The Questing Beast (Veil Knights Book 4)

by Rowan Casey

  Sophie reached past him to turn on the water. She smelled like sunshine and clean things. Not like sulfur and death. Perce wanted to lean into her warmth, feel that sunshine on his cheek. Instead he shoved his hands under the stream of water from the faucet. His world wasn’t the same as Sophie’s.

  “Hunting accident,” he lied. “Guess the others are jumpy. Must not have seen it was a person through the trees.”

  It had been no accident. Someone shot the hellhound, then shot Dani. The shots had come too far apart, were too deliberate. If Dani hadn’t been moving toward him and straightening up, that bullet might not have hit her thigh but center of mass.

  “We’ll get people on this, don’t worry. Even accidental, someone shot your sister. That’s not legal.” Sophie rubbed his shoulder in what she probably thought was a comforting way. Instead it sent electric pulses through him, her fingers like livewires. His desire for her was being amplified by the adrenaline dump, he knew that in an intellectual way, but it didn’t matter to his less-civilized self.

  Perce wrapped all his willpower around his urges and pulled away from Sophie, turning his head so he didn’t have to see the look of confusion and rejection on her face. He left her standing in the kitchen and went to find a clean shirt.

  When they were ten, he’d dared Dani to climb a giant old growth fir near their house. She’d done it, of course, Dani never turned down a challenge in those days. She hadn’t yet become the steadier, wiser twin, didn’t really understand that Perce was going to get them both killed if she didn’t start taking charge. Mama had read them the riot act a hundred times over about being irresponsible in the woods. Nature was their teacher, but it was an unforgiving professor.

  Dani had fallen while she was climbing down. She’d made it all the way to the top, of course, because Dani wasn’t a quitter. About twenty feet from the ground she’d slipped while trying to shimmy down between two wide-set branches. Her right arm had snapped like a twig.

  Perce hadn’t been so scared in his life, not until now when his sister was in the next room, being stitched up. With a gunshot wound. It was like that horrible afternoon in the forest all over again. Him standing under the tree with Dani screaming her head off, helpless to fix it, helpless to go back and keep it from happening.

  He stood in his room for a long time, just breathing and twisting his t-shirt in his hands, thinking about Dani crying in the forest. Thinking about the man who shot her and how loud he was going to make that shooter scream.

  What felt like hours but was less than half of one later, Dr. Zhou declared that Dani would be fine, gave them both another strong lecture about getting to a hospital for follow-up as soon as possible, and then he left.

  “Take the pain pills,” Perce said. He felt exhausted on every level and it was hard to keep the mask up. Dani was always the strong one, but she looked so thin and pale laying on that bed.

  “I took them already, stop mothering me.” Dani smiled at him which took all the bite out of her words. Her speech was slightly slurred.

  Perce sat with her until she slept, her warm slender hand slowly losing its grip on his fingers. Then he rose and went to find Sophie.

  “I’m going out,” he said to her. “Take care of Dani? Make sure she takes those pills if she needs them.”

  “Where are you going?” Sophie’s dark eyes were full of worry. She and Bertha were in the kitchen, helping the two boys make animals out of molding clay.

  Perce imagined this was more excitement than she was used to in this quiet little town. There was no time to reassure her, and he wasn’t about to make her complicit in what he was going to do by telling her about it beforehand.

  “Out,” he said, and then he left as Bertha shook her head at Sophie, silencing whatever her granddaughter was about to say. It didn’t matter. There was nothing she could have said to stop him.

  He had men to hunt.

  Chapter Five

  Without Dani and her lack of heightened senses and preternatural speed and stamina to slow him down, Perce retraced his path into the woods back to where they’d been attacked by the hellhounds. It was an easy path to follow once he’d left the edge of civilization and the neat rows of carefully planned houses behind him.

  At the place where Dani had been shot, he gathered her bow and stored it away in its case which she’d dropped either during the fight or after being hurt. Perce couldn’t remember. Everything had happened so quickly. The Lady of the Lake had told him Dani would die if she was away from him, so his whole focus had been keeping her with him as much as possible. He hadn’t really considered until he saw her fall that she could die anyway.

  He had to admit to himself, deep within where the real Perce lived, that he’d gotten used to not thinking things through. That even though they’d seen Grimm’s magic up close, even with the vision at the lake all those years ago…even with all that, Perce hadn’t truly understood that this was real. It was fun to be stronger and faster than everyone else. It was useful to be able to identify people by smell or track in the woods with scent and sight and honed instincts like a wolf.

  Hunting had been a game for Dani and him their whole lives. As serious game with consequences for failure, but those consequences hadn’t ever been more than lost prey or scrapes. The only time they’d been seriously hurt was Dani falling out of that tree, and it had been easy to avoid that again.

  But here was his sister’s blood on the ground. Here was the black ichor of the hellhound with its sulfurous, unnatural stench that clogged his senses and made his heart pound in his chest.

  Perce steadied himself with a deep breath, tasting the air, getting a better feel for the woods around him. Birds darted in the shadows of the branches overhead. He crouched low and waited until his heartbeat slowed. He was one with the forest, just a part of the whole. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to see here.

  He moved silently toward the direction he remembered the shots coming from. Bootprints disturbed the carpet of needles, lichens, and feather mosses. Three men, at his guess, had been here. He found a depression where one had knelt and imitated the movement, looking toward where Dani had been. Clear shot only twenty or so feet away. The trees were a mix of spruce and aspen, letting in enough light in parts to allow growth of blueberry and some kind of low bush he thought might be a type of dogwood from its leaves. The brush along the approach had hidden the men from them until they were near.

  Perce saw the tracks moving in the same direction as the splatters of black ichor from the hellhound. Tracking was an imprecise art with many variables. He could tell the rough weight and shoe size of the men. He could tell there had been two or three of them and would have been willing to swear to three if it came to it. His mind flashed to the men in the diner. There had been three of them, all close to a size with each other like these tracks.

  Shaking that thought away, Perce followed in their wake. They had a couple hours head start on him.

  With the blood trail, it was simple to follow the men. Perce kept alert, aware that unfriendly people were likely at the end of this. Or a wounded hell beast. There were also unknown perils in these wild woods. Bears, for example. Perce wasn’t sure which species were out here. Maybe Grizzly. He didn’t want to find out, so he kept a heightened look out for signs of other creatures.

  The trail zigged and zagged deeper into the woods. The black blood spatter dried up and that trail died out after roughly a mile. No sign of the creature beyond a depression here or there that could have been a paw print. The wounded hell hound had either vanished or stopped bleeding. Their paws weren’t big enough to be what killed the moose, something Perce was keeping in the back of his mind.

  The lichen cover grew thicker and he smelled running water before he heard the stream. The men’s trail was getting harder to follow, the lichen springing back where it had been trampled. Only scuffs in it showed their path now. They were more experienced than many he’d tracked through the woods. People tended to break vegetation and
leave more trail than this unless they were being careful or had good woodcraft. Animals left more sign, as well, if you knew how to look for it.

  Perce got to the stream and bent, tasting the water for chemicals. It was clean and cold. He dumped the lukewarm water from Dani’s waterskin and refilled it, drinking deep. The woods opened up here, forming a clearing around the stream. Wildflowers and fireweed carpeted the open ground.

  The scent of fresh turned earth just after a rain washed over him like an ocean wave. The woods had gone abruptly silent and Perce rose to his feet, drawing his knife.

  Out of the woods flowed a creature unlike any he’d seen. Its fur was pure white, the kind of white that glows and hurts to look at like a fresh snowfall on a sunny day. The creature was as big as a bear, had a head almost like a fox’s, and a body that moved more like a mountain lion’s with a long tail. Its ears were tufted like a lynx and its eyes shimmered as green as new leaves in spring.

  The beast halted just inside the clearing, a dozen feet from Perce. A soft growl issued from its throat and its lips slid back revealing thick fangs like something out of a prehistoric picture book.

  “Easy,” Perce murmured. He couldn’t look away from the creature. In his heart he knew what it was. It didn’t quite fit the descriptions from the books his mother let them read about King Arthur, but it was close enough. If this wasn’t the Questing Beast of legend, Bob was his uncle.

  The beast crouched and growled again, its tail twitching. Its haunches were relaxed, however, not poised to spring. The beast watched as Perce sheathed his knife slowly and held out his hands like he would with a scared puppy.

  “I am Perce Pellin,” he said, feeling a little stupid for introducing himself, but if it was an animal like any other, a calm voice might help. It would help him stay less afraid, which would help him act less like prey. “I’m supposed to find the knife of some dead Welsh guy, want to help me with that?”

  The beast stopped growling, though its teeth were still bared, and flicked its ears up at him. That was a curious, not aggressive, gesture. Progress, thought Perce.

  Howling so unnatural and eerie that it made Perce’s skin crawl rang out across the forest. Hellhounds. The creature straightened up, its head turning away from Perce. In that moment he saw a streak of red fur on its chest between its forelegs. There was a glint like a gem was embedded in that fur. Perce had only a momentary impression of this before the beast turned and slipped quickly into the woods, disappearing from sight.

  Perce drew his knife and leapt the stream, following the path the beast had taken. It left no trail, no signs of movement through the wood. The howling faded away, leaving Perce alone again in a silent forest.

  Charging blindly after it when he didn’t know where it had gone wasn’t a good plan. Perce made himself stop and check for signs. There was nothing, which he guessed didn’t surprise him. A legendary beast wouldn’t leave an obvious trail.

  He turned and made his way back to the clearing to pick up the men’s trail again. As he moved, his mind raced with speculation. The beast had been big enough to kill the moose, but that didn’t feel right. Its paws had been cat-like, not thick clawed like whatever had left prints at the moose kill. It hadn’t smelled like sulfur, not the way the hounds or the demon at Grimm’s had. No, the beast had smelled like pure untouched nature bottled into a perfume. Like life itself.

  The Questing Beast, according to legend and their mother, was supposed to spell the doom of his family. Perce wasn’t sure that was right, not now that he’d seen it. Not that something beautiful couldn’t be evil. He wished Dani was with him. She’d be able to tell if the beast meant harm or carried ill will. She’d know what to do.

  He didn’t have her. She was hurt because he’d failed to protect her, to realize danger quickly enough. The hounds had caught them off guard. It shouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t again, not if he could help it. He had to stop them, and he had to find the man who had shot his sister.

  Perce picked up the trail of the men again at the stream. It circled back toward the village. The afternoon sun was starting to build shadows under the trees but Perce guessed he had a lot of hours of daylight left in this northern climate. Sophie said the days were nearly twenty hours long this time of year.

  The men’s trail led him another mile and then died out completely in another clearing of overgrown blueberry bushes. Perce checked around the clearing, looking for where he could pick the trail back up, but there was nothing. No sign they’d moved through the bushes, either. No sign they’d emerged from the clearing.

  Frustrated, he backtracked and followed the trail again. It still ended in the same place. He worked the area in a spiral pattern with the clearing at the center. No tracks from hellhound or human. He found a very old scratched up tree that looked like it had been marked by a fairly large bear, but nothing recent. Whatever bear had used the spruce for a scratching post hadn’t returned this summer.

  No sulfur smell. Nothing. Dead end.

  Perce sat at the edge of the blueberry bush clearing and watched it for a while, alert to the woods around him. Flying squirrels moved in the branches overhead, chiding him for existing in their world. Birds darted here and there squabbling and showing off. It was a warm, lazy summer afternoon here beneath the trees. Nothing more.

  After some time, Perce rose and began to trace his way back to town using his preternatural sense of direction. He memorized the landscape as best he could in case he had to come back. The clearing was a good fifty or sixty feet across and too even to be natural from a tree falling or fire or the like. Bertha or Samuel might know why it was there since they’d been in the area their whole lives from what he’d gleaned listening to their conversations.

  The town was still its sleepy self when he returned. He nodded to an elderly couple sitting on their porch as he loped past, headed toward Bertha’s. On the main road, Perce stopped and looked up the road toward the lodge. He jogged that way and cut around the side to where there was a large gravel parking lot bounded by old logs.

  Beyond that was a park-like forested area, the trees well-groomed to remove lower branches and the ground covered in bark-dust with the ground cover cleared away. Quite a few of the campsites were occupied with a mix of sensible and bright tents. Campfires were contained in built-in fire pits and almost nobody had one going at the moment in the height of the afternoon heat. Each camp spot had a number nailed to a tree near it. On a hunch, Perce went back to the parking lot and looked at the cars there. Each one had a little cardboard number tucked onto the dash inside beneath their windshields.

  He walked among the cars until he found the one that the three men had climbed into. Perce had watched them leave while pretending not to. He’d memorized their license plate just in case they’d decided not to leave and come cause more trouble later. Their car was empty, the doors locked. Perce left the car alone after looking at the number and went to find their camp.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d do if they were there. Perhaps he’d have to ask them about the woods. That would be a heck of a conversation. He might have to not ask so nicely, either, given how rude they’d been in the diner. One of them, the man the others had called Jason, had made some very unpleasant comments about the promiscuity of his sister. A man who would do that about a stranger wasn’t a man to be respected or trusted, in Perce’s opinion.

  If they weren’t in the camp, that would be a checkmark in the “probably shot Dani” column as far as Perce was concerned. He moved confidently through the first row of the campsites. The trick to blending was to look like you knew where you were going and belonged. Perce had found that was true in L.A. as well as back home.

  Camp number nineteen was the farthest out. Three small tents had been erected around the camp area, their openings facing the fire pit and four stumps clearly used for seating. Nothing was moving, no signs of life in that camp at all, but Perce walked past it anyway, letting all his senses feel out if there were people nearby.
The campsites to either side and in front of nineteen were tent-less and empty. These men, the hunters, they’d sought isolation, it seemed.

  He circled back around to the camp and went into stealth mode. Moving silently and quickly, he slipped into the first tent. The zipper was well maintained and it made no sound as he opened the flap. It took only a second for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. A sleeping bag was rolled up against one side. A pack, like a hiker might have, was laid out on the floor. It contained clothing, a half-dozen MREs, and extra rifle ammunition in a wooden box. Nothing of interest.

  Perce mentally chided himself. What was he hoping for anyway? A diary detailing their plans to hunt hellhounds and shoot women? He put everything back the way he’d found it and then slid out of the tent, shaking his head as he went.

  The second tent held almost identical items. No smoking gun.

  Feeling like Goldilocks, Perce crept into the third tent. This one had the same sleeping bag as the others. He wondered if they’d gotten a good deal. The sleeping bags all smelled new with faint traces of plastic scent on them as though they hadn’t been slept in yet. That was odd, given the men had arrived the previous day at least.

  Checking the pack but not expecting to find much, Perce almost missed the lump in one side as he ran his hands around checking the inner pockets. He found the fastening and removed a small, waterproof pouch. Inside was a book, its leather cover so old and soft that Perce was afraid to open it. The book carried a sulfurous odor, faint but present enough to make him slip it back into its case quickly. He tucked the book away and then set everything else in the tent back to rights.

  Perce slipped away from the campground with a racing heart. He didn’t know what the book might contain, but it was time to bring Dani up to speed and let her brain do some work. He might want to physically protect her and would do all he could in that area, but he wasn’t dumb enough, despite his charade, to try to keep his twin in the dark. She’d want to know what he’d been doing, if she didn’t guess it already. Dani was no wilting violet. They were on this quest together and while her wound had her grounded from hunting, it was in her leg, not her head.