The Last Inn

by Rachel Gay

  “Sorry?” Erin shrugged. “He’ll get over it eventually. Just think of this as a trial run before I move to the city.”

  “A head’s up about that would be great, by the way. I can be sure to be out of town that month.” Art pushed his chair back into place. “Well, I’m going to head home before this storm comes in. See you around.”

  “See you.” Erin held the door for him and started to shut it when he was out of sight until she noticed something strange.

  “Uh, guys?” she called over her shoulder, and then again in a louder voice when Kota and Miles failed to show up.

  “What is it?” Kota asked once they finally came out of the kitchen.

  “I think someone followed us here,” she said, pointing.

  They looked out at the cow standing in the middle of the yard in front of the inn, who stared back at them silently.

  “How did she get out?” Miles asked. He started to walk out and then stopped short and slammed the door shut as the sun broke free of the clouds at last. “Sorry about that, reflex.”

  “We should tell someone,” Erin said. “Joe’s going to think another cow’s been attacked.”

  “Wait.” Kota pressed his hand against the door to stop her from opening it. “Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that a cow could get past all of those people without being noticed, much less get this far this soon? They’re not exactly the fastest animals around.”

  “You’ve obviously never seen a stampede,” Miles said, but he didn’t sound so sure anymore. He went to one of the other windows and risked looking out again to find that the cow had moved. She was now going around the perimeter of the inn, her nose pressed to the ground and visibly sniffing like a dog after a trail. “Well, that doesn’t look normal.”

  Kota paced the floor, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose while he thought. He stopped and turned to face them as he said, “A cannishift.”

  “A what?” Erin wondered if the lack of sleep was finally getting to Kota, but beside her Miles groaned and put his hand over his face. “What is that?”

  “There are stories where I come from,” Kota said. “Of careless farmers who, when winter came, did not notice there was an extra chicken in their coop. Then, as time passed the other chickens would start to disappear until there was just one left, the cannishift.”

  Miles said, “Cannishifts will take on the appearance of an animal to blend in with the group, and then lure them away one by one to eat them. That’s the reason why shepherds in remote areas won’t take in a stray sheep. I’ve never heard of one this far south, though.”

  “But it fits, right? No tracks, no strange sm— Erm, no one would notice an extra animal if they’re disappearing left and right, and a lock wouldn’t matter if the cannishift is already inside the building.”

  “So how can you tell if it’s one of those whatevers?” Erin asked. She looked out the window again, but the cow had moved out of sight. They heard a thump come from the kitchen, near the back door.

  Miles and Kota shrugged.

  “But if Kota is right, this one has been moving up, from chickens to larger animals,” Miles said. He remembered the horse, or rather what everyone avoided saying about the horse. “And become more violent, wasteful even.”

  “I have heard that cannishift are very territorial.” Kota’s head turned when they heard another thump that shook the back door. “They’ll take out other predators if they think they’re a threat.”

  A third thump was followed by a bang and the very definite sound of splintering wood.

  Kota looked at Miles and said, “You just had to bite the cow, didn’t you?”

  Entry 21: Take This

  Erin winced when she heard the door groan and creak as the cow rammed it again. “Look, I don’t care why it’s here but we need to get rid of this cannishift thing before it gets inside! Do you know what kind of damage a cow could do in here?”

  Kota and Miles looked at each other, but neither said what they were thinking.

  “Well, I can’t do anything about it unless it comes inside,” Miles said with a shrug. “Sun, vampire, poof of dust, remember? Kota?”

  Kota picked up the broom and handed it to Erin as he said, “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.”

  Erin took the broom and Kota did not duck in time. He shook his head until the ringing cleared and he could hear Erin speaking.

  “–You go out there and run that thing off! What do you think I pay you for?”

  “You pay me?” Kota rubbed his ear and winced. “Geez, you whack that thing once and I don’t think we’ll have to worry about it anymore.”

  Miles grinned and said, “Come on, Kota, be a gent. What kind of man tries to send someone else to do his job?”

  Kota tried to protest that this was exactly what Miles was doing right now, but between them Erin and Miles shoved him out the front door. The second he stepped into the full sunlight the young man collapsed to all fours as a wolf.

  “Oh, right, that kind of man,” Miles said.

  The wolf growled at them and Erin hefted the broom again as she said, “Come on, Kota! One look at you and it’ll run for sure!”

  Kota sighed and trotted around the house as Miles and Erin followed him on the inside, watching his movement through the windows.

  “It must be a bother, having a partner with his kind of condition,” Miles said.

  Erin froze and realized that she had never told him about Kota. Had Kota said something to the vampire? He must have; she couldn’t see even Miles not batting an eye at that.

  “Of course, at times like this it’s a useful trick, eh?” He said.

  They looked at the window in the kitchen when they heard another growl. The wolf stood out in the yard, hackles raised as he slowly approached the cannishift cow standing at the back door while being careful to leave a clear escape route.

  The cow turned around and stared down at Kota with wide, brown eyes that narrowed with a distinctively un-cowlike attitude. It gave a loud bellow and Kota visibly stopped himself from backing up. As they watched the cow’s body shifted and twisted until the cannishift took on the appearance of a large, dark gray wolf that rivaled Kota in size. Unlike Kota, this wolf did not look like it was constantly prepared to run at the slightest provocation, unless it was to chase down its prey.

  The cannishift growled, a deep, rumbling growl that shook its whole body as the fur on its back stood up in a long line.

  Miles swallowed and said, “Do you remember what we said about cannishifts being territorial?”

  “Y-yes,” Erin said. “Why?”

  Kota whimpered and bolted, becoming a gray and white blur as he raced across the yard of the inn and leaped through the gap in the fence that separated the inn from the grass plains that surrounded the town.

  The cannishift followed right on his tail, matching him stride for stride until they were out of sight.

  “What do we do?” Erin asked. She ran to another window, but it was no use; they were nowhere to be seen now.

  “If he has any sense he won’t run into the forest,” Miles said. “That thing won’t stop just because he changes shape again. What else is near here?”

  “Just the town and the Farmer’s place.” Erin corrected herself and said, “Well, there’s the wastes, but Kota may not know about them. He’s not been out of the inn much since he got here, and I don’t think he came from the capital.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think so.” Miles leaned as close to the window as he dared and looked up at the sky, but there was no sign that it would change soon. “Well, if he runs to the farm they’ll be ready for them.”

  “What?” Realization sank in and Erin ran to the door, swearing when it became evident how much damage the cannishift had done there. Something else to add to the to-do list, but she couldn’t be bothered with that right now.

  “What are you going to do?” Miles asked. He didn’t sound like he was going to try and stop her so much as he was just curious.<
br />
  “If those idiots shoot Kota I won’t have a partner anymore!” Erin paused outside and wondered if that sounded as selfish as she thought it did. She added, “I promised I would help him if I could, right?”

  Miles didn’t answer, or at least she didn’t hear him as she followed the trail the wolves took, over the back fence and across the way to the Farmer’s place. By the time she reached the gate she was already out of breath, holding the stitch in her side, and wishing she had thought to take her bike before it was too late to go back. She slowed down when she spotted Joe walking out of a shed and noticed that all of the workers were still taking care of the crops, hardly the activity of those who’d recently seen wolves running around.

  “Erin?” Joe waved and took off his wide brimmed hat to wipe the sweat off of his brow. “Back again? Your mom left a few minutes ago, if you’re looking for her.”

  “No, I—” Erin hesitated as she tried to think of an excuse for her red face and harsh breathing, but before she could think of something a shot rang out, loud and clear. A second and a third shot followed before Erin realized that they were in the distance. “Where is that coming from?”

  Joe tilted his head and said, “The wastes, I think? We don’t have anyone over there. Peter, Jeremy!”

  The two men Erin and the others had spoken to earlier dropped what they were doing and came over.

  “You two go to the wastes and see what’s going on. Take your gun and just look, understood? If those traders that have been hanging around have run into trouble, you can go back to the town for help if they need it.”

  Peter and Jeremy nodded and Peter ran to get his shotgun.

  “I should...probably get back to the inn,” Erin said, and refused Joe’s offers to send someone to escort her back. She left, careful to get out of sight of the farm before she turned back and circled around to head into the wastes. She had to know.

  Entry 22: Run, Kota, Run

  Kota was barely aware of his paws hitting the ground after he cleared the fence. The sound of the cannishift right behind him competed for space in his mind with the imperative to run, run, run. Where he was running to hadn’t quite registered yet, but he’d always found that sort of thing sorted itself out after he’d made some distance between him and what he was running from.

  The only problem was that he could not shake the cannishift, which as a wolf matched him for every step no matter which way he went. They passed through one of Farmer’s outlying fields, empty now with all of the other animals locked up and the workers staying close to the center of the farm. He spotted a pond in the middle of the field and steered toward it, but it had dried up so much that his paws felt merely damp after running straight through it.

  Behind him the cannishift snarled and Kota found a new burst of speed that took him off of Farmer’s field and beyond, over ground that grew hard and cracked where even weeds struggled to grow and the occasional wind threw up a cloud of dust that stuck in Kota’s throat and made him choke.

  The wind wasn’t the only thing throwing up dust, as Kota and the cannishift found out for themselves when they cleared a particularly bad cloud and Kota nearly ran straight under a horse pulling a familiar wagon.

  Kota’s paws shot out from under him as he tried to stop while the horse reared up onto its hind legs, snapping the shaft of the wagon as it kicked out with its flailing hooves. Men and women shouted on every side as the caravan of merchants swiftly fell into disarray, but Kota was only aware of the cannishift’s weight bearing down on his back, pushing him to the ground as a set of powerful jaws clamped down on the back of his neck.

  The air cracked with the sound of a shot being fired and the cannishift yelped as its weight shifted on Kota’s back. He looked up to see the mercenary who accompanied the caravan guards standing nearby, calmly reloading another bullet into the smallest gun Kota had ever seen, small enough to be held in one hand. The mercenary’s eyes were locked onto his face, taking in the mark over his left eye.

  Behind him another gun fired and the cannishift’s body went limp as Kota dragged himself up and started running again. The cannishift fell off of his shoulders when he darted under the wheels of the stopped wagon and came out the other side, the shouts and screams falling behind while he found his second wind. The bullet that hit the ground not far from his back paw didn’t slow him down either as he scrambled over the ridge and out of sight.

  ***

  The sound of the three shots fired reached Erin as she spoke to Joe Farmer and Miles heard them at the Last Inn. He briefly looked up before putting Kota’s meager belongings back into the only bag he had brought with him to the inn, except for one small item that he turned over in his hand a few times before carefully returning it to its spot under the lining of the bag. A small, golden pin in the shape of a sunburst, much like the mark on Kota’s own face. Well, it was something to go on. Now Miles just had to hope Kota wouldn’t go and get himself shot or eaten in the meantime.

  ***

  Erin caught up with the caravan at about the same time as Jeremy and Peter, in time to see the crowd still gathered in a ring around something lying on the ground. She could hardly breathe as she pushed her way through the traders and guards until she got close enough to see the body.

  The cannishift still had the body of a wolf, but in its death throes it had apparently tried to change into too many different things in a futile attempt to save itself. Its back legs looked like they belonged to a chicken of all things, and a pair of bull horns seemed out of place on the top of a feline head. The cannishift’s front legs were so out of proportion to the rest of the creature and twisted that Erin could not place them for anything.

  Not that she really wanted to. It was enough to see only one body, and one that clearly belonged to the cannishift.

  Amid the murmuring behind her as those familiar with the creature identified it for others, Erin caught the mercenary saying, “The other wasn’t a cannishift. I told you, it had a mark on it, bright yellow and orange. Cannishifts don’t go for markings, makes them too easy to identify.”

  “A wolf, right?” Jeremy said, closer to Erin than she expected. She moved to make sure they wouldn’t notice her and send her home while staying close enough to overhear. “That thing was at the farm the other day, it’s been attacking our animals!”

  “I don’t think that was your problem,” one of the guards said. He kicked the cannishift on the ground and started to explain what it was to Jeremy, but Erin kept her eyes on the mercenary.

  He frowned and looked at the ridge that followed the road for a second before coming to a decision. He checked his gun, one of the capital pistols, and loped away without a word. After a moment of indecision, Erin followed him over the ridge and through the wastes, trying to stay back as he constantly stopped to check the ground and followed a trail invisible to Erin’s eyes that took them back around in the direction of Farmer’s place until it veered off under the trees.

  Erin had not been aware of the darkening sky overhead until the first raindrop hit her head. Thunder rumbled in the distance and she realized that Kota, wherever he was at, would be back to his normal self by now just as the mercenary bent down to look at something on the ground: a set of wolf tracks that changed, mid-step, into bootprints.

  Entry 23: End to a Long Day

  “What was that thing?”

  Erin and the mercenary both turned to find that Peter had followed them and spotted the strange tracks.

  “Those aren’t wolf tracks,” he added. “Did that thing...Did it...?”

  “If I had to guess, it’s some kind of shapeshifter,” the mercenary said with a shrug of his shoulders. He stood up and brushed off the knee of his pants. “Not a cannishift like the thing that I shot, and not a werewolf. Full moon’s not until next week.”

  “You keep track of that sort of thing?” Erin asked.

  “You would if you had ever had to deal with one of them.” The mercenary looked at them, but his mind was clea
rly still on the wolf. “It had a strange mark. I wonder if—”

  He broke off when a shout came from in the distance and swore. “I’ve got to get back to the caravan, they lose their heads at the first sign of trouble. You two should get back with your other friend.”

  “Wait, what are we supposed to do about this monster running around?” Peter asked. “That thing’s been hanging around the farm, who knows if it wasn’t the thing attacking the animals?”

  “Well a few days should answer your question. If the animals make it, then it was the cannishift. If they don’t, it was the wolf shifter, or both. Simple enough.” The mercenary looked to the forest, his gray eyes following the trail. Erin could nearly see how much he wanted to keep going, but another shout broke his gaze.

  “But that wolf! Look at those tracks, it clearly turned into a human! What do we do about something like that?” Peter dogged the mercenary's steps as he headed back toward the caravan and Erin trailed behind to hear his answer.

  “Tell the town then. They can go on a hunt if they think that'll help. You do have hunters here, don't you?”

  “Well...” Peter trailed off and Erin knew what he was thinking. There were a few hunters in town, but most of the locals would never dare to go into the forest alone. Those who did went in large groups, and never that far in. All Kota would have to do is go a few miles in to lose them if he ever had to.

  “I'm going to head back to the inn,” Erin announced. The large raindrops were falling faster now, but if she ran she might make it back before she got drenched.

  “Alone?” The mercenary asked. “What about the wolf?”

  “I doubt he's going to do anything today, after everything else,” Erin said. Kota would be either in the forest or back at the inn licking his wounds by now. “Besides, it's not that far.”

  The mercenary looked at Peter, but the man ignored him and kept walking, intent on getting Jeremy and heading back to the farm before the bottom fell out of this storm. He came to a decision and said, “The others can wait a little longer. Come on.”