Page 22 of Blacktail

Blacktail lay beside her all that night, studying the House of men with his hunter’s eyes.

v

When the morning light was high and he could hear the two-legs stirring in their den, Blacktail leapt out of the garden. Renren’s weakness terrified him, but he could think of no good thing that might come of staying beside her. He felt sure that if her mistress caught them together, she would be punished. He hunted all morning, capturing two fat squirrels and a mouse, that she might regain her strength. That afternoon he returned to the ditch and laid waiting for sunset.

From there he saw the female come to Renren in the afternoon, bringing her food and water. Renren begged for help, saying, “Please, two-legs. Your magic was flawed. I am hurt inside, where my litter was. I think…I think I may yet bleed.” The two-legs patted her head and did nothing.

Blacktail leapt the fence as soon as the sun was down. He knew as soon as his feet touched the earth that something was wrong.

Renren lay silent and still, shackled to her post. Blacktail trotted over to sniff her, whining and averting his eyes. He needed to be certain, but his terror was nearly the equal of his courage. “No,” he said to himself with each step. “No. No. No.” In his deepest mind he heard the thunderous crack of the two-legs’ magic echoing over his hill, smelled the blood drying on his mother’s body. “No, no, oh please, no, no.”

When at last he was able to scent Renren, he found her cold and dead with her belly full of blood.

vi

Blacktail waited until the still hours of the night, when House had been dark for a long time. He slipped into it through a window. Inside, he found himself next to the child, the one who had once brought Renren a pork chop. It was sleeping. He killed it quickly and silently, snapping its neck as it slept.

When after a few breaths he heard no stirring, Blacktail lifted the body in his jaws. He padded down a long tunnel to the cave where the mother and father slept. He stood in the threshold for a time, their child hanging limp in his jaws. The scent of the man-den was alien. It whispered to him of soft times, warm sleep with a full belly and no fear of what might hunt in the night.

In one swift leap, Blacktail was up on their bed. As the mother stirred, Blacktail dropped the boy on her chest. The full moon shone in through another window in the wall of the den. In its light the blood of her child dripped thick and black from Blacktail’s fangs.

“This is what it is to see your puppies die,” he said. He drew back far enough to give her a good look. He paused a moment, breathing rough in the dark, giving her time to take it in.

He let her scream once, then tore out her throat.

Her mate woke slower. At first that one was confused, by the scream, the weight on the bed, the scents of blood and wolf. But he collected himself quickly enough—self-preservation, perhaps. While Blacktail murdered the woman, the male rummaged around in a wooden box next to their bed, pulled something out. Blacktail recognized the thing immediately. This one was not so large as the one that had killed Blacktail’s mother…but they all smelled the same. Gun. In the darkness Blacktail bared his teeth. He made the killing sound deep in his throat.

The male did nothing to aid his dying mate or even his child. He only scrambled to escape. The smell of hot urine filled the room, mingling with the blood. The man’s terror was such that he tripped over himself, fell. Blacktail watched him flail in the dark, thinking of Renren, savoring the moment. A moment later the man made a gunshot.

The sound of it was like thunder. It illuminated the room. Blacktail reached out to feel what the prey would. He did this instinctively, just as he had done since he was a pup. Sometimes he wondered if it was more than simple imagination.

In that flash the prey would see my muzzle, curled back over sharp white teeth, ears forward, fur up. The prey would see its dying mate. It would see its dead child.

Blacktail thought it tried to cry out, but his scream was soundless. Gunshots rang out over and over again, like lightning in a terrible storm.

Blacktail felt the wind as something passed by his head in the dark. The flash dazzled his eyes. The thunderclaps made his ears ring. The stinking cloud masked the scents of the room. He froze, disoriented and uncertain. There was another flash. This time the strike grazed his fur. Blacktail twisted wildly. It crossed his mind to escape, slip back into the night, go to his hill—and why not? He had seen the man’s face, the silent scream. He was dead now in every way that mattered, or would be, once the terrible sights of this night sank in.

My work here is done, I think.

But then—perhaps through one of the fresh holes in the wall—he caught a whiff of Renren. She’s alone, he thought. She’s dead and alone outside in the dark.

At the thought, a killing rage rose up in his mind, huge and terrible as never before. It eclipsed everything—fear and grief and even love, hiding them all behind a boiling red moon. In that moment he had no need for imagination, or sight, or scent; he reached out with his spirit and knew the two-legs, knew it in his mind as it called on whatever foul god it worshipped for shelter, knew its essence, its soul, tasted it, arrogant and callous and callow, yes, all of that, but now, finally, finally, terrified. It had forgotten, he thought. A lifetime of warmth, of full belly and fearless nights made it forget. But now it remembers.

This, weak one. This is your place in the hunt.

Welcome home.

There in the dark, observed by none, Blacktail smiled.

He slipped round his prey, off to the side and behind it, making no sound, invisible and unscented. He snapped out, bit down hard on the hand that brought gunshots. The prey’s bones crackled between his jaws. He ripped the flesh from its neck and face and body, eating some, casting some aside, his neck whipping back and forth as he hewed flesh from bone and sent the two-legs on to whatever hell came next for such as it. He rolled in the blood and viscera, triumphant, anointing his shoulders with the scents of conquest. He lifted up his head and screamed, sending his fury beyond the walls of the den, past the sky and out into the heavens beyond.

—

Half a world away, in the grasses of the Serengeti under the noonday sun, the Old Kitty Mother was taking questions from her acolytes. This coven was mostly lions, and they towered over her. “Instruct us, Mother,” asked one novice. “What is the secret of your courage?” His tone was both sarcastic…and ever so slightly menacing.

Her lessons that day had been harsh. The Old Kitty Mother was small—men would have called her a house cat—but the true witches among this coven winced at the lion’s impertinence and braced themselves for blood. The Old Kitty Mother was not known for her patience.

She did not respond. She seemed not to notice. She brushed past him, walked to a nearby boulder, and began to climb. Each time her paw touched rock, the light of the noonday sun receded a bit more. By the time she reached the top, it was black as midnight—blacker, for no stars shone in this sky.