he’s okay. Such a chump. Easy prey for an asshole like Mason.
Whatever Mason’s plan, I’m prepared, and I’m going to flip this on him.
He’s the one who’ll learn a lesson.
I should Change forms. Give him a real scare. Show him exactly what kind of risk he takes by threatening me.
As I realize what I’m thinking, I stop short. Sure, Change forms and then if he attacks, I’ll defend myself with fangs and claws. Lethal fangs and claws. I shiver and fight against the rage pulsing through me. If I’m this angry now, I definitely can’t afford to Change. I need to rein in my temper and
confront Mason . . . as a human.
I rise, rolling my shoulders as I slough off my anger. I sniff the air again. There is a faint scent of Mason that I missed before. That scent means he was ahead of me, not that he’s still there. Scent works like . . . well, I remember seeing old Charlie Brown comics, and there’s this character called Pigpen drawn in a constant floating cloud of dirt. That’s us, except the “cloud” is hair, dead skin, even breath particles, all of it laden with scent. Our scent
floats downwind on the breeze. Once we walk away, it lingers there before drifting to the ground where it leaves a trail. I still smell Mason faintly on the wind, which means he was here but no longer is as his scent settles to the ground.
I move forward with extreme care, tracking those tendrils of scent while looking and listening for anything that shouldn’t be in this forest. I resist the temptation to drop to my knees and sniff—that makes me an easy target. After about a hundred paces, I can no longer smell him. I’ve overshot. Somewhere nearby he veered off, probably after he cried out.
Now comes the tricky part where I do need to sniff-check the ground. His scent’s too faint in the air to figure out exactly where he turned. I back up a few steps and look around. I’m in a small clearing, which makes this easier— I can see he isn’t within attacking distance.
I do a weird crouch walk, head bobbing up like a prairie dog’s, as I check left and right for attack. I listen, too, even more than I look, my ears straining. It’s oddly silent here. Disquietingly so. People say the forest is quiet, but that’s just because they aren’t really listening. There’s always noise, birds chirping, animals scampering. Right now, even the light breeze seems to have
died, and it is unnervingly still.
A predator is near.
That’s what silence means. The birds and the animals hold their breath, waiting for the danger to pass.
Mason is near.
He’s a vampire. He can scoff at me for drawing what seems like a ridiculous conclusion, but it’s the only one that fits. I have eliminated the impossible, so my conclusion, however improbable, must be the truth. This silence only supports it. The clearing was quiet even before I entered, meaning another predator preceded me.
I find the spot where Mason’s trail ends. Then I hit a problem. It doesn’t go anywhere. He walked this far and stopped.
He must have retraced his steps. He knows I can track him, so he’s wisely backed up.
After fifty feet, I realize I’m mistaken. There is no way Mason perfectly backtracked that far over his own trail. It’s like drawing a line, taking the paper away, and trying to draw the exact same line again. There will be deviations. Yet this trail runs straight.
I return to where it stopped, and I sniff around, but his trail literally stops dead. I squint up. The nearest overhanging branch is ten feet to my left and another ten off the ground. No supernatural could spring into the air and grab it.
There are other scents. Deer, rabbits, fox and other small animals. No bear, though. No humans. Nothing spooked Mason. He stopped, let out an exclamation and a bellow of pain and then vanished.
Was I wrong about his supernatural type? I’d wondered earlier whether he could be a teleporting half-demon. That would explain the quick movements in our room. It would also explain this. He stops, screams for my benefit and then teleports.
Most supernaturals come into their powers post-puberty. For spellcasters, their powers kick in right around that time, and by our age, trained ones can cast decent spells, like Holly with her fireball. Necromancers start seeing ghosts around the same age. Werewolves are slower, with their secondary skills ramping up in adolescence and then culminating with their first Change around adulthood. Half-demons show sporadic power bursts in their early teens, but it’s a slow build. Which is the long way of saying that if Mason is a teleporting half-demon, he can’t have gone far.
There are three levels of teleporting half-demons, depending on their demon sire. At the lowest level, your dad was just some minor demon, probably not even in our records. At the highest level—an Abeo—your father was a lord demon. Even those guys aren’t exactly transporting themselves halfway around the world. The lowest level—and most common subtype—
can move a couple of feet, which sounds useless but makes them really hard to catch and hold. Demonology is a fascinating subject, and as may be obvious, I can go on about it at length.
The short version is that, at best, Mason could teleport fifty feet once he reached his full strength.
I hunt in ever-widening circles around his last-known point. Five feet, then ten, then twenty, and when I hit forty, I know something’s wrong. There’s no way a teenage half-demon teleported this far.
When I’m fifty feet away from the point of origin, I smell blood. I go still and sample the air.
It’s definitely blood. Enough that I can smell it upwind. I also smell Mason.
I lunge, ready to run. Then I pull up short, which makes me feel like the biggest asshole ever, but I don’t trust the guy. So I proceed at a quick walk, surveying while listening and sniffing.
I see and hear nothing. I smell blood, though, and I smell Mason, the smell coming stronger until I spot Mason lying flat on his back in another clearing.
I stop, my breath coming fast as I gulp deep breaths to calm down. It could be a trick.
It’s probably a trick.
Be careful.
I approach one step at a time. At first, all I can see is a figure lying on the ground, almost hidden by the tall grass. It’s the smell that tells me who it is. I spot swatches of clothing and sneakers pointed at the sky, telling me he’s lying supine.
It’s not until I’m barely a few feet away that I see the blood.
Blood covers his face and soaks his shirt, and I know then this is no trick.
He’s lying flat on his back, eyes closed, face and clothing covered in blood.
I race over and drop beside him. My hands fly to his neck, and I can’t
find a pulse. I know there was one earlier. Now there is not. No pulse. No heartbeat. No breathing.
Mason mocked me earlier for calling him a vampire when he was very obviously alive.
He isn’t anymore.