“We should have found him by now,” Syl said, two hours from the lake. “Where is he?”

  “Don’t worry, Syl,” Dena said. “We’ll find your father.”

  “He should have been on his way back from Teb’s farm, at the least. We’re almost all the way there now… and no sign of him? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “A lot of things don’t make sense,” Dena replied. The look she gave Syl clearly stated Syl’s recent behaviour was one of those things.

  Syl sighed. Her best friend had questions, but she didn’t have answers.

  “And when you find him,” Dena went on, “you can ask him yourself where he’s been. You’ve got Enna’s look down, so he won’t be able to not answer. Frankly, it’s a little terrifying.”

  Syl scowled just thinking about the lecture she’d give that man. After she hugged him.

  “Hey guys,” Kule called from the front of the group. “Think I found something.”

  The others rushed over to where he crouched at the side of the road. It didn’t take any of them long to figure out what he was looking at.

  “Blood,” Kule said, sounding very proud of himself. “Maybe a couple of days old.”

  “Is this a path?” Rogar asked. “Where does it go?”

  It was overgrown, but Rogar was right; a small path leading off the road, and the trail of blood down it.

  “Path or not, we need to check it out,” Syl said and started into the bushes.

  “Wait, Syl,” Edar said urgently, and put his hand on her shoulder.

  “What is it?” Syl asked, the patience in her voice wearing thin. That blood could be her father’s.

  “Look,” he said, and released her when he was sure she wouldn’t run off. Then he pointed to a waist-high rock partially hidden by the bushes.

  “What’s that?” Reylo asked.

  “We can’t go down this path,” Edar said. He moved the bushes aside so they could all clearly see the rock, and the image of a pair of crossed Sho-Val’s carved into it. “It’s forbidden.”

  Syl hesitated. She knew that symbol. They all did. It guarded her people’s most sacred objects or places. Places her people weren’t supposed to go.

  “Forbidden or not,” Syl said, making up her mind. “I’m going. My father could be on the other side of these bushes, hurt, needing me. And tradition isn’t going to stop me from saving him.”

  “Syl, please,” Edar pleaded. “There’s a reason these places are forbidden. They’re dangerous.”

  “More dangerous than whatever’s in these woods hunting us?” Rogar asked.

  Edar didn’t answer immediately. “Yes,” he said finally.

  “What could be more dangerous than that?” Kule asked.

  “These places, they’re tied to the Anihazi somehow. My grandmother told me about this path, and the others like them in the valley. She said that if anybody were to trespass on them, they would call the Anihazi to us. And they would bring death to our valley. To our people.”

  “Death’s already here,” Syl said flatly, then started down the path before Edar could stop her.

  The others silently followed.

  Without the trail of blood, Syl would never have noticed the path. It was so overgrown with disuse it was barely a path at all. Small rocks on either side signalled its boundaries, and the trail of blood clearly followed them.

  More importantly, there was evidence of something passing there. Not just the blood, but also broken branches, scuffs in the dirt, and kicked-up rocks. After the ghost-like movements of the Lake-Wolf, or whatever it was, it was a relief to be able to follow something tangible.

  Except she might be following the trail of blood straight to her father’s corpse.

  “This blood doesn’t line up with what we saw back at the lake,” Reylo told the group as they walked. “That happened just before we got there. This looks like it happened days ago. Are they related?”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Related or not, somebody’s hurt—maybe dying—somewhere ahead of us,” Syl answered.

  “Yeah, that’s true,” Reylo said, but it was clear there was more to what he was thinking.

  “Spit it out,” Rogar said before Syl had a chance.

  “If the Lake-Wolf did do this, then why is it doubling back? If it’s already been here…” Reylo trailed off when Syl slowed down.

  “What are you saying?” Syl asked as she completely stopped and turned to look at him. Deep in her heart, she didn’t need to ask the question.

  “Uh,” Reylo said, and turned to the others for support.

  “You opened your big mouth,” Kule said. “You get to say it.”

  “I’m not saying this…” Reylo gestured to the blood, “is your father’s, Syl… but we all assumed the killings started at the village. That they all started with Kilik. What if we were wrong? What if the Lake-Wolf has been killing for days? Weeks?”

  “We would have heard about it.” Syl shook her head immediately. “With everybody coming to the Ka-Sho-Dan, somebody would have mentioned if people were going missing or dying.”

  “But farms like Teb’s?” Reylo finally said. “We wouldn’t know about those folks unless we went to check on them. Like we are now…”

  “He’s got a point, Syl,” Rogar said. “And I think we all need to accept the possibility before we find whatever is waiting for us at the end of this trail.”

  Syl didn’t like where the conversation was going, but that didn’t mean she could just dismiss it. They had a point. They had all assumed it’d started with Kilik. Her father could already be…

  She stopped that train of thought before it fully took hold.

  Focus on the current problem, not the ‘what if,’ she reminded herself.

  The blood was several days old; there was no disputing that. It could be the Lake-Wolf, or it could have been something else entirely. Maybe somebody fell and hit their head, and accidentally stumbled down the trail?

  “What is at the end of the trail?” Syl asked Edar.

  “I don’t know,” Edar answered.

  “You never came down one of these paths with your grandmother?” Leeze asked him.

  “Forbidden,” Edar said gravely. “Even for her.”

  “I know you’re nervous about this,” Syl said.

  “That doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

  “But if you were right, back at the lake,” she went on, “and this is an Anihazi hunting us, maybe there are answers down there?”

  Edar didn’t respond immediately. “There might be,” he finally admitted. “Or we might call more of them.”

  “What if this started the killings?” Leeze suddenly offered, her hand predictably going to her pendant. “If it isn’t a Lake-Wolf hunting us, if it is actually an Anihazi, maybe this,” she pointed at the blood, “is what brought it here.

  “I mean, that’s what Edar said would happen. Right? If we go somewhere forbidden, we bring death to the valley.”

  “Not you too,” Rogar sighed, but glanced to the sky again.

  “If it is an Anihazi,” Dena said slowly, “how do we kill it?” When Rogar rolled his eyes at her, she went on. “I don’t mean I think it is… I’m just thinking we should, you know, have an answer. Just in case.”

  “We don’t,” Edar said, and shrugged. “It kills us. The power of our Ancestors is the one thing that can kill the Anihazi, or so my grandmother said.

  “Our only hope is that it grows weak and dies from our Ancestors’ gaze.”

  “What happens if it’s not dead by the time the rains get here?” Dena asked.

  “Then we’ve lost. It will have a whole month to hunt us down.”

  Nobody had a response to that chilling thought, and the group started off again without another word.

  “This is a long path,” Kule said, several hours later. “I mean, I think we’re almost at the mountains.”

  Glancing up, the steep slopes were visible through breaks in the foliage above Syl.

  “I’ve never been this close,” Dena said. “They really are… tall,” she finished lamely.

  “You don’t say?” Kule quipped.

  “Both of you, quiet,” Syl shot back at them. “I think I see something ahead.”

  “What is it?” Rogar asked quietly from behind her. Even though he was taller than she was, or perhaps because of it, the foliage was blocking his view.

  Syl answered by nocking an arrow and dropping into a crouch. The shadows were long this close to the mountain, but she caught a hint of movement. She didn’t need to instruct the others what to do and barely heard a rustle as they fanned out into the underbrush around her.

  A light tap on her shoulder told her one had stayed behind with her. Reylo most likely; he couldn’t draw his bow.

  Syl nodded, for Reylo, then quick-stepped forward. She reached the edge of a semi-circular clearing a few seconds later and rushed out with her bow drawn. The others silently burst through the bushes on either side of her.

  All of them instinctively trained their bows on the only thing of note in the clearing; a stone archway carved into the side of the mountain. And the darkness of the tunnel beyond.

  The movement Syl had noticed was the dancing flames in the sconces on either side of the arch.

  “That’s… not normal,” Kule said as he looked at the flames.

  The blue flames.

  “You don’t say?” Dena mimicked Kule’s earlier tone.

  “Where does it go? To the other side of the mountain?” Reylo asked.

  “Edar?” Syl put the question to the most knowledgeable of the group.

  “Maybe?” he said, without his usual confidence. “My grandmother never said anything about this.”

  “Isn’t that the crossed Sho-Val symbol under the sconces?” Reylo asked. “This place must be sacred.”

  “Or forbidden. Taboo,” Edar countered. “We shouldn’t go in there.”

  “The trail of blood leads in,” Rogar pointed out. “We won’t be the first ones going in.”

  “And maybe that’s what brought the Anihazi down upon us,” Edar said, and physically took a step back. “We shouldn’t risk bringing more.”

  “I think it’s sacred,” Syl said. “And safe.”

  “Why would you say that? How can you know?” Edar asked.

  “Don’t you feel it? From those flames? A sense of… comfort. Like a welcome hearth after a long journey,” she said. The dancing flames were familiar and mesmerizing.

  Dena’s hand on her shoulder snapped her attention back to reality. “They are pretty,” Dena said. “But the threat of looming Anihazi death kind of ruins the moment.”

  “You’re right,” Syl said, and refocused on the trail of blood.

  “Are we going in?” Dena asked her.

  “Definitely,” she said, and walked into the darkness without a second thought.

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