It was the night of the killing moon.
I scramble out of the car, the wind whipping the door out of my hands. “Wait!” Chloe cries, and I’m aware of the engine dying, of her footsteps on the snow. “Do you have him?”
I stop on the edge of the trees, breathing deep. The terror is in the woods, I can tell that much, carried toward me on a draft of winter wind. “I have to go on foot,” I tell Chloe.
“I’ll come with you.” She glares up at me like she’s daring me to tell her not to.
“I’ll be faster by myself.”
“I want to help,” she counters, the wind whipping her hair into her face. For a moment, I’m reminded of how she looked the night of the killing moon—the way her face flushed with that same determination as she pointed the shotgun at my chest. But it’s different today. Her determination isn’t soiled by abject terror and despair. It almost feels hopeful.
So I nod, not really wanting to leave her alone on the side of the road anyway. Then I take off into the woods, moving as quickly as I can, all my senses on alert as I track that little glimmer of fear. Sometimes, the scent shifts away from me, blown off-course by the wind. But I catch it more often than I don’t, and it’s not long before I have a clear trail that leads me deeper into the woods.
Chloe is a constant presence at my back, and her presence is easier to keep up with. Her breath and heartbeats are loud, letting me know she’s not falling behind. I keep moving.
It feels like stalking prey. Not like during a killing moon, where my victims are tucked away in their houses, but when I stalk interlopers that come into my territory. I always catch their scent and follow it until I find the right time to act. But there’s so much more urgency here, because with every step, that terror grows brighter, calling out to me like a beacon. I don’t even know for certain that it’s Oliver, although I can’t imagine there’s another child lost in the woods, drowning in fear.
We weave through the trees, Chloe and I. And then I catch a whiff of blood.
I freeze in place, fear jolting through my system again. Chloe bumps against my back. “Theo?” she asks. “Are you—Is everything okay?”
I sniff again. Yes, blood. Not a lot. I don’t know if it’s Oliver’s. It’s coming from my left, the same direction as the fear. But there’s something else, too. A kind of—quiet.
Like the quiet just before someone dies.
And with that, I run.
“Theo!” Chloe screams, and she runs after me, although I know she won’t be able to keep up. At least my boots leave tracks in the snow for her to follow. Because all I can focus on right now is finding the source of that blood before the silence of death becomes permanent.
I duck through the straggly branches, clumps of wet snow falling in my hair. I’m not used to the snow, but my kind are strong, and I run without slipping or falling, darting between the trees. The scent of blood grows brighter.
Then I see it, a trio of crimson dots against the white expanse. My heart nearly erupts out of my chest, and the terror is now everywhere, as relentless as the wind.
I follow the blood trail, dots here and there, until I finally—finally—catch onto a heartbeat. A child’s heartbeat, as fast and as faint as a hummingbird’s.
I give a wordless shout, the sound echoing through the trees. Behind me, Chloe cries out my name. Then, a second later, she calls out Oliver’s.
The heartbeat quickens.
I surge forward, following the heartbeat now instead of the blood trail. It’s the loudest thing in the dampened silence of the snowy forest, so thunderously loud that the sound seems to tunnel down until it’s a clear and undeniable path. I follow that path with more fervor than I’ve ever hunted one of my victims, even though it feels the same—the blood, the fear, the frantic heartbeat. The only difference is what I’m going to do at the end of it.
Footsteps behind me, the soft, steady huffing of breath. Chloe, trampling through the woods. More blood on the snow. My heart squeezes up in that weird way again.
Then I see a flash of color: Oliver’s backpack, the one he used to store his drawings. I snatch it up and look inside. Clothes. A half-eaten apple.
I move forward, the backpack tossed over my shoulder, my eyes on the snow, until I hear crying.
How many times have I heard someone cry in my life? Too many to count. This time makes my heart break in half, though.
“Oh my god!” Chloe cries. “Oh my god, I hear him!”
I hear him, smell him, sense him. I shove aside a low-hanging bough of pine needles, free of their snow, and there he is, curled up in a ball, his lips tinged blue.
I’ve never felt relief like this before.
Oliver tilts his head up at me and blinks, his gaze unfocused and his breath shuddery. When he sees me, he makes a small, soft keening sound. He lifts his hands, but his fingers are tooclumsy to speak. I’ve seen enough anyway. I scoop him up in my arms, pulling him close to my chest. His whole body vibrates, and I can feel the wet patch of his tears seeping through my shirt.
Chloe rushes up behind us, and I turn to face her, Oliver still clinging to me. “You found him!” she gasps. Oliver looks up at her and makes that same soft sound, his tears streaming down his cheeks.
