Rituals (Cainsville 5)

"Then let the sluagh take the killers," I muttered.

The words were no sooner out of my lips than I fell into darkness again, this time landing near a small encampment. Hide tents in a forest. A smoldering fire pit. Snores from inside the tents.

"The perpetrators," Gabriel said.

An odd choice of word. Very clinical, very legal, and it might seem as if that let Gabriel put this horror into a perspective he understood. But what he understood were killers, while these men had perpetrated something far worse.

In the tents, the m

en snored and mumbled in sleep. Then came the distant sound of a thousand wings beating the night air.

"They deserve it," I said.

"Yes." Simple. Direct. Unequivocal.

The melltithiwyd came. They beat at the tents until they found a way in and drove the men out, and the men ran, pursued by the birds, who swooped and dove and seemed to delight in the chase as the cwn hounds did not.

Then came the sluagh. The darkness. The unforgiven. The smoke wound through the flock of melltithiwyd, and the birds swarmed, engulfing the men.

The screams followed.

Whatever these men had done, it was impossible to enjoy those screams. It sounded as if they were being torn apart, slowly, their shrieks of agony turning to an animal howling that made me stop up my ears. Even Gabriel turned away until, as one body, the melltithiwyd flew up, the sluagh buffeting them into the sky.

And on the forest floor? Bone. Nothing left but bones.

When that wind rose again, I looked to see that the swarm of sluagh and melltithiwyd had changed direction. It plummeted like a black and red cyclone. A scream sounded, and I took off into the forest, Gabriel at my heels.

Through the trees, I saw the young man who'd refused to slaughter the camp--the one who'd been sent away. He must have been camping close to his kinsmen, as if hoping to follow them home.

Now he ran. Ran from the melltithiwyd as they swooped at him, drove him, toyed with him. They weren't waiting for the sluagh. That smoke still hovered above. So there was no excuse for the torment. The melltithiwyd were amusing themselves.

"I didn't do it," the boy shouted. "I wouldn't have."

"He must be lying," I said to Gabriel. "The sluagh wouldn't target him if he wasn't involved."

Gabriel shook his head. "I know the sound of false protests. He's telling the truth."

"Then they're just scaring him. Teaching him a lesson."

We watched the boy scale a tree to escape his tormenters.

"The exact wording of the book was 'some,' " Gabriel said.

"What?"

" 'In some cases, it is a fitting and just punishment.' "

"But..."

The boy screamed. I looked to see the melltithiwyd diving at him. Biting at him. Swooping down and taking tiny mouthfuls and then flying away again.

"Hey!" I shouted. "No!"

Gabriel didn't point out that this was a reenactment, that the melltithiwyd couldn't hear me. I ran to the tree and looked up at the boy, his face and arms covered in tiny red spots, each dripping blood.

"If you're going to do it, do it!" I yelled at the melltithiwyd. "He's the least to blame. Why torment him?"

"Because they can," Gabriel murmured behind me, his voice taking on Gwynn's tenor. "They've eaten their fill, and he's the last, and they don't care if he's innocent or guilty, deserving or not."