No one wandered outside after dark. Well, not anyone who wanted to live. Sometimes the townsfolk would discover that one of their own had gone missing in the dead of night. Not from an attack or nothing. Just…gone. As if instead of lying in bed to sleep, they had decided to walk off by themselves into the darkness.
That was what the townsfolk called it, too. The Long Walk. No one came back from one of those.
My dad...he had disappeared overnight, just like what I’d heard from the town rumors. I’d gone up to bed, my dad still at the table reading his scriptures like always. The next morning, I went about my day and didn’t realize anything was wrong until mid-morning.
I’d thought I’d finally caught him sleeping in, but when I’d gone to his room, it was as pristine as ever. Not one speck of dust dared touch my dad’s things. Bed tightly made, as if he hadn’t even slept in it. The only thing out of place had been my dad.
There hadn’t been many places to look. Our farmhouse was efficient, and I’d been everywhere else on our property. I’d even run down to the town, wondering if he’d been called unexpectedly. Sometimes that happened. But he wasn’t there.
If it hadn’t been for his missing gear—the worn leather satchel he carried his books and oils in—I would have been even more worried. But those were gone too, which meant he left on purpose with every intention of coming back.
He would never walk off. He would never do that. Not to me.
Our number one rule was survive. Always.
The Long Walk was the exact opposite.
Crouching down to one knee on my rooftop, I rested my rifle on the perimeter railing as I peered into the scope. I hoped I could see more. The heft of the gun felt good, the scent of the blessed oils and the cool metal comforting against my cheek.
I swept along the borders, this time through the scope, and something glinted in the distance.
I looked with my naked eye and I didn’t see it, but thanks to the oils, my scope sighted it.
It had to be something blessed; I was sure of it.
Why I hadn’t thought to look for my dad this way before now, I didn’t know. But he must have done something, must have hidden something just outside of the wards.
I didn’t want to think on why he hadn’t been able to get it any closer. Heck, why he hadn’t been able to get back all the way to the house.
At least it was a relatively safe area, and I didn’t have to travel through much of the forest to get there. But it was still a ways away from the house in the opposite direction of the wards and protected glades.
I stood from my sniper’s crouch on the rooftop and glared in the direction of the marker.
It was my father’s. I was sure of it. No one else would have had the skill to make that kind of shield over whatever it was that he had wanted me to find.
But that was his skill as a word mage and preacher. He was able to create out of the word of scriptures and he had laid for me a pretty little marker. One that said simply, “Come and claim me.”
If I had doubted that my father lived, this took it away.
I slung the rifle on my back. Checked the sun. It was farther along on the horizon than I would have liked, but if I ran, I could get there and back well ahead of sunset.
I retreated back to the house.
Sometimes I hated to be so right.
The marker had been both a sign and a trap. A sign from my dad, and a trap for some of the monsters that evidently wandered into our neck of the woods.
Monsters were rare in this portion of the woods but of course, it would be my luck to attract some of them.
I had lifted the blessed cache from its ring of protection and placed the bundle hidden there into my backpack. As soon as I left the blessed circle, something large had crashed through the trees toward me. Something that charged toward me with too many paws reverberating against the earth.
I ran back the way I came, even as what I’d feared broke through the tree line up the mountain. A Skoll. Even worse, an Alpha Skoll.
Where there was an Alpha, there was a pack that followed him. And his pack was not far behind.
Skolls were designed without the capacity to feel pain and could eat the most out of any of their brethren.
Hells, an Alpha would eat his brethren if he were hungry enough. Worse, he was an unholy monster with eight legs and a body bigger than a horse.
And he was gaining on me.
I ran for the hollow created by blessed pines and bound oak; a small sanctuary of trees that my parents wove into a safe haven with their combined magic. Triumph rushed through me as I passed the border, feeling the first wave of protection tingling over my skin. Energy surged into my muscles as a renewed sense of hope filled me. I risked a glance over my shoulder.
A couple of the monsters had fallen away, but the more tenacious ones still stuck to my trail, including the Alpha.
I just needed to get to the water. Once I got there, they would fall away. No monsters had ever been able to breach that ring of protection. Just needed to get to the water.
An old spiritual from my parents' youth drifted up into my mind, sung in my mother’s soulful voice. Wade in the water...
I pushed on despite the burning in my calves and the pressure in my lungs. I was grateful that my track days got me through most of high school…when there were still such things as school. I ran hill sprints to
