Page 39 of His Human Believer

Bergelmir’s voice: “Say again?”

“Rear gate. Open. Not forced.”

“And the wulver’s gone.”

My stomach sinks.

Chapter Twelve

Vidar

Bergelmir “Cap” Touchstone runs the entire search operation out of the back of a vehicle at the rear gate.

He has a grid up immediately. Sectors, comms channels, a headcount that he’s taken twice. He orders two members of Molten Lava to stay on the community side of the wall to make certain no other being goes out.

He does not put Hannibal Hellstone in command of anything. Cap gives him a sector and a partner and tells him to work it, and Hannibal takes it without a word.

Then he turns to Margaret. “You were Bureau?”

“Seven years in charge of witness protection. Relocation authority. Thirty-one operations.”

He grunts. “You are with Coalstone on the wall line. You know his equipment better than my team does.”

And that is the entirety of it. Every objection I have raised since the diurnal she arrived about contamination, unaffiliated parties, the integrity of the record, simply ceases to exist when a boy’s life is on the line.

The first thing the team discovers is blood at the gate.

Not a great deal, but enough to cause worry. It is on the stone at the base of the post and there is a smear of it on the ground going outward through the opening.

Somebody records it and tests it immediately. “This is a wulver’s blood.”

We go through.

The first thing I notice when I return to the preserve is the lack of shadows.

The two moons overhead are at nearly the same point in the sky, which means the light arrives from one angle and fills everything, and nothing in this preserve has an edge. The trunks have no dark side. The undergrowth reads as a flat surface. A fallen limb across the path does not announce itself until I am nearly standing on it. I cannot gauge distance because depth perception is a function of shadow and there is none. My equipment functions perfectly but my eyes are useless.

The moonlight is silver, and under the silver is a dusty shade of pink, coming down through the canopy in shafts, across the leaves and the path and on the backs of my own claws.

It is the most beautiful thing I have ever stood inside of.

I shake my head.

There is a child missing.

Forty beings spread out through the preserve.

Molten Lava has the deep sectors. Community volunteers have the near ground with a team member on each of them. Margaret and I have the wall line, east, because that is where my equipment is and because I am the only being on this planet who can read it.

Voices go up at intervals. “Dagr. Dagr Hellstone.”

They carry an enormous distance because that is the other thing about tonight—the preserve has stopped making noise and it is eerily quiet.

It has been silent since before the search began. Nothing is calling or moving in the understory. The fire birds went quiet when the moons closed and have not started again. During a light event every creature with a nest is in it and those without one have gone to ground.

It feels like the whole of the preserve is holding still and listening, and we are the only things making noise.

“It is hard for me to see,” Margaret admits. “Reminder that I don’t have night vision like the rest of you.”