Twi

by Romi Hart

  “I don’t hunt or trap animals.” I wasn’t going to let anyone think I would do a thing like that. “That’s Zoe’s thing, not mine.”

  For a second, Twilight’s lips pulled into a smile as he gave me a short nod. “Good.” He looked at the knife I’d laid on the table in front of me. “Those weapons won’t do much to the Wendigo, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, yes they will,” Zoe ejected a bullet from the chamber of her gun. Holding it on her palm, she showed it off. “Silver bullets are all I carry when on a beast hunt. One shot, right through the heart is what it will take to kill the creature we’re here for.”

  “But we’re not here to kill it.” I had to clarify that. “The blade of my knife is silver as well. But we’ll only use our weapons if we have no other choice. We’ll run before be hurt anything.”

  “Which brings me to another thing that has perplexed me,” Twilight said as he ambled to my side, taking the seat next to me that Zoe had vacated. “How in the world were you two doing the chasing instead of it being the other way around?”

  With a shrug, I had no idea how that had come to be. “You got me. That was a first for us.”

  Zoe jerked her head toward the area of the tree line where we’d first noticed the Wendigo. “It was watching us. But we noticed that and went off to the side, going into the woods ourselves. We went around it and came up behind it. Essentially, we spooked it and it started running. So, we ran too. It was planned but I had no idea if it would work or not.”

  Twilight bumped his shoulder against mine and when I turned to face him, his handsome face was right there. “You were damn lucky, Val. It won’t happen that way for you again. Heed my warning. It will come back to get you. The Wendigo are hunters by nature. They can stalk their prey for days – even weeks.”

  Mist took over as he said, “They tend to herd their victims much like wolves do with sheep. The Wendigo uses the sounds of other animals to make you think there’s nothing sinister following you. It can even mimic human sounds and voices to fool its victims into coming right to it.”

  “I’ve heard that too.” I’d done tons of research. “I don’t come after things I don’t know everything I can find out about it. I know that if we have to kill that thing, we’ll have to pierce its heart with sliver, then we’ll have to cut the heart into many pieces before burying it in a silver box.” Looking over my shoulder, I asked Zoe, “Can you get the box so they can see just how prepared we are?”

  “Not that I think we need to explain ourselves to these guys, but okay.” She went back to the van then came back with the specially made box. “If we must kill the creature, we’ll put its torn asunder heart into this box. After that, we’ll take it to a graveyard in the back of a small church on the outskirts of Ontario.”

  “See, Twilight, we’ve thought of everything. But we really don’t want to kill anything. We want to document our discovery with video and nothing more than that. We don’t want to capture it or try to make it do a thing other than what it normally does.” I wasn’t about controlling anything. I just wanted proof of some of the things no one had ever gotten proof of before.

  One, long finger trailed down my cheek, then Twilight traced my lips. “You’re too pretty to get the bones sucked out of you, Valentine.”

  Lost in his eyes, my heart pounded so loudly I was sure he could hear it. “I’ll try not to let that happen. I’ve got a younger brother and sister to get home to. Dying isn’t on my agenda.”

  “Then you should leave.” He got up and went to stand next to Mist. “We’ll start taking the tent down while you girls put the things in the van.”

  Zoe and I exchanged aggravated expressions. It seemed the guys were going to take the dominant role.

  As if we’re about to let them do that.

  “Maybe you two should head out,” Zoe said as she put the silver box and gun away in the van. “Val and I will take our chances, the way we’ve done for over a year now.”

  “I’m serious,” Twilight shouted as a vein throbbed in the middle of his forehead. “You can’t take on this thing.”

  “We’re not trying to,” I tried to make him understand. “But if we do, why should you care? We’re nothing to you. You guys don’t even know us. Just go away and let us do what we came here to do. We might need to move our campsite. You haven’t left us alone so we can talk about what our next move is.”

  Zoe whipped out her cell phone and went to show the guys something. “Look. I’ll prove to you that I can take care of things. See, this is a picture I took last year of the haul Gramps and I got.”

  “That’s horrifying,” Mist turned his head away.

  Twilight looked at the phone as if he was watching a horror movie. “So many pelts.”

  Zoe pointed something out. “Look in the background. We shot a buck too. See it hanging from the tree branch? We did that so it could bleed out before we cut it up and put it in the ice chest. We got fifteen of the best fox pelts we’ve ever gotten last year. It was a record year for us.”

  I wasn’t into hunting myself, so all of that sounded pretty gross to me. Twilight and Mist had reactions that bordered on hilarious, being that they were big, buff men.

  Mist backed away. “I can’t see that. Why would you do that? What’s the reason behind all the carnage?”

  “People like furs.” Zoe shrugged as she put her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. “And deer meat is better than cow any day. Plus, it’s healthier for you.”

  “This isn’t worth it.” Twilight looked at me with disgust. “You two are not worth it. Someone who delights in killing helpless animals only so she can have their fur isn’t worth our time.” He pointed one long finger at me. “And you condone it. By saying nothing, you may as well be joining her in her horrifying hunts for defenseless animals.”

  It shouldn’t have bothered me that he spoke to me that way. What did I care about what he thought about me? But I didn’t like the idea of anyone thinking I agreed with things I didn’t. Then again, people had the right to hunt, so who was I to say negative things about it?

  I had no idea what to say to the men anyway. “It is what it is.” That was simply all I could come up with.

  “No,” Twilight shouted. “It is not that. I hate that damn saying - it is what it is. It’s what you make it. That’s what it is. If you accept everything based on that idiotic theory, then you will learn to tolerate the intolerable.” He turned to leave. “This is useless. I certainly don’t wish for you two to meet your demise in the woods, but it is what it is, isn’t it?” He turned to catch me looking at him. “See how stupid that sounds?”

  He’d called me stupid more times than anyone ever had. “You know who’s stupid? You are, Twilight. What kinds of names are Twilight and Mist anyway? You both made them up. You’re probably theater freaks who only come out here so you can run around the woods naked.”

  Zoe was quick to give me a high five. “Yeah, they probably like to streak around the forest while howling at the moon. Theater freaks!”

  Stalking away, I sort of hated to see them going. Twilight might’ve had a dumb name, but he was hot and fun to look at. His muscles rippled as he stomped away, making parts of me hot – even if he was stupid. “Well, there they go. Finally.” They disappeared into the trees. “Shame though. Twilight was built like a brick shit house.”

  “Your mouth is getting terrible, Val.” Zoe laughed. “But I agree. Both of them looked like something out of Happy Campers Magazine. Braun and some brains too. It’s a shame they had to be such fraidy cats. Now, if they were on our team, we might actually get some footage of the things we search for.”

  “They’d never go along with that. They’re more worried about the rights of killer beasts than those of humans.” I sort of hated that they didn’t understand us. But Zoe was partially to blame for that. “Maybe, next time, if we ever happen to have handsome men as camp guests again, leave out all the hunting stuff. That really put them off.”

  “It�
�s what I do. It’s like my passion. Well, my second passion after this one.” Zoe sighed as she went to the tent to finish setting it up. “I’m not used to men acting that way about it. Most guys think I’m freaking awesome because I hunt.”

  I began feeling bad for what I’d called the guys. Standing up, I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “I’m sorry I made fun of you and called you names. That’s not like me at all. I hope you don’t take anything we said to heart. Sorry!”

  “You’re an idiot.” Zoe reached out, wiggling her fingers as she held a piece of the tent to the ground. “Hand me that hammer please.”

  Tossing it just out of her reach, I’d grown tired of being called names. “There you go.” Walking away, I went to the van to see what else needed to be taken out. “Name-calling isn’t cool, Zoe.”

  “Neither is almost handing me the hammer I need to stabilize this damn tent.” I heard her slam the head of the hammer down on a metal spike. “There’s too much negative energy around here now.”

  “You’re right.” Digging in the box I’d brought, I pulled out a candle. “Maybe this honeysuckle scented candle will bring back the good vibes and get rid of the bad ones.”

  Zoe came to the van to grab a box she brought. Pulling a bottle of vodka out of it, she shook it at me. “This will help too. You pour the orange juice and I’ll pour the alcohol.”

  I wasn’t sure about doing that. “We probably should keep our wits about us. We did chase a mythical creature around the forest. We might have made it mad. And it really might come after us.”

  She picked up two plastic cups and put some of the vodka in both. “It ran in the other direction. It’s long gone. It’ll be a miracle if we ever see a hint of it again. I wasn’t going to say anything with those guys around, but we probably should cancel this mission.”

  “You just didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of making us leave, huh?” I understood where she was coming from. Being females in this line of work wasn’t easy. Most of the time there were men trying to scare us away from what we were after.

  “If you give in once, it’ll happen over and over again.” She added some orange juice to both cups. “We should stay the night though. I’m sure they’ll sneak back over here to see if we left or not. They’d take all the credit for making us leave if we leave before daylight. We can’t have that.”

  I took the cup she handed me, and we tapped our cups together then took drinks. “You’re probably right. That thing did sound as if it was heading as far away from us as it could get. We most likely freaked it out. It can’t be used to people chasing it. And especially not a couple of girls.” Laughing, I took another drink. “I wonder what it thought when we came at it.”

  “We must’ve looked insane.” She laughed too. “A couple of chicks coming out of nowhere, shining a flashlight on it.”

  “I have no idea what sort of mental capacity it has, but I would guess that it’s kind of smart. Maybe it thought we were witches.” I took another drink as I giggled about what we’d done. “No one will ever believe us. I hate that we didn’t catch any of that on video.”

  “It wouldn’t have done us a bit of good if I had caught any of that on video. It was complete chaos. Even we would have had a hard time deciphering what was going on if I had recorded any of that.” Pulling out her camp chair, she laid back in it as she sipped on her drink, looking up at the stars. “The night air is cool. We should sleep well tonight.”

  Maybe she would. I knew I’d be awake, listening for any sound of the creature coming back for us. Not that I would tell Zoe that.

  7

  Twilight

  Valentine might’ve been just about the prettiest girl I’d seen in a very long time, but she was doomed to be Wendigo food. “A knife,” I said as I threw my hands up. “Who, in their rational mind, thinks she can kill a monster with a frigging knife? I don’t care if it is a big knife with a silver blade – she can’t possibly kill something as big, mean, and lethal as the Wendigo. I wouldn’t even attempt to do such a thing.”

  Mist grumbled, “I think that Zoe girl is mentally deranged. Why’d she even bring up her blood-lusting hobby in the first place?”

  “I’m not exactly sure about that. It seemed as if she was trying to impress us with her carnage. Valentine wasn’t a thing like Zoe, though. If she wasn’t such a glutton for punishment, I think I’d like her.”

  “You mean that you like the way she looks. She is pretty. But you can’t forget about her self-destructive tendencies. Going out to look for monsters just isn’t safe.” Mist pointed out an empty campsite near the girls. “Perhaps we should spend the night here. You know, just in case we’re right and the Wendigo does come after them.”

  It would’ve been nice to believe that we could actually defend them against such a formidable creature. But we didn’t stand a chance in hell of doing such a thing. “We are not heroes, Mist. We’re fox-shifters and that’s all we are.”

  I’d never really figured out what we did that was exceptional. Unlike the brutes of the shifter world, the bears, the lions, tigers, dragons, we fox-shifters weren’t built like Mack trucks. We were normal-sized men with great muscular features but nothing spectacular.

  “Anyone can be a hero, Twi. Even little girls can do heroic deeds. Why must you always shortchange yourself, cousin?” He ran ahead of me and took a seat on top of the cement picnic table of the campsite he wanted us to spend the night at. “There’s a tree right over there where we can dig a den to sleep in.”

  “We’ve already dug one underneath another tree.” I didn’t really want to even hear the sounds of the beast sucking out the bones of the women who refused to listen to reason. “I’m not going to stay here. If you want to, then that’s up to you. I’m heading to the den we’ve already dug. Plus, there are snacks there. The berries, remember?”

  I was full, from the sandwich we’d eaten with the girls. Mist was a snacker though. He’d be getting hungry later and if we stayed there, he’d bother me to go find him something to eat. Probably even ask me to go back to the girl’s camp to ask for food. Which I would not do.

  Thinking ahead wasn’t always Mist’s strong suit. “You’re right. Our snacks are back in the den. Without us there to protect them, something else will come along and help themselves to our food. Come on.” He leapt up and started hurrying away. “We might not be helpless, but we can’t fight a Wendigo. We did the best we could for those obstinate females.”

  One has to know when one has done all they can do, and then they must move on.

  8

  Valentine

  The night was long and thankfully, uneventful. While Zoe had had no trouble at all falling asleep with her gun underneath her pillow, I’d found it hard to close my eyes. At first. But then, with the sounds of crickets chirping and no monsters lurking about, I drifted off to a peaceful slumber.

  Until thunder boomed overhead, waking me from a night of deep sleep to find dawn had broken on a new day. Rubbing my eyes with the backs of my hands, I yawned. “I didn’t see rain in the forecast yesterday.”

  Zoe sat up, unzipping her sleeping bag. “Me neither. I wouldn’t have come out here if I would’ve seen even a slight chance of rain in the forecast for this week.”

  Climbing out of my sleeping bag, I crawled on my hands and knees to the door of the tent then unzipped it to take a peek outside. “I don’t see any clouds at all. The horizon is pink, and the sky is light blue. I wonder where the thunder could’ve possibly come from.”

  Getting up, Zoe walked past me, leaving the tent. “I’m putting on some coffee. You need to get up and make breakfast. Today is your day to do that.”

  “Eggs and toast, it is.” Standing up, I brushed the wrinkles from the t-shirt and shorts I’d slept in.

  “Damn it!” Zoe shouted. “Coons! They got into our things.”

  Stepping out of the tent, I saw the mess they’d made of our things. Going to help straighten up, I began picking up the scattered bot
tles of water. “It doesn’t look like they were able to get into anything.” Putting the bottles back into the wooden case they’d been in, I looked around for signs of tracks and found none. “Odd, there’re no tracks.”

  Zoe scanned the area then shrugged. “The ground is so thickly covered in pine needles I don’t think anything could leave a track around here. But this is the work of raccoons.” Getting the old-fashioned percolator coffee pot out of the box she’d packed it in, she reached out to me, wiggling her fingers. “A bottle of water please.”

  Handing her one that I hadn’t put away yet, I found the lid had been opened but not all the way. “They almost got into this one. I guess we woke up and scared them away.”

  Zoe twisted the top the rest of the way off, then poured it into the coffee pot. “Well, we’re not throwing it away just because raccoon paws have been on it. Waste not – want not.”

  “I agree one hundred percent.” I always started my day with a bottle of water. “I read somewhere that it’s good to chug a bottle of water when you first wake up to get your body going.” Holding another bottle out to her, I asked, “Care for one?”

  “Yeah, why not?” She opened her bottle at the same time I did, and we upended them, racing to see who could drink theirs first.

  I won, of course, having practiced. “Ah! I’ve got it down to thirty seconds.”

  Zoe looked like she was having trouble getting down the last bit as her eyes bugged out. “You made that look a lot easier than it really is.”

  “I’ve been doing that every morning for the last three months. And I’ve got to say that it makes me feel more awake and energetic than ever.” Tossing the empty bottle into the trash bin, I ran in place for a minute then went to wash up before changing my clothes. “You up for a hike after breakfast, Zoe?”