Scaley's Arc

Chapter 11 of 13

The black water stretched ahead, still and dark as oil. Scaley kept her eyes on the three-toed prints, following them deeper into the zone she'd marked forbidden. The mud pulled at her boots with each step. The tracks led to a shack standing on stilts above the water. A weathered sign hung crooked over the door — Snake Lodge. Scaley stopped twenty yards back and counted the glowing charms hanging from the porch rail. Four of them, swaying in the humid air. The Elders were inside. She could hear low voices through the walls, a rhythm like chanting. She pulled out her ledger and made a note of the location, then moved closer, keeping to the shadows between the cypress roots. Through a gap in the boards, she saw them. Four figures in dark robes stood in a circle around something on the floor — a massive serpent coiled tight, its scales the color of deep water. The Elders held their staffs high, green crystals pulsing in time with their voices. One of them stepped forward and placed a hand on the serpent's head. The creature didn't move. Scaley realized it wasn't resisting. They weren't hunting it. They were controlling it. This was the Beast, and they'd already won. Scaley backed away from the shack and crouched behind a fallen log. She opened her ledger and wrote fast. The Elders had the Beast. They were conducting some kind of ritual over it, binding it with those crystals. The gem was still missing, but now she understood what they were protecting — not an artifact, but a living weapon. She pulled the wire cutters from her belt and looked back at the fence line she'd crossed. She couldn't stop them alone, not four of them with that kind of power. But she could make sure no one else got through. She moved back toward the cut fence and began twisting the wire together, sealing the opening she'd made. The Elders would stay contained in this zone, and so would their Beast, until she figured out how to deal with them. She marked the shack's location in her ledger and turned back toward the village. The cultists were caught. The Elders were found. And Scaley had just made herself the only thing standing between them and the outside world.