by Zaide Bishop
“Come, Pup!” Juliet snapped, but it snarled at her, snapping at her hands when she tried to grab it. She had no time. If it wanted to stay and die, she had no choice but to leave it. She scrambled across the rocks, back toward the beach.
One of the rocks moved under her hand. It was too warm, and for a moment she thought perhaps it was a polished tree trunk left on the beach by some storm. But driftwood was pale, and this was the same gray-brown as the rocks. It rose up with a hiss, a wall of stone that slowly turned toward her.
Its teeth were stained black, and it dribbled thick, tar-like saliva. It smelled of reptile urine and sulfur.
“Oh, Pup...” Juliet murmured.
The monitor struck.
* * *
Whiskey had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Juliet had taken her mutant pup out for training, but now the sun was setting and there was still no sign of them. Around the camp, the rest of the tribe were gathering around their fire pits, preparing the evening meal and chattering happily. The last of the hunters had made their way back already. No Varekai wanted to face the dangers that came out after dark. The snakes and crocodiles, even the wild boar, could be harder to see and more dangerous at night. Seeing a jaguar on the island was rare, but they were there. A Varekai alone at night ran the risk of meeting all manner of foul things.
“Mike.” She paused beside one of her sisters. Mike was tall and broad-shouldered. Not particularly clever, but strong and with a good throwing arm.
“Mm?”
“I’m going to look for Juliet.”
“Do you want me to come?”
Whiskey hesitated. “No, I’ll take the dogs. I won’t be more than an hour.”
Mike looked like she might be going to question Whiskey’s judgment, going out in the fading light alone, but then she shrugged and nodded. Mike wasn’t the kind to question authority.
Whiskey picked up two spears and two knives from her tent, then whistled for the dogs. All the Varekai dogs were big and tan, with long legs, broad shoulders and solid chests. Their muzzles were blunt and black, their ears small and high on their heads. They were bred for hunting pigs and crocodiles, and at the moment the pack was led by a big, scarred bitch. Whiskey had never been prouder of an animal—the creature had killed three dogs who had challenged her position as alpha, and she always seemed to come out of a pig hunt on top. Whiskey had been making sure it was her pups that got the most food. Every litter made her pack stronger and more intelligent.
She didn’t pet the animals when they came. They were just as likely to snap at her fingers as appreciate the affection. Instead, she clicked her tongue, and they fell in beside her as she made her way down the path to the eastern beach.
It was already dark here, the shadows cast by the trees hiding the last of the sun in the west. The beach was barren and muggy.
She found Juliet’s canoe dragged up onto the sand and loosely tied to a dead tree. Juliet was cautious like that, always prepared for any eventuality—a king tide, a small tsunami, these were the sorts of things that never caught Juliet unawares.
Across the bay, the shipwrecks on the reef were howling. Long, mournful cries, as if they were lonely out there without any people.
The sound put Whiskey further on edge, and in response to her tension two of the dogs began to fight. She let the alpha bitch break it up. She scanned the soft, damp sand, trying to find recent footprints.
It was paw prints that gave her away. Half-grown pup prints, leading north. Whiskey pointed them out to the dogs, as if they were tracking prey. The pack sniffed around as one, then took off along the sand.
Whiskey hoped they didn’t kill the pup when they reached it, or Juliet would be upset. Still, keeping the miserable thing alive was an exercise in futility. She ran after the dogs, keeping pace thirty feet behind them. Sometimes they stopped to sniff around, then they would take off again, still heading north.
They reached the edge of the sand, where the beach gave way to rocks and rock pools, and the pack clattered across them, nails loud on the stone. One of them found a meal, and suddenly there were snarls and yowls as the dogs began to fight over the meat.
Whiskey scrambled after them, smacking tan hides with the butt of her spear and driving them off with cusses and unintelligible snarls.
The morass of gore had filled a small rock pool, making it seem like there was far more of it than there should have been. In the orange afternoon light, the blood seemed to go on forever.
Juliet had been disemboweled, her innards spread like a slick, pink feast. The blood that caked her face and hair did not quite leave her unrecognizable.
Whiskey knelt, picking up the telescope that had been Juliet’s most treasured thing. The lens was cracked, the casing broken. There was no sign of a predator. No sign of life at all.
Whiskey buried her face in her hands, rocking back and forth as she began to keen. Her voice rose to a scream, and all around her the pack barked and howled, drowning out all the other sounds, even the mournful song of the shipwrecks.
* * *
Tango looked over the scene in quiet horror. They’d heard the dogs baying from the village, and like a shot, Mike had been off and running. The tribe had followed and found Whiskey sobbing with her feet in the pool of blood. Several of her dogs had wounds where she’d jabbed them with her spear to keep them from feeding on the body.
Charlie had taken the dogs away, and other Varekai had brought hide and rope to gather and wrap Juliet’s body. Whiskey was refusing to leave.
“A crocodile,” India said quietly. “She must not have seen it. It caught her by surprise, or maybe she went after it, trying to save that damn dog.”
Tango knelt beside Juliet’s body. A dear sister. Someone she had known every moment of her life. The tribe had lost sisters before—too many, since the birth of the world—but somehow Tango had thought it was over now they were at peace with the Elikai.
“I’m not sure. I think you’re wrong,” she said.
The bite wounds were large, but to Tango they looked more like snakebites than crocodile bites. Of course, that was absurd, as a snake could not rip a body open. The pythons of the isles killed by breaking bones in their coils, not tearing into flesh. Still, the teeth marks looked evenly spaced and sized. She ran her fingers over the wound, and under the blood Tango found a slimy blackness.
She sniffed her fingertips and recoiled from the scent of putrid meat and something distinctly chemical.
“What else could it be?” India wiped the tears from her eyes, barely listening.
“Not a croc. What if it was a giant snake? This might be venom.”
“Tango. Juliet is dead. There is no need for monsters. Our grief cuts deep enough.”
Tango started to reply, then swallowed and nodded. She wiped her fingers on seaweed. She moved toward the edge of the trees, absently looking for signs of predators. There were footprints, but the sand was so soft, they were impossible to make out clearly. Something large that had sunk deep into the soft sand. Something with a tail or belly that had dragged. Like a snake, she supposed, but there were deep indents like footprints. As if something with impossibly long fingers had slithered through here. Not like a crocodile or a snake.
There were broken branches at the edge of the trees, oozing yellowy sap and scenting the air with a buzzing bitterness. Tango peered into the undergrowth, trying to see what, if anything, could still be lurking there, ready to attack again.
The flicker of torchlight caught reflective eyes, and Tango startled, heart thundering. The pup crawled toward her on its belly, with its oversized, deformed ear pressed back to its skull, nervous tails thumping the ground. It was terrified, half feral, but its gold eyes were fixed on her, begging.
Juliet’s mongrel. Still alive, though its brindle fur was streaked with blood. Not its own
, Tango realized. Juliet’s. It had been close during the attack.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw India, a darker shadow in the ebony blue of night, and Whiskey, her hair glowing in the torches. Whiskey was in charge of the dog pack, but she wouldn’t take Juliet’s pup. And India had wanted to kill it from the beginning. Tango clicked her fingers and held out her hand.
The pup crawled over to her, sniffing her, then licking her fingers.
“Come on then. You can come with me.”
The pup whined, wriggling between her feet. She’d never seen an animal so traumatized. “Is that Juliet’s dog?” Charlie asked as Tango moved back into the light, the young animal glued to her calf.
“Yes. It was hiding.”
“Probably from the rest of the pack.” Charlie looked between Tango and the pup. “Are you going to keep it?”
Tango scratched the knotted, lumpy scars on her shoulder. “Someone should. For Juliet. It mattered to her.”
“Not losing to Whiskey and India mattered to her,” Charlie said. “But I don’t mind. You keep it. It would be a shame to see something happen to it now.”
Tango nodded, clicking her tongue and heading back up the beach, but the pup left her side, scrambling over the rocks to where Juliet’s body was wrapped on the rocks. It whined, circling her form, nudging it with its nose. Mike and Sierra chased it away, carefully lifting the body to carry it back to the village. The pup trailed solemnly in their wake.
They placed Juliet’s body up on a platform in the tree branches, out of reach of dogs and scavengers. The trunk of the tree, and the branches above the body, were quickly tarred to stop the ants.
The pup settled below, tails tucked under its body, nose on its paws.
The camp, in mourning, slowly packed up for the night, and Tango settled in her own tent, listening to the night sounds of the forest and the quiet sobs from all around her. The pup was unmoving, diligent in its vigil.
It was still there when the sun rose.
Chapter Two
The ravine amplified the sounds, so the roar of the attacking dogs and the enraged scream of the boar pierced the morning sky, sending flurries of birds into the air. Fox ran along the top of the ravine, leaping lightly over the sunbaked rocks, eyes flicking through the foliage below, trying to spot the Varekai he knew would be leading the attack.
The brutish Varekai war dogs only answered to Whiskey and Charlie, and Charlie had never struck Fox as the boar-hunting type. Sure, he was the Varekai leader—proud, smart and cunning—but he was not a killer. He was not Whiskey.
It was a sow and a single half-grown piglet bailed up at the end of the ravine. The sow was long and scarred, with one curly tusk and rows of ivory teeth that could have easily chomped through a person’s arm. He was enraged, and his piglet was white-eyed and savage. However, the Varekai hunting dogs were built for taking down prey far bigger than themselves and charged in with fearless abandon.
A flash of red betrayed Whiskey in the undergrowth. The Varekai were well hidden in the foliage, painting their bodies with white clay and black ink to disguise themselves. However, Whiskey’s long hair was rich and coppery, and it caught the light like burning embers. Less obvious to most color-blind animals like crocodiles, but standing out brightly to Elikai, monkeys and birds.
Whiskey carried two spears and a bow and quiver. He was graceful and terrible, and Fox’s breath caught in his throat just watching the other man move. Fox had a history with Whiskey. The Varekai had kidnapped him and forcefully coupled with him several weeks ago, and they had not seen each other since. Fox had no idea if the Varekai’s attempts to fall pregnant had been successful or not.
After Fox had escaped Whiskey, they had both been trapped in the nest of a giant crocodile and had almost died. He’d carried the barely conscious Whiskey to safety. It was hard to believe the Varekai would be so proud and reckless to hunt a boar this size so early in his recovery.
Fox had been out hunting too, but he had been looking for ducks.
Two arrows found their mark in the sow’s side. They did little but enrage him. A dog fell, gored and yowling, but the pack closed the gap in their ranks, biting at the sow’s throat and hind legs. The sprays of blood slowly painting the foliage red made his heart beat faster and harder. Hunting was an instinct. Not all Elikai felt the pull of prey, the need to chase what ran, to end the pulse of life. Fox did, and his instinct told him he should be moving if he wanted to stay alive. He should be preparing for that final blow. It was not his hunt, though. He could only watch.
Whiskey nocked another arrow, pacing back and forth, trying to get another clear shot. Frustrated, he put the arrow back into the quiver and hefted a spear instead. He looked for an opening, scrambling up a rock to get closer and jamming the stone point into the leathery brown hide. For a moment, Fox was certain Whiskey had speared one of his own dogs, but then it was the pig that screamed. The sound was so loud his ears rang.
In a burst of rage, the pig shook off the dogs, squaring itself to face Whiskey. There was not much room for a charge in the narrow ravine, but its gnarled tusks were dangerous enough to do serious harm in a tight space. Whiskey jammed the second spear into its head, through the eye socket and deep into the skull.
The Varekai leaped aside, barely in time, as the animal crashed into the stone he had been standing on. The spear snapped, the tip and part of the shaft still embedded in the pig’s head. It was still on its feet, fighting the dogs that swarmed back around it, but it had slowed. Disoriented. The damage in its brain and the loss of sight were taking a heavy toll. One of the dogs, the biggest bitch Fox had ever seen, got a good grip on the boar’s throat. The sow’s squeals were short. They became grunts. It dropped to its knees, then its side. At some point, after the dogs began to tear into it, it died.
The scream and the shaking of the brush seemed to come as a surprise to Whiskey, but not Fox. He threw his spear and it buried deep into the chest of the piglet the instant before it struck Whiskey down. The dogs who had it bailed up against the stone pounced again, and it vanished in a sea of snarling teeth and whipping tails.
Whiskey looked up at Fox, wide-eyed. He grinned. For a moment, the Varekai was too stunned to react, then he cussed and began driving the dogs away from the pig carcasses.
Cautiously, Fox slid down the bank. The brindle pack snarled and circled, unsure of him, but not territorial like they were at the Varekai village. He ignored them, letting his posture and scent reassure them. It was fear and uncertainty dogs hated. While the Elikai had a healthy fear of the Varekai war dogs, Fox knew an animal was still an animal. Dogs were still dogs, and the same rules of alpha and omega applied to Varekai and Elikai alike.
Whiskey was crouching when he reached him. Checking the wounds on her pack.
“All okay?”
He frowned. “Maybe. This one is bad, but I’ll see how she goes. Sometimes they’ll let India treat their wounds.”
He understood the subtext. Sometimes a wounded dog would not allow itself to be touched. Then, a spear was a kindness.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “It’s too soon.”
“The tribe needs to eat.” Whiskey was very still, as if he were a tree, ruffled only by the breeze. There was a deep heaviness to him, and his green eyes burned with exhaustion. He did not look up to meet Fox’s gaze. Even so, he was achingly beautiful, and it hurt something in Fox to see the Varekai looking so...defeated.
Fox slid slowly closer, reaching out a hand to touch the Varekai, then aborted the gesture. “What is it?”
“Mm?”
“What’s wrong, Whiskey? I’ve never seen you like this.”
The Varekai looked up, and their eyes met. For the first time, Fox realized it wasn’t just exhaustion. Whiskey was overcome with grief.
“Juliet is dead.”
“One of your brothers?” Fox’s chest tightened. He had lost brothers. With both tribes growing smaller, every death was a blow. Fox suddenly realized that, in a way, it was his loss too. Another “female” gone. Another potential mate for his brothers. Another lost chance to repopulate the tribes. If all the Varekai died, it wouldn’t matter what the Elikai did. They would all die out too.
Whiskey nodded, and Fox bit his lip. “I’m sorry. Was it an accident?”
“Animal attack.” Whiskey sighed, as if admitting it deflated him.
“Animal?” Why the ambiguity? “What kind?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” he admitted. “Some sisters believe it was a python, some a crocodile.”
Fox opened his mouth and closed it. He didn’t want to upset Whiskey more, but that didn’t make any sense. “Well, but was it a crushing wound? Like a python makes? Or was it a crocodile bite?”
“It was a bite. Not a crocodile, more like a python.”
He frowned. “A shark, perhaps?”
“A shark with claws? A shark on the beach? It wasn’t a shark.”
“Claws? It must have been a crocodile, then.”
“The teeth were evenly spaced and the same size.” Whiskey was looking at the bloody ground as if he were furious with it.
Fox fell silent a moment, not wanting that anger directed at him. “So, something new. New like the monster crocodile.”
Whiskey looked up, eyes momentarily wide. “It wasn’t that.”
“No, but that crocodile is new too, isn’t it? I mean, we know new things can come here.”
Whiskey gave a bitter sigh. “You know, Tango tried to say it was something else. No one wanted to listen. We’ve just been arguing about crocodiles and pythons instead.”
“Is that why you’re out here killing boar? To be alone?” Fox felt the same, sometimes. His brothers, while he loved them and would protect every one of them with his life, could drive him to the brink of despair, even at the best of times.
