Vera Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

The servant was ash, but the demon still breathed somewhere. Vera knelt in the miller's yard and studied the double mark on the brother's palm. The old black house was empty now. She had cleared it, and the demon had fled. She had no trail, no scent, no next door to break. Somewhere in Maplecrypt it hunted for a fresh throat. She pushed her glasses up and forced herself to think. The demon left signs. Signs could be followed. A voice cut the dark behind her. "You're looking in the wrong place." Vera spun, blade up. A man stood at the edge of the yard, all in black, coat still, hands loose. He did not flinch at the steel. His eyes moved over her like he had measured her already. She had never seen him in this town. "Who are you?" "Silas Crane." He stepped closer, unhurried. "I've hunted this thing longer than you've been in Maplecrypt. It doesn't lair in one house. It roots itself where the marked sleep." Vera kept her blade between them. "Then tell me where." He crouched by the miller's brother and turned the man's arm over. Beneath the flower marks, a darker shape spread across the forearm. A rune, raw and red, the skin cracked around it like dry mud. Blood beaded in the deep lines. Vera had seen the flowers. She had never seen this. "The flower claims the body," Silas said. "This binds it. When the demon feeds, the bound one's scar bleeds fresh. The blood runs toward the master." He pressed the arm. A thin line of blood welled and slid down the man's wrist. It did not drip to the grass. It pulled sideways, crawling against gravity, pointing toward the tree line beyond the mill. Vera's stomach turned. "It's a compass." "It's a leash." Silas stood. "Cut the demon and the leash points home. You gave me that. You killed its servant tonight. That forced it to feed itself, and feeding leaves a trail." She watched the blood crawl and hold its line. The demon was not lost. It was at the far end of that red thread. She sheathed her blade slowly. "Why help me?" "Because it knows your face now." Silas met her eyes. "That makes you bait it can't ignore. I've wanted that for a long time." Vera didn't trust him. She trusted the blood. She marked the direction in her mind, into the black trees where no path ran. The miller's brother groaned. His scar still bled its single crawling line, steady as a needle. "Then we follow it," she said. "Before it stops." She had her lead. She also had a stranger at her back who wanted the demon to see her, and she could not tell yet which hunger was worse.