Tomas Edel's Arc

Chapter 17 of 17

The wendigo burned. Fire climbed its gray flank and lit the whole cave mouth orange. Tomas and Regan backed down the slope to watch it die. Then Hunter screamed. He dropped behind his line and clutched his bitten shoulder. The link ran both ways. Now the creature's pain poured into the boy who could sense it. Tomas ran to him. Hunter had come to Tomas weeks ago, a mean, closed-off boy hunting a kid who vanished from his town. The bite made him their tracker. Tomas had kept him seven steps back to keep the creature asleep. But fire did not care about steps. The agony traveled the connection straight into Hunter's head. "Hunter." Regan knelt and shook him. His eyes rolled white. His body went slack. He slid to the mud and did not move. Her flat voice cracked once. "He's out." Tomas felt the drop in his gut. With Hunter awake, they knew where the wendigo was every second. Now the boy lay cold and silent. Tomas was blind. He turned back to the cave. The fire still roared, but smoke blotted the entrance black. He could not see the creature inside. He could not tell if it still burned or if it had found a crack in the flames. A sound came from the smoke. Stone scraped. Something dragged itself along the floor, toward the mouth, away from the fire's heart. Regan heard it too. She stood and raised her stake, though the stake was useless. "It's coming out." Tomas looked at the unconscious boy, then at the dark cave. He had no tracker now. He had only his eyes and the torch had gone into the oil. He grabbed the oil can Regan had dropped. Half full. He shook it and listened to the slosh. One throw left. The dragging grew louder. A clawed hand reached into the orange light at the cave mouth. The arm behind it was scorched black, skin split and smoking. The wendigo was burned but alive, and it was crawling free. Tomas did not wait to see its face. He hurled the oil can into the flames at the entrance. It burst. Fire leapt up in a fresh wall and swallowed the crawling shape. The wendigo shrieked and jerked back into the dark. The sound of dragging stopped. Silence, except the fire. Regan lowered her stake. "Did it die?" Tomas did not answer. He could not. He dropped beside Hunter and pressed two fingers to the boy's throat. A pulse, fast and weak. Hunter breathed, but he did not wake. Without him, Tomas could not sense whether the thing in the cave was dead or only hiding deeper to heal again. He lifted Hunter onto his shoulder. The boy's weight pulled at his splinted arm. They had the creature trapped and burning. But their one way of knowing now hung limp against his back.