Tomas Edel's Arc

Chapter 14 of 17

Dawn brought no relief. The wendigo had retreated to its cave to heal, but so had it dragged one of the night's dead back into the trees. Tomas knew what that meant. The creature was gathering its hoard again. To hunt it in the cave, he needed torches, and Duskwood held the only oil and the only flame. He crossed the square toward the dead man's house, where his family had barred the door. The father met him on the step. His eyes were red and his fists shook. "You brought this thing here," he said. "You paraded that sick boy through our streets. Now my brother is gone, dragged off like meat." Behind him, the family clutched their torches close, the only ones left with oil. "You'll get nothing from us. Go die in the woods alone." Tomas said nothing. He never did. He held out his empty hands, but the man spat and turned away. The door slammed. Without those torches, there would be no hunt. The wendigo would heal, and the killing would go on. Regan came to his side. She had staked worse than grieving men. "They won't listen to a mute," she said flatly. "They listen to proof." She looked past Tomas to the ranger truck, where the sick hunter sat wrapped in his blanket. Hunter had healed. The village doctor had drained the bite wound, and the boy's skin had lost its gray. He climbed down on his own legs, steady for the first time in days. But his blue eyes still tracked the tree line, sharp and certain. The bite had left him joined to the creature. He walked to the family's door and knocked. The father opened it, ready to shout. Hunter cut him off. "Your brother isn't dead yet." The words landed hard. "The wendigo doesn't eat. It collects. He's in the cave, alive, like I was. I can feel him breathing." He pressed a hand to his shoulder. "If you want him back, we go now. While it's weak." The father stared. His grief cracked open into something else. "Alive?" "For now," Hunter said, and stopped talking. The family looked at each other. Then the father shoved a torch into Tomas's hands. His wife brought two more, and the jug of oil from beside their hearth. "Bring him home," the father said. "Or bring me the thing that took him." Tomas gripped the torches. He had what he needed. Regan loaded the oil into the truck. Hunter climbed in beside it, his eyes already turned toward the forest, toward the cave where the creature slept and the missing brother still drew breath. "It's asleep," Hunter said. "Healing. We won't get another chance this clean." Tomas started the engine. For eleven years he had watched and stayed silent. Now, for the first time, he was driving toward the thing at the tree line, torches lit, to end it.