We Walk As Wolves

Chapter 7

Cass

The child darted through the trees, gripping Cass's fingers tightly. He struggled to keep up, focusing intently on the back of the boy's cloaked head, but was not blind to the way the world began to change as he dragged him deeper into the forest. 

The trunks of the trees had thinned, lightened, were almost white when the glare of the red moon hit them. The bark was strangely smooth, like someone had gone through and painted a thin layer of snow onto each trunk. 

The leaves, now purple, seemed content with sticking to where they had sprouted up from the branch instead of twisting and turning to watch him race by. They acted as they should, like leaves, fluttering gently on the warm breeze.

The boy released Cass's hand as he slowed, bit the skin around his thumb, and then turned to the right. Cass followed behind him, ducking under a low hanging branch. The boy reached back, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and hurried him along. 

Cass tried not to lag behind for fear of his shirt tearing in two. "How much farther?"

The boy mumbled something Cass couldn't decipher. Then he tightened his grip and pointed ahead of him. "Just beyond those trees."

Cass squinted. It all looked too familiar. "Are you sure we're going the right way?" 

"Yes," the boy nodded. When he saw Cass's hesitation, he gave him a small smile. "I know the way. Everything's tickety-boo." 

Tickety-boo?

The boy led him toward the bundle of trees, then slipped between two of the white trunks. Cass followed after, brushing away the purple vines that hung in his face like the earrings his mother used to wear. Before he could fully study the patch of woods he'd been dragged into, the boy reached for his hand and wrenched him forward. 

Then he saw the body at the base of the tree. 

What was left of it, anyway. Tattered pieces of clothing littered the ground like ash from a fire, scattered about by the wind. The boy's little hands pressed against Cass's back, nudging him forward. But Cass didn't want to get any closer. Didn't want to see - 

"Can you fix him?"

Cass swallowed. The body was incrusted with blood, mangled to the point of complete disfigurement. If the boy hadn't told him it was his brother, Cass would have thought it was the remains of a dead animal - a discarded pile of meat from a monster's dinner plate. 

He tried to find some semblance of a face, hair, something that told him this had been a child. But he could barely pick out where one body part ended and another began. The little boy stood behind him, daring a peek from around his hip. 

"You can, right?" he asked. "Fix him?"

Cass stared at the body. He should have been upset, should have been reeling. The skin on his face burned, prickled, like a torch igniting. All he felt was fury. 

The boy had never stopped talking. "I think he fell into one of those craters."

Cass shook his head. "I don't think the earthquake did this." 

The child's eyes widened, green emeralds against his rich black cloak. "You think one of those beasts got him?"

Beasts. God, there were beasts here. And the boy spoke of them like Londoners spoke of rats in their basements. 

A flash of silver caught Cass's eye, buried beneath all the red. "I'm not sure." He knelt down beside the body, forcing himself to brush away some of the remains until he could scoop the silver chain up with his thumb.