The Wolf's Bounty Read online

  Raleigh dared not fall behind in this place. No one would stand aside and let her pass. She couldn’t move an inch in this place if Bishop hadn’t forged a path for her to follow. She kept close to his back and hovered in the wake of his passage.

  They passed the bounty hunter who first offered him the job, but the man didn’t rise again. He touched his forehead, and Bishop nodded and went on his way. Raleigh caught sight of the entrance ahead. A wave of relief lifted her spirits, but she couldn’t help looking back. Would she ever see this place again? Would she ever discover all the mysteries and hidden curiosities of Hinterland?

  She wanted to find out. She wanted to see it for herself, and now she had. She would never forget what she saw here, and her burning curiosity would never stop wishing she could get back here. Maybe Bishop would bring her back someday.

  Bishop picked up his pace to gain the entrance, but he never reached it. At that moment, a bunch of men jumped out of the crowd at the two of them. They looked like men at first glance, but they struck terror into Raleigh’s heart.

  They had two arms and two legs, two hands and two feet, just like real people. They even had two ears on either side of their heads, but no faces. Blank white skin covered their skulls with no hair, and they stretched out their arms toward Raleigh and Bishop.

  Raleigh staggered a step back. She took a fraction of a second to react to these strange non-people, but Bishop reacted in an instant. He pulled a pistol from his belt and blasted one of them right in the face. Its head exploded and sent a shower of blood and brain over the surrounding crowd.

  He didn’t wait. He spun the opposite way and yanked a dagger from his waist. He lunged forward and drove the point to the hilt with all his strength into another creature’s chest. His shoulders bulged and flexed under his frock coat, and his coat tails whipped from side to side when he turned with lightning speed.

  He stepped back and shoved the stricken assailant aside, but more of these faceless apparitions rushed the pair from all sides. Bishop’s attack woke Raleigh from her trance. She pulled her curved throwing blade from her belt and swung her crossbow down, but she didn’t have time to load it before one of the creatures laid its disembodied hands on her shoulders.

  She whirled around and clubbed her crossbow across the side of the thing’s head, but she didn’t have time to stand and fight. Another five moved in on her from the opposite direction. She danced to her other foot and slashed another one across its throat. Hot, black blood splattered her face. A few droplets touched her lips. Her tongue darted out, and she tasted blood.

  That taste sent her into a blood-fueled rage. She understood blood. She understood a battle to the death against insurmountable odds. She would make these things sorry they ever messed with her.

  She wheeled the other way, but she didn’t see Bishop anywhere. A solid mass of the faceless automatons blocked her whole view. She cut and bashed and smashed in all directions. The things having no faces actually made it easier to kill and maim them with all her might. She didn’t have to think or worry she might be killing a real person. They were brainless lumps of flesh.

  How they knew where to find her without eyes or ears, she couldn’t understand—not that she gave herself any chance to think about it. However they knew, they found her. No matter how many of them she killed, more rushed in to take their places. They lurched toward her with their arms out. Their hands closed around her arms and shoulders and neck. They held her in a vise so she couldn’t break free.

  She started to go down under their constant advance. Panic took hold. She had to get out of here. No amount of fighting could defeat so many bodies, even if they were unarmed.

  Where could she go? She didn’t know anything about this market or this strange world. So many unknown forces surrounded her on all sides, she didn’t know where to turn.

  She called out, “Bishop!” but no one answered. She thought fast. They weren’t so far from the entrance when these faceless zombies attacked. Maybe she could get there and fight her way out into the world. She would rather face Rekworth’s people than this mob of faceless whatevers.

  Their heads towered over her. She turned so many times she wasn’t sure in which direction the entrance lay. She battled them back for a second, just to give herself an inch of breathing space. Then she jumped up to peer over their heads.

  She only had to do it once. There was the entrance not twenty yards away. She had to get there. She couldn’t go down in this strange place. What would her father say? He would probably never know. She would become one of the many unburied idiots who tried to apprentice to Knox Bishop.

  She should have listened to him. She should have taken the danger seriously. Where was he? Was he dead now, too?

  She took a chance. She slashed back and forth one more time to clear a path. Then, in a rabid frenzy, she whipped her crossbow across her back and hung her blade in its place at her belt. She yanked both her pistols and fired. The creatures clustered so thickly around her she didn’t even bother to aim.

  Two corpses teetered and toppled over, right on top of her. She collapsed onto her knees under their weight and hit the floor on all fours, but the dead bodies accomplished what she wanted them to accomplish. They confounded the rest of the things so they couldn’t get their hands on Raleigh.

  Quicker than lightning, she crawled between their legs toward the entrance. These things weren’t the smartest bricks in the sidewalk. At least she could outwit them even if she couldn’t fight them.

  She scrambled between a forest of legs until she found legs wearing pants and shoes. She glanced back at the crowd of bare legs behind her. They all faced the other way. The creatures still tried to get her out from under their dead friends at the center of that circle.

  She crawled a few more paces before she dared stand up and dust herself off. The entrance loomed right in front of her. Would Esmeralda let her pass without Bishop? Raleigh couldn’t see him. If he was still alive in this market somewhere, he would have to take care of himself.

  She pressed forward. No one bothered her or tried to stop her. She holstered her pistols and shoved the door open. It swung into the entrance, but Esmeralda didn’t even stand up from her stool in the corner when Raleigh ducked through to freedom.

  Raleigh stopped to catch her breath. Esmeralda rolled her eyes. “You okay there, honey?”

  Raleigh jerked her head toward the door. “You haven’t seen Bishop come through, have you?”

  “No.” Esmeralda chuckled. “I would definitely remember that.”

  “If he does come through, can you tell him I went back out to the tunnel.”

  “Sure, honey.”

  “Thanks.”

  Raleigh took a deep breath and started forward when the door blasted off its hinges. It slammed back into the wall with a deafening bang, and dozens of the faceless lurching things glutted the entrance.

  Esmeralda still didn’t get up. She watched the whole scene in languid tranquility. She lolled her tongue to the other side of her mouth.

  Raleigh didn’t see any more. She bolted forward down the tunnel the way she came. She didn’t pause at the lake shore, but ran straight onto the crystalline surface. It formed stepping places under her feet. No matter how fast she ran, she always put her foot down on a solid surface.

  She jumped onto the ninth stone and made for the long tunnel, but the creatures charged right behind her. She wouldn’t have time for the lantern. She would have to crawl as fast as she could to get away from them.

  Would they stop when she gained the outside world? Would they shrink from the light of day, or would she lead these mysterious beings into the normal world of horse-drawn coaches, muddy streets, and children returning from school?

  She would figure out what to do about that when the time came. They followed close behind, and every time she slowed or paused or hesitated, they gained a few steps on her. She couldn’t fight them again. The moment she stopped running, she was done for.

&nbs
p; She hit the stepping stones and turned the corner. The music still rippled over the lake from the castle in the distance, and people still passed back and forth behind the lighted windows. She would love to find out what was going on inside that castle, but now was not the time. That was one more mystery she would leave behind in Hinterland. She would just have to wonder.

  She charged toward the tunnel, but she almost fell among the flashing eels when another mob of faceless bodies appeared out of the tunnel’s mouth. They cut off her retreat and closed her between their ranks and the onrushing crowd behind her.

  She dodged back and forth for a moment, but she had nowhere else to go. She teetered on the stones. Only one avenue of escape remained. She turned on her heel and raced over more stepping stones straight toward the castle.

  Chapter 12

  Raleigh’s lungs ached from running for so long. Her throat hurt and her knees shivered, but she dared not slow down. She struggled up the long curved marble steps to the castle door.

  She pounded on the thick oak slabs, but the faceless people already tripped across the stepping stones behind her. She couldn’t stand on ceremony. She grabbed the big iron ring embedded in the door and heaved with all her strength. To her surprise, it glided open, and she darted inside.

  She cast one quick glance around a huge hall lit up with thousands of candles set into wall sconces and chandeliers. Four stout brackets set into the back of the heavy door, and a long beam rested against the wall. It fit those brackets perfectly, and it could only be standing there for one purpose.

  She picked it up and slotted it into place to barricade the door before she raced into the castle. The music got louder, and the sound of human voices led her on. People laughed and called to each other over the lively music, but she didn’t see anybody.

  She made it halfway across the enormous entrance hall when deathly silence descended all around her. The music stopped, and the candles faded to nothing. The hall fell into gloomy darkness so Raleigh couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  A thunderous crash rocked the castle. She jumped out of her skin, and another boom followed the first. The doors shook, and the barricade heaved. Those creatures were trying to break down the door.

  She had to go on. She had to find help. She groped her way forward. A tiny glimmer of light led her to a banquet hall where a long table stretched from one glowing fireplace to another. Raleigh’s eyes popped when she saw mounded platters of food covering the table and people standing around.

  She hurried into the room and gasped for breath. “Help me! Please help me!”

  No one moved. Not one face turned around at her appearance. Raleigh stood still and held her breath. What was going on?

  She took another tentative step into the room and approached a cluster of people near the fireplace. The women wore long, elaborate gowns glittering with gems and pearls. By the light from the fire, she saw that everyone in the room wore a masquerade mask to hide their features.

  She studied each frozen image. None of these people moved a muscle, and the mouths below their masks twisted in the most grotesque toothy smiles she ever witnessed.

  The food steamed on the tables, and the delicious smells of roasted meat and savory vegetables floated into Raleigh’s nose. Gleaming decanters of wine shone in the flickering firelight, and a bubbling champagne flowed over the wings of a large swan ice sculpture.

  Raleigh smacked her lips in thirst, but she dared not go near that table. Every hair stood on end. The people stared into space through glassy eyes, but the surface shimmered with subtle moisture. She could almost believe they were still alive, although their chests and shoulders didn’t move with breathing.

  She wandered to another cluster of people and found them as immobile and terrifying as the first. Something sinister kept these people frozen in place, never moving. A sinking feeling came over her. She didn’t want to get frozen like them. She had to get out of here.

  She turned around to make her way out of the banquet hall when she bumped into one of the women. The woman rocked on her heels and almost tipped over, but Raleigh caught her in time and righted her again.

  When Raleigh removed her hands from the woman’s body, her fingers tangled in a thin strand of something almost too fine to see with the naked eye. Raleigh had to squint and peer close to see what it was.

  She touched the strand again. It rose from the woman’s elbow toward the ceiling far above. Raleigh tugged it out of the way, and the firelight struck it bright and shiny for an instant. The slight pressure on the string made the woman’s arm move like a puppet.

  Raleigh took a closer look at the woman and found dozens of these strings attached to every part of her. Now that she knew what to look for, Raleigh saw the threads everywhere. They connected every person in the room to the ceiling far beyond sight.

  Raleigh craned her head back to follow the strings up into the dark, and she almost died of fright. Perched on the ceiling directly above her head, with its beady black eyes fixed firmly on her face, sat the biggest spider Raleigh ever saw.

  It covered half the ceiling, and it moved its hairy legs to creep an inch closer. Its sharp curved mandibles pinched in front of its mouth, and it snuck along those gossamer wires connecting everyone in the room to the ceiling. When it stepped, someone moved before coming to rest again.

  The mandibles opened, but instead of a spine-chilling scream, music and laughter and the sounds of people talking came out of the spider’s mouth. The sound echoed around that still chamber to send chills up Raleigh’s spine.

  The most terrifying part of the thing, though, was its face. Above the masticating jaws, the eyes and face of a man glared down at her. They fixed their flashing eyes on her, and they understood. A human’s consciousness worked behind that hideous form. That spider could think and plan and strategize. It could devise this whole scene to attract its prey into its web.

  Didn’t Bishop warn her the castle was a trap? The music, the shadows passing in front of the windows, the smell of delectable food—all worked to entice people where the spider could catch them.

  Her terror and surprise startled her into freezing for a moment. The spider took advantage of that instant to move one of its legs. A jet of fine silk looped through the air toward her. It rippled down from the ceiling toward her head.

  She snapped out of her trance to dodge out of the way, but the spider moved so fast she couldn’t keep track of what it was doing. Dozens of invisible lassos draped down from the ceiling on all sides. She couldn’t get away from them. She would get caught in the web. She would get frozen in place and never leave this castle.

  At that moment, a crash from the outer chamber shattered the stillness. Dozens upon dozens of the faceless zombies flooded into the room. They knocked over the frozen people and bumped into the table.

  The spider spun around to face this new intrusion. Lightning quick, it pulled another thread, and two great wooden doors slammed shut behind the faceless creatures. They were so stupid they got too preoccupied with catching Raleigh to notice they were trapped in the spider’s deadly lair.

  The spider turned all its attention on the intruders. Here were dozens of tasty morsels. It no longer cared about little old Raleigh. The spider shot thousands of strands at the stumbling brutes. The threads flashed through the chamber so fast they formed a cloud against the dark ceiling.

  Raleigh cast around, but she could see no other exit from the room. Then her eye fell on a curving banister high above. It cut across the ceiling and swooped down into the room. A staircase rose from one side of the room to an upper balcony. She hadn’t noticed it before in the shadows.

  She raced around the scene of battle. Webs and tangled sticky threads surrounded the faceless people. They fought as hard as they could, but the spider covered them from head to foot in masses of gluey silk.

  Raleigh hit the stairs going a mile a minute. She took them two at a time and gained the balcony. The spider didn’t quit. It showered th
e creatures with so many pounds of silk they couldn’t move. They never gave Raleigh a second thought.

  She dashed along the balcony in search of any way out. She ran all the way to the end and started to despair. If that spider came after her, she would never get out of here.

  At the far end of the balcony, she came across a tiny window barely bigger than a breadbox. She heaved it open and slithered through. Screams ripped up the stairs, along with the all-too-familiar sounds of music and laughter.

  The first thing Raleigh saw when she poked her head out the window was the lake spread out before her. Her spirits soared. She was facing the exit tunnel to the outside world.

  She dragged her body through the hole and scaled down the castle wall to the ground. The rough black stones gave her enough hand and foot holds to climb down with no trouble.

  She caught her breath at the lake shore. No faceless automatons followed her. She could take her time and regain her strength, just in case she faced another fight against the wolves outside.

  She picked her way across the stepping stones to the other side, but she cast a glance back over her shoulder before she climbed into the tunnel. The castle lay dark and gleaming across the water. The music and laughter bubbled from its lighted windows, and shadows moved back and forth behind the glass.

  The market lay to one side. This lake opened into a vast unknown world unseen and unsuspected by people on the surface. This must be the world through which Bishop traveled in his work. No wonder none of his apprentices survived. That world contained untold dangers and mystical wonders.

  She let out a shaky breath. She wouldn’t be sorry to get back to the house for a nice quiet supper with Dax and Mrs. Mitchell.

  No wonder Bishop guarded them so closely. No wonder he wanted to keep Dax away from this world. Already Raleigh wanted to protect the boy from it, too. She never wanted him to find out Hinterland existed. She wanted someone, somewhere, to live their lives in peace and innocence. That one person left unscathed by this hideous world offered her a sanctuary to which she could retreat after fighting all these hostile forces. She could crawl into the knowledge of Dax’s innocence and find rest.