Wolfehaven Read online

  “It jumped us about the time I was closing in on the other man,” Raven said.

  Without even looking to see if the first arrow had hit its mark, she withdrew another from her quiver and nocked it. Only then, when she was ready to shoot again, did she peer back over the tops of the ferns.

  “It came up out of cover between us; the guy almost stepped on it. Anyway, I think he must have gotten away, because the damned thing came after me, and I didn’t see a second one.”

  Emmie was almost afraid to ask, but she did. “Where’s Satan?”

  Settling back beneath the ferns, Raven slowly shook her head. “He was right on the man’s heels when the kryl rose up. The guy didn’t even slow down, but Satan spun around at it. I saw a flash, and Satan yelped and crashed into the brush. He didn’t get up. It turned after me, and I took off, so I had no chance to check Satan, but I don’t think — I mean, I haven’t been able to — I can’t —”

  With tears welling in Raven’s eyes, Emmie laid a hand gently on her friend’s shoulder. Making quick, searching glances across the far side of the meadow, Emmie rose up with her head just high enough to peer over the ferns while remaining concealed. She hoped.

  It seemed a long time ago — was it really only six years since the world had ended? And, of course, the world hadn’t really ended, only the world she had been born into and spent the first twelve years of her life. It had been a wonderful world of wonderful things, fantastic things that she could barely remember, things that were surely more magical than the simple abilities that some of the survivors shared. In the old world, the world that was no longer except in memories savored on dreamy afternoons while basking in the warm sun, there were things like television, and telephones, and radio, and airplanes, and cars that could whisk her along a broad, straight highway at sixty and seventy miles an hour — even faster if the driver dared. It was a world in which a young girl needn’t worry about anything but how to talk her parents into letting her have the latest trend in clothes or gadgets. There had been vague warnings to beware of strange men in cars offering to let her see the litter of kittens they were trying to find homes for, or to taste a sample of the candy they had bags and bags of, or a hundred other schemes to get a young girl into their clutches. The warnings had never been specific about what dangers awaited her if she did get into their cars; only that terrible things might be done to her. But, since she had never been approached by anyone with a litter of kittens, or bag of candy, or any of the other inducements she had heard of, the danger never really seemed much more real than a thump in the night. That was the old world, the world that was gone, the world that had ended.

  She lived, now, in a world that had none of those marvelous things. But her new world did have a few things the old one didn’t. She had the ability to move things, to lift, to fly if she wanted, just by thinking it, wishing it. Raven, her best friend, could talk to many animals, especially Satan, as well as people just by thinking. And she could understand what he was thinking back at her. Others could do marvelous, similar things, just by thinking, by willing it to happen. And, then there were the kryls.

  She still remembered the deadly aim of the kryls. She still had occasional dreams about that terrible time when the half-mile-wide ships in which the kryls had traveled across space from other stars had descended into the clear, summer skies of Earth.

  Well, we just can’t forget that they are real — just like our magic is real. Raven says it will be lost again, too, if we allow it. I wonder if this kryl came back for a capture. Why else would it be here? I wonder how many times they’ve been back in the last six years and just didn’t happen to bother with us at Wolfehaven. I wonder how many there are this time. I’m pretty sure this one isn’t alone. They were always in either pairs or trios.

  Raven rose up far enough to take another shot, and she ducked back down into the green cover just as a thin beam of violet light flickered past her. She and Emmie both looked back at a smoking hole in a tree ten feet behind them.

  Emmie said, “Well, does he want to catch us or kill us?”

  Raven bobbed back up just long enough to launch another arrow. After ducking back down, she slowly rose up to peer over the ferns, and Emmie was right beside her.

  Across the way, the kryl stood beside a large tree, staying close to cover to duck behind in case another arrow came at it. It peered out at them, or at their place of concealment, waiting for a clear shot, but it appeared to have learned not to try to cross the meadow. Arrows were lethal.

  Looking across the meadow, Emmie shivered as she recognized the alien as though she had seen its kind only the day before.

  At first glance, they could be mistaken for men — humans. They were man-size, and they had two arms, two legs, and one head. But with the second glance, it was clear they were not human. They looked like no other creature she had ever seen.

  Their legs were more like a dog’s hind legs, bending in opposite directions from those of humans at the knees, and stubby in proportion to their bodies. Their arms were like humans’, but their six-fingered hands were elongated. Their torsos were similar to humans’, but with large humps on their backs between their shoulders like bison or camels. Their heads faced forward with two eyes, a nose and a mouth. But their noses looked like the snouts of pigs or moles. Their dark eyes were small and deep-set beneath heavy brow ridges that had knobby protrusions above the outer corner of each eye giving them a demonic look. Bony ridges ran down the middle of their heads like on male gorillas. Their mouths were wide, lipless gashes. Emmie couldn’t remember ever noticing if they had teeth.

  She wasn’t sure they wore garments, not like humans wear clothing for warmth and to cover nakedness. What appeared to be heavy folds of skin at their joints and around their torsos could be form-fitting suits.

  The most obvious items were sashes that each one wore like a bandoleer draped over one shoulder and down around the torso at waist height. They seemed to be just blank stripes of colored fabric; most wore red, and they were killers. A few wore green; hunters. And, of course, the glluriks wore multicolored, but their lesser size was a better indicator that they were tracking hounds and not hunters or killers. The one across the meadow wore green, a hunter. Some of them wore belts with various, unidentifiable items attached. Boots might have covered their feet, or their feet might simply have been colored differently. It was hard to tell at a distance, and the one time she had the opportunity to examine one closely, she had not been inclined to do so.

  They each carried rods or poles about the size of small broomsticks from which small protuberances extended at odd angles and spacing. She and her fellow humans had learned very soon that they were some sort of light-beam weapons. She remembered knowing about lasers, although now they seemed to be more magical than plain old levitation. But what the kryls had was clearly far beyond earthly lasers. Theirs could do at least three different things. A green beam would stun a person, and they were used for capturing. Violet beams were deadly. So were red ones, although they were normally used as a tool, not a weapon. And kryls were very accurate and deadly with them within short ranges.

  Raven yelped as a beam of red light flashed for an instant between her and Emmie, burning through the fern thicket. After they scrambled back to join Sherri and her children behind the tree, Emmie was surprised to see the man who had tried to kill them crouched beside them, and all peering out toward the meadow and the monster beyond it. The kryl continued to fire in short sweeps, slicing through the foliage like a red scythe eliminating the ferns as a hiding place. A haze of smoke drifted into the semi-darkness beneath the trees.

  Raven edged back out to where she could draw her bow and sent an arrow across the meadow. The red, scything beams stopped, but for how long?

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Emmie said, gasping in the smoky air.

  “We can’t,” Raven responded. “If we go, it’ll come after us. It can move fast, faster than us with the children and a wounded woman to c
arry. We wouldn’t get very far. At least here, I can keep it on the other side of the meadow.”

  “But for how long? You’ve only got a few arrows left. And even with mine, it’s only a matter of time. They don’t run out of fire, remember?”

  Raven shook her head. “And if we take off running, it won’t take long to catch up. And in there, I won’t be able to use my bow.”

  “But you couldn’t here either after the last arrow is gone.”

  Raven paused for a few moments, nodded, and said, “You’re right. Lead them toward the village. I’ll see that it doesn’t follow as long as I can and then come after you.”

  “I’m not gonna leave you here! Are you crazy?”

  “Emmie, honey, we don’t have a choice. Do we? What chance will the children have after it kills me and then you and the man and the mother?”

  “How about if I use my power — pick it up and smash it against the trees. I could, you know. I did it before, back when I was just starting —”

  “And if it isn’t alone? Which it probably isn’t. Most likely there are others in the area and within calling if that thing sees us using magic. Remember the warning? We can’t risk using our powers against them; they’d keep coming in larger and larger forces until you’re eliminated. Probably the entire village, too, just to be sure.”

  “But...but...I know you,” Emmie said, shaking her head and fighting hard to hold back tears of fear and hopelessness. “You won’t leave here as long as that thing is over there and able to chase us down. You won’t —”

  “Just get them as far as you can. Push them. Make that guy carry the woman. He shot her, it’s the least he can do. There’s a good chance it won’t chase after you if it can capture me. You saw the green beams. It’s a hunter, not a killer.”

  “But it was shooting violet and red, too. And those kill. Maybe there’s two of ‘em.”

  “No. There’s just one. Hunters can shoot green, red, or violet if they aren’t sure they have a quarry worth capturing. Anyway, the red is just for clearing brush out of the way. So, go on, now, before it —”

  It took a moment for Emmie to recognize the trance-like look that had come into Raven’s eyes at the same time she raised her hand for silence. Then, just as abruptly, Raven spun and peered out across the meadow.

  She said nothing, but Emmie knew that far-horizon look. It happened whenever Raven used her own, special talent. And that must mean —

  Across the meadow arose a din of loud howls mixed with heavy growls and a great rattling and shaking of brush. It lasted for only a few seconds after which rising dust clouded the air. And, again, all was silent.

  Emmie heard both Sherri and the man beside her gasp as Raven stepped out from behind the tree to stand fully exposed amid the destroyed ferns. But Emmie knew what the sounds had meant; if today was to be the day of her death, it would have to be by some agency other than that particular kryl.

  Satan lived!

  CHAPTER 3

  Like a thousand feathery fingers caressing Tina’s skin, the water lapped about her in tiny wavelets. The water tickled a circle around the edge of her face barely above the surface like one of the wave swept isles she had seen pictures of in one of the books. Floating just beneath the surface with her arms and legs spread like a fan, she imagined the minute tickling at the corner of her eyes just above the water was from great, crashing breakers smashing against coastal cliffs.

  The temperature of the water in the small thermal pond, fed by a subterranean hot spring, was close to that of her own body, reducing her sensory input. With her eyes closed and without moving to stir the water, she could imagine she was floating through a sun-drenched sky, blue all about her except for occasional white, puffy clouds that she could soar through like a bird. She imagined swirls and eddies left behind by her passage. In the open spaces between clouds, great flocks of birds squawked in protest at the disturbance as they fought to regain control of their own flight in the turbulence of her wake. By arching her body even more, she was able to soar to even greater heights, higher, even, than the eagles that become mere dots in the sky. And in that instant, when she arched her back in the sensory deprivation of the soothing, warm water, and her islet face suddenly sank beneath the waves, the rush of sinuses-burning water into her nostrils brought her crashing and splashing back to reality.

  She waved her arms and kicked her legs to bring herself upright, stabbing her feet against the silty bottom of the pond as soon as her head broke back into the air. Coughing and sputtering, she rubbed her eyes and looked around to get her bearings.

  She immediately recognized the glade in which her pond was dominant. Of course, it wasn’t really her pond, but she came here so frequently, usually alone, that she felt like it was only hers. Rubbing the stinging water from her eyes, she turned slowly to take in the calming view of the surrounding trees and brush that grew within just a couple of feet of the water’s edge. She had made it less than halfway around when she suddenly froze at the sight of a person, a man, standing among the first of the trees. He was almost invisible among the shadows and gloom farther back, but he wasn’t trying to hide. He stood with his arms crossed at his chest, his feet planted apart for long-term standing, and he was smiling a broad, leering grin. And, of course, she knew him.

  “Jerry!” she called, bending her knees enough to crouch back beneath the water enough to submerge her exposed breasts. “What are you doing? How long have you been standing there?”

  Her breasts had begun their development only a year ago; she had begun to wonder if she would be flat-chested all her life. But they had since swollen to a size that caused much giggling and finger pointing among the few teenaged boys in the village. At times she was embarrassed, and at other times she found herself strutting and wiggling her rear end, just to let them know she was aware of their ogling. And, of course, that always brought howls and snorting from her audience, which caused even more embarrassment. She was usually confused as to how she should feel about her body, and those young idiots didn’t make it any easier. But for an older guy like Jerry, a man, to ogle her like he was doing…her confusion doubled.

  Jerry was the son of Joe Louis McDaniel, one of the leaders of the village. She loved Uncle Joe, as everyone called him even though he was an uncle only to Raven. But Tina had never gotten to know Jerry all that well. He was in his mid-twenties, at least ten years older than Tina, and he spent a good deal of his time away from the village. It seemed like he no sooner returned from one of his cross-country journeys with his friend, Jackie Johnson, than the two of them would take off again for another two or three months. They had been back from their last trip only a week or so and had already been talking about taking off again.

  “Jerry!” she repeated when he made no response. “What do you want?”

  “Well, hi there, Tina,” he finally answered in a light tone, although he made no effort to mask the leering grin spread across his face. “Gee, imagine running into you way out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “This isn’t the middle of nowhere. We’re only a little ways from the village. I come here a lot. It’s warmer and safer than the river.”

  “Really? Well, if I knew that, I’d come out here more often.”

  For some reason, the way he leered when he said it made her uncomfortable. “Lots of people come out here to swim. There could be someone arriving any time.”

  Jerry looked around, peering back into the dark forest behind him, as well as to left and right around the bank of the secluded pool. “Gee, I don’t see a soul. And I don’t hear anyone tromping through the woods, either. No, I’d say we’re pretty much alone. Well, unless you want to count Jackie over there.”

  Tina spun to look in the direction Jerry had nodded, and sure enough, Jackie stood there just slightly back from the edge of the bank straight across the pond from Jerry.

  Jackie was probably a couple of years older than Jerry. They were both good-looking men, slim and active, although neither w
as often seen helping with any of the many projects around the village to make living easier. About their only contributions were occasional kills from their infrequent hunts. But, since they were away so much, their lack of contributions was not so noticeable.

  Jackie stepped out from the shadows and his constant smirk seemed, somehow, threatening this time.

  “Uh…hi, Jackie.” Tina raised one hand above the water and made a half-hearted wave before slipping it back beneath the surface.

  When she turned back to face Jerry, she crossed her arms in front of her breasts, even though they were beneath the surface. She didn’t know why she felt like she should, she just did. Nude communal bathing among the villagers, especially among the children, was common. But, now, out here, with Jerry and Jackie both ogling her like the teens back at the village, she felt exposed and, if not especially in peril, at least a growing discomfort.

  “Jerry, I don’t think you should be looking at me like that. What do you want?”

  “Why, nothing, Tina, nothing at all. We were just out strolling along out here in the middle of nowhere and came across this lovely pond. Maybe we were going to go for a swim. It’s a nice, warm day, you know. And that pond is plenty big enough for three people, I’d say. What do you say we join you? How about I wash your back?”

  At first, all she could do was shake her head. No words would come to her. It was like that part of her mind had suddenly just shut down for a moment. Finally, she forced her mouth to form the words screaming in her head. “No, I don’t want you to wash my back. I don’t think you should be here at all. I don’t like it how you’re looking at me. Go away.”

  When Jerry shrugged out of his shirt that he must have unbuttoned while she was facing Jackie, she noticed Jerry’s boots were already off. With no hesitation, he opened his belt and dropped his trousers to the ground. Then, straightening up, he stood looking out at her, leering.