Saban Wolf's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Saban did not go to the pack at dawn. He went back into the trees to find whatever had raised the dead. The bat smell led him east, past the frozen creek, into a hollow where the pines grew thin. A boy stood there in torn jeans and heavy boots, gray-skinned, jaw hanging loose. Blood crusted his shirt. He was not alive, and he was not a skeleton either. Saban lowered his head and growled. The dead boy lifted a hand and the pines above him shook. No bats came. Saban understood then. The skeletons had been this one's work. Every walking bone in these woods had crawled up because the dead boy called them. Saban had killed them all last night. He had left this one with nothing to raise. The dead boy's white eyes fixed on him, and his loose mouth worked around a word Saban could not hear. Then he came. He moved faster than a corpse should. Saban lunged for the throat and missed. Cold fingers caught his ear and tore. Teeth closed on his shoulder and ground down to the bone. Saban twisted, threw the body off, and drove in again. He got the arm this time and cracked it at the elbow. The dead boy did not slow. He raked his nails across Saban's belly and opened it. Saban felt the heat leave him. His back legs folded. He bit once more, weakly, at the ruined jeans. The dead boy, Marcus Graves by the look of the name stitched inside the collar, bent down and closed his teeth on Saban's neck. Saban's blood ran into the frost. He thought of the old alpha waiting at the creek, and of the wolves who would drink there tomorrow without an alpha to lead them. Then the cold pines went dark, and Saban Wolf did not rise again.