by Sierra Storm
As I wait, I turn my eyes to the sky over the trees. There are a few clouds out today. They’re fluffy and white, high over the trees and out of the way. And they’re moving. I watch as one full, mid-sized cloud floats effortlessly over the trees. I begin to feel weightless myself, faint.
Then something breaks my view.
An arrowhead?
I sit bolt upright, and my vision sways with the sudden movement. Vince walks out at us through the trees. I never would have recognized him, never would have seen him in those green cargo pants and the tan shirt designed to blend in so thoroughly with the trees. In one of his hands is a longbow. He passes me and marches straight to Comet. I can see behind him his quiver of five arrows, tipped at the end with feathers.
“Do you think you’ll get away with everything?” he asks her.
Chapter 5
I swallow. I still feel gross and disoriented. My blood seems to have turned into a more viscous material that flows through my veins in a thick sludge. Tristan hangs his head in his hands and paces back into the forest, muttering something that I can’t hear.
“Don’t ever lower yourself to that level,” says Vince, forcing my attention back to the situation at hand. “How do you feel? Is it too late?”
I wait, expecting to faint or throw up at any moment. I don’t feel anything, much. Just cold and a little confused.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” says Natasha. She runs and bolts from the clearing. Comet takes a couple of steps in her direction before pausing.
“What’s going on?” asks Vince.
“She messed up,” Comet says, staring in the direction Natasha ran in. “There’s a problem.” She turns to me, and in one second I know I made a huge mistake.
Getting bitten by a wendigo or entered through one of their ceremonies is not a guaranteed result. In most cases, wendigo venom proves fatal to humans. I hadn’t thought of that in my own case. I haven’t thought of it ever since I started looking into all of this. Tristan was sick for a long period of time, but he never teetered on the brink of death with it.
I should never have assumed trust in Natasha as well. Maybe all this is an innocent mistake, but she spoke the truth when she told me she had a problem. She was talking about me. And now she’s doing away with me, just as she probably always wanted to.
“You’re going to die because of your own stupidity,” says Vince. “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow or the next day. The biggest reason no one’s ever heard of wendigos is that no one ever survives the transition.”
Comet smirks. “You could save her, Vince. I know you’ve got that hero streak that’s been building up inside of you. Why don’t you go ahead and do something?”
What would he do? I have a sinking feeling much more real than the notion that this could kill me. I see myself returning to my home at the end of the day with everything back to normal and no Tristan. I would have been made a laughing stock in a dangerous crowd I’ll never again see.
Vince pulls an arrow from his quiver. I note with some surprise that the arrowheads are hand-carved out of flint, tied to the arrows with immaculate skill. He leans over me, and his eyes narrow. “It won’t take long. I’ll lick the arrowhead, and my saliva can dissolve it and that poison inside you like acid. Then I can bandage you up right so as long as you don’t tell anyone, no one will ever need to know.”
Is he going to shoot me? “I’m fine,” I say. “I feel fine. I’m not sick at all.”
“You’re right in saying that you’re not sick,” he says. “You’re dying. Now you might want to lie down because this is going to hurt. A lot.”
He licks the tip of his arrowhead. Instantly I see it: the melting of the flint. It dissolves into the air as the saliva works its way up to the stalk of the arrow. My heart pounds. He isn’t actually going to shoot me, is he? I try to stand, to run from this horrific scenario, but Comet grabs me and forces me in place.
But then he drops the bow. He steps to my side, and I see the fine beads of sweat gathering at his forehead. “I’m so sorry,” he says, touching the melting stone to my lips.
When I open my eyes, I realize that Vince is cradling my head in his lap anxiously. “Are you with us?” he asks.
“What happened?”
“You couldn’t take it is what happened,” he says. “You passed out. How do you feel?”
I’ve never fainted before. I’ve felt faint, on occasion. The pig dissection in biology a couple of years ago made me have to sit down through the procedure, but that was the worst it ever was for me. “I guess I feel a little confused.”
“You were out for seven seconds,” says Comet. “Not long.”
Vince returns his attention to me. "Werewolf venom is the natural antidote to wendigo venom. It’s less likely to kill, but far more likely to convert.”
I don’t know how I’ll broach the subject with my family. I hope I won’t get sick like Tristan did. My mom would want to take me to a doctor if I was that sick. Does this mean I’ll turn into a werewolf?
“Stay warm,” says Vince. “Drink water. Go back home to your family, and don’t tell them about what happened here today.”
“I’ll have to tell them something,” I say.
“You have band rehearsals.”
“I don’t play anything.”
“You do now,” he says. “I’ve got an old flute I’ve held onto since the 1940s. If you want, you can play that. Or Natasha’s drum set; she’ll part with it if we make her.”
“The flute will be fine,” I say.
“Then I’ll be seeing you at practice.”
The Forbidden Craving
Natasha Rowell has only two missions in life. The first is to avoid human contact as much as possible. The second is no never become a monster like her parents. Everything seems simple enough as she joins her mother’s Exigency of old-school wendigos, but then she meets one human boy with the power to uproot everything.
Read the thrilling prequel of the Midnight Valley Saga for free now: https://www.darkstarpress.org/free-book.html
About The Author
Sierra Storm is a New England based author with a flair for adventure and the dramatic. The Midnight Valley Saga was previously self-published as her first attempt at a YA paranormal series, and she hopes you have as much fun reading her stories as she has writing them.
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