Remington “Rem” Riley's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Rem found Beth at the mouth of a side tunnel. She swayed on her feet. The red moss sap still worked in her blood. Cuts marked her hand where she had touched the stuff. Her blue eyes swam, unfocused, and she smiled at nothing. This was the detective who once thought Rem a killer. Now she could not tell him from a dream. "The lake is so pretty," she murmured. She stepped toward a black gap in the rock. Rem grabbed her arm. Down that gap he heard breathing, low and wet. The beast waited there, tracking the red scent that clung to her. If she wandered in, it would take her. "Beth. Look at me." He turned her face to his. She giggled. The sap had her deep. He could not reason her out. He had to shock her back. He scooped snow that had blown into the tunnel. He packed it hard and pressed it against the cuts on her hand, then against her neck. She gasped. The cold bit through the fog. "Rem?" she said. Her eyes sharpened for one second. "Rem, my head—there's something behind me—" "I know. Run." He pulled her the other way, toward daylight. Claws hammered the stone behind them. The wolf burst from the gap, black fur, red eyes. Rem shoved Beth out the cave mouth into open snow. They ran along the cliff edge. The ledge crumbled. They fell. Snow and ice swallowed them. They tumbled down the slope, over and over, and slid out onto a flat black surface. A frozen lake. The ice held, dark and smooth as glass. Rem's axe skidded from his grip and stopped an arm's length away, glowing faint red. Beth sat up, clear-eyed now. The fall and the cold had burned the sap out of her. "Where are we?" She saw the axe. She saw the shape at the top of the slope. The wolf stood at the lake's edge. Beside it came a second shape. It walked upright, but wrong. Long arms. A jutting jaw. Torn clothes hung off a body that no longer fit them. Rem knew the beard, the scars. It was Marcus Hollow, the guest from Room Seven. The bite had finished its work. He was more beast than man now. Marcus's yellow eyes fixed on Rem. A growl came from his throat, but under it Rem heard a groan, human still, trapped inside. Rem crawled to his axe and closed his hand on the haft. His ribs screamed. The blood markings had shown him the way. Strike the throat with the red bloom held high. But he had no bloom now. He had dropped the flower coat far behind, in the dark. Two hunters stepped onto the ice. Rem got Beth to her feet and put the axe between them and the beasts. "Stay behind me," he said. The frozen lake spread wide and open. There was nowhere left to run.