Trail of Blood by Michael McBride

Author:Michael McBride [McBride, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Factor V Classic Releases
Published: 2015-02-27T06:00:00+00:00

VI

THE SMELL OF ITS PREY DROVE IT INTO A FRENZY. THAT DIVINE AROMA WAS all around it now, seeping through its pores to induce a state of euphoria. Whatever small measure of control it once held over its faculties was now a memory. Its instincts assumed full control of its body, and they were tapped into a primal core where only rage and bloodlust resided. The wet scent of human blood caused a descent into madness with the speed of a plummeting elevator. Faster and faster it raced. Branches tore lacerations across its face and chest as it circled its quarry just out of sight, clinging to the smoke, becoming a part of it.

The beast leapt onto a boulder, hunched its back, and released a roar that brought the world into focus around it, but even that didn’t matter now. With the aroma of its prey in its nostrils and lungs, it no longer felt anything but hunger and desire. It could have sprinted headlong into a tree trunk and broken every rib without the slightest twinge of pain and been back on its feet in a second.

The scent, that wonderful, wonderful scent, intensified when it bellowed. Every sound it made, every crash of detritus underfoot or branch that snapped amplified the smell as though they were swimmers bleeding the shark-infested waters red through hundreds of small cuts, opening slowly, tantalizingly. It parted the shroud of smoke and was assaulted by the sweet music of screams, each one thickening the aroma of their fear until it was an oil clinging to its skin, filling it with ecstasy.

It wanted to hurl itself down into their midst, to carve them to the bone and gorge itself on the meat. The anticipation was maddening, but at the same time, the symphony of fear it conducted was still building to a wet crescendo, and when it reached that point it would throw itself upon them alongside its brethren with savage ferocity and a rush of blood.

The others were feeling the same thing, pausing in their whirlwind torment only long enough to bray into the smoke. One after another—

Bang!

It stopped where it was and flattened to its belly in the cinders. The sound had been peripherally familiar, an echo from a past life. The food corralled between them had made that sound several times, but that one had been different. The explosive noise hadn’t culminated with the dry pounding of the earth and a scattering of pellets and gravel, but a damp thud that was followed by the thump of a body hitting the ground amidst a splash of fluids. It could taste the death on the air, the bitter tang of spilled blood, and even though the mess positively reeked, it only added to is fervor.

It arched its back, pushing itself only far enough up from the earth to accommodate its swelling chest, and released a roar.

One of its kin was helpless against the rotten smell of one of their own, unable to resist the bloodlust coursing through its veins.

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