AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The demon? We do not know. We wish to learn all we can about ‘it’ from you. Our knowledge comes from textbooks rather than experience. Our ancestors who hunted the last of them died long ago.”
“Who are you?”
“We are the Huntresses of Arapovia.”
Arapovia? He’d thought the place was a myth, a story conjured up by priests. “He can’t be stopped.”
Sister Solvena placed her warm hand on Silas’s cheek. “With your help, ‘it’ will be.”
Epilogue
Mara crouched behind a huge tree, the strong wind grabbing at him as it wailed past as if trying to pull him back out into the ankle-deep snow. He sat down. The walk had been long and slow, but it didn’t matter. He was finally alone.
He felt calm, even with the whispers grumbling at him. They wanted him to go back and burn the village he’d seen. He’d been close to doing it too – still was, just to shut them up – but he’d come so far now, and he didn’t want to have to walk all that way again.
It was the first time he didn’t have to worry about someone wanting to hurt him. Nobody could live up here in all this snow. He thought about Silas. Without him, I’d still be in the Spring, probably dead. He didn’t deserve to die, even though he wanted to. The whispers started up. They’d wanted Silas dead. If he comes again, I’ll do it. He needed one last chance.
He looked into the snow; it blew sideways rather than falling from the sky. His footprints were almost filled in already. Just like the powder in the Shadow Forest. Nobody can follow me up here, not even Silas. He pulled at the arrow stuck in his leg. It moved a little more each time he’d tried, but still wouldn’t come out. Stupid arrow.
He wasn’t hungry or thirsty. The last time he could remember being either was when he was chained to the table in Talon. He’d spent his entire life being one or the other, mostly both, and strangely he missed it.
His bruised and scabby hands were red and purple, a little white on the fingertips. He could feel they were cold, but they didn’t hurt, not like they had when he’d been cold in the past. His fingers moved slowly as he flexed them. He wouldn’t be able to grip his blade properly if he needed to, so he tucked them under his armpits.
The whispers became excited. Mara looked around. Nothing but white and the odd tree. What can you see? Snow wet his face as he peered around the tree at his back. The Beast stood ahead, not a single flake of snow on its black skin. What do you want? It pointed sideways. What’s over there? Quiet as ever, the Beast just stood there. Mara huffed. “Okay, I’ll go look.”
Forced to squint into the wind and snow again, he walked to the Beast, then in the direction it pointed. He passed among some small trees that were bent almost sideways under the snow. He panted. The snow was deeper here, nearly at his knees.
The shape of a mountain appeared through the white, and as he got closer, a yellow ball of light glowed at the bottom of it. A fire? Closer still, and a cave came into view. Two men dressed in thick looking fur held their hands out toward a small fire.
The whispers went wild. They wanted blood. Mara stared at the men. They shivered gently. People do live all the way up here? Maybe they’ve got lost. I can keep going. They’ll never know I was here. The whispers became screams. Mara dropped to a knee and squeezed his head. “Shut up, just shut up.”
“Who’s out there?” one man shouted.
Mara looked up to see both men stood, pointing their spears in his direction. Fine. He fake shivered as he forced his legs through the snow. “Help… me.”
“What the hell? Is that a boy?” The man on the left dropped his spear and leaped through the snow.
The fur-covered man looked a lot like an animal as he pranced toward him. It wouldn’t be hard to kill him and then his friend, but he needed to find out what they were doing here. He let the man scoop him up and carry him to the cave.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” the man who carried him said as he put Mara down by the fire. “We need those wet clothes off, boy. You need to get warm, and they ain’t helping.”
Mara held the bottom of his shirt as the man tried to pull it up.
“You need ’em off. Son, take off that coat.”
The bearded son pulled off his fur coat and held it out. Mara let the father pull up the shirt over his head. Both men’s mouths hung open as they stepped away.
“What the hell?” the father said.
Mara looked down. The burn wounds on his arms, chest, and stomach were horribly infected. Brown and yellow pus leaked from the raised red lumps. Purple veins ran from their edges in a web across his body. He pressed at a lump, the thick pus came out like a sausage, and he flicked it into the fire. “Where is your village?”
The son looked shit scared. “What’s happened to him, da?”
The father leant slowly sideways and grabbed his spear. “Get back, son.”
Mara pulled out the blade from the back of his trousers and tossed it to the son’s feet. The son picked it up and held it to his own neck, the Beast st
anding right behind him.
