Page 280 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Wraith's familiar scent is everywhere here.

I couldn't feel unsafe even if I tried.

The house lights disappear sooner than I expect. One minute they're a warm glow at the edge of my peripheral vision, friendly and close, and then they're just… not there anymore. The trees swallow them entirely, and now there's nothing behind me but dark and the soft creak of branches.

My boots find the path by feel more than sight, the ground rising steadily beneath me, loose rock shifting under my heel whenever I step wrong. The flashlight beam bobs with every stride, dragging shadows back and forth through the underbrush until the edges of my vision become a constant flutter of movement that I have to consciously tell myself to ignore.

Nothing. It's nothing.

Branches and shadows, like they always look at night.

Somewhere far off to my left, an owl calls.

I'm not scared.

I'm excited.

My boot scuffs against a root. I stumble, but I keep moving, swapping the heavy flashlight to my left hand to give my right hand a break.

I count my steps under my breath for a while. Focusing on the number keeps the full silence from pressing too close.

"Ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six…"

I've been out here maybe twenty minutes. Maybe a little more. The path has bent twice, following the ridge, and the slope under my feet has gotten steeper. My calves are starting to feel it.

The beam from my flashlight skims across a boulder up on the hillside the size of a car, half-buried in the hillside, and I use it as a landmark, picking my way up to it to get a better vantage point.

Valek still hasn't found me.

So I'm going to find him.

If I can keep track of this boulder, I'll know roughly where I am. I haven't gone so far that I can't find my way back, and the flare gun in my pocket would tell the pack exactly where I am if I actually do end up needing it.

It is getting colder.

And I'm starting to feel…

Watched.

A branch snaps behind me.

A fucking heavy branch giving way under considerable mass, and it comes from the path below me.

Close. Maybe thirty feet.

I spin around.

The flashlight swings down the slope, beam cutting wild arcs through the dark before I get it under control, and I press my back against the boulder and steady the heavy flashlight with both hands.

Grinning teeth shine back at me.

I jump back and my boot slips on the mud. I catch myself against the boulder, the flashlight flying out of my hand and clattering against the stones as I pitch sideways off the path into nothing.

I don't even have time to scream.

There's a rush of air, a massive displacement of the dark, something enormous moving fast.

Yep.