something just beyond reach, just beyond taste. Something powerful.
“That is the scent of the Holder,” Alun said. “Find the blacksmith’s boy. Then find the Holder. Do we have a deal?”
Cedar opened his mouth to agree, but only a breathy woof came out. He might have the mind of a man, but he did not have the words. Fine. He picked up the bag of money and placed it on top of his clothing.
The brothers laughed. “As sound a yes as we need. Good hunting to you,” Alun said, “and luck besides. Bryn, the door.”
Bryn was already headed to the wall where he worked the lock, then the wheel to set the door rolling smoothly on its hidden track.
A rush of night air pushed into the cavern, bringing with it a thousand different smells of forest and creature and sky. Too many scents for a man’s mind to sort. Cedar knew what every smell belonged to, not by name, but by the texture of the scent.
It was a powerful knowledge to break the world apart into so many pieces. It made it easy to find the Strange, easy to find his prey.
No, Cedar thought, first he’d find the piece of the world that belonged to the Gregors’ boy, then the Holder, then whatever else he hungered for.
He walked to the door, sniffed the air, sorting the possibilities riding the wind. Life throbbed out there, animals and humans and Strange, filled with blood and bone. A haze of red covered his vision.
The scent of the boy was faint, shuttered by too many other scents, too many other things he needed to tear apart, destroy. Cedar raised his voice and howled with want, with need. His hold on the beast slipped, and he fell, his thoughts buried, his control lost in the need to hunt. To kill.
He ran into the night, inhaling scent and odor, searching for blood, for bone, for flesh.
A horse nearby, hot from a long day’s ride. His horse. So easy to bite, first the hamstring, then the neck, then blood would fill his belly. He stalked off that way.
Something skittered in the brush to his right and ran.
Jackrabbit. Fast, hot. Terrified.
Cedar tore across the scree after it, weaving through the brush, faster than any other animal, gaining on the kill, savoring the chase, closing in, fast. He clamped his jaws down on the rabbit’s head.
Blood, sweet, warm, and salty with the slick of brains burst through his mouth. He chewed and chewed, licking the fluid off his muzzle before tearing the heart out of the chest. That he swallowed without chewing.
The need for blood eased as he made quick work of the rest of the hare.
A thought lifted through the heat of the kill. A boy. He was supposed to find a boy.
Cedar followed that thought, and rose up out of the beast’s needs like a man breathing free of a deep dive. He reined in the beast once more and sniffed the wind, catching the boy’s scent.
A cool wash poured over his mind as he loped toward the town.
The beast within him growled.
But the need for blood pushed at him. The beast would stay calm so long as its hunger was slaked. And he had not let the beast eat for many, many months. Soon, he would need to kill again.
He must go by the boy’s house and pick up his trail quickly. Before the beast, before his need to kill, overtook him again.
Cedar ran, faster than any other creature in this world, wild and alive, the tuning fork singing one sweet note against his heart as the hunt began.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jeb Lindson had been working his way from shadow to shadow all the day. Some shadows were so far apart, sunlight had plenty of time to pour over his skin and burn down deep, leaving his flesh weeping. But that didn’t stop him from walking. On and on. Into the next shadow. Through the light and into the shadow again. For Mae. For his beautiful wife.
The sun had taken its time to roll across the sky and down behind the hills, but it was nearly gone now. Shadows hooked the edges of night and pulled darkness like a quilt back over the ground again.
Jeb liked the night. He could move faster in the night. That meant he could find Shard LeFel faster in the night. And then he could kill him.
Other things moved along with him in the night. Animals going about their hunting and scratching. Some pausing to watch as he shambled by. They didn’t come too close, so Jeb paid them no never mind.
Pretty soon he heard something more than animals moving. Pretty soon he heard the hiss, the pump, and the clatter of matics. Matics coming closer. Coming toward him. He stopped and listened while the wind hushed itself up high in the trees. Could be the matics were set out in the night to work the land. Maybe for a farmer. Maybe for a logger. Maybe for a rancher.
He’d seen matics, seemed a long stretch of time ago. Matics working something more than fields. Iron. Laying down dead iron for the steam engines. A rail. They’d been building a rail. He could not recall which way that rail had fallen. He thought and thought, but no memory filled that hole.
Jeb looked to the sky, the hangman’s rope around his neck shifting across his back. He squinted to make out the stars through the juniper branches. He could not remember which star set the sky north. Could not remember much about the land he walked across, or the sky he labored under.
He was not much of a man left.
But the dragonfly wings fluttering against the silver box somehow dug deep down into his heart reminded him of one thing. He was set upon finding Shard LeFel. And once he did so, he was going to tear him apart.
The huff and hiss of steam escaping through metal vents filled the night. Might be the matics that worked for Shard LeFel laying down that rail.
Jeb cocked his head toward the sound. To his left. That was where the sound came from. That was the way he’d go.
A flash of brass out in the scrub brought his attention back down from the spangled sky.
A matic tromped out from behind a bush. Big as a horse and black as coal, it had spindle legs, four sets of two that all seemed to work independent of the others to keep it upright. The water tank hung down from the back of the long boiler body of the thing, and the chimney at the front had been worked into a horselike head with no eyes. Steam poured out of its gaping mouth. Brass pipes and valves and a ruby red whirring centrifugal governor stuck up out of the beast’s riveted back like a porcupine’s quills. And all across the side of it were six piston-driven arms, each ending in a thresher blade. Looked like a thing made to stomp a man to death, then mince his bones for bread.
It paused, huffing, six arms clacking, six blades clicking. The wind shifted, pushing at Jeb’s back, and taking his scent right as you please to the matic.
The matic swiveled its misshapen head and stared straight at him—if it’d had eyes. Then it screamed—the sound of metal on metal—and a plume of thick white steam poured on out of its mouth to swirl around its head. It took straight aim and charged him.
Jeb grabbed hold of a thick bough and tore it from the tree. Splinters sprayed over the dry ground. He’d been a strong man in life, and dying, each time he’d done it, had made him stronger. He hefted the branch across his shoulder like a baseball bat. The legs, he thought. First the legs, then the pressure valve there at the neck. Arms next, if he had to, then head.
The matic was almost on him. The heat from it stung Jeb’s nostrils. The huff and clamor clogged up the strangely silent air.
Jeb stood his ground, no fear in his heart. He’d come back from death so many times, fear didn’t have a hold in him no more. But hate . . . Well, hate he’d give all the room it needed.
