A messenger had come in and was now walking toward Colonel Braddick.
A moment later, Colonel Braddick and several of his men hurried out of the Billiard Room.
“He never leaves a card game that quickly,” Jess said, her voice tight with worry.
“What’s it mean?” Serafina asked, feeling herself already relying on this girl’s startling powers of observation.
“The local tracker he hired must have found something—”
“Jess!” the colonel barked. Jess jumped at the shout. “Get out of that gown and into your hunting clothes! We’re going out right now!”
“You’d better get going,” Jess whispered to Serafina.
“I will, right away, but please tell me: Why are you helping me like this?”
Jess looked her in the eye. “Because I’ve seen too many dead cats.”
Serafina ran through the forest, her four furred feet tearing rapidly across the ground, propelling her forward, her body nothing but a black streak through the murky darkness of the trees. The colonel’s pack of hunting dogs chased close behind her, running, barking, howling after their prey. She knew from experience that hounds only bayed like that when they were close on the scent. But they weren’t on her scent. She had come up behind them and gone far around them. She scanned the forest ahead of her, looking frantically for a flash of tan. Her sister and brother were out here someplace, running for their lives. They must know the baying hounds were coming for them. And there was no escape. A mountain lion could easily kill a single dog, but a pack of twenty mindless, biting hounds—all willing to die to get in a single bleeding bite—was more than most mountain lions could handle.
Finally, she heard the whisking sound of two mountain lions sprinting through the thicket in the distance. Looking across a rocky, mist-filled valley, she saw them scurrying up the slope across from her, instinctively heading for high ground.
Not up there, Serafina thought, recognizing the ridge they were headed for. Not up there.
The pack of dogs came out of the forest close behind them, loud now, howling with new fervor. The hounds had been chasing the two mountain lions for miles, all through the night, relentless in their pursuit, and they knew they had finally gotten close to their prey.
With nowhere else to go, the two young mountain lions bounded from rock to rock up the ridge, then scrambled their way up an old, dead tree snagged at the top of it. Their shoulder muscles bulged and their claws ripped into the loose bark as they scaled the trunk and reached the upper branches.
The two wildcats were now stuck at the top. They turned, panting, and looked down at the barking, snarling, howling dogs surrounding the base of the tree.
The cats pulled back their ears and wrinkled their whiskered faces in nasty snarls as they hissed at the dogs.
Serafina ran across the valley to help, but then she heard the sound of the hunters crashing through the underbrush on their horses.
“The dogs’ve got ’em trapped!” the dog handler shouted in his mountain twang as the hunters came into view through the swirling fog rolling across the slope of the mountain.
The hunters quickly dismounted and forced their way through the thicket on foot, pushing their rifles out in front of them.
“They’ve treed two of the varmints!” one of the hunters shouted as he climbed up the rocks to get a better look.
The helpless cats stared down at the barking dogs and shouting humans. The dogs were out of their mind with bloodthirsty excitement, their mouths dripping with spit, their tails wagging feverishly as they paced and circled. Many of the hounds were trying repeatedly to run up the trunk of the tree, one after another, some of them getting up to the lower branches before falling down to the ground, picking themselves up, and trying again, howling all the while.
Even lion-hunting dogs couldn’t climb trees, but the dogs didn’t seem to care about the illogic of it or their own well-being. They just kept trying over and over again, desperate to sink their snapping jaws into the hides of the big cats.
Colonel Braddick came crashing through the thicket on his horse, the last to arrive. “Get back!” he shouted to his men as he dismounted, handing his reins off to Jess, who was there on her dark bay horse, her rifle in her hands. “Nobody shoot!” the colonel shouted. “This is my shot! My shot!”
Still gasping for breath from the exertion of the chase, the colonel lifted his rifle and aimed at the closest mountain lion.
The crack of the colonel’s rifle rang through the night air, echoing off the surrounding mountains. A piece of bark flew up next to the lion as the cat leapt to a different branch of the tree.
Swearing in anger that he had missed the shot, the colonel took several steps closer, levered his rifle, and fired again. Once more, the lion leaped away just in time, slinking from branch to branch as her brother hissed and snarled to keep the frenzied, stupid tree-climbing dogs at bay.
Serafina ran toward her brother and sister as fast as she could, her claws out and ready to fight.
The colonel fired again, and then again, twigs breaking, bark exploding, the lions hissing and snarling, the sound of the repeated shots echoing across the mist-filled valley.
Discouraged by the colonel’s poor accuracy, the other hunters began to position themselves to shoot the mountain lions themselves and get it over with.
“My shot!” he screamed again as he moved closer.
Serafina ran straight toward them, her powerful chest expanding with raging power. She was almost there.
But on the colonel’s next shot, she heard the bullet thwack into her sister’s body.
Serafina watched helplessly as her sister fell from the branch of the tree and tumbled through midair, her limbs flailing as she plummeted toward the rocks below.
Her sister’s body hit a branch as she fell, then hit another and another, until the cat finally flipped upright and landed on her feet, claws out, right on top of the pack of dogs. Two of the dogs yelped in pain and surprise as the wildcat came down on top of them. But the other hounds turned on the lion, lunging at her with their biting, snapping attacks.
Serafina leapt into the battle, knocking the largest of the dogs away with a powerful swipe of her claws, then clamped her jaws onto another and pulled it to the ground. She swiped another dog as the two behind her latched onto her back with their teeth. Spinning with a ferocious, angry snarl, she grabbed one of the dogs in her fangs and hurled it down the slope of the mountain.
As Serafina fought, her brother came down the tree headfirst and then leapt onto the backs of the dogs that were biting his wounded sister, sending them into wild, screeching yelps. His sister managed to get to her feet, and the two of them dashed away, disappearing into the mist-cloaked underbrush.
Serafina felt a quick burst of relief that her sister and brother had escaped, but then one of the attacking dogs lunged teeth-first at her throat. Reacting on pure reflex, she cocked her head and snapped the dog’s neck in her jaws. As a second and third dog lunged in at her, she swiped at them with her claws.
A dense fog had rolled across the ridge like the breath of ghouls, making it difficult to see more than a few feet around her, but through a narrow opening in the white swirling mist she caught a glimpse of the colonel and the other men scrambling hurriedly through the brush and back up onto their horses in panic.
She charged toward them. She could see Colonel Braddick up on his horse with his rifle in his hands. She moved so rapidly through the underbrush that she was invisible, her long slinking black body crouched for the kill. Her chest filled with a growling anger. Her fangs were dripping with blood. Her claws sprang out. She launched herself straight at the colonel in a ferocious, snarling attack, determined to make sure the vile human never shot another animal again.
As she leapt toward Colonel Braddick and the other hunters she found herself plunging into a wall of fog so thick that she couldn’t see anything in front of her. Something large brushed past her. She heard the blowing snort of a startled hor
se, the crack of steel-shod hooves on the rocky ground. Men shouted warnings to each other as they tried to control their frightened beasts. The horses lunged and turned and lunged again, one rider crashing into another, shouting as their mounts scraped so close that the riders’ knees struck and nearly ripped each other out of the saddle. A frightened hunting dog darted past her. She caught a glimpse of a horse’s haunch, its dark brown hide glistening with sweat and slashed with bloody gashes.
“There it is!” one of the hunters shouted, sounding as frightened and confused as she was.
“Watch out!” shouted another.
Three dogs tore past her, yelping and crying, glancing over their shoulders as they ran. Her heart hammered in her chest as she tried to understand what was happening. She looked up to see a rider frantically yanking his reins as his horse jostled him one way and then the other.
A burst of light lit up the fog like a flash of lightning and a gunshot cracked the night. And then another gunshot, and another.
“Jess!” Colonel Braddick shouted, his voice ripped with fear.
Serafina hissed as something shoved past her. But then it pivoted and charged straight at her. She dodged the attack and swiped at it with her paw. Her claws raked across something so hard that it didn’t feel like skin or muscle, but a mesh of steel, and then it was gone. She heard the collision of something striking a horse’s side, the great grunt of the beast, a man shouting, gunfire. One of the bullets grazed Serafina’s shoulder, slicing her with a blaze of pain. She struck out with her paw against whatever it was, blind in the fog.
A quick movement dashed behind her. She spun to defend herself, opening her fanged mouth in a hissing snarl. A whimpering dog went limping by, its bloody leg hanging loose from its body.
A sound came rushing in. She sprang to the side. A girl’s shouting scream rose up ahead of her, and then the high-pitched neighing of a frightened horse. Serafina leapt forward. She saw Jess up on her horse as it treaded backward in terror, Jess lifting her rifle and firing at something in front of her, the muzzle flashing, the cracks of the shots splitting the air one after another.
Serafina lunged forward to help Jess, but Jess’s horse spooked at the sight of her coming in from the side, its eyes white with fear as it rose up onto its hind legs, rearing and striking. Jess fought valiantly to stay in the saddle, but the horse was out of its mind with panic. It neighed and kicked, rising higher and higher, until it finally toppled, throwing Jess to the ground.
A massive, charging weight slammed into Serafina. It knocked her tumbling across the rocky ground and right over the edge of a drop-off. Her body fell, then struck rock, then rolled and fell again as she plunged down the steep slope of the mountain. She flung out her paws, clawing at trees and rocks, anything to hold on to, trying desperately to stop her fall.
Serafina slowly opened her eyes and stared into the darkness.
She did not know how long she’d been unconscious. Her body lay splayed across the ground, racked with pain. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. But she knew she had to. Gritting her long panther teeth, she slowly pushed herself up onto her four feet.
There were no more gunshots. No more people screaming. No more horses neighing. All she could hear was the dripping of the moisture from the surrounding branches. Nothing was moving except for the swirls of gray fog drifting between the trunks of the trees like writhing ghosts.
Shaking off the wet dirt and debris that had stuck to her fur, she scrambled back up the slope. She didn’t understand what had happened, but she knew she had to get up there to help Jess.
When she reached the top of the ridge, the fog was so thick that she couldn’t see anything. Crouching down, she waited and listened for the movement of enemies. She sniffed the air, smelling humans, horses, dogs, trees, wet earth, gunpowder, and ferns.
She let several more seconds pass, just waiting. The chaos of the battle had ended.
Staying low to the ground, she crept blindly forward several feet into the fog.
She found a dead dog lying on the ground, an open wound at its neck.
A few yards beyond the dog she found one of the hunters. She could tell by his simple mountain clothing and the raggedness of his beard that it wasn’t one of the gentlemen guests. It was the local man named Isariah Mayfield, whom the colonel had paid to track down the mountain lions with his hounds. Isariah lay crumpled in the leaves, bleeding from a kind of wound she’d never seen before, a single straight slash to the chest.
She shifted into human form. Still staying low to the ground, she crawled forward to help the man, but when she saw Isariah’s face, and his open eyes, she knew immediately that he was already dead.
Pulling in rapid, frightened breaths, she scurried along the ground through the fog more quickly now.
She came to Mr. Turner, his eyes wide and his dead hands still clenching his rifle in terror, and then to Mr. Suttleston, his body facedown.
And then she came to the colonel.
His broken leg bone was sticking out of his thigh where his toppling horse had smashed him against a rock, and there was a large, deep wound to his chest and belly, the blood oozing from it every time he tried to take in a breath.
“Colonel,” she said as she rushed toward him. “What attacked you?”
“It’s you…” he said. “What are you doing here, girl? Where’s Jess? Forget about me. You’ve got to help my Jess, please…” he said, his voice ragged and weak.
“I’ll find her, Colonel, but tell me what attacked you.”
“It was a black panther and—” He gasped violently for a gulp of air, his chest heaving and blood coming out of his mouth.
“Colonel,” she said, watching helplessly as his eyes fell closed, his head slowly dropped down, and the last, long, rattling breath of his life came out of him.
She had despised this man. She had hated him with all her heart. But she still couldn’t help but feel a pang of remorse to see him die like this.
She looked around her, trying to gaze out into the fog-filled forest. Who or what had done this? Was it still out there?
She slowly leaned toward the colonel and studied the wound to his body. It wasn’t a straight cut like the other. And it wasn’t the punctures of an animal’s fangs. And it wasn’t bullet wounds. His chest and belly had been sliced open with four long slashes, like a large cat’s claws. Like her claws.
A sickening feeling sank into her. She had seen her brother and sister run off, so she knew it hadn’t been them. And she knew her mother wasn’t in the area.
She looked at the dead body of the colonel, and all around at the bodies of the other hunters and the dogs lying on the forest floor.
She tried to remember the exact sequence of events, everything she had seen and heard. In all the fighting and confusion, was it possible that she had done this? Had she, in her panther form, been the one who had frightened the horses? Had she lost her mind in some kind of revenge-fueled rage? She had hated these hunters for what they were doing. But had she actually killed them? Had her dark, black panther soul taken her over?
Gasping for breath, she got to her feet and backed away from the colonel’s dead body.
Her ankle hit a lump on the ground behind her. Another body. Another victim. She turned to see a girl with long, dark hair crumpled among the roots of an old tree.
“Jess…” she cried, filling with anguish as she dropped to her knees beside her friend.
Serafina grabbed Jess’s shoulder and turned her over.
She was expecting Jess to be cold and stiff like the others. But she wasn’t. She was warm and breathing. Her eyes were closed, but she was very much alive.
“Jess,” Serafina said excitedly, her heart leaping with hope.
Serafina looked for a wound, thinking that Jess must have been struck down the same way her father and the other men had been, but she couldn’t find any such injuries. Jess’s torso, arms, and legs appeared unhurt. But then Serafina found blood in Jess’s hair. Sera
fina remembered seeing Jess shooting her rifle at something in the fog. And then…What had caused her horse to rear up in panic?
It was me, Serafina thought. I sprang to help her, but all Jess’s horse saw was a panther charging at it out of the fog.
She tried to piece everything together in her mind, what she saw, what she heard, but it had happened so fast.
All she knew now was that she had to get Jess back to Biltmore, to a doctor.
But then a small stick broke on the forest floor in the distance behind her.
For days she had been second-guessing herself. For months.
But this time she was sure.
There was something out there moving through the underbrush.
She rose to her feet and scanned the trees.
Then she heard a much closer noise: the dragging of heavy footsteps coming toward her through the woods, the movement of metal mesh, and the clanking of one piece of metal against the other.
The muscles in her legs tightened, telling her to run, to flee for her life. Her heart felt like it was somersaulting in her chest. Her breaths were getting shorter, more frantic.
She knew she shouldn’t leave Jess lying here alone and wounded on the ground, but she felt a powerful, overwhelming need to follow that sound.
One way or another she had to know! Had she lost her mind and killed these men? Or was there something out there?
She shifted into panther form and charged into the darkness, straight toward the sound.
She dove headlong through the forest, plowing through the swirling fog, the underbrush catching on her whiskered face.
When the fog became so thick she couldn’t even see a few feet in front of her she had to slow down, but she kept moving, listening ahead.
She heard another dull, clanking thud and the heavy, dragging footsteps.
She rushed forward in a fast, slinking prowl, claws at the ready.
But the farther she went, the fainter the sound became.
Serafina and the Seven Stars Page 8
