Nora Vex's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Nora Vex only hunted things that had already killed someone. Now she knelt in cold mud at the edge of Knotgrove's woods, staring at three sets of prints that all wanted to be the man-eater. Something had dragged four villagers into these trees in a month. She read tracks the way most people read words. But these tracks lied. A wolf print. A bear's wide pad. And a third, deep and clawed, cut over the other two. Any of them could belong to the killer. Guess wrong, and she'd chase a plain wolf while the real thing fed on a fifth body. Nora pressed her thumb into the clawed print and felt the mud. Fresh. Too many stories in one patch of ground. "You're reading them like they're all true." The voice came from the trees. Dara Voss stepped out, a small old woman in a patchwork coat hung with carved stone tablets. She had survived the man-eater herself, weeks ago, and had not spoken of it since. Nora had knocked on her door twice. Both times the old woman turned away white-faced. Now she stood here, jaw tight, forcing the words out. "I saw it take my neighbor," Dara said. "It walked over old kills after. On purpose. It steps in other beasts' tracks to hide its own." Nora sat back on her heels. That was why the prints tangled. The killer wasn't one of the three trails. It was the thing that crossed all three. "Then I need the print it can't fake," Nora said. "Show me where you saw it." Dara's hands shook, but she led. They went in deep, past leaning trees, to a wet hollow. There a crow watched from a branch, sleek and black, head cocked at something below. Nora followed its gaze. In the soft bank sat one clean print, alone, with no other tracks laid over it. Five toes. A dragging heel. Bigger than any bear. "That's it," Dara whispered. "Fresh this morning." Nora traced the shape into her memory. The stride was long. The weight sat back, like the thing walked half upright. She finally knew what she was hunting. Not a wolf. Not a bear. Something that wore their tracks like a coat. The crow burst upward, screaming. Nora looked where it had been staring past the print. Deeper in the hollow lay a torn boot and a smear of red dragged into the ferns. The trail was hours old, not days. A fifth villager, taken while she'd wasted her time on false prints. Nora stood. She knew the true track now. But she was chasing a killer that was already eating, and the drag marks led straight toward the far side of the wood, where the trees grew too thick to see. "Stay behind me," she told Dara, and started after the blood.