Kursk doesn’t interrupt.
“They were coming back from some ridiculous library convention in Syracuse. Snowstorm caught them. Semi didn’t stop in time.”
I shake my head. “I’d just started a new job in Boston. Big academic library. All chrome and digitization. But when I got the call, I just… I didn’t want to be there anymore. I came back here.”
“Because it is your home.”
“No,” I murmur. “Because it’stheirs.”
He nods, slowly. “We do not bury our dead beneath stone. We burn them on mountaintops. But the pain is the same.”
Our eyes meet in the dark. No more jokes. Just shared ache.
That’s when it happens.
A sudden rustle. A screech.
The underbrush explodes.
A raccoon—at least, itwasa raccoon once—bursts from the trees. Its body is bloated, patchy, twitching like it’s possessed. Eyes glowing green-white like acid in the dark. Jaws unhinged far too wide.
I scream.
Kursk is faster.
One fluid motion—spear in hand, pivot,thunk—he skewers the beast against a pine trunk. It lets out a sound like nails on glass and crumples into a heap of twitching fur and blackened ichor.
The stench hits like a wall.
Kursk kneels beside it, frowning.
“The Vorfaluka has left its mark,” he growls. “It is nesting. Seeding corruption. This creature was twisted. Not killed. This is… new.”
I clutch my jacket tighter. “You mean it’s makingmoreof itself?”
“Or testing what it can control.”
A long silence.
I feel his hand on my shoulder. Gentle. Too gentle for a warrior.
“You are trembling.”
“I’m fine.”
“You lie badly.”
I look up. He’s closer than I realized. His breath is warm on my cheek. The forest fades away. The fear, the death, the twisted raccoon… it all goes distant.
Our faces are inches apart.
“You shouldn’t—” I begin.
He doesn’t finish whatever he was about to say.
Neither do I.
The moment stretches. Breathless.
