Are you telling me that this thing has a baby daddy? There's another one?" he asked sharply.
"No," I answered as I turned to meet his eye, "I'm telling you, we don't know how many more there are, or how grown they are."
Yes, you do, an inner voice said. Think it through. "She's been teaching them to hunt." I followed the lead, thinking out loud. "That's why there's been so much prey taken lately. I knew it was way too much for one solitary scavenger."
"Oh, well, thanks for sharing," Dean broke in sarcastically, "Anything else you forgot to mention?"
"Hey," I shot back, jumping up from the crouch, "I told you from the gate that I didn't know much. How am I supposed to know their load capacity? I don't remember you suggesting...oh crap." A soft growl had interrupted my tirade, a reminder that this was neither the time nor place to sort out what had gone wrong and whose fault it was.
Out of the mouth of the den poked a curious, fur-bare muzzle. This one wasn't nearly the size of its mother, not by half, hardly more than a good sized dog. That didn't make it harmless. It ventured forward a few hesitant steps before halting and retreating to the cover of the den. It was confused, didn't understand what had happened, but it knew it didn't like it.
"What?" Dean asked, scanning the area.
"You can't see it?" I asked, keeping my eyes trained on the newly arrived threat.
"See what?"
Shadows stirred in the mouth of the cave. The boldest would have been the first to venture into the open to investigate. Now the rest were growing restless, working up the nerve to join in. The leader was getting more agitated, dancing between challenging advance and skittish withdrawal, the growls growing deeper.
"Oh, holy crap!" Dean yelled when it jumped forward, posturing in threat, emboldened by the arrival of its litter mates. He had drawn and fired, winging the pup before I could react.
Any other time, I would have been ribbing him over the near miss, but the half grown beast charging at us in a bloody rage made it hard to enjoy the moment. The rest took their cue from the first and spilled out of the cave mouth, coming at us as a pack.
"Run!" I yelled, grabbing a handful of his sleeve as I took my own advice.
Yes, I know, you never run from a predator. It lights the fuse on a chase instinct and pits you in a foot race that, odds are, will end painfully for you. I'm not saying it was a smart move. With five to two odds, on a slope with unsteady footing, it was just the least dumb one we had.
We stumbled and tumbled our way down the rise to the flatland, the pack in pursuit and gaining. There was no outrunning them for long, and turning to fight would have just saved them the trouble of chasing us down.
Dean knew it too, and even so, he was right beside me. He could have outpaced me easily, but he was holding back, making sure we didn't get separated. Damned if I was going to let it get him killed.
We closed on the trees that had covered our approach and I steered us towards the nearest one. With a foot against the trunk, I vaulted myself within reach of the lowest limb and hauled myself onto it. Dean leaped for it and was already hoisting himself up by the time I could turn to offer a hand. I gotta say, for a city boy, he could climb a tree pretty good.
The pack swarmed below us, one of them making a jump to snap at one of Dean's feet and catching the heel of his boot to the snout for its trouble. It scampered back, yipping in pain and surprise. The rest swarmed the trunk, searching for some way to reach their treed prey and voicing loud threats.
Dean and I exchanged knowing glances. It was a temporary solution, but it had bought us some time. Every second you're still breathing is a chance to find a way to keep it that way. We needed another option and it needed to be soon.
As if to emphasize that point, our perch let out an ominous creak and sagged under our combined weight.
"Get near the trunk!" I barked and scrambled up into the higher branches.
"Yeah, I got that. I'm not an idiot!" he yelled over the noise from the ground.
There wasn't a lot to choose from higher up. None of the branches were going to be strong enough alone, but I was able to straddle over two that, together, should hold me...for a while. "I assume you can see them now." I said as I got myself settled into my precarious nest.
"Oh yeah, I can see them." he sneered, "Ugly little bitches, just like their mother."
I leaned my head back against the trunk, relieved and frustrated at the same time. "At least we know they're still solid." I sighed.
"That's just how I like 'em." I heard him growl.
He had already pulled the slide by the time I yelled, "No! Don't!" I swear, it was like he was always holding the gun and it was just invisible when he didn't need it. "You might spook them into bolting." I cautioned him.
"I'm not really seeing how that's a bad thing." he snapped. Then his expression changed, signaling that he had put it together. If they broke off the attack, they would go see through again and we would have to do all of this all over again. "Damn it," muttered uncorking the gun.
The kei'lutt had figured out that jumping and bracing their fore paws on the trunk to stand on their hind legs wasn't going to put us in their reach. Now they were worrying about the trunk, sniffing here and there, trying to find some path up to us. They were still young, which worked in our favor. Even as animals go, they weren't going to be the brightest of bulbs. They were confounded, thinking that since we had gotten up, there must be a way to follow.
It was a hell of a catch 22. If we did anything, we risked running them off. If we didn't, eventually they would lose interest and wander back to their den on their own. Either way, we would be right back to square one, and no way to make sure that our next attempt would go any better.
"All right, if we have to kill 'em quiet, we'll do this your way." Dean spoke up, "Can you hit where your aiming from up there?"
Not likely, I was buried under a mesh of leaves and branches with no elbow room. The targets were right below me, and so was he, right in the way. "No clean line," I told him, "Wouldn't matter if there was. A throwing blade isn't going to take one of those things down. Hit it just right, it might bleed out eventually, but who knows?"
"We do." he said, smacking my foot to get my attention, "Check out Ol' Yeller over there." I pushed a chunk of the greenery aside to look where he was pointing. One of them was hanging back from the others, more interested in licking at its wounded flank than in us. The chase must have gotten its heart pumping and amped up the blood loss. It was in bad shape, didn't have long left.
"Wait a minute," I said as something hit me, "You can see it? It's solid?"
"Looks like, so?" he answered.
"So why doesn't it get spiritual and save itself?" I asked, "Why's it just letting itself die?"
We both chewed on that.
"Because it can't" Dean piped up after a moment, "Something about getting perforated, or that bullet jammed up inside of it has it on lockdown. It's stuck on this side."
Good to know, if he was right. You sort of figure a lot of this stuff out as you go along. Half of hunting is thinking on the fly. At least there was one less to worry about. It was only a matter of time. Time was something we didn't have where the rest were concerned.
If we could get them bleeding without running them off, that was, at least, something. They would stay killable, and we would know right where they would head for if they did run. I didn't like the idea of following a bunch of wounded animals into their own den, especially after recent experience, but if it had to be done, it had to be done. "How are you with a knife?" I asked Dean, "Throwing one, I mean."
Normally that would have been an invitation to an ego stroking brag. And I think he bit back on one that almost pooped out on reflex. "I'd have to be drunk and distracted to miss at this range." he said, "You're thinking, if we tag them, they can't spook out on us. One problem solved."
"I don't know what to expect." I admitted, "I don't know the breed, and wild things can be unpredictable. They might still run, or just back off. Hell, it might just piss them off all over again. But it levels the playing field some."
"Beats waiting up here to starve to death. Let's do this." he said reaching up.
"Won't happen." I said unfastening the straps on the thigh sheath, "The branches will never hold our weight that long."
"Yeah, thanks for that, Sally Sunshine. Just give me the knives."
I lowered the sheath within his reach by the strap. "You've got four targets and three shots. Make them count. Don't waste any." I said.
He drew the first one and held it loosely, checking the weight and balance. I was glad to see that. It meant he knew what he was doing. An amateur would have just whipped it without calibrating and hoped for the best.
His throw caught one of the kei'lutt between the shoulder blades, drawing a yelp of pain and surprise. The stricken animal contorted, looking for the source of the unexpected attack. It caught the attention of the others, who watched curiously, briefly distracted from us.
"Good enough for you?" he asked, preening a little.
Actually, Dean had a bad habit of overextending his follow through which caused a drift to the left. It was something he had learned to compensate for with windage rather than working to correct. Grated on my nerves every time I saw it. I'd be lying if I said that that was the day I first noticed it. "Yeah, I'll take that." I said, "Want to show it to me again?"
He drew the second knife and sited in on another target. "Damn it!" he cried just as he was pulling back to throw.
"What?"
"They're gone," he explained, "just sort of winked out. All but the one I tagged."
"They're not gone. They're just not on the attack anymore." I said. Damn, I had hoped we would have more time.
"Well, what now?" he asked only to be interrupted by the muffled sound of a familiar chime from his pocket. Impatiently he jerked the phone out to silence it. "Yeah, I know, past me, hunting a freakin' kei'lutt. Only right now, we're the ones getting hunted, so maybe shut your pie hole." he growled.
Loud, distressed whines rose from below us. I peered down to see the three still healthy pups backing off by several yards. Even the two wounded ones were cringing back, pulling away as much as their wounded bodies would allow.
Something had set them off, but what? They had all acted together, in the same instant. They weren't just edgy about the unexplained assaults. They had reacted to something, something they had seen maybe. No, they would have all had to have been looking the same way at the same time. Something they smelled then, or something they heard.
"Dean," I called down to him, "say that again."
"Say what again?"
"Whatever it was you were just yelling about." I said, craning my neck to keep the animals in view, "Do it again."
"Oh, terrific," he grumbled, before yelling urgently "Gwen, stay with me. We're on a hunt, and those kei'lutt bitches have our asses pinned down. You can't flake on me right now."
"Oh, they do not like that." I observed softly as the beasts again reacted in either pain or fear, maybe both.
"Gwen!" Dean bellowed.
"Ease off!" I said irritably, "I'm fine. I'm better than fine."
"I'll ease off when you start making sense." he countered.
"The...spirits," I spoke carefully, to avoid any further response, "that thing we've been calling them for two days, it's a warding word."
"A warding word," he repeated, "Sure, that makes sense. You said the lore was all oral, right? They probably didn't have a written language. They used the ward as a name for the spirit in the stories so that people would remember it."
"I don't care how it happened, not right now anyway. I'm just glad it did." I said. This was a game changer. We had a way to drive them back, in either form, literally on the tip of our tongues. That shifted the balance of power in our favor.
"All right," I told him, "I'm going down and put those two out of their misery. With any luck, that should get the others to come back out of hiding. It looks like they haven't outgrown their pack mentality yet. If that doesn't work, I'll go right at them. A direct challenge should put them back on the offensive. If things get too hot, I'll use the ward. You be ready and don't miss."
"Ah hell no," he said firmly, moving to block my way down, "I already played switch to your bait once today. I'm not doing it again. This one's on me."
A lot of things can drive a hunter to call dibs on the risky job, ego, vengeance, death wish, blood lust. If it had been any of those, we would have been in another argument, but it wasn't. Up on the slope, it had been different, a straight forward hunt, some risk, sure, but nothing too major as long as nothing went sideways.
But something had, and now there were high stakes on the table, the highest. I was betting the farm on him and he didn't like not having skin in the game. Noble, and totally unrealistic.
"Where are they, Dean?" I asked abruptly.
He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
"Exactly," I said pointedly, "You won't see them until they're a viable target. I won't know when that is. I can see them either way. There's one road open here, and you know it."
He did know it, but he was also Dean Winchester, which meant, he wasn't about to meekly back down from the demands of facts or the whims of fate without some push back.
"Dean, I said it was going to be you I was counting on today." I said, "Please, don't fight me on this."
"This sucks." he grumbled in surrender. It wasn't me he was fighting. It was the hard, cold truth of an unyielding reality. "We both go." he said, "I'm not sending you into the lion's den while my sweet ass sits up here behind the lines."
I didn't like it. Basic tactics, keep your trigger man protected. There was no upside to putting us both at risk. Dean, however, had decided the discussion was over. He had already dropped down to the ground, making it clear that he neither wanted or needed my approval. "You coming?" he called up to me. What could I do but concede?
"Where are they?" he asked as I got my feet back on the ground next to him.
"Ten o'clock, about 70 yards," I answered, careful not to look directly at them. I didn't want them closing in until we were ready. "Keep your eyes open, but if you see one, don't fire until they're all in range. We don't want to lose them again." I instructed him.
He nodded and brought the gun up to a ready position. His baring, sharp and focused, took me right back to the moment we met and made me wonder, how, even with his youthful features, I had even mistaken him for some green kid. I was putting my life, the breathing, heart beating part, in his hands, and honestly, I was fine with that. I usually don't trust that quickly, but the kid had earned it.
The one Dean had stuck lay, belly to the ground, not far from us. It growled a warning when I stepped towards it. If pushed, it would fight with whatever strength it had. With a quick flit of my eyes, I checked on its brethren, who were watching, pacing nervously. They were reluctant to abandon their litter mate but were in no hurry to charge into danger for him.
I took another step toward the wounded animal. It bared its teeth at me with a snarl. I knew it would jump at me the instant I got too close. The trick is, to see it coming. The first signs of movement would show in the shoulders. I focused my gaze over the top of its head at that spot.
Another step and I caught the flutter of a muscle twitch. The beast lunged, growling and snapping. I yelled the ward. My hand shot out to cup the muzzle. Pushing up to bare the throat, I let the Bowie slash across it, biting deep.
"Anything," I asked over my shoulder as the animal bled out at my feet.
"Nope," came the cool, one word answer. I knew, without looking, that Dean would still be holding the ready stance, eyes seeping the area for sudden targets.
"Looks like I'm going to have to make them an offer they can't refuse." I said. Looking again at the remaining pups, I singled out the most aggressive. The others would take their cues from that one. Focusing on the leader, I lowered into a high crouch, a mimicry of the attack posture I had observed. Leading with my shoulders, I stalked deliberately forward. It was a direct challenge, issued in a language the animal could understand.
The kei'lutt bounded forward, threatening me loudly, warning me to back off.
"Got one!" Dean yelled, "Still out of range. We should have brought a rifle."
That did seem painfully obvious at that moment. But, it was too late. We just had to take what we had and make it work. There would be plenty of time later to kick ourselves over the shouldas and couldas, if we pulled this off.
I kept moving, the awkward stance putting me off balance. A bead of sweat that had nothing to do with the heat trickled down my temple.
The kei'lutt charged, provoked to its limit, triggering the others to follow. This was it. I settled into a defensive posture, Bowie up and ready, just in case. They should never get in that close, but Dean was going to have a narrow window. If he fired too soon and they ran, we would lose them. He had to get them all in one go. If he waited too long...I didn't want to think about too long. I stood my ground, reminding myself to use the ward if things got hairy.
The kei'lutt moved closer to me. One fell with the sound of a shot. Seconds later, another was down. Startled and confused by the sudden deaths of its brothers, the last drew up short in its charge. It faltered, torn between attack and retreat. Gunfire cracked in the air like a whip, ending its short life. The hunt was now one more memory.
Dean walked up and surveyed the carcasses spread over the field. "What about daddy?" he asked.
"Honestly," I said, "I don't think that's a problem. They're solitary as adults. Where ever he is, it won't be anywhere near here. That's probably how she ended up so far south. They mated and then he drove her out of his territory."
He scrunched up his face in distaste. "Dick move," he observed.
There's a reason why they call drifters dogs. What are you gonna do? Instinct is instinct.
"So, I guess you have to tuck the kiddies in with a bedtime story before we can get out of here." he said.
He didn't understand and I couldn't make him understand. I hate it when a hunt goes like this. What has to be done has to be done, but there's no reason to be unnecessarily cruel about it. That can be the first step down a dark road. More than one hunter had looked too long into the abyss and discovered that the had become the monster. Some lines you just don't cross, because by the time you notice how far you've gone, it's too late to turn back.
I needed to make peace, not just for the sake of the spirits, but for my own. I would have preferred a clean kill to the mess we had made and had to clean up. You can get all tangled up in loose ends and drag the things they're attached to along with you, so it's best not to leave any.
Dean didn't see things that way, so all I said was, "I have to."