Cryptids: Book One by David Haynes

Author:David Haynes [Haynes, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

18

It was a man’s voice. A soldier’s perhaps? Shaw waited, keeping still, pressed up against the cold but rank stone. He sank his fingers into Girl’s deep coat and hushed her gently. She was scared, he could feel her trembling beneath his touch.

He could feel it too. Not fear exactly, but the rising heat in his gorge was something he hadn’t felt for a long time. He needed to leave it a message, something obvious in its lair that said this was his land and that it was a trespasser.

He slid through the narrow slit, feeling the nauseous miasma of rotting flesh swirl about him. The path immediately sloped downward, deeper yet beneath Black Rocks. Girl, loyal as always, followed him inside.

He touched the walls once before vowing not to do it again. They were slimy, slick with rain that permeated down through the rock, but it wasn’t the greasy touch that he found repellent. The air, the rocks, the water, the darkness, it was all spoiled. The natural order had left this place; nothing retained the life it had been created with. An absence of essence, of that thing man called soul. It had been removed. He had never felt anything so utterly confusing, so completely against how he had lived his life. His mind swam at the idea of it. Girl’s claws clicked on the ground behind him. He was grateful for the sound.

The vague light from the slit in the rocks vanished after just a few seconds, another indicator that death resided here. He should stop, leave his scent and then get the hell out of here; yet his own ego, his own sense of pride, pushed him on. This was his ground. And if it came down to it, he’d fight for it. He hoped he wouldn’t have to. Fighting for territory was something that happened all the time in the days of the Great Pack, but he couldn’t recall a time when he’d been forced into that kind of action alone. There were so few monsters like him left that it was unnecessary. Humanity was the bigger problem, for all of them.

Still, Shaw had to make sure he did this right, made sure his message was understood. Whatever beef this thing had with humanity, it didn’t have to be with him too. Just leave a calling card and they could go their separate ways. And if that wasn’t possible, then alternative measures would have to be taken.

The path wound its way under and around the rocks. Maybe someone had mined it years ago, hacking away at the stone with picks and axes, following a vein of some metal they coveted. It wasn’t silver, that much he did know. He would have felt it in his blood.

The voice of the man had disappeared at the same time as the light failed. The creature was probably back on the hunt. There were other men out there, more soldiers. They may even kill the thing before it had the opportunity to come back and smell his presence.

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