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23

Banno did not feel any pain. He did not feel any cold. He did not feel anything at all except for a happiness so powerful it threatened to burst right out of him.

The wind blew against his face, but he didn't feel it. The snow clumped together inside the red, sticky tangles of his fur, but he didn't feel it. The broken arrows sticking out of his back grinded against each other as he moved, but he didn't feel it. His face was hot with fever and sickly yellow tendrils of puss kept oozing from his many wounds, but surprise surprise, he didn't feel any of that either.

He was excited, but calm. He was overjoyed, but rational. He was ecstatic, but calculating. They were coming very close to the end now, and he couldn't afford to make any mistakes at this late juncture.

Especially not with such a bounty of prey before him.

Banno crept from tree to tree, making sure to stay downwind at all times. There were lights up ahead; the weak glimmer of campfires struggling to stay alive. They flickered in and out of existence as he moved through the dead forest, swallowed up and spat out again by bands of black. Shadowy figures walked back and forth between them, large and small. One of the shapes threw a log onto a fire and a bright flurry of golden sparks shot up into the air like reversed snowflakes. After a while, he was able to hear voices, too. No words yet, just a soft mumble.

It was the Foxes' basecamp.

Banno parted the bushes just far enough for him to peer between their dead, frost-stung branches. He was so close that, if he were to reach out, his fingertips would brush the very edge of the light - an unwelcome touch of darkness inside their warm little sanctuary.

His people were in that light, huddled together in little groups with blankets thrown around their shoulders, holding their hands up to fires for warmth, and those were just the conscious ones. There were others strewn about like corpses, wrapped up like worms in their cocoons, shivering in the cold. There were weeping gashes and broken bones, frostbitten fingers and toes, Wolves so weak they could barely twitch their tails. It was a rather pitiful sight.

And then there were the Foxes, scurrying back and forth like ants tending to their larvae, carrying blankets and medicines and wrappings and bowls of food from one weakling to the next, whispering their platitudes and even patting some of the more pathetic individuals on the head before scurrying off again. So many Foxes, so many delectable little morsels of red and orange, beautiful, tasty little candles shining in the dark...

But not as many as there would have been.

A smile spread across Banno's lips, cracking open the thin layer of dried blood and puss that had hardened to a crust along the corner of his mouth. There were a lot of vixens around, hurrying along in their flowing garb, but a distinct lack of males, and that meant a distinct lack of bows and arrows. They were so vulnerable right now, every last one of them. They might as well be lying on the ground with their bellies exposed, completely naked, just waiting for him to come in and... have a taste...

A line of blood, puss, and saliva stretched down from his chin and landed in the bushes, sliding across the dead branches and down to the snow like the strands of a spider's web. His mind drifted back an hour, examining every decision, making absolutely sure he had made no mistakes, going back, retracing his steps, walking through the snow, every step, every careful step, each one perfect, each one in just the right place, following the blood, following his own blood, following -

*

• his own bloody footprints, winding and weaving back through the frost-blackened trees. Banno took great care to make absolutely sure he was stepping down nice and hard with his bleeding stump. Loose stones and pebbles and twigs and rock-hard shards of ice scraped against the exposed piece of bone sticking out of his right leg, piercing his frozen flesh and leaking his blood into the snow. He had to leave a spot roughly halfway between each of the footprints he had made on his way over here, and he had to get it just right, otherwise it would look too obvious, too fake. The spaces between couldn't be too far apart, but neither could they be too close. They had to be perfect, but not too perfect. They would expect him to be limping far worse than this, after all.

Banno stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Oh, how he hated snow. It kept sticking to his fur and draining the warmth right out of his skin. All the trees in this forest were blighted by it. The mountain peaks to his left were all capped with it. Even the air was saturated with it. He despised snow, but tonight it was proving useful, at the very least. He looked back the way he came and smiled at what the cold dead little pieces of frozen water were doing for him.

They were filling in his tracks beautifully, both the old and the new, but the dull red smears of his blood were still clearly visible, and would remain that way for quite a while.

They would have no idea they were actually following two trails instead of just one, two trails of blood doubled back on each other, snaking their way into the dark.

Oh yes, he knew they were coming for him. There was simply no other way things could be going right now. It had taken a huge amount of willpower not to crack open those four scrawny Foxes and rub their entrails all over his face when he had the chance, but this was the reason they existed. This was their purpose. Like all things, they ultimately existed to serve him. The reason they were inside that pass at that very moment was so they could help him get revenge on Ander and his slut Fox, and then... then he would finally be with little Valery again... Vallah would get a new friend... and they would be a part of him forever...

Those four were all injured (the little liar in particular) so it would probably have taken them a while to make it back through the pass. Ten minutes maybe? Their camp didn't sound all that far when he made it through the mouth himself. Add another minute or two for them to explain what happened and another five minutes to get a hunting party started and he might be looking at a head start of twenty minutes at the absolute most.

It would be close, but he was certain he could pull it off.

Valery was counting on him.

Banno sniffed, flaring his nostrils wide, hoping to get an idea of how close they might be, but with this gale blowing in from the mountain it was proving next to impossible. Not only did it blow away all the scents in the air, it covered all the scents on the ground with snow. But that was good, actually. It would slow his pursuers down and mask his true heading all at the same time.

Still stepping between his older and rapidly disappearing footprints, Banno approached a tree he had singled out earlier, one that was sure to be seen even in the dark. His blood trail looked incredibly suspicious the way it was right now, suddenly doubling for no reason at all, but he would soon fix that. He took his tacky, blood-stained hands and smeared them across the bark of the tree, going diagonally downwards from left to right, from north to south, leaving two smudged handprints against the trunk. Even an experienced tracker would assume he had stumbled here. That was good. It was the blood that would make all the difference. It was the blood that would buy him the time he needed. It was the blood that would clear the way to Valery.

He dropped down to the snow, flat on his stomach, and flailed his arms and legs like a pup at play, splattering as much of his blood at the base of the tree as he could. He smeared his face across the rough, splintery bark. He pushed his dripping hands into the snow and swept them sideways, as if they had slid out from under him. He clawed at his already shredded stump and sent rivulets of blood pouring into the trench made by his own body. Lastly, he stuck his fingers down his throat and vomited a noxious, steaming mixture of blood and bile all over the roots.

When he was done, Banno sat up, gasping for breath, mist pluming from his nostrils in rapid bursts, and inspected his handiwork.

His trail came in from the north, perfectly normal until it reached this tree. His handprints were clearly visible against the trunk, and beneath them, the snow was splattered with blood. Following this point his trail continued, but twice as thick as before.

Banno looked at the scene through the eyes of a tracker, checking every twig and branch and stone and drop of blood, and this was what he saw:

He saw a poor, weakened cripple just lumbering along on one foot. He saw this sad creature fall against a tree and rip open an old wound. He saw the one-footed wonder struggle to get back up and then continue on his way, now bleeding twice as much, adamant to complete his quest or die trying. Truly an admirable effort. Heroic, really.

It was perfect.

Now to vanish. Banno lifted his leg and brushed the snow off his stump. The piece of bone sticking out of his flesh was all scratched up and worn down to a rounded stub. It wasn't white, but a reddish brown, and there was a constant stream of blood dripping from the shredded flaps of meat surrounding it. His other wounds were mostly okay (the extreme cold and constant barrage of snow kept freezing his blood to his fur before it could get a good drip going), but his leg was a different story.

Banno slipped the eyepatch from around his head and sat looking at it for a while, lying limply in his hands, a single square of leather with two hoops of rawhide dangling from the edges, swaying in the wind. Had Valery known he would one day need it for this? Was that why she spent hours making it for him? Shaping and measuring and cutting with those delicate little fingers? Was that why she presented it to him with such ceremony? Had she known all along that this would happen? That their future together might hinge on this one little act of kindness? This one little gesture of love?

Banno raised the eyepatch to his mouth and kissed it, whispering: "Thank you, Valery. Thank you for this chance. I promise you I won't squander it. I'll be with you soon. Just hang on a little bit longer."

Banno bit the hoops off where they attached to the leather, giving him two strips of rawhide just short of the length of his arm. He took one, wrapped it around his calf and tied it off, cinching it tight. The bleeding didn't stop entirely, but it did slow down a little. So far so good. He pressed the eyepatch against his stump. It wasn't big enough to cover the wound by itself, but that was okay. He ripped a piece of buckskin from his left pants leg and sliced it down the length with his teeth, letting it fall open into a neat little square. He covered the leather patch with this piece of buckskin, wrapped the edges up and around his stump, and then tied the whole thing off with his last strip of rawhide, creating a tight seal as well as a soft leather cushion for his leg, not unlike the lining of the fake foot James had made for him.

Lastly, he pulled his tattered pants leg down over his stump and tied that, too, creating an extra layer of protection, just a nice little bit of insurance in the event of the unforeseen; rips, tears, general fraying, what have you.

Banno stood up and carefully tested his handicraft. It wasn't the most sophisticated of dressings, but it should keep the blood from seeping through for at least a little while, and a little while was all he needed, just long enough to get the hell out of here.

How much time did he have left?

Banno sniffed the air, but of course he could smell nothing other than the wind and snow. That was good, but it also meant he had no idea how close they might be. They could be right around the corner for all he knew.

Banno started to smile, but caught himself just in time to keep his cheek from splitting open yet again. He couldn't afford to leave any bloodstains from here on out, so he smiled on the inside instead, where there was no limit how wide his grin could grow.

Let them come. Hundreds, thousands, the more the better.

It was all going according to plan, and it was all thanks to those four miserable Foxes.

Banno ran through the trees, moving as fast as he could, zigging left and zagging right, pushing his body through the freezing cold. He chuckled despite the rather uncomfortable waves of pressure shooting through his bones on every impact and the slimy sensation of his stump sliding up and down inside his pants leg, coated in sticky layers of gore. That red Fox with the grumpy face, he came so close...

If only his friends hadn't been total idiots.

The grumpy red one's plan wasn't half bad, but unfortunately for him, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing, and his friends hadn't been able to adapt fast enough.

When Grumpy Fox started selling out the Jonah Fox's family it got all angry and huffy. 'I've got family up there!' it had shouted, swinging from his grasp like some overgrown rabbit caught in a snare.

Up. That's what he had said. Up there. Not 'down there', not 'over there', but UP there.

The way south was a steady downhill decline, and would eventually take him down into the valley, where the river flowed through all those empty, open fields. If Valery was downhill, why he would say he had family 'up there'?

That by itself wasn't much to go on. The Jonah Fox could have had a slip of the tongue, or maybe he wasn't fully aware of his surroundings in his panic. Having a claw slowly slicing into your neck could have that effect.

But then something else happened, something that destroyed all doubt.

Brother Fox Number 1 punched Grumpy Fox to the ground to shut him up, much to Brother Fox Number 2's satisfaction. It looked like they were all just about ready to skin Grumpy Fox alive, but then it all changed, and Banno could even pinpoint the exact moment. It was when Grumpy Fox said 'south'. After that single word everything turned into a laughable bit of play acting. Jonah Fox acted all betrayed and the Brother Foxes acted all angry, but it was nothing compared to how they had behaved when they believed Grumpy Fox was actually turning on them to save his own skin. Banno almost expected them to wink at each other. And the comically large gap of silence that had followed Grumpy's statement was, all by itself, more than enough to convince Banno that they were trying to send him down a false trail. Was it not fitting that he return the favour?

But that left the burning question: if Valery was not to the south, where was she? She couldn't be to the west because the mountain was in the way, so that left three other possibilities: north, east, and northeast. One quarter of the paths of the winds.

Out of all those directions, north was probably the most likely. Firstly because north was the most uphill direction right now, and secondly because Grumpy Fox had gone out of his way to inform him that there were thousands of armed Foxes up there and that he should most definitely not go anywhere near that place. Just another little clue to point him in the right direction.

Could there really be thousands of Foxes up ahead? It was possible, he supposed. Banno saw all those flickering yellow lights for himself not too long ago, but once you subtracted all the women, children, and the elderly, that number would go way, way down. And, if his plan was working (and he had no reason to doubt himself), then a large number of them (including Ander) would be headed south right now, chasing after a trail of blood that would lead them nowhere, leaving the women all alone, in the dark and the cold, their throats completely exposed and vulnerable to teeth in the night.

Banno kept running, not feeling the ache in his muscles, the stabbing pain in his wounds, the baking heat of his fever or the burning in his chest. There was only one feeling, and that feeling was a building sense of euphoria. He was doing it. Within the next few hours, they would finally be together again, and there was nothing anyone could do to keep them apart. But first...

First there was one other thing that needed his attention. One other thing he's been itching to do ever since his head sunk below the raging, bubbling waters of the river, pulling him down, down, down into the muddy darkness.

Banno raised his head and scented the air, flaring his nostrils wide, sniffing... sniffing... sniffing for -

*

• the perfect one. Ander had let so many into his heart, each one a weakness, each one a target just waiting to be cleaved right open, but hers... hers was the flesh that would hurt him the most.

She stepped out from between two tents, her knees buckling under the weight of a double armful of firewood. A flash of orange among the shadows. A frayed and tattered dress rippling just above her ankles, clearly showing off the lovely scar she had earned on that fateful day. A split appeared in Banno's face, snaking its way from one corner of his mouth to the other, parting his lips and exposing his bloody teeth. Memories flashed through his mind in a series of smells and images, painting a beautiful picture of infinite opportunity and potential, squandered by a murderer's hands, but now found again, never truly lost at all, just waiting... waiting for him to come and finish what he started so very long ago...

Dark clouds above his head, deep grey, darkening to purple. The heavy, pregnant scent of rain still trapped in the sky, waiting to fall, waiting to be birthed onto this world only to die a moment later. The green smell of the woods all around them, of living, growing things. A flash of lightning, the rumble of thunder, and then the sweetness of her blood, riding the currents of all these other scents, so sharp, yet delicate, like a gentle kiss upon the edge of a blade. Fat drops of rain pouring down from a dying sky, striking the metal bars of her cage, exploding into smaller droplets, hanging down in shifting lines of silver, fusing together again, dripping down onto her shivering body, darkening her dress one spot at a time, as if with a thousand tears.

Kiana. Banno strained towards her, pushing his fingers through the snow, reaching out to her as far as he could without actually touching the light.

Eyes widened in fright. Her face smeared with streaks of mud. Dead autumn leaves stuck in her hair. Fearful whimpers. Flashes of blinding light born from a pitch-black sky, swirling waters and crashing waves, thick sprays of muddy foam and red, smoky tendrils of blood mixing with rainwater.

Kiana. She was only one body, one lump of meat, one fake, empty shell, but biting into her would be like biting into two bodies, two minds, two souls.

Banno bit down on his bottom lip, piercing it straight through with one of his fangs. Blood dribbled down his chin and pattered to the snow, red inside the white.

Red inside the white, just like her... He could imagine what it would look like, biting into that slender little neck, with the band of white traveling up her throat all the way to the bottom of her chin, how the red would leak out of the puncture wounds, red inside the white...

He'd be careful. She wouldn't die just from that. He would... he would...

Blood welling up from the wounds in her neck, seeping through her fur, touching the neckline of her dress, seeping into the fabric, staining it a dark brown. It was in the way. It was blocking the view. He didn't care about green or brown, only red, only red inside the white, beautiful colours mixing together, life and death, death and life, together as one, fusing, melting, just like them, together, black, orange, white, red, so much red, locked together in this ultimate act of passion, sharing a bond that Ander could never touch.

Ripping. Tearing. Cloth, parting. More of that beautiful flesh revealed, blooming beneath his touch, leaking sweet red nectar all over his claws, beautiful lines carved through her body, rivers flowing down mountains, lakes forming in valleys, all the areas Ander had touched in his lustful ways, all those tender caresses, embraces, soft, whispered kisses.

Kiana.

His hands around her throat. His own reflection staring back from inside her half-lidded eyes, seeing what she was seeing, not a mere Wolf, but everything, everything that exists, everything that ever existed, and everything that ever will exist, all of it, the earth, the sky, the sun, the stars, bearing down on her, actually touching her, cutting off her air, leaving her empty, leaving her hollow, ready to be filled with something real.

Kiana.

His tongue on her lips, slightly parted. Pushing past her teeth. Inside her now. He could feel her tongue playfully sliding beneath his, inviting him in, deeper and deeper, down to where he could feel it, the anticipation, growing and growing, making the climax all the sweeter, deeper still, down to the beating of her heart, slowing down, all the way down to where he could taste it... down to where he could taste the life leaving her body... down to where he could taste her death...

Swallow it whole...

If anyone sitting by the fires, whether they were Wolf or Fox, had chosen that exact moment to look up, they would have seen the shadows themselves swelling into the light like a cancerous growth, taking on shape and form where none previously existed. They would have seen a creature birthing itself from the darkness, slipping into the basecamp as easily as a dagger sliding into naked flesh.

But none did.

None did.