Vera Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 11 of 8

Morning came gray over the shack. The demon had fled the night before, burned three times, trailing smoke into the trees. Vera stood in the doorway and studied the ground. No blood. No dragged tracks. The rain had washed the earth clean. She had wounded the creature badly, but it had left her nothing to follow. It would hide, heal what it could, and come for her when she was weakest. "It won't wait long," Silas said behind her. He limped to her side, his splinted leg stiff. Silas had taught her to hunt this thing. Then he had asked her to wear the demon's mark and stand as bait. She still watched his hands when he spoke. "You hurt it. That makes it careful. It'll pick its ground next time." "Then I pick it first." Vera crouched over the mud. She dragged one finger through a shallow scrape near the tree line. Ash. Black flakes, still greasy. The pitch fire had burned into the demon's flesh. As it ran, the burned skin flaked off. "Look. It leaves ash where it bleeds." Silas knelt slow. He rubbed the flakes between two fingers and smelled them. "Pitch and rot. This is fresh." He looked up. There was no smile, only that flat, intense stare. "You didn't lose the trail. You made a new one." Vera followed the flakes into the woods. They came in a broken line, one smear on a root, another on a low branch. The steel blade could not kill the demon. She had no pitch left to burn it. But the fire she had already put in its body was working for her now. Each step it took shed more ash. The trail led downhill to a split in the rock. Cold air breathed out of the gap. Vera pressed her back to the stone and listened. Slow, wet breathing came from inside. Rasping. Pained. The demon had crawled into a den to nurse its burns. "It's in there," she whispered. "Hurt. Not healed." Silas gripped her arm. "You have no fire. Go in now and steel won't hold it." His voice dropped. "But we know where it sleeps. That's worth more than one bad fight." Vera stared at the black gap. Everything in her wanted to rush the wounded thing. She made herself count its breaths instead. He was right, and she hated that he was right. She marked the split in the rock in her mind. Then she backed away, silent, until the den fell behind them. "We come back with fire," she said. "Then it doesn't leave." She had lost the demon in the open and found it in the dark. The archdemon that shattered Maplecrypt lay cornered in a hole in the ground. She knew where. Now she needed the one thing her hands were empty of.