Devon Monk - Dead Iron

Cedar slowed, instinct finally winning over desperation. He’d go carefully into this place of death, tread softly, and kill swiftly.

Kill, the beast echoed.

The widow Lindson’s house was near enough he could smell the fire from her hearth and the sweet spice from her herb garden. He peered through the night. Should he cross the field to her house?

No, the scent of Mae, of the boy, of his brother, came from the stand of trees.

Cedar slipped beneath the sheltering boughs, immersing in the deeper darkness.

Ahead, he heard a mule bray and a woman scream. Ahead, he heard the growl of a wolf. A male—his brother.

Wil.

Cedar ran to the edge of a small clearing in the trees, and saw with his own eyes a vision out of hell.

The widow clung to her mule as the animal bucked and reared. Something the size of a child crawled at odd angles over the beast, clinging like a spider to a wall, biting Mae, scratching, pulling, slapping.

And near a tall tree, not much more than a shadow himself, stood that Strange, Mr. Shunt. Too tall, too cold, fingers made of needles and blades and hooks, fingers tapping impatiently over the leather leash held in one hand.

At the end of that leash hunkered a wolf, ears flattened in fear, in hunger, eyes the brown of old copper. His brother, Wil.

It felt as if the whole world spun itself into the wind that battered at the treetops. Too many images, too many memories, warred through his mind. Wil’s blood spread across stone and grass. Wil’s mangled corpse. The taste of blood and flesh in his mouth. He had thought it was Wil, had known it had to be Wil. He had seen Wil change, twist beneath the curse just as he had changed. But then the blood hunger, the dark beast’s need, had cast its thrall.

And he had lost all control.

Cedar was a learned man. He had not considered it before, too wild in his grief, but there was a chance, narrow, slight, that he had been so crazy from pain, from the change, from the cursed blood hunger, that he had not recognized his own brother. There was a chance that the wolf he had killed that first night he’d become the beast was simply that—a wolf.

He’d not stayed to bury it. Caught in the clutches of a high fever, he’d wandered incoherent for days.

A heartbeat, a breath, was all it took for those thoughts to rush through Cedar’s mind.

And then the hot urge to kill the Strange gripped him again.

For the first time, Cedar agreed.

Mae Lindson fell from the mule, a yell of anger and pain filling the night. She scrabbled for a weapon—the gun turned by the Madders’ ingenious hands—but the creature, the boy that was not a boy, caught it up first.

Mr. Shunt let loose the leash on the wolf. “Punish her, or I shall punish you,” he hissed.

The wolf growled again, baring his teeth, his eyes shifting from Mae and the boy to where Cedar crouched, hidden in shadow.

“Now.” Mr. Shunt flicked his fingers, and the wolf snarled as if fire had sparked beneath his skin.

Cedar could smell the pain. Every nerve in Cedar’s body told him to stay away from the Strange. Stay away from the collar snapped around his brother’s neck. Stay away from the boy who was not a boy, who held the shotgun high and humming at Mae’s chest. The boy who laughed while she bled.

But Cedar was not about to run.

Kill.

He rushed out of the sheltering brush, launched himself at the boy who was not a boy.

He caught the Strange boy and chomped down on his head, jaws pumping to crack it open.

The Strange boy screamed, yowled, beat at him with hands that were stronger than any grown man’s. Cedar bit harder.

There was no crack of bone. No burst of blood. Nothing soft and savory beneath the Strange boy’s hard exterior. The boy tasted of old flesh and copper coil and burned wood. Cedar growled. He shook the Strange by the head, and snapped its neck.

It was still laughing, plucking at Cedar’s eyes, fingers sharp and stabbing.

What did it take to kill a thing like this?

Something struck Cedar from behind, throwing him to the ground in a tangle of fangs and claw. Wil.

Cedar pushed away and stared straight into his brother’s eyes, at the madness of pain caught there.

He had a second, a breath, to rejoice. Wil was alive!

Then Wil launched at his throat, jaws catching his fur as Cedar twisted away.

Kill.

No. This was his brother. He would not harm him. Cedar snarled, hackles raised, head low in warning.

Wil lowered his ears, teeth bared in challenge.

There was no reason of a man in those eyes. There was only hunger, kill, and pain.

Blood hunger pushed at Cedar, but he would not attack his brother. Cedar growled in warning. Mr. Shunt snapped his fingers, the sound of flint against steel. Wil yelped, the stink of pain heavy on him.

Mr. Shunt had more than a leash keeping Wil kowtowed. He was using the collar to cause him pain.

Wil worked a slow circle to Cedar’s left. Cedar glanced at the boy that was not a boy. Most of its face was gone, stripped away as if bark from a tree, leaving a fish belly–smooth surface where eyes and nose should be. A crack ran straight through the head, behind which peeked glints and spikes and spokes of gears and cogs. A rotted-flesh stink radiated out of the crack in its head, and the slash where its mouth should be was now an open maw where small black bugs skittered and oil seeped.

The witch, bloody and bruised, her hair free as spun gold in the moonlight, picked up the shotgun and snapped it to life.

At the sight of that gun, Cedar knew it meant his death. Knew it meant his brother’s death.

Run, Cedar thought, run, run, run.

Wil rushed him, biting deep into his flesh.

Cedar howled in pain and fought his brother, no longer thinking of the collar, of the gun, of anything but being free of this attacker.

Kill.

He fought back, tearing at the wolf, as the wolf tore at him. Fangs, claws, jaws. Blood over muzzles, clogging nostrils. There would be an end to this fight, and that end would be death.

An orb of pure gold light shattered the night and stole Cedar’s sight.

He scrambled away from the fight, dodging back to the safety of cover, his ears, his eyes, slowly sinking back to correct levels.

“Come out of the shadows, Strange,” the witch said, her voice rough with anger. “And fight me on your own.” She held the shotgun toward the shadows where Mr. Shunt had stood, but the gun was not yet recharged, the hum too low, the light too faint.

The boy that was not a boy was nothing but a pile of splinters now, smoking from the impact of the shotgun, metal springs and bits of bone sticking up like gristle in a stew.

Wil had backed away into cover just as Cedar had.

And for a moment, Wil’s eyes were clear, sane. He looked at Mae, at the broken boy, and over at the shadows where Mr. Shunt had been. And then he looked at Cedar. There was a spark of recognition between them. Wil knew it was Cedar in wolf form just as Cedar knew it was Wil.

Cedar could see his laughing brother, his trusting brother, in the wolf’s eyes. They held gazes for a moment; then Wil threw himself across the clearing, fangs bared. Launching himself at Cedar.

Cedar heard the snap of a twig behind him and spun.

Mr. Shunt was behind him, a long, hooked prod in his hand. His teeth glinted bloody red as he jammed the stick into Cedar’s side.

Cedar twisted, but not fast enough. The stick punched through his skin and scraped bone. An explosion of pain shuddered through him, like lightning from the sky had just fused him to the ground. He howled and snarled, but no voice was big enough to contain the heartstopping pain.

The world was agony. Agony that burned him alive, agony that ate away his bones and flesh and mind.