Supernatural Fresh Meat - By Alice Henderson Page 0,51
his weight a little, straining his foot against the rock that had shifted. It was either huge and weighed more than Dean did, or was wedged tightly against the tremendous boulder. And if he lowered his other foot into the hole, it might get stuck, too.
Dean cursed, then let out a bellow of frustration.
He tried to console himself with the thought that the aswang would have a problem getting into the space. It was bigger than Dean, and it wouldn’t be able to fly in. Of course, he might still be stuck when the eggs hatched.
He checked the sack again out of the corner of his eye. Please don’t be moving, he asked it silently. It was still, crammed in the cleft.
He tried to pivot his body as much as he could, but it wasn’t enough. The granite lip held his foot firmly. He was going to have to risk it and lower his other foot into the crack to try and shift the rock around.
Dean squeezed his foot into the hole and kicked hard. He felt the rock shift. His trapped foot came free and he slammed downward. The granite gouged into his shins as his feet landed in dirt a few inches below. The granite walls on either side of him cinched up painfully. Dean gripped the flat of the boulder and heaved himself up, chimney crawling high enough up the cleft to actually take a deep breath. He breathed in the air. He was no longer stuck.
Be grateful for little things, he thought, like not suffocating in a cleft in a rock or having to cut your own foot off.
Dean leant sideways and reached down with grasping fingers to grab the sack of eggs. A bit further in, the lip of rock his foot had gotten trapped under met the ground. Plenty of dirt had gathered there over the years. The space was too tight to bend over in, so he dug with his feet. Gouging out dirt with his boot toe, Dean created a trench.
The loose soil piled up at his feet. The work sent sprays of earth up into the tiny confines and Dean spat out the bittersweet taste of dirt. He started to sweat under all his winter layers. Every few minutes, the wind blew a welcome gust of cold air his way.
Finally, the trench was deep enough for the eggs. He pushed the sack in with his boot, then kicked the soil back over it. When it was done, he turned his head and started out of the cleft, taking care not to step down into the lip again.
After a few minutes of squeezing and crawling, his head came out into the open. A white haze had consumed the forest. Dean could barely make out tree trunks only a few feet away. The wind blew even stronger, swirling snow up into a ground blizzard of ice needles that stung his eyes, making them tear.
He knew which direction the stream lay in, but couldn’t see it at all. Hefting himself free of the crevice, he fell into almost hip-deep snow. He trudged in the direction of the stream, each step a tiring effort. He heard the water before he saw it, glad to locate the burbling little river.
Hiking downriver, he hoped he’d recognize where he should break off to get back to the cabin. He worried about Sam and Bobby, wondering if they were out in the storm looking for him. Once it died down, he’d go back to the car and contact them.
The storm had bleached the world of its color. The trees were no longer green, their trunks no longer brown or red. The world had gone monochromatic, a glass painting backdrop from a black-and-white 1930s film.
As he struggled back to the cabin, he wondered if the aswang could survive in a storm like this, or if it, too, would be seeking shelter. Dean felt the reassuring weight of the spice container inside his jacket. He hoped that the reason it hadn’t worked on the eggs was their encasing shell. If it didn’t work at all, he was in serious trouble.
THIRTY-ONE
For the tenth time in five minutes, Sam looked at his phone’s clock. “We’re not going to get there before dark.”
Bobby peered ahead at the line of cars in front of them. Tail lights burned through the haze of snow. “I know.”
They’d just crawled through Emigrant Gap, and Bobby knew it took more than thirty minutes to reach Truckee on a good