The Questing Beast (Veil Knights Book 4)
Page 2
“Trade secret,” Grimm said with a faint smile on his thin lips. “Don’t fret, your sister won’t know it. I promise.”
“We done?” Perce stood up. He didn’t know what to do but trust Grimm. He saw little choice there.
“I’m satisfied,” Grimm said, rising also. “Perce,” he added, “Have you considered telling Dani the truth?”
“Tell her that I’ve been playing a suicidally stupid dumbass for twenty years in order to keep her around because a misty broad in a lake told me my sister would die if we were apart? No, weirdly that never occurred to me.” Perce restrained himself from rolling his eyes. “I’m sure she’d take it all in stride and not leave me, right?” He’d dug this hole, couldn’t Grimm see that? Perce had fantasized a million times about telling Dani the truth, freeing them both from the charade. But her life could be the price, and that wasn’t a price Perce was prepared to ever pay.
“Prophesy is a tricky business. You can’t always take it literally.”
“Noted,” Perce said. His stomach felt like it was full of rocks, but the magician’s words gave him something to chew over. Later. Dani would be worrying. He’d have to come up with something to tell her. Likely near the truth, that Grimm wanted to talk to him and said it was because he was worried Perce wasn’t smart enough. She’d believe that if Perce sold it with enough of his trademarked belligerence.
Perce glanced one last time at the shelves of books he’d never read, and let his mask slip back into place. Placid deer. Quiet waters. No brains, no headaches, his mom had always said. But she’d been wrong. Acting stupid was a giant headache all its own.
Because in the end, Dani had always believed the mask, and sometimes that was the sharpest pain Perce knew.
Chapter Two
Perce and Dani hitched a ride in the back of an old pickup from a weathered, good-natured man named Samuel. The drive from Whitehorse to Benderlake was about five hours, long enough for Perce’s legs to get sore. He turned his head to glance in through the back window and saw Dani shifting her weight as they jounced along the gravel road and figured she was getting sore, too, though she was riding in the cab.
They’d left the Klondike Highway behind more than an hour ago by his reckoning and were hopefully near the end of the journey. The land from Whitehorse had gone from forest to more open, dry terrain, and was now morphing back to woods again. The trees were mostly spruce, white or black or maybe both. Perce wasn’t sure. He saw some aspen and poplar when the road came near streams. The truck had startled some ptarmigan earlier, bursting the fat birds from the brush as the tires kicked up gravel.
The forest provided some shade from the summer sun riding high in the sky now and the truck was moving along with enough speed to keep the bugs off them. Perce figured that was a small enough mercy, though Dani would be the one to suffer. Mosquitoes and midges and the like didn’t seem to care for his blood. Samuel had offered Dani a spot up front with him and Perce said he didn’t mind riding in back alone. He didn’t. It was nice to sit and think, the wind rushing past him mostly putting his senses out of commission.
Perce was facing backward, his back propped against the toolbox bolted into the bed of the truck, so he didn’t get any warning when Samuel slammed on the brakes. He bit back a swear, tasting blood as his teeth closed on his lower lip. Only grabbing the two big hiking packs and bracing his legs against the tailgate saved him from flying around too much as the truck came to an abrupt stop.
His ears were buzzing from the sudden lack of rushing wind, but his nose told him something was wrong straight away. Perce had been hunting since he could remember knowing how to walk. He knew the smell of dead flesh left in summer heat, the thick sweetness of large quantities of drying blood. He was out of the truck with his hunting knife in hand before either Samuel or Dani got their doors open.
There was something large and very dead blocking the road ahead of them, its shape too much in the shadows of the large spruces overhanging this section of the narrow gravel road. Perce moved around the truck and started a cautious approach.
“Heck is that thing?” Dani said as her feet hit the ground.
“Think it was a moose,” Samuel said. He pulled a hunting rifle from behind the bench seat.
The buzzing wasn’t just the dying of the wind, Perce realized as he waved Samuel and Dani back. The carcass was covered in what looked like a living carpet of insects. Perce moved around the moose, looking at the road, at the brush to the sides, reading what he could from the signs. No car had hit this moose. Big gouges were furrowed out of its flesh and its head was missing. He waved away a cloud of flies as he looked at the open neck of the moose.
Its head wasn’t just missing, it had been bitten clean off. No human tool had done this. No creature that Perce could think of, either. What could bite off a moose head? What would want to? He sniffed the air as he bent to take a closer look at the claw marks.
All the small hairs on his neck and the backs of his arms rose. Sulfur. The same pervasive smell that had clotted his nostrils during the fight with the demon creature at the Avalon.
Perce looked up as Dani and Samuel approached. The old man held his rifle at his side and looked bewildered. Dani’s green eyes were wide, her nose wrinkling as she bent down beside Perce.
“No head,” Perce told her, going for pointing out the obvious as was his usual.
“What made those marks? Bear?” Dani motioned but carefully didn’t touch the corpse. “You smell that?” she added in a whisper.
“Like that thing, yeah,” Perce whispered back. Louder he said, “See that? Teeth I think. You got bears up here big enough to bite a moose like this?”
Samuel had stopped about five feet short and stood in the road, still looking around like whatever had killed the moose might return. That was a sobering thought and Perce shoved it away. The old man scratched his salt and pepper beard.
“Grizzly, but… where’s its head? And those aren’t Griz tracks,” Samuel said, pointing at a patch of disturbed earth on the side of the road near the moose.
Perce, carefully so as not to disturb the ground too much, picked his way over to the track. It was huge, bigger than his hand. He’d tracked black bears and mountain lions, and never seen a print like this. It had claw divots like a wolf or bear would, but there were six of them. The track was deep, whatever it was was heavy as well as big.
“I’ll call the game warden. We’re not far from Benderlake now. We can tell Albright up at the lodge about it and they’ll come clear the road.” Samuel looked like he wanted to get back in the truck. “We can drive around it.”
“Shame to waste the meat,” Perce said, though he wouldn’t have wanted to eat the bloated carcass with its strange rotting egg smell even if he’d been starving to death.
“No eating roadkill,” Dani said. She walked up beside Perce where he stood still, staring up into the woods where whatever demonic beast that had killed the moose had gone. “Sam says town is close. Let’s go get settled and figure out what’s going on, then we can always backtrack here.”
Perce felt the forest calling him. It was the one place he could be himself, especially when alone. Dani joked he was an idiot savant when it came to hunting. It was the one indulgence he allowed himself, the one skill he let himself develop. He had to be good at it to protect her. Good at not being prey. Their mother had encouraged it, told them all kinds of stories.
Stories that were getting closer to reality every day.
“It’s the Questing Beast, we have to go after it,” he told Dani as he reluctantly turned away from the track. The trail was hours cold now judging from the tracks and the state of the moose. It was late afternoon and they were in unknown territory. Going after a demon or whatever it was now without preparation wouldn’t be wise. Perce could see that, even if he had to pretend he couldn’t.
“That’s just a story,” Dani said. “Come on, let’s get to town.”
Mom had told them about the beast that ha
d hunted and killed their father. She’d said it was the fate of their family to always be pursued and someday it would come for them. That’s why they had to be prepared. Why they had to stay away from the corrupting influences of modern life, of other humans who didn’t see God’s plan, who didn’t know how special her kids were. Perce and Dani hadn’t talked about their abilities with their mom. They’d sat through her lectures and rants, quietly in Dani’s case, fidgeting and whining in Perce’s. Mom had never been able to tell him what the beast looked like. She didn’t like questions like that, asking them could earn them the belt.
Dani told Sam she’d be riding in the back the rest of the way with her brother and while the old man gave her a headshake, he didn’t argue with her million-watt smile. People didn’t argue with Dani often. Her pretty face and no nonsense manner combined into an effective façade. Sometimes people, men especially, underestimated her, but even then, they didn’t argue too hard. Perce wondered what could have been if he’d been able to be more like his sister. He thought it likely he’d have gotten in even more trouble.
Once they were settled in back and Samuel had navigated around the moose, Dani leaned against Perce, putting her mouth near his ear so they could talk even with the noise. He put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her lower in the truck bed to shield them.
“Questing beast,” he said again before she had a chance to speak.
“It’s just a story,” she repeated, exasperation pitching her voice higher in tone than normally.
“Tell that to Dad,” Perce said stubbornly.
“Perce,” Dani said, her voice abruptly lower, sadder. “I should have told you, I guess.”
His stomach started to twist at her words. Perce turned his head so he was looking straight into green eyes that were the mirror of his own.
“Told me what?”
“I used the computer at the library. Looked up articles. Dad died in a car accident. He was drunk. Mom was pregnant with us, that’s why it even made the papers, said she was lucky to live.” Dani’s eyes had a way of going soft, the corners crinkling slightly, whenever she had to tell him something she really didn’t want to explain or thought he wouldn’t really understand.
Perce wished she’d told him sooner. He wished he could see that article, talk to whoever wrote it maybe. Find the truth.
“Doesn’t explain that moose,” he said.
“No. I don’t like this. We’re supposed to be looking for the knife blade of Llawfrodedd Farchog, not chasing down demons in the middle of nowhere. This place is even more remote than home was.”
Perce rolled onto his back. “Gonna be a lot of knives at a hunting party, right? Besides, we’re supposed to look for strangeness.”
Dani sighed loud enough he heard her over the wind and he felt her roll away from him. They spent the rest of the drive in silence, watching sunlight dance on the needles and leaves of the trees sliding past.
Benderlake was little more than a single store, a gas station, two bars, and a church. Houses dotted the few side-streets off the main paved road like decorations popped on a cake as an afterthought. The north side of the town was dominated by a log and stone hunting lodge with a designated campground. Samuel offered to drop the twins off there but let them know that rooms at the lodge were expensive and always booked up this time of year.
When they asked if there was a better option, Samuel suggested that he take them to a friend of his, a woman named Bertha de Repentigny who sometimes took on a holiday renter or two. The twins agreed.
Sam stopped the truck in front of a pretty yellow house with a big porch. The yard was neatly tended with a faded red wagon parked next to the steps leading up to the iron-banded front door. The door was open, a second screen door keeping flies out while letting the faint afternoon breeze in. The interior was dim even to Perce’s eyes, from the brightness of the driveway, he couldn’t see past the entryway.
Perce stretched his legs and then hitched his pack higher on his shoulder, glancing at Dani. She usually wore sundresses these days as some kind of post-parent rebellion, since it was something that had been forbidden to her while Mom was still alive, but she’d opted for jeans and a blue t-shirt for this trip. Sweat darkened her armpits and the small of her back, but she looked fresh and ready to take on the world otherwise. She was good at that.
“Sam!” said a woman’s voice as the screen door opened.
The voice belonged to a large brown-skinned woman with thick silver and black hair piled on top of her head in a haphazard bun. She was in her sixties, Perce guessed. The woman was heavyset and moved down the steps with the ease of someone who had lived an active life. She had an apron on over a pair of overalls and the combination struck Perce as funny.
“Bertha,” Sam said, his shoulders squaring and his posture getting straighter than it had been even when they’d investigated the moose. This was a woman that Sam respected, Perce could read that from his change in mannerisms. “I brought you a couple boarders, if you’ll have them. Come to help out with the trouble.”
“I got room. Albright hasn’t sent anyone my way as yet,” Bertha said, brushing her hands on her apron as she looked Perce and Dani over.
Before Dani could make introductions, two boys came nearly tumbling out the door, slamming the screen behind them. They raced down the stairs and stopped short in front of Dani and Perce. The boys were about eight years old but that was where the similarities stopped. One boy was taller, his tanned arms well-muscled for his age, and his hazel eyes inquisitive in his freckled face. The smaller boy was painfully thin, with close-cropped black hair and skin like the bronze on a medieval statue. He had big brown eyes flecked with gold and he stared up at Perce with the kind of understanding of suffering that makes people comment a child is an old soul and Perce crouched down the way he would if he were watching a rabbit.
“That’s Oliver but he don’t speak,” the bigger boy said. “I’m Carl.”
“I’m Perce,” Perce said, keeping his voice soft. “Like when you put an earring in, you piece the ear.” He reached out and gently tugged on Oliver’s unpierced ear.
Oliver made a face and gave him a shy smile.
“Or like a spear!” Carl said. “A spear pieces things.”
“No, it stabs,” Perce corrected him solemnly.
Carl tipped his head to the side like a bird.
“I’m Dani,” Dani cut in. “We just need somewhere to sleep for a couple nights. We can pay.”
“Carl, Ollie, where did you go?” a young female voice called out from the shadows inside. The screen door pushed open a third time and an angel stepped out onto the porch.
She was built like Bertha might have been thirty years ago, her brown skin smooth over well-muscled arms, her chest filling out the v-necked t-shirt she wore. She had thick hips and long black hair that brushed them as she walked. Her face was wide with an expressive mouth and eyes that shone with vitality and humor visible even from this distance. Oh, Perce knew she wasn’t really an angel. No choirs broke out in song and she didn’t have a halo or wings, but it was near enough for him.
There was no room or time in his life for real romance. He’d seduced a few women here and there, or they’d seduced him, it was never really clear, but he was always upfront about the lack of long-term prospects. His sole job was keeping Dani safe. Besides that, he hadn’t met someone he could see letting in on his secrets.
Perce knew he was gaping like a fish, but it didn’t really matter. That would fit right in with his persona. Dani likely thought him far more of a hound dog than he really was. He flirted a lot more than he followed through on, and talked up the physical assets of the women he saw to her more than she was comfortable with.
“They’ll be staying for a few days,” Bertha told the angel. “This is Sophie, my granddaughter,” she added, smiling at Dani. She looked at Perce and her smile took on an edge.
“These boys yours?” Dani asked Sophie as they followed Bertha up the steps.
She smelled like vanilla, strongly enough Perce thought it must be lotion since the scent was delicately there, not layered on heavily like perfume. He took his mind away from the idea of her spreading lotion on all that lovely skin. He’d only just met the woman and it felt disrespectful to be undressing her in his mind. They were guests, with a job to do. She was a normal, beautiful woman who deserved to stay in the dark about all the weird shit.
Having lectured himself into obedience, Perce followed the group into the house. This wasn’t about angels, after all. He and Dani weren’t there to hunt something from heaven…but from hell.
Chapter Three
Watching Perce sit in the backyard at Bertha’s house and let the two boys show off their GI Joe collection made Dani smile as she sipped the cup of iced tea Sophie had poured her. The boys were out in the fenced yard, putting up a mock battle with Perce as the general in the middle.
“He’s good with kids,” Sophie said. She sat down on the top step beside Dani.
Dani glanced at her and inwardly groaned a little. She knew that speculative look, she’d seen it a thousand times from women before they really got to talking to Perce. This was the part that she dreaded. Her thoughts were always full of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ when it came to letting other people into their lives.
Perce was like a child in many ways himself. He didn’t understand relationships and nuance. Dani knew he’d been with women and she tried to give him space, but she also saw the trail of broken hearts or had to be there to pick up Perce’s unhappy heart when it became clear to him that he’d been rejected. Fortunately in those cases he got over it quickly. She’d seen how he’d gaped at Sophie like he’d just discovered air. They were staying here, there could be a demon on the loose, and Dani just didn’t feel like she had time for this shit at all.