Page 4

Arken

Obizad

Two Months Ago

A man ambled by with wolf ears and a tail out. He dragged his left foot, and his right elbow bone shined bright white in the afternoon sun. It showed not only through his torn flannel but also through decaying flesh. His human mouth hung open, displaying the sharp teeth of his wolf. The teeth of his inner beast were so long he couldn’t properly close his mouth, and it left him looking more grotesque than death alone would have. He was alone, but he was hungry. The cries from his half-shifted form were a half-formed sob trying and failing to morph into a wolf’s growl.

Next to me the hair on the back of a ginger tabby cat bristled. Spinach was alive as I was. He was immune to the curse because he was a domestic cat and not a shifter. The end of Obizad or not, Spinach was my little baby. Though, if you asked him, he was the one in charge. Only sometimes I looked at him and still saw the little mewing kitten, half drenched and half-starved trying to eat spinach from my garden. That’s how he got his name.

“You stay close. The dead are hungry,” I warned my cat with body language since that was his native language anyway. I was in my fox form as we walked around big piles of leaves. I was russet and he was a ginger, so we mostly blended in. At least, we had learned to blend in since the curse started. We learned because otherwise he’d be eaten and I’d be dead. Only, the dead on Obizad no longer stayed dead and death spread through bites and scratches. It spread through eating tainted meat too.

One had to be cunning, spry, and very damn lucky to survive on Obizad. Only some days it felt as if I was the unlucky one. I hadn’t seen another shifter in the year Spinach and I had spent traveling. Soon, I’d have to give up on finding anyone else alive and leave Obizad. Our search was already morphing from finding survivors to finding a way off the world. At one time, we’d been connected to the Other World gateways. Only, we’d passed by meadows where two doors had been in the time before the curse and none were there now. Had the elves locked us all in to stop the spread? Were they afraid they’d have to fight the men who had half animal faces?

Spinach didn’t move closer to me, but he also didn’t charge at Mister-Shiny-Elbow. He bristled any time the undead got close to us. He might not have had the words I did, but he knew something was wrong with them. He could smell it. Plus, we’d seen more than one pack of them descend upon animals and shifters alike and gobble them up. This morning we had the same goal as the undead wolfman. Our bellies were empty too. The poor creature we found would be stuck between the living and the undead trying to kill them. What a fate.

I often wondered what the wild animals made of the curse. At least, I assumed what happened on Obizad was a curse. What else could it be? I didn’t spend too much time dwelling on what shaped the fate of my home and those who inhabited it, because more likely than not, I’d never know. Some things in life were like that. Some questions didn’t have answers.

The breeze shifted bringing not only the scent of the Mister-Shiny-Elbow but also the scent of a rabbit. I sprinted. I had to get there before the undead wolf. If he even touched it the poor thing would be useless to me and Spinach and our bellies couldn’t take too many more days of eating grass. It wasn’t so much as fueling us as prolonging our suffering. If we hadn’t been so healthy to begin with, he’d be dead and I’d be undead by now.

But our physiques and health had stood up. We hunted and I gathered. Some nights dinner was merely root veggies. We were just in a barren part of the world. I brought us this way in hopes that the hardest to reach Other World gateway might still be here. No such luck. So now we had to find something to eat and then find greener meadows.

Spinach ran right on my heels. Together we’d taken down bigger prey than we could alone. We weren’t pack hunters by nature, but we learned because a full belly made life more pleasant. The undead ran too now. His left foot dragging along making a sickening clunk-drag sound that sounded too wet for a living being to make. If I were alone, I’d have stopped and let him have the rabbit. It wasn’t worth the risk. Only, I wasn’t alone and once my hungry companion scented the rabbit there was no stopping him. So, I did the only thing I could do. I shifted into my human form and charged Mister-Shiny-Elbow with my dagger. I’d learned early on keeping it in my pocket meant it survived the shifts. It wasn’t comfortable, but comfort was a foreign word on Obizad now.

Upon hearing me, Mister-Shiny-Elbow gave up on chasing the rabbit and Spinach. There was slower prey around. On two feet, I was an easier catch. I braced as he ambled toward me, picking up speed. I cringed against the sound his dragging leg made. I’d only have one chance to shove my dagger through his skull before he got those wolfy teeth into me. Even if I died or became undead at least Spinach would still have a chance at life.

When he was five feet away, he charged over the dusty, near-barren ground and I raised my dagger. Their skulls were getting softer with time or at least that was my theory. He snarled and howled and I prayed that whoever he once was didn’t exist inside him anymore. The wolves of Obizad were kind nature keepers. My sleuth had allied with them through many harsh, barren winters.

“Gone are the nature keepers,” I whispered mostly to myself as I struck out, and my dagger found give in his forehead. I snarled and growled as he grappled to get closer to me. His nails only found the thick leather hides I’d wound around all my limbs for protection from the undead. My dagger found his brain and he fell hard, almost instantly. I followed him down, twisting the knife to sever any working tissue that might be able to reach out for another synapsis.

“Sorry, wolf brother,” I sighed. “I hope you’re not in there to hear me.”

I wiped my dagger off on the ground and stuck it back in its sheath. Once upon a time, it lived a life as a hunter dagger, but now it was only for the undead. The squeal of a rabbit escaping the cruelty of this world through death broke through the meadow. I shifted down into my fox form with my knife and its sheath safely back inside my pocket and sprinted to find Spinach before anything else did.

Chapter 4

Leopold

The Hidden Fox Village

Two Months Ago

The energy shifted as we stepped through the mist and into the fox village. I sighed as the familiar, welcoming magic washed over me. I was home. I was back. There always had been something soothing about this place even when my parents brought me to visit as a kit. This was home. Maybe I’d lived here before.

“Souls are often reborn into their own families,” Pox said over our witch and familiar link.

He was right. So, maybe I had lived here before. Maybe I ran around here before my carrier was ever born. I shook the thought away. The Halloween season was not the time to ponder past lives that might not have been pleasant. Better to stay in the here and now. Especially with Liam’s spirit board weighing down my duffle.

When I first arrived years ago and needed to choose somewhere to be my home base, I avoided the house my parents stayed at when they vacationed here. It was the house my carrier grew up in and being there without them felt like trespassing on something holy. Maybe it was because I kept my trips here secret or perhaps my carrier had put up some ward to keep us from plundering through his stuff. Foxes loved to explore and look for shiny things. I was no exception.

In lieu of staying at the family house, I’d taken over one of the other abandoned houses for my trips. The first time I visited that meant a lot of work to get things the way I liked them and making it feel like home. Though, I didn’t change a single thing about the altar room. There were little statues to long forgotten fox deities. Maybe those were our Frost and Juda. Maybe one day, someone would find out. I hoped they told me, if they ever did. We’d been coming here so long now, as long as I didn’t miss a year, the house stayed exactly as Pox and I left it.

“We’re going to live here for real one day,” Pox said as I pushed open the door. “Us and your alpha. Maybe we’ll bring Ox too. He’s nice to have around. He’ll get me stuff from the top shelf.”

“You only say that because he sneaks you extra food,” I laughed, taking off my duffel bag and sitting it down by the plaid sofa. It and all the furniture were relics of days gone by. I checked every room and found them empty except for a young fox asleep in the bathroom sink. I scratched the top of his head and introduced myself.

“You weren’t out and about the last time I was here, huh? You’re a young guy,” I said and then looking around to ensure Pox wasn’t watching, I snuck him a freeze-dried chicken heart. Pox usually didn’t mind sharing with the foxes in the village. Only he wanted one every time I brought them out and he’d had enough chicken hearts today already after breaking into my bag while I napped on the train.

The little guy yawned and stood up to eat his chicken heart. I left him to his own devices and unpacked my duffle bag. We’d only be here a few nights, but I liked to be cozy wherever I went. Plus, I wanted to get everything set up in the altar room to talk to my ancestors. I’d brought some candles that smelled really good in fragrances called ‘Apple Orchard’ and ‘Pumpkin Patch.’ I cooked up a pot roast and a roasted rabbit to put out for them too. What they didn’t eat the wild foxes would take. I’d leave the spirit board for last of course. Nothing good ever came of leaving a spirit board laying around. Us foxes loved mischief after all.