Remington “Rem” Riley's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

The howl faded behind Rem. He kept running with the reeking coat in his fist. His side screamed with each step. The tunnel forked, and the axe pulled left. He followed it. But the beast's claws scraped stone behind him now, closer than before. It had found the scent. He could not outrun it much longer. Rem shoved his free hand into his grandfather's coat. His fingers closed on a small metal tube. A flashlight. He clicked it on. Yellow light cut the dark. He needed a place to lose the wolf, or a place to make his stand. A line of pale moss ran along the floor. It glowed faintly in the beam. Not the red moss. This was different, cold and green. It led away from the fork, into a low crack in the wall. The wolf tracked the red bloom, not this. Rem made a choice. He dropped the flower-soaked coat in the middle of the tunnel and squeezed into the crack, following the green trail. Behind him, the beast crashed into the tunnel. It found the coat. Rem heard it tear the fabric, snarling, savaging the scent. The lure held. He crawled deeper along the moss until the passage opened into a small chamber. His light swept the far wall. He stopped breathing. The stone was covered in markings. Old handprints in dried blood. Symbols, tally lines, crude figures. Rem stepped closer. The pictures told a story. A man and a woman stood together. Red hair fell past the woman's shoulders, drawn in careful strokes. She had an innocent face, young. The next panel showed her fallen in a dark wood. The man knelt over her. Rem knew her without a name at first. Then the marks named her in a plain hand pressed below the figure. Rosanna. A woman from long ago. The wolf's love, before he was a wolf. The next panels showed a ring of figures with raised hands. A coven. They pointed at the kneeling man. Lines burst from their fingers into him. In the last panel of that row, the man was gone. A black wolf stood in his place, eyes marked with red. They had cursed him for her death. The land too. That was why the bloom grew red, and why the beast still hunted here. Rem's light dropped lower. The bottom row showed a figure with an axe. Rem's axe. The glowing blade in his own hand matched the drawing. The marks showed where to strike. Not the heart. The throat, under the jaw, where the curse had entered. And a hand held the red bloom high first, to draw the beast close. The wall told him how to kill it. Rem pressed his palm flat to the cold stone. His family had hunted for generations and died not knowing this. He knew now. Behind him, the wolf finished with the coat and lifted its head, sniffing for a fresh trail. Rem gripped the axe. He had the answer. Now he had to reach Beth before the beast did.