Dead Iron

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Cedar ran. The night coursed by him, through him. His claws punctured dirt, tearing, rending the earth with each stride. The mountain thrummed with life, with movement, with living things that should be dying things. The need to kill rolled over him in a hot wave.

No. He had to find the boy. Cedar pulled against the beast, against instinct that leaned a hand over his throat.

The beast whispered: Track. Kill. Devour.

Cedar focused on the boy. Clung to that one goal to drown out the blood need. Repeated it like he was repenting a sin. Track the boy. Hunt the boy. Find the boy.

The beast twisted against his hold. Snarled at his thoughts, his litany. It was all Cedar could do to think through the hunger, to remember a need that was not bent by fang and claw.

Save the boy.

He followed jagged jackrabbit trails through the brush across the fields. The boy was not here. Not on this mountain. Not in these hills, nowhere near enough for the wind to bring him his scent.

Town. The tuning fork slapped against his chest as he ran, a single pure tone humming in beat with his footfalls, music only his keen ears could hear. The Strange were here. Not near, but close enough the tuning fork whispered of their presence.

Kill.

Cedar stumbled as the blood need pressed against his hold.

No, he thought, taking back control. He would find the boy.

The wind rose as night deepened, dragging cold fingers through his thick fur and prickling against his skin. He shivered at the invitation, the freedom, the rightness of the night around him. No chains to hold him down. No locks to keep him caged. He could run forever and belong only to the night.

The boy, Cedar thought.

He was at the edge of the town now, and slowed. The press of humans living too near one another wove a thick blanket of odors. Softly, carefully, through patches of shadow and moonlight, he crept into town.

The blacksmith’s shop beneath the water clock tower was dark and stank of coal. He didn’t like coming so near the shop and tower. The slosh of water, ratchet and clatter of gears, stink of oil and grime, were too much. There were too many smells, too many noises to hide the sound of killing things, of footsteps, of bullets slid into chambers, of breath caught before a finger squeezed a trigger.

This was no place to hunt. This was a place to be killed.

Cedar stopped, fighting his dual nature.

Instinct said run.

Reason held strong to one thing only: Find the boy.

Cedar reined in his fear and made his way along the edge of a split-wood fence, then the side of the street to the Gregors’ shop. The stink of ash and metal and grease stung his nose and fouled all other scents. He took two cautious sniffs, then crept around the back of the shop.

He could smell the sweat and booze of the blacksmith here, the second sugary scent of his wife, and other people he needn’t name. His mouth watered. The overwhelming need for blood washed through his veins, took over his thoughts.

Cedar held against it, though he knew he could not hold for long. He sniffed the ground, working his way closer to the house. The beast was gaining strength the longer he denied the hunger. Quickly. He needed to find Elbert’s trail quickly.

The boy’s scent was strongest here, though still faint. The child had been gone too long, his scent rubbed away by other living things.

Cedar stood on his back legs, paws on the lower windowsill, nose at the wall.

The silver tuning fork swung forward and rapped the wood.

The single sweet note soured with the song of the Strange, too loud in the night, too loud in his ears, twisting in harmonies that made him want to growl.

The song was thick in the air. The Strange had been here. He sniffed for the Strange’s scent and found it, an oily earthiness and rot, and beneath that, the faintest scent of the boy.

The Strange had taken the boy, covered the boy’s scent, carried the boy. And he knew which way they had gone.

Cedar dropped back to all fours and turned, muscles bunched to run, to howl, to hunt. To kill.

A figure across the street paused. “Mr. Hunt?” a voice called softly.

Cedar froze. Man and beast warred. Man won.

“Mr. Hunt?” The figure across the street came closer.

He knew that voice. Knew that figure. Miss Rose Small.

But how did she know it was him? Maybe she was teched in the head, and thought all wild animals were people from the town. Even if that were so, what would be the chance that she would call him by name? What was the chance she would know he was behind the wolf’s eyes?

Rose had a handful of bolts and wires and washers. As she stepped into a pool of moonlight, the hunger pushed over him again, dragging against his reasonable mind.

Kill.

She sucked in a quick breath, her hand flying up to touch the locket around her neck, the cogs and gears and wires chiming to the ground. “Are you quite well?”

Sweet blood, sweet bones, flesh to tear, heart to pierce.

Cedar pulled against the beast’s need, struggling to keep control.

Rose Small did not look like Rose Small.

To his man’s eyes, she was the woman he had seen just yesterday. But through the wolf’s eyes and the veil of the curse that brought both minds together, Miss Small was a woman filled with a glim light. It was as if she contained sunshine and summer, and all the stars glinting in the sky.

There was something of the Strange about her. Even the tuning fork hummed softly, not the sour song of the Strange in the windowsill, but a song much like he had heard back in the Madders’ mine.

Miss Rose Small was not wholly human, a condition he reckoned she had not yet discovered.

She stepped out of the moonlight, and took to looking like herself again. She was bundled up in a long coat, but her bonnet was pushed back off her head. She’d obviously been out in the night, strolling the streets, ducking beneath limbs and crevasses to collect up nails and bits of wire. He wondered what she did with those bits and bobs, wondered if she devised matic and tickers and other such trinkets.

“Do you need assistance, Mr. Hunt? A doctor, perhaps?” She didn’t come any closer, though she wasn’t far enough away to be safe from him.

He inhaled the scent of her. His hold slipped slightly, and the beast within him whispered, Kill.

Cedar pushed against the beast.

She did not smell like the Holder the Madders wanted him to find. She did not smell like the Strange who had taken the boy, and she did not smell like the boy. Standing here was doing nothing more than wasting moonlight.

Find the boy. Cedar took a step backward, two. Three.

Miss Small nodded, just that easily accepting him as a wolf. “I see that you have things to do and a need to be doing them. I don’t want to keep you, Mr. Hunt. Good night to you.”

Kill, the beast in him whispered again.

Cedar silenced the voice with one word: Hunt. Before the moon set and dawn burned the beast out of his bones.

He ran, out into the fields. Not following the boy’s trail yet, looking instead for blood and meat to sate the beast’s hunger and give him back his reasoning mind. And he found it, in a calf who had staggered away from its mother, too frightened to cry out before Cedar lost control over the beast, and tore out the animal’s heart.