Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1)

by Justine Sebastian

  Crash bobbed his head and seemed mollified by that. He made another chuffing sound, Right you are. There was another sound, a rustling, brushing sound and it took Nick a moment to pinpoint what it was.

  Crash was wagging his tail.

  That was what drove it home with full force that this was real. Nick could not have said why, but it was the straw that broke his skeptic’s back once and for all. Given enough time, Nick could have possibly convinced himself that what had happened up to this point had all been a weird fever dream, but the sound of Crash’s wagging tail brushing back and forth against the low scrub was the end of that for him.

  “Just let me go,” Nick said. “You can do that, Crash.”

  When Crash shook his head, Nick though, Oh, shit. He wondered if all of this was a part of the game, part of Crash playing with his food before he ate it. It was catlike of him, not wolf-like, but in his current situation, all bets were off.

  Nick backed up, moving around the fallen branch so it was between him and Crash. Nick had tried to reason with him, but you couldn’t reason with crazy as far gone as Crash’s. You couldn’t appeal to the humanity of a creature that had long since shrugged off that mantle. It was another of those things he realized too late.

  “Fuck you then.” Nick pulled his lips back from his teeth and growled at Crash. He didn’t think about it, he just did it, the sound welling up from deep in his chest like it was made to be there. He was furious; he’d held it in check while he wasted his time trying to talk the crazy piece of shit down. Now he was as out of patience as he was time.

  Crash’s responding snarl was deeper, meaner than Nick’s and it brought back that sick feeling of coldness, but he ignored it. He was thinking, scheming, trying to figure out how the hell he could survive this fight.

  There weren’t a lot of options.

  “Come on, motherfucker!” Nick yelled at him. “Do it if you think you can!”

  There was no hesitation in him when Crash charged, moving quick as burning shadows, quicker than Nick thought he could. Nick grabbed the limb he’d gotten a grip on while he stared Crash down. He didn’t think he’d be able to make his move after all, Crash was too goddamn fast, but he did. He got the limb up and swung it as hard as he could even as he moved to the side. The old, dry thing broke easily against the curve of Crash’s shoulder, but Nick was able to get out of the way. His own reflexes were quicker, more fluid than he remembered and he danced to the side as Crash sailed by, bits of splintered wood caught in his dark fur.

  Crash turned on a dime, growling, strings of saliva gleaming white and frothy hanging from his jaws. It was hard for Nick to breathe, air forcing itself down the narrow pinhole of his throat, but Nick rushed to meet Crash. He ducked low, hitting Crash in the stomach with his shoulder as hard as he could. They went sailing backward and Crash’s claws raked over the side of his head, the curve of his shoulder and along the back of his ribs. Nick’s skin parted like butter, the immediate smell of blood a wet stench in the piney air.

  Nick jerked back and Crash followed him, snapping his teeth so close to Nick’s face that he felt the rush of air from his fangs a second before he ducked and weaved to the side. Nick punched him and stood back up, Crash following him, head cocked, eyes hard and intent on Nick’s face. He moved and Nick swung, clipping Crash on the jaw before pulling back. He screamed through his teeth when Crash turned his head and caught his arm in his massive teeth. The bones in his forearm snapped with a sound like waterlogged wood and Nick screamed even louder. He swung blindly and brought the side of his other fist down on the center of Crash’s snout.

  When Crash released him with a surprised, pained yelp, Nick lost his balance. He landed on his ass in the pine straw, shoulder scraping against the scaly bark of a tree as he went down. Crash turned on him, muzzle wrinkled back, fearsome and angry. Nick cradled his ruined, bleeding arm against his chest, pieces of splintered bone poking through his already bloody t-shirt. With his free hand, Nick felt around, searching for anything he could use as a weapon.

  Crash grabbed his left ankle just as Nick found a stick buried beneath the straw. His claws sank into Nick’s flesh like hooks, digging in and holding on. He lashed out with his right foot and caught Crash a hard blow on the side of his face. He yelped then snarled, licking his tongue out between his teeth. He slung Nick to the side, sending him spinning across the ground, the flesh around his ankle torn open. He came to a stop when he slammed against the trunk of another tree so hard it knocked the wind from him. He gasped and panted as he used his feet to shove himself into a sitting position. Crash wasn’t far behind him and when their eyes met across the short distance, Crash lunged.

  Nick had kept his hold on the stick, fingers clenched around it so tightly that splinters and scraps of bark were digging painful divots into his palm. Crash lunged, moving like a streak in a half crouch low to the ground, powerful legs shoving him forward, mouth already open. Nick used every bit of strength he had to shove himself upward, stick outstretched before him, to greet Crash.

  He felt Crash’s hot breath and heard his pained scream as the stick went through the roof of his mouth and stuck there. Crash reeled away from Nick, grabbing at his face to pull the stick free. With reserves Nick did not know he had, he pushed himself to his feet, wobbled, but stayed upright. Crash at least had not severed the tendon in his ankle when he grabbed him and though it hurt, Nick turned and ran while he had the chance. He was only getting a head start in the race against his own death, but Nick couldn’t simply stand there and wait for it either. He had to try.

  Nick had gotten turned around, thrown off his original direction and didn’t know which way he was going any longer. He ran blindly, his body on autopilot, his excellent night vision saving his eyes from low-hanging branches. He ran pell-mell over the uneven ground, stumbling through the shallow, overgrown ravines of old fire lanes, up small hills then down again. Southeast Louisiana had more hills and higher ground than most areas in the southern half of the state, but for the most part, the ground was low and spongy with the moisture built up beneath the pine straw.

  He splashed through marshy ground, ferns whipping against his jeans as he went. Nick was beginning to tire, his former stamina bleeding out of him on wave after wave of pain as he left a bright red trail through the forest. He came to the top of a small rise and the soft ground gave under his feet, pitching him forward and down the other side of a short bluff. As he went over, he heard Crash scream behind him and knew this was the end of the line.

  The monster had found him and he had fallen down. Nick wasn’t going to be able to get up again, that knowledge was sharp and clear as he tumbled down the bluff, sticks and pine cones digging into all of his sore places and creating new ones. The side of his face turned up just in time to scrape over the woody, thick thorns of a Devil’s walking stick, leaving behind dangling darts of flesh.

  He came to a sudden, bone-jarring thump against the trunk of yet another tree and lay there, head buzzing and ringing, mind empty of everything other than the sound of Crash charging toward him. He was going fast, weight and muscle propelling him downhill after Nick. Nick opened his eyes to face his end as it came toward him. Crash skidded on the leaf litter and pine straw as he tried to stop his forward momentum. Kinetic energy made stronger by that same weight and speed on the down-slope made it nearly impossible for Crash to stop. Nick knew he was going to slam into him and tried to rally the strength to turn out of the way.

  With one last heave, Nick rolled to the side as Crash arrived. He, too, tried to use his momentum to turn his body, but it was too late. He slammed into the tree with a scream that pierced the night with its shrillness. It was the scream of an animal in horrific pain and Nick cringed from it as he slowly pushed himself up. He felt like he had broken ribs to go with his arm, his face was wet with blood from scrapes, thorns and a busted nose. But sitting upright in a shaft of moonlight, Nick saw what he had missed before when he slid to a stop.

  The tre
e he had hit was broken and the trunk looked dark, burnt, like it had been struck by lightning. The opposite side of the tree was tilted up out of the ground, thick, ropey coils of curling roots looking like the snakes of Medusa’s hair. The shattered tree trunk canted out of the ground at a sharp angle, long splinters of wood reaching into the darkness. Crash’s momentum had carried him right into those thick splinters and they had run him through, blood-dark spikes jutted from his back and shoulders.

  He wasn’t dead yet and Nick watched, gorge rising as Crash yelped and struggled against the wicked pins holding him down. He tried to pull and push himself off the tree, blood slopping to the ground in great splashes whenever he moved. Nick could hear the steady streaming drip of it when he stilled, panting and whimpering softly. His breathing was labored, gushing out of him in wet pants as he turned his head to look at Nick. He whined and opened his mouth to pant, a stream of blood falling from his open maw.

  He was dying, Nick could see it in his eyes and smell it; an encroaching sickly sweet odor as his body’s cells collapsed and began the process of rot. It surprised him to feel a twinge of pity for the monster dying in front of him. The great beast of Sparrow Falls had met its end on a broken tree trunk and it was looking at Nick with dimming eyes that were still afraid.

  Nick pushed himself to his feet, swaying like a drunkard and nearly going back to his knees. He shook his head and stayed vertical through sheer force of will. He met Crash’s eyes and heaved a sigh. Blood pattered to the leaves below Crash, soft as rain, but thicker. His broad head was beginning to droop and he whined, crying like a frightened puppy as he struggled once more, actions feeble.

  “Shh,” Nick soothed. It surprised him to hear his own voice and shocked him even more that he moved closer. It didn’t stop him though; he walked to Crash, injured leg dragging along behind him. “Hey,” Nick said softly when he reached Crash.

  Crash lifted his head though it looked like a struggle and stared at Nick with pleading eyes, begging him to help him, to make this horrible thing stop. Nick couldn’t do that, he had nothing to do it with and wasn’t sure he’d have been able to even if he had. He reached out though and ran his hand over the top of Crash’s head, thick fur soft beneath his fingers as he stroked behind his ear and down the side of his neck.

  Crash licked his arm once, breath quick and shallow as he went down the final rabbit hole. Nick wanted to tell him he was sorry, but he didn’t because it wasn’t true. He did wonder though at how someone—something—could become so twisted up inside that they did the things Crash had done.

  He ran his hand over Crash’s fur, felt the thundering tremble of his faltering heart under his fingers as he stroked through the ruff of fur on his neck and felt the warmth already leaching from his body. Nick frowned at the lump in his throat, sorry to see something as magnificent as Crash come to such an untidy, painful end. He could have been more, maybe should have been, but there was something broken deep inside of him that could not be fixed.

  As Nick stroked his hand over Crash’s head one last time, Crash jerked it to the side. With a snarl, teeth bared in a vicious grimace and bloody mouth open wide, he tried to bite Nick.

  Nick backpedaled away, heart galloping in his chest as Crash’s teeth clicked together on nothing. He stared at the monster and thought that sometimes, a dog needed to be put down because it never did know when to quit.

  Crash shuddered all over and sagged, body sliding down the wooden spikes holding it, massive head drooping between the fork of two, leaving him looking like he was hung in a grisly stocks. Crash still wasn’t dead, but the finale was coming now and Nick had no desire to stick around and watch it. He felt woozy and lightheaded, exhausted and all around like shit run over twice. He could leave Crash to his end and go find his own rest somewhere else. Nick didn’t know if he was dying, too, but if he was then he wanted to fall down somewhere that Crash was not.

  He skirted around the slight rise, bitterly amused to see that if he had gone about six feet to the left he would have missed it almost entirely. The side of the rise he walked around sloped down gently and into a clearing dotted here and there with crabapple trees. If Nick had done that though then he would have been torn apart amid the crabapple trees with no broken oak to stop Crash.

  Nick had made it about three hundred yards away when a howl, the last call of a great beast, cut through the night. It wavered, weak and strained, but audible, angry and heartbroken no matter how faltering it was. The answering howl that rose in Nick’s throat was none of those things. He tipped his head back and let it go with no thought to it. It filled the night, loud and strong, rising and falling in a wave of sound. When it was over, the woods were deathly silent; Crash had sung his last and Nick had given him his send-off.

  With the vibration of his howl still humming in his teeth, he began his slow walk again and knew that he, too, was a monster.

  32

  Nick collapsed and lost consciousness sometime during his walk though he had no recollection of it. One minute he was walking, each step slower and more difficult than the last and the next he was waking in the pre-dawn greyness. He was lying half beneath the propped trunk of the broken pine tree, the clearing around him splashed with blood that looked like spilled chocolate sauce in the bad light. He could barely move, leaves and straw glued to his body with his own dried blood. His broken arm was swollen and black, scary in how much it hurt and how the naked bone was crusted with filth. Infection had to have already set in and Nick feared that he would lose the arm.

  He had only the faintest memory of finding his way back to the clearing, using his own blood trail to backtrack toward it. There was the ghostly sensation of relief and then there was nothing at all for a few hours. He stood on colt-shaky legs, using his good arm and the fallen tree to drag himself to his feet. He leaned against it, winded from the slight exertion, every part of him aching like an abscessed tooth.

  It was while he was trying to muster the strength to start walking again that he heard Nancy screaming his name. Her voice echoed through the forest and Nick picked his head up, looking in the direction it sounded like it was coming from. The sound of Nancy’s voice faded and Hylas’s came next. Soon they were both calling his name, each one going off in different directions. Nick licked his dry, blood- and dirt-crusted lips and tried to call back to them. At first nothing came but a weak, painful croak of sound, but he tried again and again. On the fourth try, he found his voice and yelled for them both.

  Hylas found him first and blanched at the sight of Nick half-draped over the fallen tree to keep from sliding back to the ground. He rushed to Nick, calling Nancy’s name and telling her to hurry up, Nick needed help.

  Everything after that was a blur, Nancy came and sobbed at the sight of Nick before she got herself under control. She lay him down on the pine needles and began to do her best to stabilize him. She whispered things to herself as she worked, things like shock and compound fracture and multiple lacerations. Nick tried to tell them what had happened, but he wasn’t sure he was making any sense. He kept saying, “It was a monster.” Or maybe it was, “I’m a monster.” There was more or at least he thought there was, but he was too out of it to be sure the words weren’t just in his head.

  By the time the EMTs got him out of the woods, he was nearly unconscious again. He checked out completely around the time they began to load him into the ambulance.

  Nick woke up in the hospital a day and a half later, groggy and confused until the pain started seeping through. There was no wake-up call as good as fierce aches throughout the majority of your body to push you toward full consciousness. A quick check left him relieved to find both of his arms were still there though the right was bolted together like a bad science experiment. Nick did not care, as long as it was still attached, that was the only thing that mattered to him.

  Hylas was asleep in the chair next to Nick’s bed, his warm, sleepy odor as calming as ever. When Nick woke him, Hylas smiled and stretched in h
is chair, slumping down in it so far he was in danger of sliding right out onto the floor.

  “I’m not giving you an exclusive,” Nick said.

  “Dude,” Hylas said as he straightened up. “That is cruel of you. Still wise though since I’m not writing an article about that.”

  “Seriously?” Nick asked. He started to say more, but his throat was dry and aching. “Mind hooking me up with some water?”

  “No problem,” Hylas said. He got up to get the pitcher from the side table then paused to lean down and give Nick an awkward hug. “I am very pleased to have you still existing on this plane.”

  It was Hylas speak for, I’m really glad you’re not dead.

  “Same,” Nick croaked. “Now water, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  Hylas got Nick his water and Nick used the little button on the bed to raise himself up enough to drink it without drowning in the attempt.

  “So, we need to talk,” Hylas said after he sat back down. His posture was as relaxed and languid as ever, but his expression was grave.

  Nick grunted and waited to hear what Hylas had to say, though he was worried.

  “It’s like this, Nicky.” Hylas leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I—we—just want you to know that we took care of it.”

  “You took care—”

  “We took care of it,” Hylas repeated with a nod. “Me and Nancy didn’t know what the hell to do with that… that… thing when we found it, but—” Hylas held up a finger, a tiny smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. “I have a secret weapon: my undertaker brother.”

  “You fucking told Tobias?” Nick asked, sitting straight up in his bed, earning himself chiming alarm bells of pain.

  “Calm thyself, Nicholas,” Hylas said, smiling at him. “It is all cool, very gravy and so forth. Tobias was kinda annoyed and a little freaked out, but he’s used to that sorta thing.”

  “No one is used to that sort of thing,” Nick said.