Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 6 of 30

At the lip of the low places, the ground opened into a wide, jagged gap. Through it Avi Marie saw the upper world's sky, calm and blue. She had climbed out with a name to find. But her light-carrying horse pawed the stone and would not step through. Malphas read the beast's tracks near the edge. "It circled back up," the goat said. "It's hunting again. Fresh souls. Now." Avi Marie felt the split in her own chest. Above her, the beast stalked the living. Below her, its master waited. She could not do both. Chase the councilman, and someone died tonight. Guard the living, and the trail went cold. Azrael, bound behind her, spoke flat. "Choose the man at the top. The beast is only a knife. Kill the hand." She did not answer him. She had learned what his advice was worth. Then the shadows near the gap moved on their own. A hound stepped out, black as tar, its mouth a grin of long white teeth. Frostclaw had spoken of the woods that took people. This was what lived there. Avi Marie's horse shied. Her hand went to its neck. "You smell of fear," the hound said. His voice was low and blunt. "Not yours. The thing above. It hunts scared people. So do I." He fixed his red eyes on her. "You want it stopped. I want it gone. It takes what I take. It's a thief in my woods." Avi Marie studied him. "Why help me?" "Not helping you." Shadowmaw Grim bared his teeth wider. "I go up. I hold the beast off the living. You go down. Kill the one who made it." He said it like a fact already true. Malphas stiffened. "He eats fear. He is not gentle." "No," the hound agreed. He did not soften it. Avi Marie weighed it the way she had weighed the goat. A monster who hunted the same monster. She could not shield the living and reach the master both. Here stood something that could hold the upper world while she went down. She looked at the calm sky through the gap, then at the dark road below. "You keep the beast off them until I return," she said. "Every soul it does not take, you leave alive." "They stay scared," the hound said. "But they live. That's the trade." "That's the trade," she said. Shadowmaw Grim turned and slid up through the gap into the light. The sky swallowed his shadow. Avi Marie turned her horse the other way, back down the dark trail. The pull in her chest eased. She could not be in two places. Now she did not have to be. A carved pillar stood at the trailhead, words cut deep in the stone. You never see your own face, only a reflection. She read it once. Then she rode past it, down toward the master, with the living guarded behind her.