23. Cricket

Lavender and wintergreen hung heavy in the humid air, choking Cricket with each rasping, sawing breath. She pulled the neck of her shirt up, attempting to filter the perfumed musk through the fabric, and followed the scent along Elkwater Run.

It had grown stronger as she descended the last ridge, and once she hit the creek feeding into the larger stream running through the camp, the stench became unbearable.

A chorus of howls rose over her harsh breathing, bleeding through the thick night and pushing Cricket onward. Fury drove her every step, powering her through the ache in her legs and the blinding pain in her ankle.

She dropped into a creek and waded through calf-deep waters cold enough to help her forget the pain, but all too soon, she was clamoring out the other side, hands slipping on mossy roots and dislodging loose stones.

She was never going to run after this. Hells, she would be lucky even to be able to, and if she could, she would never run again for pleasure, that was damn sure. Easing into a jog, she clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth might crack. The ache in her legs she could deal with. The sharp twang and pinch of strained muscle and tendon she could ignore. But her hoof …

Gods, she wanted to ignore it, but it was all she could think about. If she thought about Avery and what those howls meant, she would start panicking, and then she’d start crying, and then she’d be useless. But if she thought about the pain—about the wicked snap she’d felt after falling on the western face of Barton Knob, the sound of it like dry twigs snapping in half; if she thought about the feel of splinters driving into the pad of her hoof, she could keep going.

Her hoof was going to slough off, that much she knew. An injury like that? No way it hadn’t damaged the tissue underneath. Until it regrew, she’d be stuck with that damn crutch again, hobbling around the camp or Green Bank or wherever she ended up. But until it sloughed off, she could press through the pain, let it stoke her anger, and fuel her body enough to get to Avery.

She leapt over a gully. Her good hoof landed in an unseen divot on the other side and, arms flailing, she tumbled and hit the ground, tucking somewhat into a roll. Her shoulder hit a rock, ivy tangled around her legs, and she crashed against a tree stump. Bark and leaves tumbled around her. She lay in a daze, blinking away the sting in her eyes.

Get up.

Gods, she was so close, and the scent was so strong.

Get the hells up.

Lavender and wintergreen, the musk of male. Close enough, heady enough, that when she rolled onto her side and pressed her hand to the forest floor she could taste the Georgia Man on her tongue.

You’re so damned close. Get. Up.

Lavender and wintergreen. What had Avery called it? Obsession? Whatever it was, it clogged the woods, the scent no longer a trail but a web. She pushed to her knees, biting her tongue to stifle the scream as a new ribbon of pain wound up her leg.

“Fuck,” she panted, dropping her weight against the tree stump. Her hair snagged in the bark, eyes going unfocused as she fought off the tears, the pain. A slight breeze wove through the glade, wafting away the shopping mall miasma. Not entirely, but enough to clear Cricket’s head. She stretched out her uninjured leg, massaging the calf and inspecting her ankle and hoof.

No breaks, no splinters.

Thank the Gods.

Settling against the stump, Cricket dropped her head back and closed her eyes, just for a moment. Just long enough to catch her breath, to let the worst of the pain fade. Enough to breathe the cleaner air, inhaling grass and moss instead of lavender and wintergreen. Grass and moss, wet earth, and … salt.

She lifted her head, ears pricking as she scanned the glade. High overhead, the moon peered through the pine, painting the world in shadows and clean blue light. Low branches and shrubs filled eye level, densely packed, and impassable unless you knew the deer trails behind the camp. She tripped her gaze from branch to branch to bush, picking out the details: broken twigs and trampled undergrowth. Pine needles bent at an angle, and a lone scrap of cloth caught in thorns.

Nostrils flaring, she inhaled again, dropping onto her hands to crawl forward and catching the scent of salt once again. Salt and fear.

She knew the scent and stink of that fright, as well as she knew her own. And that salt was a sweat she had tasted.

“No.” Staggering to her hooves, Cricket rushed to the thornbush and grabbed the cloth, pressing it to her nose and breathing deep. Her tongue was fat and thirsty in her mouth, dry as bark, and barely able to form the word. “No, no, no.”

Flowers dotted the fabric, a light, summery linen torn from a skirt she knew—a skirt she had seen tangled around soft, sturdy legs.

Her knee buckled. She stumbled to the side, grunting at the throb of pain and barely catching herself on a boulder. Gods, she was so close—close enough to smell Avery’s sweat and her fear. Where had she gone? Which way had she run?

Cricket wobbled in a circle, her back to the deer trail, searching the darkened wood as her ears swiveled, straining to catch any sound: the camp, a frantic heartbeat, panicked breathing. Anything to tell her where Avery might be. To tell her she was safe—

“Found you,” a deeply masculine and predatory voice snarled from behind her. Cricket whirled around, tweaking her ankle and swallowing the cry as she scanned the shadows. Still. Everything was so still … too still. The sort of still that set her hairs on end and sparked the urge to flee.

The shadows shifted just to the left of the deer trail, a mass forming among the trees. Too tall to be human, too broad to be faun. Too muscular to be any of the inhumans she had seen in the camp, even in their shifted form.

Fright held her in place. That wretched instinct every faun had to freeze at the sight of bright lights, though instead of the momentary blindness that came with human machines, this was pure, unadulterated fear.

Moonlight poured over a bone-white face, swallowed by a fold of impenetrable black splitting the skull’s brow in two. The creature heaved through the wood, the ground shuddering as a massive paw stepped into the glade. Cricket took in all of him and pieces of him at once: that skull, bilious yellow eyes, bulging muscle in thick thighs, the claws at the tips of his toes and fingers, the teeth …

“Your human’s given me quite a chase,” he snarled, lips curling back over vicious fangs. A sick, shuddering sigh hissed from his throat, and he prowled closer. “Leading me through the woods in circles. Back and back again, twisting her trail with scraps of cloth.” He tossed a handful of fabric in her direction. Ribbons of cloth fluttered and fell to the ground, identical to the scrap in her hand.

Cricket’s heart sputtered, tripping over beats as adrenaline spiked in her veins. Her fingers quaked, her legs trembled. She gripped the cloth as she gasped, trying to fill her lungs enough to scream for help.

“Why don’t you run, little deer?” the creature taunted.

A whimper was all she could muster, the pathetic sound burbling past her lips and dying just as quickly. He advanced, the moonlight revealing the true terror of the creature … the monster. Twigs snapped beneath every step, the earth protesting against his weight and size as he paced in a slow, predatory circle. Even if she could run, she could never outrun this.

“Your human ran,” he taunted. A hand swept his browbone, fingers tracing the fold in his skull that swallowed the moonlight. No, not a fold, a crack. A snide laugh escaped as a tight bark. “Jumped right out the window. Damn near broke the wall when I hit it. Who knew a girl that soft could be so fast?”

The breeze kicked up again, bringing the scent of the beast to Cricket’s nose: musk and sweat, the sharp tang of exertion. Lavender, and wintergreen. She gagged, eyes watering as she took in the monster with new understanding. “Georgia Man.”

He tipped his head back, arms hanging loose at his sides. An unearthly howl tore from his throat, rattling the leaves and needles overhead. In the distance, a chorus of identical howls sang in reply. Cricket cowered down, her body battling the warring urges to run, cry, vomit, and piss herself.

“You faun are so stupid.” He lurched forward, spittle flying from his muzzle. “So easy to manipulate. How long have you been here, a decade? Longer? And you’ve remained just as back-assward as you were back home.”

“What are you—”

“But you …” He wagged a clawed finger at Cricket, pacing in a tighter circle. “You’re a little cleverer than the rest, aren’t you? Wanting to integrate, raising a red flag about the ‘Georgia Men.’ Crying wolf.”

He snapped his teeth a hair’s breadth from her nose. Cricket flinched back, her hoof catching on a root. The sob forcing its way out of her throat became a cry of pain and she fell against a tree, trembling as those threatened tears finally slipped free.

“Pathetic,” he snarled. “How the faun were entrusted to maintain the wood is beyond me. You’re all so soft.” He held out a clawed hand, fingers furling as if crushing something in his leather-padded palm. Snuffing out a light or a life. “So weak.”

A cry, deep in the wood, jerked him around. His body tensed for just a moment, and then he angled that terrible skull face back to Cricket. “They’re coming, little deer.”

She pressed harder against the tree, blinking to clear the tears from her eyes. Distant lights bobbed and wove through the trees, flashlights and lanterns dancing to the cadence of faint voices.

The campers, she realized. Mac and the counselors, oh, Gods, no.

“Be here any minute now.” A vicious grin spread beneath the skull, sharp fangs white in the moonlight, a drooling tongue lolling to the side. “Do you know what I’m going to do when they get here?”

“K-kill me.”

“Kill you?” If that monstrous skull had eyebrows, they would have raised. “Oh, no, no, no, I’m going to defend you”—he flicked his fingers in the direction of the lights—“and kill them. Well, some of them, at least.”

“Why?”

The monster did not answer. He raised a hand to his face, gripped his skull, and pulled. Bone came away with the gesture, and only when the moonlight revealed a wolven face and sharp, predatory eyes did Cricket realize what she’d been looking at.

A mask. A deer skull mask. He fingered the fold running up the brow, lip curling into a snarl. “Bitch of yours broke it,” he muttered and faced Cricket, leaning close and cocking his head to the side. Claws scraped over bone, and he replaced the mask. “I suppose this will do. What do you think?”

She whimpered, muscles twitching and ready to run. But there would be no running, not for Cricket. She doubted she would make it half a foot before those powerful jaws clamped around her leg, and those claws tore into her body. So she pressed back against the tree as if to will the bark to absorb her and shield her from this monster. “Why?”

“To make them fear you,” he said. “You faun are so simple, so kind. You are so stupid, and you always have been. Keeping to the trees and befriending backwoods hillbillies. Even in our home world, you were loved and lauded, while werewolves were cast aside as less than. As cursed, nothing beasts. But here, in this world?” He crowded into her space, looming over Cricket. The heat and musk of him choked her nose and mouth with dank lavender and decaying pine. “The naga have no power over water, the wolven have lost their speed, and you have no magic to heal. All you can do is lure the deviant with your big eyes and bucolic song.”

“We never—”

“I’ve seen that faun with the camp’s director,” he said, foam frothing on his lips and tongue. “I’ve witnessed those idiots in Green Bank look away from a monster in the woods, I have smelled you on Elizabeth—I’m sorry, Avery Payne.”

“You keep her name out of your mouth!” Cricket hollered, her voice far stronger than she felt.

“No problem-o.” He grinned again and raised his hand, waggling furry, clawed fingers in her face. “I’ll keep it in my hand instead.”

“You—” She lunged for him, only to be thrown against the tree, the wind knocked out of her as a clawed hand drove into her chest. Bone and cartilage protested, the last air compressed from her lungs as he slid his palm up her sternum to her throat. Claws pinched her neck, his grip tightening.

Cricket scrabbled at his wrist, his hand. Soft velvet slipped against his dense fur, her nail-less fingers unable to grab hold, unable to injure or tear. She kicked her hooves against the bark, and the pain had her gasping for air. He pressed harder. White stars burst at the corners of her eyes, and she felt her hide popping beneath the press of his claws. Felt warmth dribbling down her throat.

“They’re close, little deer. Do you hear them?” He leaned in, dank breath and spittle crashing against her cheek. “Poor, stupid humans. They will see a deer-like monster in the woods killing their children. And when I find Avery Payne, I will eviscerate her where they all can see. Maybe I’ll add antlers, really dial in on the faun effect; what do you think?”

Cricket wheezed, the stars in her eyes dimming.

“No more rumors of a monster.” He raised his arm, the heel of his hand pressing harder into her throat as she was lifted into the air. Bark scraped against Cricket’s back, her hooves flailing, kicks slowing. “No more dances in a moonlight glade or whatever the fuck it is you tragic deer do to bedevil the humans. No more looking away. They will fear you and take whatever shitty deal my firm offers them for their land, and there will be nowhere left for the faun to go.”

“Why …” she wheezed. The strength in her arms sapped away, her grip on his wrist weakening.

“What was that?” He turned his head slightly, angling a pointed ear at her. “Sorry, you’re a little breathy.”

“Why—urk.” Cricket’s eyes bugged as he gripped her throat tighter. “Why Avery?”

The Georgia Man threw his head back, barking out a laugh before glaring her in the eye. “Can’t have a dyke daughter besmirching Nathan Payne’s good name, now can we?”

“Does … does he know?”

“Of course, he does, dumbass.” He straightened his arm, leaning away from Cricket to leer at her. “Whose idea do you think this was?”

“Wha—” The Georgia Man shoved all of his weight into his arm, entirely cutting off what little air Cricket could sip. Her hooves kicked weakly, her hands grabbing, patting, falling away as the world grayed out, her vision tunneled, and—

“Hey, douchebag.”

He turned his head into the fierce swing of a tree branch. One moment Cricket was pinned to the tree, strangling, and the next, she was crumpling to the ground. Pain howled up her leg, and she barely registered the sickening crack of bone against bark and the shudder of the woods as that massive figure thudded to the ground.

She hacked and coughed, wheezing as her stomach heaved, her entire body working to fill her lungs and clear her vision, and then a familiar warmth slipped around her back, strong fingers grabbing her wrist and hauling her arm over a soft, sturdy shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” Avery grunted.

“Where is your skirt?” she asked in return, unable to take her eyes away from moon-pale, freckled legs in filthy sneakers and bike shorts. Her voice was a sandpaper rasp, and the effort of speaking made her throat ache.

“If you’re going to lecture me about proper attire for a young lady, save it,” Avery grunted. Her arm tightened around Cricket, and she hefted them both to their feet. Well, her feet and Cricket’s one hoof. “And seriously, what are you doing here?”

“I came to—” she wheezed, then coughed, then hacked and panted. “Came to wa—”

“Oh, my gosh, don’t talk, you disaster.” Her tone was dry and so exasperated that Cricket couldn’t help but huff a hoarse laugh. “We need to get back to camp. There’s a trail right—”Avery dropped from beneath Cricket’s arm, her words transformed into a scream as she was yanked away.