Blood Creek Beast Read online

  Jack shrugged. “I’ll go.”

  “That’s brave of you, young Jack, but what about the rest of the bandits?”

  “If I hurry, I can be on my way before they find each other. Can I buy any of this food from you?”

  “Buy?” Barnaby laughed. “You can help yourself to my contributions, and I’m sure most of our village would say the same.”

  “Thanks. Jenny, can you recharge my amulet with your protection spell?”

  “You know that recharging these things doesn’t work as well as making a new one, right?”

  Jack nodded. “I reckon we ain’t got time for you to make a new one. You and I ought to get going quick before the bandits regroup. Think you can find Annie’s place without me?”

  “I’ll follow the creek. Hand me the amulet.”

  While Jack negotiated some dried meat and fruit from the villagers, Jenny recited her protection spell into Jack’s amulet. As she handed it back, she said, “I guess this is it, huh?”

  Jack nodded. “I reckon. We ought to take advantage of the daylight. By tomorrow, that Zainus guy will have plans. Now, I ain’t seen anyone heading upstream, but you be careful on your way back, okay?”

  Jenny looked him in the eyes and nodded somberly. “Jack, I haven’t had many close friends in my life. I’ve only known you for a few weeks, but you are already one of the best friends I’ve ever had.”

  “You too. I ain’t had many friends neither.” He was going to say something else, but something caught in his throat. He finally managed, “I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “You better.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Be careful out there, Jack.”

  Jack never worried about going off-trail in the woods near his home, but this world was unfamiliar territory. There were no power lines or roads to find if he got lost, and the woods were far more dangerous than anything near Maple Bend. He took to the road and hoped that the bandits were too busy with their own problems to bother him.

  Even the most crumbling paved roads of West Virginia were better than the road leading out of town. Generations-old ruts marked the path, and it was clear of larger growth. However, traffic was infrequent enough that grasses and weeds grew around and sometimes even inside the ruts. It remained shaded by overhanging branches of trees on either side of the trail, although frequent breaks in the canopy allowed the afternoon sun through.

  Jack adjusted the brim of his John Deere hat to shade his face. Maybe it was the stretches of uninterrupted sunlight, but the road seemed hotter than the game trail the day before. As sweat trickled beneath his shirt, he discovered how much he missed nice, warm showers. He had always considered himself more of an outdoorsy sort of guy, but there were some conveniences of modern life that he had trouble doing without.

  After twenty minutes, he spotted the blood. A fresh spray covered the grass and part of a tree. He drew close to investigate, ears alert. A stone bigger than his fist lay beside trail, also bloodied with bits of hair stuck to it. Jack bent down to examine the stone. The hairs looked too coarse to be human. Perhaps they belonged to a horse?

  A small trail of blood led off the road into the forest. A boot-shaped footprint disturbed the blood, smearing it. By his best guess, the boot was at least half again as big as anything he could possibly wear, and Jack wasn’t endowed with particularly small feet.

  Even a small giant was more than a match for Jack in a fair fight, regardless of the magical amulet protecting him from the first couple of blows. He’d rather face the bandits again. He backed away from the blood and resumed his travel down the road, picking up his pace. He resisted the urge to run. He’d just tire himself out, and he couldn’t outrun a giant.

  Something thumped into the bag slung over his shoulder. Lowering it, he took a moment to puzzle out where the projecting crossbow bolt had come from. Realization hit him, and he ran for the nearest trees to take cover, dropping his bag as he went.

  The surrounding forest was silent for several seconds. He didn’t know exactly where the attack had come from, or who had shot at him. The bolt wasn’t the size of a giant’s arrow, but that made it no less deadly. He peeked out from behind the tree, trying to spot his enemy. He saw nothing until the blur of another bolt streaked into his shoulder. The feathered shaft snapped in two as it struck. Jenny’s barrier held.

  Hidden somewhere in the forest nearby, Zainus laughed and mocked him. “So, sorcerer, how long can you keep those protective spells around you? I suppose we shall find out. It’s been over a year since I gutted a sorcerer. I don’t mind taking my time on you.”

  Jenny was wrong about Jack being smart, but when times required it, he could be clever. Unfortunately, nothing particularly clever was coming to mind right now. All he could come up with was to hurl insults right back. Bullies like Zainus hated to be mocked. “Take all the time you need, Zainus the Anus. You ain’t much of a sorcerer yourself. I fought a witch half your age, and she packed much bigger wallops in her spells.”

  “I am no sorcerer or witch!” The voice had moved. Jack was already diving for better cover before the next shot fired, and the bolt missed him by a hair’s breadth. “I’m one of the spirit folk, an exile of the Dogwood Clan. I am more powerful than any witch. I am older than your grandpa’s grandpa, and I’ll be around for decades after the worms are done eating the rotting flesh off your bones.”

  “And you ran like a scared little mouse when you didn’t have your buddies to back you up.”

  This elicited another shot, which flew wide by several inches. Jack saw the strange little man now, scowling and furious as he dodged between the trees to get a clear shot. Jack drew his blade and moved to better cover as the bandit reloaded his crossbow. If he could draw the man—or dogwood spirit thing, whatever he was—close enough, Jack could charge while Zainus was reloading.

  Zainus called, “You must have powerful magic to resist my best spells like you did. Perhaps if I make a stew out of your guts, I’ll gain that power. That’s why I was exiled from my clan. Eating humans. Killing you was fine when it was warranted, but eating you was forbidden. My clan elders were stupid that way, and now you’ve bred far and wide. I’ll tell you what: surrender now, and I’ll make sure you are good and dead before I chow down on you.”

  In spite of Jack’s best efforts to ignore the taunts, they rattled him, if only for a few seconds. A mental image of Zainus chomping down on a villager came to him. Before he could dismiss the distraction, the evil bandit leader sprang from behind the trees and shot him. Fortunately, Jacks magical protection held, and the bolt ricocheted harmlessly off his head.

  Sooner or later that protection would give out.

  Jack shook off his shock and charged, catching Zainus with an unloaded crossbow. Zainus raised the weapon as a shield against Jack’s attack. Jack’s sword thudded against the wooden stock, and Zainus lunged, knocking Jack backward, pinning the blade with the crossbow. Jack stumbled and fell. In a flash, Zainus was on top of him with a knife out. Jack grabbed the creature’s wrist, but Zainus was stronger, and bore his weight down on the weapon.

  “This is exactly how I killed the last sorcerer,” Zainus said, spittle spraying from his mouth on the last word. “The knife took only three seconds to go through his shield.”

  Jack pushed back, but the knife tip descended ever so slowly toward his throat, and his strength was failing. Zainus grinned in victory.

  Jack was too focused on the descending knife to hear the earth-shaking footfalls at first. He squirmed under Zainus’ weight, trying to twist his way out of danger, but the knife continued its slow-motion descent.

  Zainus glanced up, and his elation collapsed into a look of stark terror. He dove away from Jack and ran down the road at inhuman speed. A shadow flew over Jack, a form he couldn’t make out properly from flat on his back, but whatever cast the shadow was huge. The creature landed on the other side of him and continued its pursuit of the bandit with a bellow of “YEE-HAW!” Zainus’ velocity only barely
matched that of his long-legged pursuer.

  Jack shakily got to his feet, recovering his sword where he’d dropped it. At the bend in the road, the monster—clearly a giant, though not a large one—hurled a stone at its quarry. It peered into the distance and shook its head. It turned around and strode confidently toward Jack.

  Jack stood firm and raised his sword toward the giant. It was futile, but unlike Zainus, he couldn’t outrun a giant. Maybe he’d give it a nasty cut or two before it pounded him into goo.

  The monster stood just over ten feet tall. It wore a shapeless wool tunic that hung on it like a barber cloth. Below the tunic, it wore a skirt of poorly stitched together animal hides. Its boots were ragged and tied around the monster’s ankles. It grinned with industrial-sized pointed teeth that could snap through human bones like popcorn and stared down at Jack through great brown eyes.

  Jack stared back, his sword shaking in his hands. Maybe Jenny’s spell had one more hit left to protect him. Maybe he could get a lucky shot into one of those eyes, or stab its throat with enough force to pierce skin. Maybe he could chop at its fingers and cause it enough pain to let him go.

  Probably not. The giant, even unarmed, would overpower him. But that wouldn’t stop Jack from trying.

  “You!” the creature bellowed.

  If it was interested in talking for a bit, Jack was more than willing to delay his inevitable death for the purpose of conversation. “Me,” Jack answered.

  “Is you the one called Jack?”

  Jack hesitated. How would it know his name? “Um, yes? Why?”

  “Is you one of them humans with Witch Annabelle? You fought our brothers an almost-moon ago?”

  This didn’t sound like a conversation that would end well. While technically the creature was probably interested in eating him and therefore fell under Jack’s exception for telling the truth, he didn’t think lying would earn him much of a reprieve. “Yes, that was us. Me.”

  “What done happen to Arrogat?”

  “Who?”

  “Arrogat the Hunter. He ain’t never returned from the battle.”

  “Sorry. I can’t really say. If he was one of those who chased Jenny, then he might be dead. He ain’t coming back. I’m, uh, sorry?”

  The creature roared something like a throaty laugh or a cry. Jack couldn’t tell which. “He was my ‘troved! He ain’t never returnin’!”

  Jack gripped his sword more tightly and shifted one foot back to prepare for the attack. “Um, ‘troved?”

  The giant looked up to the sky, made the throaty noise again, and then snapped its head down to stare at him. “I’s s’posed to be his mate! I owe you, Jack!”

  Jack’s muscles tensed. “They attacked us. We did what we had to defend ourselves.”

  It grinned. “Ain’t you modest? Arrogat ain’t never comin’ back! Thank you kindly!”

  This was not what Jack had expected. His shaky sword-tip lowered two inches seemingly of its own accord. “Wait, what?”

  “Is that right? Thank you? You done saved me!” The giant grinned and did something that resembled a jig. “I ain’t never going to have to make his babies!”

  Jack lowered the sword a bit more and stared at the creature. “You’re, um, a woman giant?”

  The giant smiled and touched its chest, the cloth of the tunic pressing against breasts. “Yes! I be Rumela the giantess, of Clan... That don’t matter no more. My clan done left without me. They all afeared of Witch Annabelle’s revenge!”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “Witch Evelyn said names. I’s good at remembering names. Jenny, Jack, Jessabelle, Sean. Witch Evelyn say not to kill the boys less’n we got to.”

  “Okay. So you ain’t going to try and eat me?”

  “Me? Eat you? No! Never! Besides, I ain’t hungry. I done ate a chunk of horse just a bit ago. I got plenty left over. You hungry?”

  “No! I mean, no, thank you. And thank you for saving me from Zainus.”

  “You done looked like you be in trouble.”

  “I was. So, thank you. I guess that makes us even?”

  She grinned wider. “You think so? Okay. Where you off to now?”

  “Um... a town down yonder a days’ walk. I need to send the sheriff to arrest more bandits.”

  “You scared that Zainus feller might come back?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe I tag along for a while? Me an’ you?”

  Jack shook his head. “You saved my life once today. I ain’t gonna say no.”

  The road remained clear as they continued the journey. As evening approached, the air grew thicker and oppressive as clouds rolled in overhead. Jack hoped for a reprieve from the hot sun, but it made little difference. Now it was hot and muggy.

  Rumela carried a pair of torn-off horse legs wrapped in rags with her as a snack. Occasionally, she’d ask Jack, “You sure you ain’t want none?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, not really.”

  The third time this happened, she said, “Oh! Right! Y’all humans like meat all cooked first!”

  Jack shrugged. “Yeah, raw meat don’t set with us so well, especially if there’re germs.”

  “What is ‘germs’?”

  “Um, little... bugs. Kinda.”

  Rumela’s mouth opened into a wide smile of comprehension. “Bugs? They give meat extra flavor!”

  “No, not those bugs. Well, them too, but they’re even smaller, and can make us sick.”

  “Oh. You get achey-belly. Meat comes back out the wrong end, right?”

  “Among other things, yeah.”

  “Yeah. That sometime done happen to giants, too. Giants cook meat when we have lots of extra, make it last longer, yeah?”

  “Yeah, I reckon.”

  “Me an’ you make a fire, and I cook for you.”

  “Nah, you can keep the horse. You are a lot bigger’n me, so you need it more.”

  “You’re a lot smaller’n me, so I reckon you ain’t gonna eat much.”

  Jack laughed. Rumela wouldn’t have been his first choice of traveling companions. However, she was much better than no one at all, and not just because she scared Zainus.

  “It’s gonna get dark soon,” Jack said, noting the position of the sun’s glow through the clouds. “We ought to find ourselves some place to bed down for the night.”

  “What do you need to find? A house?”

  “No, just a place to camp.”

  “Oh, okay. I ain’t knowed what humans need. Some place me an’ you won’t be seen, you mean.”

  “Right. And preferably near water. My canteen will need refilling soon.”

  “You need to hunt?”

  “Um, no. I’m good until we get to Dane’s Point, I think.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the name of the town we’re heading to.”

  She nodded. “I reckon I ain’t needin’ to hunt for a bit. The rest of this here horse will keep me for a couple of days.”

  If he were so inclined, the meat she carried would probably keep Jack for a couple of weeks.

  After a short search, aided by Rumela’s height, they found a relatively flat, secluded clearing near a brook. Jack wasn’t sure if it was part of Blood Creek or somehow connected with it, but the water seemed clean. Jack had been warned about parasites in untreated water, but that was all they seemed to have in this world.

  He refilled his canteen after drinking his fill to replenish what he’d lost in sweat along the road and then sought the best place to sleep. He brushed away rocks and debris and set his blanket down as a makeshift mattress. After making a dinner of fruit and dried meat, he turned his pack into a serviceable pillow and tried to get comfortable.

  Rumela sat down beside a tree, leaned up against it, and was asleep within moments.

  Jack awoke as raindrops hit his face. He checked his watch. The tiny glow of the watch’s light was, to his eyes, all the light in the entire world at two in the morning. Even in remote Maple Bend, there w
as enough light pollution to reflect off the overhead clouds that a night like this would never be so utterly dark.

  The forest echoed the white-noise static of thousands of tiny raindrops striking the leafy canopy above. In the dark, he couldn’t find a better place to shield himself from the rain. He settled for rolling one corner of the blanket over his face and hoped the light drizzle wouldn’t turn into a torrent.

  He lay quietly in the dark. With the rain’s noise, he couldn’t hear Rumela’s breathing, and for all he could tell he was alone in the world. There were threats all around him, and he couldn’t be certain Rumela wasn’t one of them. He thought of his own bed, a world away, and expected a wave of homesickness. It didn’t arise. For all the dangers and discomfort, he felt strangely at peace. Before drifting off to sleep again, he had the thought that if he had to do it again, he’d make the same decisions that led him to this place.

  Jessabelle ate in the cafeteria for every meal after the first. Two guards always accompanied her, plus Susan, Elise, or an older lady named Harriet who didn’t speak much. Jessabelle treasured the times with Elise the most. Elise was reluctant to speak about herself, but she did reveal that she went to high school in New York—upstate, not the city—and was attending college part-time.

  “Where are you going to school now?” Jessabelle asked at breakfast on the tenth day of her incarceration.

  Elise shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you that, Jessabelle.”

  A dark-skinned young man sitting near Elise laughed. “Oh, we’re keeping schools a secret? It that because Susan is watching?”

  Jessabelle glanced off to the corner of the cafeteria. Susan spoke to another woman who was dressed far more casually than most of the staff. As far as Jessabelle could tell, Susan wasn’t paying obvious attention, but what she’d learned in the last week and a half was that Susan was always paying attention. Her first impressions of Susan had only grown worse over time.