“Can’t wait,” I said. “Keep up. Follow.”
I raced off into the trees, keeping on Gil’s trail. Twigs snapped underfoot, dry leaves crunching as I stomped them into dead earth. The forest was full of its own sounds and smells, but my senses kept their focus on the man’s screaming. He wasn’t far off. We were closer. I could smell his fear, the tang of new blood in the air.
Worse: I could hear the snarling.
7
I dashed through the woods, the trees and clouds and slivers of moonlight whizzing past me in a blur. The sound was unmistakable. It was the slavering and growling of something feral. Canine, maybe, but more likely lupine. Did it really make any difference in this context? Something with powerful jaws and horrific teeth.
But the noise had stopped. The snarling had been so fleeting. What bothered me more was how the screaming had also stopped. I balled my hands up into fists, running harder. I didn’t have far to go, though. I spotted the outline of Gil’s body a few dozen feet away through the trees. He was in a clearing, breathing heavily, hands on his hips as he stared at something on the ground. I smelled the traces of his sweat as I entered the clearing. I smelled the metal of freshly spilled blood before I even saw the corpse.
Not far from Gil’s feet was the still body of what was once a man, lying face up. From the frame and build I would have guessed him to be in his late twenties, dressed in flannel and jeans. I could sense the heat leaving him. The sheer shock and terror of witnessing what had attacked him was written all over his face – or at least on what was left of it. You could see the fear in the gape of his fleshless mouth, in the way his fingers were crooked and clenched.
Blood pooled on the ground, seeping into the man’s hair, a crimson halo. It didn’t smell right to me. Once, and only once in the past had I ever tried consuming a dead man’s blood. It felt immoral, like stealing something from someone who couldn’t fight back. I felt like a scavenger, more predator than every time I’d ever accosted someone in a darkened alley. The taste was tainted. Wrong.
“This is horrible,” Gil said, his hand over his mouth. “What would do something like this?”
I bit the inside of my lip, hating the idea of starting another argument, but it had to be said. “We don’t know yet. But I know that you heard what I heard.”
He nodded, saying nothing. There’s a massive list of fundamental differences between werewolves and vampires, but Gil and I were both equipped with keenly developed senses. He smelled the blood on the air long before we got there, heard the man screaming more clearly than a human could. But something else was bothering me about all this.
“Did you smell it?” I asked. “The thing that did this. Because I couldn’t.”
He shook his head. “Didn’t pick up any scent. It’s like there was nothing here.”
“Yeah,” I said. I stared at the corpse, clenching my teeth as I studied the mangled remains of the man’s face. “Like it was a ghost.”
Asher came running out from among the trees, skittering to a stop between us, leaning over and grabbing his knees as he panted. “Holy shit,” he said, scuttling backwards when he realized what the three of us had gathered around. “Oh, shit. Oh my God.”
I walked up to him, draping an arm across his shoulders, squeezing the back of his neck firmly. “Relax. Seriously, chill out. You’re the necromancer, you’re supposed to be used to shit like this.”
Asher shivered, his muscles tensed. “I know this is your idea of being supportive, Sterling, but holy shit, something ate this guy’s face. Oh. Oh, I think I’m going to be sick.”
I clapped him on the back. “Hold it together. No, get it together, actually. We need you right now. Do your little trick.”
Gil perked up. “That’s right. Not to be too callous about this, but it can help bring this man’s killer to justice.”
Asher raked his fingers through his hair, glaring at the both of us. “Are you guys serious? The guy just snuffed it and you already want me to drag his spirit screaming back into his dead body?”
“Yikes.” I shuddered myself. “It’s way more macabre when you put it like that. Gil isn’t wrong, though. We can prevent this from happening if we know what it is we’re meant to be fighting. It can’t hurt to get what we can from his final moments. Answers straight from the corpse’s mouth.”
Asher shrugged my arm off, glaring at me. It didn’t happen very often, but as sweet as the kid was, he knew how to flay you with a single look.
“Too soon,” I muttered, pawing at the ground with the sole of one shoe. “Right. Sorry.”
“It’s not like you haven’t done this before, Asher.” Gil patted him on the back. "We just want to ask some questions. The sooner, the better, before his spirit wanders off. This is the best way we can help the people of this town.”
Asher put his face into his hands, steadying his breathing, then nodding. “Fine. Fine. Okay. I’ll do it. Stand clear.”
He knelt in the grass, eyes shut as he placed his hand in the air just above the man’s face, where his forehead would be. The little trick didn’t involve resurrection. That wasn’t part of the necromancer’s repertoire, or at least it wasn’t part of Asher’s. Bringing the dead back to life simply didn’t happen without any snags. There was always a catch.
No, this particular trick, I’d seen Asher pull off a few times in the past. It was a kind of temporary reanimation. Very helpful for harvesting information from the newly dead, but I understood his hesitation, too. Necromancers were painted as powerful mages who could command the dead and bend them to their will. Asher’s entire thing, whether it came to dealing with the living or the dead, was being a perfectly decent human being. Call it sappy, or idealistic, but Asher was at his most powerful when he showed reverence for the dead. And like he said, forcing a man’s spirit back into his newly-mangled body wasn’t the most respectful way to treat someone. But we needed leads, a way to stop more of these killings from happening.
Asher’s lips moved as he muttered a quiet incantation, speaking words I could never hope to understand. The wind picked up, tousling his hair as he chanted. When Asher opened his eyes again, they were no longer the same color, now burning with sickly green light. The dead man’s body convulsed, limbs thrashing in the dirt. His eyes flickered with light, the same pale jade as Asher’s. He gasped once, hard and deep, the sound a man makes when he emerges from the bottom of a lake – or when his soul returns to his body.
“Why?” the man murmured, the word stuttering like a hot coal on his fleshless lips. “Let me go.”
“I am so sorry,” Asher said, his voice soft, soothing. “I know you’re afraid, but we need to know what you saw. We need to know what did this to you.”