Chapter Thirteen

Alongside the wolf, feasting on the carcass of the fallen

H orror and realization filled Ravyn, yet she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What do you eat? What fills you?”

“I didn’t want to eat it in the beginning, you know? It’s just that I was so hungry. We all were, surely, but not all of us were strong enough to eat. But I was. I was, but I’m still so hungry.” He beseeched her to understand his apparently endless hunger, even as her mind flipped through possibilities.

Hunger? His body remained in one place, but his muscles spasmed and twitched, bouncing from one place to another as he waited for her to understand. The perspiration on his forehead began pooling its way down his face. He rolled his shoulders, as if his body had suddenly become too uncomfortable to be in.

“What did you eat?” Despite trying to remain calm, Ravyn’s voice instinctively rose an octave. Goddess, please.

“They said it was a shortcut. It would save us so much time, they said. Easily done, they said. The expedition was cursed,” he spat in his eerie, high-pitched voice, sounding as if his vocal cords were stretching along with his body. “Hastings’s riders told us it would be better, that we were making history traveling through the pass. We made history, all right, but not how we wanted to.” Another maniacal giggle escaped before he could swallow up the noise.

“But they convinced Donner that leading this expedition would give him infamy. They were wrong. That smooth bastard convinced us that he could handle anything thrown his way, and so we followed him. We followed him to the gates of hell, if hell were a desolate, frozen wasteland.”

Gulping, the man took a deep breath as if struggling to control himself, holding his chin up proudly to stare down at Ravyn. “Which was worse: the cold or the hunger? Both grind away at you, little by little. The cold and snow went on endlessly, reaching deep into your bones to twist them until they shattered. The hunger grew and grew, starting in the pit of your stomach, so little at first you barely noticed it. But it grew, reaching deeper, moving out more until it was so vast, so endless that it was all you could think about. Just how hungry you were. The cold made you numb, though, but that hunger, that hunger just grew and grew, twisting and twisting.”

The Donner Party… This man claimed to be a member of the Donner Party, the ill-fated group of migrants and pioneers who had trusted the wrong people, followed the wrong path, and ended up stuck in the treacherous, snow-covered mountains during the winter of 1846. Eighty-seven souls entered the mountains full of hopes and dreams; only forty-eight survived.

“Wendigo…” The word escaped Toby softly, almost reverently, or more than likely fearfully, as similar feelings flooded through Ravyn. A legend? Impossible.

A wendigo? This man claimed to be a creature from a nightmare and Toby believed it, if his tone was any indication. Her eyes flickered to him, taking in his whispered word. A subtle but quick movement of his hand flashed the fig sign to ward off the evil, not appearing to notice the pain as even the slight movement moved the silver chains, which once again drew blood as they tore at the already raw skin of his wrist.

Despite her own bondage, Ravyn found herself following his movement, cupping her own fist and sticking her thumb between two fingers to ward off this mythical daemon. Damn, he should fear her.

“They’re not real.” Even to her own ears her false bravado fell flat, but she pushed forward as if disbelief alone could destroy such an evil incarnate. “Bedtime stories told to children and pups to keep them in line. Fireside stories to entertain away the long, dark nights.”

Bertrando’s long face looked plaintively at her once again. “How could you, of all creatures, say that?” Waving his elongated hands, he took a few steps away from her before turning back to implore with large, round eyes, “You, the destroyer of death, the defeater of the grave? Yes, and I suppose all vampires are fanciful stories and shifters are just imaginative ramblings of drunken encounters? But a real monster must be a story? A fairytale, I suppose? And you, you of all people, deny my existence?”

A now knobby accusatory finger pointed across at her, and Ravyn wondered if she’d made a grave mistake in questioning him as he once again began pacing and huffing around Toby.

“So, you choose this, this immortality?” Keep him distracted, keep him talking , she chanted to herself, wondering how much wolfsbane and vervain she’d ingested. He wasn’t joking when he pointed out her greediness; unfortunately, often a downfall of vampires. She could still barely hold her head up and the only reason she stood mostly upright was due to the chains holding her arms outward and supporting her weight.

“A choice? I suppose you could call it that,” he scoffed. “Cold and hunger do strange things to a person. The wind whispers things, cold and dark ideas. And after enough days, you would do anything to quiet the whispers and the hunger, that deep, bone-rotting hunger. The wind whispered that I could end the hunger. Why let all of that… all of that go to waste when we were starving? But when I listened to the whispers, all I did was prolong the hunger. And so, I eat and I eat and I eat, but all is not lost.”

If legends were true, the whispers that rode the wind belonged to a lost spirit—he spirit of a demon that could only be allowed to enter a body if the person agreed and then consecrated that agreement with human flesh. The shared body committed to an eternal shared life with a creature that needed to continue consuming human flesh to live, to stave off the endless hunger pangs.

“At first, I was weak and scavenged for food to keep the hunger at bay. My life was a cycle of hunting and eating. Then I learned the true art of the hunt, and I embraced the gift I had been given. Let them come to me. Some lifetimes they would come for a job, or a meal. You see, I learned that the more I offered, the more they came to me. In California everyone comes searching for something: riches, fame, love. If I dangle that they come right to me. So many desperate meals came straight to my doorstep. My favorite has been midwestern dreams that land them straight here, desperate and trusting, and then gone. The bonus is when you make enough money, no one looks twice at you.”

He mocked in a lilting voice, “Who, me? Why would I allow some girl from Kansas to stop by my house, when I make Hollywood stars? Fools, fools, fools,” the creature chanted mindlessly, mockingly the girls who had come before. The innocents who had thought they were coming for answered dreams, Hollywood fame, but had ended up a meal for the monster before her.

They were being held by a manic, one who either was truly a wendigo or someone who thought he was, but either way, he was clearly out of his mind and that made him even more dangerous—especially to Toby. Ravyn hadn’t survived thousands of years by being weak or stupid, but today’s stupidity might get the young wolf killed.

“Ahhh,” the creature before her groaned as his body elongated once more, surely making him twice the height as when they first met him. “The moon calls to me.” Turning his hungry attention once again to the young wolf who eyed him with both fear and anger, he said, “Surely you know what’s that like, when the moon controls you? There is no fighting its dark call, is there?”

He shuddered as spasms moved through him.

Ravyn wasn’t sure if it was pain or something else.

She knew Toby bit his tongue to avoid angering or arguing with the man. The wolves revered the moon; it brought forth their true selves. They lived in harmony with the moon, and its siren call wasn’t a curse but a blessing bestowed by their ancestor Fenrir, the gray wolf. Whatever this man felt was a foul blasphemy compared to the beauty the wolves found in their relationship with the moon.

Hunched over, gasping in pain or ecstasy as bones snapped and crackled, the man’s features twisted and turned as his body arched this way and that. Fascination and horror forced Ravyn to watch, unable to look away, as a transformation overtook the creature. This wasn’t the smooth transformation of the wolf shifters, but a painful, unnatural transformation. Once it began it went quickly, though, and with a shudder, the wendigo shook off the last remaining remnants of its human shell, rising to an upright position, nearly doubling again its original height.

This time, Ravyn’s fist instinctively curled in with panic to ward off the evil in front of her. Bertrando Roland—or whoever he really was—wasn’t trapped in a delusion. Her heart sank in the fear and realization that what stood before her was like nothing she’d ever seen in her long lifetime.

She realized that her warding was a feeble and futile attempt as she stared in the face of true evil, feeling the power emanating from its grotesque body. Tight, ash-gray skin pulled tautly across its transformed features. Having doubled in size, its blood-stained bone antlers nearly brushed the ceiling of the room; the humped neck prevented it from quite reaching it. Its head had stretched out in a parody of the deer skull its antlers represented, stretching longer than a normal deer’s head might. Double rows of sharp carnivore’s teeth ran along its jaw, firmly ending any likeness to a deer, real or imaginary.

Gray skin so thin that Ravyn could count the row of ribs along its torso, long arms dangling close to the ground. A mixture of skin and sinew ended with elongated fingers that formed into claws appeared to be stained with the blood of previous victims. Lean, muscular thighs supported the mismatched body, with tufts of fur hiding most of the thin skin on its waist and thighs. The legs looked more likely to support a creature on all fours, but this one somehow defied logic and stood upright on feet encased with two cloven hooves, as well as a third clawed toe that seemingly appeared out of the side of its foot. And a stench, the smell of decay and death, floated off the creature, unpleasantly tickling Ravyn’s nose.

In short, it was terrifying—a nightmare brought to life.

She and Toby might truly be screwed if backup didn’t arrive soon. Ravyn simply wasn’t regaining her strength quickly enough to ensure her own safety, let alone the safety of the young wolf whom she’d foolishly brought into this den of death.

The wendigo lifted its bony snout, sniffing the air, testing it, before its snake-like tongue darted from its mouth, tasting the air with what looked like an expression of pleasure.

“Ah, yesss,” it hissed, stretching once again, shaking its shoulders to remove the last dregs of humanity, “to remove the shackles of that body is, well... is relieving.” Focusing its large, glassy eyes on Ravyn, it gave a mocking half bow, its body bending at the waist a hair, with one long, distended arm crossed across its waist and the other tossed back dramatically. “My queen is here; my savior, surely.” With a casual look over its shoulder toward the frozen wolf, it added, “And dinner.”

Toby let out a small whimper before curling back away on himself as far as his chains would allow on the cold stone floor.

Ravyn tilted her chin up, determined to hide the fear that assailed her, looking the creature directly in its dead eyes. Clenching her jaw, she swore to herself, This wendigo is dead. A dead man walking.

“You, my beloved, will be my everlasting meal, the one that will conquer the hunger… the hunger.” Another plaintive howl escaped the creature as it clutched at its stomach. “You have conquered death, and so will I as I partake of your undead but ever living flesh. Night after night,” it promised, once again running a long-clawed finger along Ravyn’s body, this time not quite touching it, but the cold that followed along its path chilled her deep in her bones.

Realization struck Ravyn. Toby’s death might be quick, but hers wouldn’t be. If this creature had its way, her pain and suffering would be endless. The regenerative properties of her body would ensure that, a never-ending cycle of flesh torn from her body, to grow anew, then repeat until this creature grew bored or tired of the situation and tore her to dust.

“Your body has conquered all, and now you have the honor of sharing that with me. It has taken me years to track you down, but to see the results in front of me.” It shook its head in disbelief, and Ravyn could almost believe it was touched by the situation. It actually believed that her body had powers beyond what it had. “Finally, you are mine, and no one will stand between us again.”

“Vampires can’t offer eternal life beyond their own.” Ravyn took a stab at arguing with the creature, tentatively adding a pleading, “Bertrando,” to the end of statement.

Throwing its head up, the creature howled with laughter. “Oh, you are funny, my dear. Bertrando is gone now.” Titling its head as if to listen, it amended, “Ah, he is in here somewhere, but he doesn’t want to play anymore. I have tried numerous vampires over the years. What an experience that has been. Kill them and they dust. So, carving them up while they scream is a rewarding experience all of its own. But their immortal flesh doesn’t satiate this hunger. So, I continued studying and observing. I think you are like me. I think the hell spawn that created you have inadvertently created a buffet for me.”

It tilted its oversized head as it heard something outside the room before what might pass as a macabre smile crossed its face. “Ah, my queen, I have a visitor for you.”

The soft click of a well-oiled door sounded to her right, and Ravyn struggled to turn her head toward the sound, as nearly silent footsteps tapped gently into the room. A blurry figure entered her peripheral vision as she struggled to focus. Shrugging off a cloak that covered her from head to foot, she stepped into Ravyn’s line of sight.

With a shrieking giggle, the deranged creature awkwardly clapped its hands together. “I love a goooood family reunion,” it hissed, followed by an awkward half bow. “My queen, let me introduce you, or ssshall I say reintroduce you, to your sissster. My witch.”

And Ibis stepped fully into her vision. Not the version that Ravyn had met just days before, not a grandmotherly Anya. And not a young Ibis from years ago. A version, but just slightly different. If Ravyn was the youth and Anya the elder, then this version was slightly middle-aged. Where Anya’s smile lines had creased with love and happiness, this version’s age lines bespoke anger and hate. Her sharp eyes cut through Ravyn as if she could barely stand to look at her without cutting her to pieces.

“Impossible,” Ravyn whispered as she took in the aging beauty before her. And she was beautiful; the evil that emanated from her didn’t change that.

“Well met, Little Sister.” This version of Ibis spat in her face.