The gun tasted sour and oily on his tongue. The muzzle scraped the roof of his mouth as he tightened his…
…and pushed himself up. He swayed uneasily on his feet as he tried to focus.
He couldn’t pull together enough of him to…
…the wheels of the truck tore up the bike first. She thought that would save her. The driver would stop before it ran over her. It would stop. It didn’t.
…do anything, but he could listen.
“Where are they?” one of the Hounds asked. It seemed strange to recognize anything human in that snarled, chewed-on voice, but he sounded afraid. “Are you sure they’ll be here?”
“The birds said this is the closest corpse near harvest,” the lead Hound said. “You want to ask them more?”
Apparently not.
Hill pressed his tongue down against the bottom of his jaw and tried to lift his head. The bone bridle felt like it was strung with weights, dragging him down and making his back ache, but he managed to catch a quick glimpse of their surroundings.
That didn’t help much. Trees and the night sky. They weren’t far from the house. He could still hear the party, but too far for him to stagger in this state. His feet caught in torn-up earth, and the lead Hound had to grab his shoulder to keep him upright.
A second later Hill saw the corpse they’d been talking about. A teenager sprawled across the path, head and body twisted in opposite directions. His slack, discolored face didn’t look surprised, but Davy had died that way a few times now. He had been. The dirt bike he’d taken his spill from hung nearby, strung up on the fallen tree trunk he’d notquitebeen able to take.
…his heart had stopped. His chest felt like it was going to explode and…
“He’s ready for harvest,” the lead Hound said. He dragged Hill forward and kicked his feet out from under him. A paw on the back of Hill’s neck pushed his head down into…
Into the dead man.
He tried to scream, but nothing but garbled howls came out through the bridle. The Hound shoved harder. Hill grabbed at him, clawed at the corners of his mask asthis particular horrorcut through the rest like a knife.
“Stop it.” The Hound slapped his hands away and forced them down to match the dead man’s sprawled limbs. It wasn’t exact, but the Hound made him fit. “This is how we all die. You just fucked it up.”
There was someone else in the body. Hill didn’t know how there was room for them both, but somehow it worked. Somehow it worked. He was scared, but they were screaming because…because they weren’t dead.
Not yet.
“It’s done,” the Hound. He glanced at someone who must have been already there, waiting on them, and cocked a curious ear. “Will you do the honors?”
There was a grunt and then a cold hand under his chin tipped his head around—stillinthe dead body—so he stared up at Seb. He felt a brief stab of excitement, but the expression of flat irritation in Seb’s eyes quashed it.
“I told you,” Seb said. “Call me before the men with nooses and sticks get you. You should have listened.”
He slapped the side of Hill’s face and pushed himself back up out of the crouch. There was a chain strung around his neck. Hill watched as the dog-muzzled man pulled a whistle from under his shirt. It shouldn’t have been possible for dog lips and tongue to blow a whistle, but he managed it.
It was silent.
It ripped Hill apart like tissue paper, leaving him desperate as he tried to wad what washimback together. That wasn’t his mother. It was his Dad, he thought.
Seb nudged the dead man with the toe of his boot. “You’ll feel better once it’s over,” he said. “They all do. Once the Harvest is finished, you won’t mind much at all.”
He was going to say something else. Then he glanced into the trees, flinched, and quickly retreated. The rest of the Hounds went with him, ears flat and fur slick to their body.
Hill tried to roll his eyes to see what was coming. He couldn’t make them out, just the crunch of their feet on the leaves and the long, hooded shadows the moonlight cast.
“The tally’s off,” someone said. The voicehurt.It sounded like a broken bone felt; it tasted like marrow. Hill tried to spit it out, as if it had gone in his mouth instead of his ears, but it didn’t help. “We came for one.”
“Call it a bonus,” Seb said. His voice was tense, drawn out thin and nasal with fear. “You’ve been doing good work.”
He laughed at that, like it was a joke. No one else did.
