We Walk As Wolves

Chapter 1

Cass

People whispered about them - the shadows. 

The dark beings that came for the children in the dead of night. The kidnappings, rather peculiar acts, had been ongoing - starting long before Cass was born. Though the mystery of them seemed unsolvable, the testaments about those nights never failed to correspond: only when the moon was full, a cacophony of heavy boots and rustling coat sleeves, children vanishing beneath the moonlight, quick as rabbits in hats. No traces. No evidence. No prints. The children were simply there one day, and the next they were not. No one could quite figure out how the child thieves were doing it. 

But Cass had been told something different. 

Tales always spoken under his mother's low, frantic breath, as if she feared the shadows might overhear. And her testimony had always clashed with all the others. She spoke of sudden, impromptu wind changes, boats that did not belong creaking in the harbor, the smell of rot and something trying its damnedest to decay. She'd claimed the thieves were something else, something other. Straight out of a world from a nightmare, evil things that shouldn't exist. 

Things that didn't exist, Cass knew. Couldn't - not the way she spoke of them. 

But blunt uncertainty thudded along with the echo of footsteps behind him. 

Skidding, he snagged onto the nearest wall with a palm and flung himself down a back street. The sound of boots squealing on wet cobblestone followed after him. It didn't seem to matter how quick he was, how agile. The shadows were always a stride behind. 

His mother had never mentioned in her tales where they came from, or quite what they were. So Cass had thought of them the way most thought of ghosts. Some believed fully, layering their doorways and windows with salt. Others simply didn't, knew the shadows were just wicked-minded men in dark clothes. 

Cass didn't believe. Had never. His mother had told him nightmares instead of bedtime stories, habitually, like a ritual, like they were rules to follow. To always look out for her, to never let his sister out of his sight. But nightmares and crooked thieves were two different things, and regardless of his mother's warnings, he'd never truly thought either would come for her. 

But now their fingers were interlocked, now they were darting through the streets of London like hunted rats. 

Her legs were small, even for a child of eight, the muscles weak from years of famine. Food had been scarce already, and Cass had been caught lifting bread from a street food market that morning. He'd gotten away with four loaves, but had lost three of them on the way back to a group of older loiterers. It had taken a black eye and a few bloody knuckles, but he'd been able to keep the promise to his mother, had been able to hand the last loaf over to his sister. 

She stumbled, and her knees hit the stone. Cass wrapped a hand around her thin waist and hauled her into his arms. She clasped her palms around his neck as he staggered back to his feet. 

"Cass, they're coming." Her blonde hair swirled around him in a chaotic dance as she glanced over his shoulder. "They're coming, just like she said." 

He didn't risk a look back; the footsteps were enough to know he wasn't gaining any ground. With a streetlamp as a guide, he spun around the corner, squeezing around rusted poles and cracked sewer grates that bent under his feet like the flickering wick of a candle. 

He gripped her tighter, rounded the end of the street. 

Then bumped straight into a shadow. 

Quick as a gunshot, it latched a hand around Cass's throat. The touch burned with a sort of algid sting, like touching a sliver of pale ice, far too cold to belong to anything human. With a savagely strong force, Cass flew backward. His spine hit the wall, and she tumbled from his grip. The world listed hard to the left when he tried to raise his head. 

"She's sort of small." An airy voice came from his right. "Don't know if they'll like her. Ocean's gonna tear her apart." 

Cass heard his sister scream. Fumbling through the red veil of his own vision, he groped the bricks beneath him. "Get away from her!" 

A boot kicked him in the side. 

"She'll do. Those beasts ain't picky." 

The earth rocked as Cass lunged. Fingers clamped around his arm, his shoulder, the collar of his shirt. The sound of seams splitting rippled through his ears as one of the shadows dragged him up from the ground. 

Cass kicked out, and the toe of his boot struck the shadow's shin. Something cracked beneath the pant leg, but the shadow merely laughed. Cass swatted at it, seizing the narrow wrist with his hand. A deep frost shot through the tips of his fingers, and his thumb slipped into a brittle crevice that moved beneath his touch. Then sleeve of the black coat shifted, and a strangled cry shot from Cass's mouth as the shadow slipped beneath the streetlamp's frail light. 

Shredded skin hung like drapes along a cratered arm. The flesh itself had decayed, sloughed off in thick chunks. Missing. 

Cass held a fistful of weathered bones. 

He dropped his hand with a yelp, stumbled back against the wall as the shadow released him. Slipping back until the gleam of its bones faded into the night, the shadow gave a brief nod to the rest. "The docks."

"No!" Cass shouted. "You've got the wrong girl!" 

He was on the ground again with a swift kick and a blow to the jaw, bones cracking against bones. The shadows grabbed at his sister, hauling her away. Cass threw himself at them, her screams ringing in his ears. He wanted to feel the withered bones again, wanted to crush them in his palm. 

"Take me! Take me instead!" 

He knew they were delicate, aged; he'd felt the way they bowed under his touch. How far could a bone bend until it broke?

The nearest shadow stopped, turned, a cloud of smoke caught in a draft. Two more shadows grabbed at Cass's arms, hauling him back, knocking him so hard in the ribs he heard something crack when he landed. He tried to rise, couldn't. 

"Trust me, lad." When Cass lifted his head from the stone, a glistening cheekbone winked at him like a fading star. "I'm doing you a favor."