Remington “Rem” Riley's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

The cave mouth breathed cold air onto the shelf. Rem stared at the fresh tracks in the snow. Beth crouched beside him, close but not trusting. Two days ago she was a guest at his lodge. Now she was a former cop who thought he killed a man, and she still watched his hands more than the dark ahead. "That's not a wolf," Beth said. She measured a paw print with her palm. Her hand looked small in it. "No wolf leaves that." "No," Rem said. "It isn't." She stood and faced him. Her jaw was set. "The man from Room Seven ran up this mountain. His door was torn off the hinges. You want me to believe some animal did that, and not you." "I want you to believe your own eyes," Rem said. He held out the axe. The blade glowed red and strained toward the cave. It pulled his arm like a leashed dog. "Iron doesn't do that. Not for a man. My family made this thing to kill what lives in there. I came to finish what they couldn't." Beth reached out and touched the glowing steel. She flinched at the warmth. Her hand dropped. For a long moment she said nothing. Then a shape moved at the base of the tracks. A body lay half-buried in the drift near the cave. Beth ran to it before Rem could stop her. She brushed snow from a bearded face. Scars raked the man's cheek, four lines, wide as claws. His eyes stared at nothing. "That's him," she whispered. "The man from Seven." She pressed two fingers to his throat. She already knew. "These marks. No knife makes these." "I never touched him," Rem said. "You see now what did." Beth looked from the dead man's face to the cave to the red axe in Rem's fist. Something behind her eyes shifted and settled. She rose and stepped to Rem's side, her back to the mountain, facing the dark with him. "Okay," she said. "Not you. That." She nodded at the cave. "So we kill it together." "You should go down," Rem said. "This is my blood, not yours." "He was my problem before he was yours." She pulled a folding knife from her coat and thumbed it open. "I don't run down a mountain and leave the only man who saved my life." Rem almost smiled. The suspect and the hunter, standing shoulder to shoulder. Then the axe jerked hard toward the cave. The glow flared white-hot. Deep in the stone, something scraped and rose. Two red points opened in the black, low and wide apart, higher than a man's head. A growl rolled out that Rem felt in his teeth. The creature was awake. It had heard them. And it was coming to the light. Beth gripped her knife. "Tell me that axe knows how to swing."