Under The Gods: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (The Last Promethean Book 1) by B.C. Palmer & Marie Robinson

Author:B.C. Palmer & Marie Robinson [Palmer, B.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Gabe

Gar, Fitz, Dora and I made our way through the darkening wood carefully, all eyes peeled. We had flashlights, and Dora was capable of making some light herself, but we only had a few options to pick from regarding what killed the giant wolf. If there was any chance it was killed by something bigger, the last thing we wanted was to attract its attention.

No one spoke until we got back to where we found the animal. It was, of course, still there. But there wasn’t quite as much of it.

“Fitz,” I said as I knelt at the beast’s head and peered closely at it under the beam of a flashlight, “is this thing… is it decaying too quickly?”

“Let me see,” Gar said.

He surprised me by nudging in close, sniffing around the air, and then leaning down to look closely at the skin and then more particularly at the tearing along the wolf’s belly. After several long moments he sat up and rested in a squat as he waved at the thing. “It’s not diseased, and it’s not decaying. And it wasn’t another animal that killed it.”

Fitz gave a little grunt of curiosity. “And you know that because…?”

“Because before I came here I worked at a farm, and once in a long while we lost something to coyotes,” he said. “No matter how many sacrifices we made to Demeter and Artemis. The… other Artemis, obviously. And if it was an animal, there would be tearing. Strips of skin and flesh. Not like this. There are no bones in this animal, for one thing. It’s like they… I don’t know, melted. But also, look at the wound. This wasn’t pulled and torn from the outside. Whatever did this came from inside and pushed its way out.”

“And you know it’s not disease or decay because?” I asked.

Gar sniffed again. “That smell is just the insides of an animal. It’s not putrefaction. Diseased animals smell wrong. Like an infected wound, there’s an especially nasty tang to it. But there”—he waved at the skin again—“this is just guts. Gross, but not that kind of gross.”

We stood in silence for a long moment, staring at the thing. I tried to imagine something that would fit that description, and gave the body a nudge with my boot. There was firmness there, but I thought Gar was probably right—no bones. Just thick skin, maybe fat, maybe cartilage. Nothing hard enough for bone.

“Oh, and the teeth just fell out?” Gar wondered. He picked a tooth up with his bare hand.

“Gar,” I snapped. “You can’t know that it’s not infected.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, “I can. I’ve seen everything under the sun and it all looks and smells pretty much the same. How come the teeth were left behind?”

“Left behind,” I repeated.

Gar frowned, and nodded as he collected a few more teeth. “Yeah. Obviously, something came out and took the bones with it.” He stood and pocketed the teeth. “Oh, do you think there could be some kind of animated wolf skeleton running around? It wouldn’t have teeth but could still be dangerous.

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