Chapter Three

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Chapter Three

“The cost for saving the dog will be higher than you think. Far higher than you could ever imagine.”

Zave opened his eyes to find himself lying in his bed, suspended in a void of cold, black nothingness. His body immediately seized up. Over the past week he had experienced horrors the likes of which he could barely comprehend, but the dark…nothing could compare to the suffocating, inescapable, all-encompassing weight of the dark.

A shadow even deeper than the pitch blackness around it rose from the void at the foot of his bed. Its eyes were the only specks of light to be seen, and they glowed a diseased yellow.

The form was indistinct, constantly shifting like it was a shadow being cast by a fire that gave off no light, but somewhere below his growing terror Zave recognized it as the beast from the night before. The one who had murdered Derrick, Jake, and Nat before eating their flesh like mere animals.

Jacob Donner.

Frozen in fear as he was, Zave could do nothing but watch as Jacob reached a shadowy limb out and wrapped his skeletal fingers around Zave’s neck. His touch was like ice, a cold so deep that it burned like fire.

"You are not ready," he hissed, his voice like a winter wind.

Zave gasped for air, but each breath froze in his throat.

"You need to cook a while longer to develop your flavor."

"Get off!" Zave managed to yell—and suddenly his bed and the void were gone.

"Zave!" came Fey's worried voice. "Are you all right?"

It took Zave a minute to remember where he was. He, as well as Fey and all the others, were on the plane that Glenn had led them to. Even now they were more than five miles in the air, racing toward Utah and Skinwalker Ranch.

Zave craned his neck around to see Fey peering at him from between the seats. She was seated behind him, with the plane's window on his right, and Glenn to his left. Behind Fey sat Clueless and Ember—Zave had tried to sit next to Clueless, but in an especially cutting insult she had obstinately selected the seat next to the surly fox-walker instead. Behind them sat Norrin, dead asleep and taking up two seats all by himself.

Taking a deep breath, Zave was finally able to stop shaking. "Y- Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, did I make a scene?"

"A little," Fey admitted, "but it's okay. It was just a bad dream, right?"

"Right," Zave whispered, reaching up to feel his throat. He knew it was all in his head. Who wouldn't suffer a bad dream or two after what he'd seen? But at the same time, he almost swore he could still feel where Donner had grabbed him. Like there should have been a burn—or frostbite, more likely—in the perfect shape of a handprint.

"Here," said Glenn, holding something out to him.

Curious, Zave took it. It was a little wooden carving, about the size of his thumb. It had obviously been whittled in a hurry, but the shape of a human head was unmistakable.

"Find the one that belongs to you and pass the rest back to the others," Glenn said to Fey, handing her a small handful of similar carvings. "I want you to keep hold of these. Always have them close by."

Zave glanced at his carving again, then back at Fey's. There didn't seem to be anything special about them—except, now that he really looked, he saw that Fey's carving had a goat's head instead of a human like his.

"What are they?" he asked.

"A safeguard, just in case," Glenn answered. "It's not much, but it should help if you run into trouble."

Zave slipped it into his pocket and turned to look out the window. Far, far below them, the earth was like a green and brown patchwork quilt. Farmland made squares and rectangles, while the occasional forests were huge, shapeless patches of green. Every now and then they would pass over a city, its whites and grays a stark contrast to the more natural colors that surrounded them. Looking down at them, Zave couldn't help but feel a sense of detachment from those tiny harbors of civilization. He tried to tell himself it was just because he was so high up, but something in the back of his mind whispered to him that there was more to it. More had changed about him over the past week than even he realized.

He couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that he no longer belonged to that world of lights and machines, where convenience and comfort were taken for granted.

"Have you ever been on an airplane?" he asked, turning to Glenn again.

The gray haired deer-walker shook his head.

Zave pointed toward the window. "You want to switch seats? Look outside for a—"

"All a view like that would do," Glenn cut him off softly, "is remind me of Skylar."

Zave's mouth snapped shut. Overwhelmed as everyone was by the deaths of the pack's youngest members, it was easy—disturbingly easy—to forget that they had lost one of their older members too. The hawk-walker had perished before Zave had even arrived to save Fey and the others from the wendigo horde.

Following the visions let me save Fey, Glenn, Ember, and Norrin, he thought ruefully. Could I have saved Skylar too if I'd been a little faster? Or would everything have played out differently if I hadn't arrived at the exact moment I did?

A low rumble reached Zave's ears, just barely louder than the distant roar of the plane's engines, and he looked outside to see a line of dark clouds on the horizon. Lightning flashed deep inside them, followed by quiet claps of thunder.

"It looks like it's coming straight for us," Fey said, peering nervously out her own window. "And fast."

"Did the forecast say anything about storms today?" Zave asked, shuffling uncomfortably in his seat.

Fey snorted. "How would I know? There aren't any weather channels in the woods, Zave."

Zave's face burned with embarrassment, but it wasn't enough to banish the growing feeling of dread in his stomach.

"That day back home," he said quietly, eyeing the goat-walker behind him, "there was a huge storm just before the…you-know-whats appeared. Do you think—"

Before he could finish, a gust of wind slammed into the side of the plane, and the entire thing wobbled back and forth a little. A few people muttered worriedly, but it quickly righted itself.

"Unless they learned how to grow wings when we weren't looking," said Fey, "I don't think we need to worry."

By now the sky outside the plane had gone almost completely dark. It was still bright inside the plane, but Zave couldn't help but wring his hands as he stared out the window. Raindrops battered against the glass like tiny bullets, and lightning would flash every few seconds, revealing the churning, roiling sea of clouds surrounding them. By now the thunder was coming at the same time as the lightning, and each clap was deafening.

"How do we know they didn't grow wings?" he asked, his heart in his throat.

"Zave," Glenn said calmly, "sometimes a storm is just a—

"Attention passengers," a disembodied voice interrupted, "this is your captain speaking. We've run into some unexpected weather, but things are going to be just…"

His voice trailed off, and for a few seconds everything was silent except for the crash of thunder and the patter of rain.

"What in the world is THAT?" the captain exclaimed.

Then there was a BANG even louder than the thunder, and the entire plane lurched to the side.

NEXT CHAPTER: 11/27/2024