Green stroked his beard, feeling a tingle of adrenaline as Valentina turned and moved quiet as a cloud shadow through the trees. Two breaths later, he was alone on the edge of the pinewoods.
He looked at the flare gun, realized that the trigger was the only moving part he recognized, and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. He had zero clue how to use the radio. The house was a distant gray smudge with bright windows. He made for it, thinking of Valentina’s stealth advice and feeling overly conscious of his size.
He stayed on the balls of his feet for about thirty steps before his calves were burning. He had no idea how you did anything precise with your feet while wearing new hiking boots in the dark woods. So, he clomped. He clomped as gently as he could.
At the rear of the white house, Green found a large propane tank. It looked like a giant Tylenol. He crept up behind it and studied the home. No movement. Flower-print curtains soaked with buttery light.
He scanned the woods, but saw nothing. In the distance, he heard the furtive sounds of something foraging, but he felt confident that the creatures he sought would make no noise at all. Conventional animal sound was a comfort.
He walked on toward the road, glancing left and right in slow rhythm in time with his steps.
The moon crested the trees and Green was shocked by the amount of light it provided. There were shadows in the moonlight. Moon shadows. A thing he didn’t know existed.
Across the road, a silver spark drew his eye. Something had caught the moonlight, but instead of going dark again, it held the ghostly glow, kindling it to white fire.
It was the glass fawn, walking directly toward Wildwood Stable.
He froze.
At that distance, it was such a tiny thing. A strange little deer pulled from an animated film walking in the real world, a trick of light and angle.
His stomach fluttered, recalling the first time he saw that deer.
Recalling what followed it.
He pulled the flare gun from his pocket and turned in a slow circle.
The hunted had arrived. Where was the hunter?
Green knew that the horned wolf would not come with a moonlight glow to announce its presence in the darkness. It wouldn’t walk across the road with delicate care, the way the fawn was doing. It would be invisible and then it would be exactly where it wanted tobe.
The fawn walked forward.
Adrenaline ran a current through his limbs.
He didn’t know exactly how near the fawn might need to be before its chilling effect took hold, but it was moving closer to the house. He still harbored doubts that the glass fawn was to blame for the recent deaths, but those doubts were nothing so vain or foolish as certainty. He took a step forward.
The fawn was well over a hundred yards away, but it stopped as soon as Green moved. Even at that distance, he could feel the fawn’s eyes upon him like a winter wind following a newcomer into a warm room.
Well. If not now, when?
He raised the flare gun, estimating an angle that would carry the bright fire up and over the road where the fawn stood. He pulled the trigger.
There was a muffled crack and a smell like sulfur, then nothing.
The fawn took a step toward him.
He cocked back the hammer and tried again.
Even more nothing than before.
Valentina had said that you don’t meet the unknown armed for war, but they were also there to defend people who couldn’t defend themselves and now Green was absolutely without any tools to turn away the approaching cryptid.
“Shit.”
The fawn looked away from Green and began a slow arc around the practice ring, heading for the house. Something about the motion flipped a switch in Green’s mind. The deer wasn’t fleeing and it wasn’t wandering. That turn wasn’t random. Was it hunting?
He picked up a stick, planning to crack it against trees and fence posts to startle the fawn into retreating. It was better than nothing.
