Page 16 of Mortis

Blood coated its mouth. A strip of flesh hung from razor-sharp teeth. And when its gaze locked onto mine, I found myself staring into a pair of glowing red eyes.

“If red eyes linger in the dark,

Barrowfell Woods will claim your heart.”

The nursery rhyme crashed through my mind. Every story, every warning. Every missing hiker and mutilated body. All of it hit me at once.

The monster froze.

I froze.

Neither of us moved.

Neither of us breathed.

The entire world seemed to narrow until it was just me, Dorothy’s corpse, and the creature looming over her.

Then my brain finally caught up.

“Oh, fuck.”

2

KAEL

This flesh tasted . . . different. Unnatural. Almost chemical. No matter how much I chewed, searching for the copper tang of blood or the rich taste of fresh meat, it never came.

I was left unsatisfied.

Perhaps that was to be my eternal punishment.

It had been decades since I first began slaughtering innocent mortals in the woods, surrendering control to my inner beast whenever the hunger grew too great. When He was fed and the ever-present need was sated, I was granted a brief reprieve.

But each time the haze lifted, I was left staring at another mangled corpse.

Another face frozen in misery.

Fragments of the hunt lingered in my memory. The pounding rhythm of fleeing footsteps. The desperate thunder of a racing heart, and the bitter, intoxicating scent of fear persisted in my nostrils long after the blood had dried.

And every time, I felt sick with guilt.

Guilt that I wasn’t strong enough to hold Him back.

Guilt that I had allowed Him to claim another innocent life using my hands and teeth as His weapons.

Guilt that, despite everything, I still enjoyed the taste of His prey while I cowered in the depths of my own mind.

It was that guilt that finally made me put my hoof down.

Only hours earlier, while the sun still hung high above the canopy, two hikers had crossed the treeline of Barrowfell Woods. The place I’d called home for sixty years.

My sanctuary.

My prison.

His hunting ground.

Ordinarily, when the scent of sweat-dampened flesh reached me and the steady rhythm of a mortal heartbeat echoed through the trees, I simply stepped aside. I surrendered the reins, and allowed Him to take control, knowing what would follow was inevitable.