Little Wolves - By Thomas Maltman Page 0,93

whole world was going to know. “Go inside. This is where you belong.”

When he lifted the shotgun, something roared off in the woods, a cry so utterly inhuman it raised the hackles on Clara’s neck.

Kelan pivoted and they were here, the coyotes surging from the woods all around him. Their ears peeled back, their yellow eyes huge and rolling. The gray pounced and snagged the edge of Kelan’s coat in his teeth. Off balance, Kelan spun and fired, and the unbraced shotgun leaped in the looseness of his hold and smashed into his face. He toppled backward into the snow. But instead of falling on him, the coyotes fled, scared off by the blast, the gunpowder smell, his high-pitched screams.

The two were alone again in the clearing. Clara limped off the stoop, hoping he wouldn’t notice her creeping up on him. Kelan, bleeding freely from his forehead, squatted as he levered open the shotgun, fumbling shells from his coat pockets. He blew on his fingers, numb from the cold, and looked up at Clara as if expected her to try rushing him. She approached, her palms upraised, when it came again, the primal bellow of something immense and wounded.

“No,” Kelan said, seeing it first. “It’s not possible.” The thing entered into the clearing, and Clara retreated, unsure which way to run, caught between the cabin and Kelan and what had come from the woods. It looked like Seth, risen from his shallow grave. Seth’s revenant here for vengeance. A thing massive and dark, as though it had formed from the fertile black soils of the farmlands stretching all around. A giant from under the earth, deep in the mountain. Her father’s giant, dripping something wet as though disintegrating with each step. HeWhoSleeps. A demon summoned.

Kelan crammed in two shells and clanked shut the chambers. The giant stepped into the clearing, black and seething. It grabbed Kelan from the ground before he could fire, lifted him in a huge hug that left Kelan’s feet windmilling above the ground. Kelan wheezed, dropping the gun, his fists flailing, knocking off wet dark earth. His screaming ended when the embrace tightened and all breath squeezed from his body. His rib cage collapsed, bones snapping brittle, an almost delicate sound, like icicles breaking on stones. Then the giant flung him away, the boy’s body folding as he fell.

Later she would wonder why she did this, how she had such presence of mind. Clara went over and crouched beside Kelan, crumpled in the snow. He blinked up at her, his pupils darkening, the color of falling ashes. He tried to speak through a mouth filling with blood. She lay her hand on his icy cheek, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” until he shuddered and was still.

The giant swayed above them, black circles ringing his eyes, and when he opened his mouth what came out was an animal’s cry of pain.

She was burning up under her skin. Somewhere off in the woods one of the coyotes howled, a question in the night, the others joining in. Clara’s own pain washed over her, splitting her strange calm. It came in waves, in beats. “Grizz,” she said to the giant. “Seth Fallon.” She called by his full name, his baptized name. She needed him to come back to his human self. “I think my water just broke.”

ADVENT

Under the door she saw the shadow of his passage in a bar of moonlight. The night stretched long and silent before she heard the scream, a wet gurgle of something being eaten alive, and then nothingness. She waited for it to return to the cabin, press again at the door. What had been killed out there? The girl lay awake with the rifle her father had left her and didn’t sleep until sometime before dawn.

The next morning she carried the half-stock rifle with her when she went to gather eggs. One of the hens was gone, the only thing left of her a few feathers drifting down in the dusty light. That was what she heard screaming. But it was not an ordinary fox that had done this. The thing outside her cabin had been heavy, big as a man. She didn’t bother to fix the latch. If it came back, what use was a thin strip of leather? How could it possibly bar a monster? She looked at the blue gleaming metal of the gun her father had given her for protection. And what use was this gun? Her father had