“They mesmerize demons with their lights and lead them into swamps, or quicksand, or anywhere their victims will die. Then they feed on the corpses and lay their eggs. It’s probably why this area is so lifeless; it must be infested with them. Luckily, it only works on smaller wild demons.”
Fletcher shuddered and drew his coat closer around him. They had seemed so beautiful, yet their true purpose left a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He realized that Othello was the only one of the group to have had two years at Vocans, and the dwarf’s knowledge would be useful in the coming days. He only hoped that they would avoid the more dangerous demons of the ether.
The group watched in silence as the blue light faded, and the mesmerized demons disappeared into the gloom. Fletcher shuffled closer to his mother, but saw she was sleeping, curled up with Ignatius and Athena nestling beside her.
“We should have killed it,” Sylva murmured, so low that Fletcher could barely hear her over the dull thuds of Sheldon’s footsteps.
“Killed what?” he asked.
“The Baku,” she replied, pointing the way the demons had gone. “It’s a prey demon—low on the food chain. Plenty of meat on it too.”
“You want to eat demons?” Cress gasped, overhearing.
“You’ve been eating them since you got here, hell, even before you got here,” Sylva said, pointing at their dwindling supplies of petals. “Didn’t Electra say plants from the ether are technically demons too?”
“Yeah, but … it feels wrong,” Cress said, pulling Tosk to her chest and cuddling him protectively.
“Well, it’s either that or starve,” Sylva replied. “Unless Hominum’s part of the ether is around the corner—which it isn’t by the look of those mountains—we’re going to need to feed ourselves at some point.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone eating a demon before, although I hear shamans do it during some of their ceremonies,” Cress mused.
The thought of eating a demon had never crossed Fletcher’s mind. It repulsed him in some ways, but then, demons ate meat from his dimension. Why could he not do so in theirs?
“Fletcher, what do you reckon?” Othello said, watching his face as he mulled it over.
Fletcher grinned and shook his head ruefully, suddenly acutely aware of the hollowness in his empty stomach.
“Get some sleep,” he said, scooting over to his mother and lying himself out beside her. “Tomorrow, we hunt.”
CHAPTER
7
THE SKY WAS ALREADY DARKENING, and Fletcher’s stomach was cramping and gurgling, digesting nothing but the petal he had eaten a few hours ago. The team had been hunting all day, having been dropped off by Lysander several miles ahead of Sheldon’s path, but had found nothing. Now they had separated to cover more ground.
Fletcher had known hunger like this before, when winter had come early to Pelt and the mountain paths had been too icy for the traders to travel. Starvation had been staved off by hunting. Then and now, his senses were sharp, honed of desperation, but he was weaker and slower too. The difference was that in Pelt’s forests, a failed attempt meant another day of hunger. Here, it meant death.
Crouched in the shadow of a gnarled bush, Fletcher heard the thud of hooves in the damp soil nearby. Then a deep snort, and the soft rhythmic squelching of tissue being chewed to pulp. It was the first sign of life he had come across.
Fletcher dared to tread closer, placing one foot after another with care born of long practice. He dared not pull on his bow, for the creak of the string might give him away. Another step, and he pressed the arrow against the bow’s stock in case of clattering. Behind the thinning screen of the bush’s leaves, Fletcher saw his prey.
It was a hulking beast, as large as a buffalo and shaped like one too, with powerful shoulders between which grew a mane not unlike a wild horse’s. It had a tufted tail that switched back and forth, a sign of agitation that left Fletcher uneasy.
As if it sensed it was being watched, the beast swung its head low and to the side, snorting and sniffing, misting the air with its mucus.
Protected by no more than a few leaves and twigs, Fletcher froze, hoping desperately that the beast had poor eyesight. It had small red eyes, after all, with a piggish head resembling that of a warthog, but with a pair of curving horns on its brow and tusks that were far more prominent. Its snout was stained with green around the edges, and Fletcher could see a pile of nettles that it had been busy chewing on.
In that moment, he knew what he faced. This was no easy prey, though more high-level carnivores did hunt and eat them. But a human would be mad to attack one, even if he was starving and desperate. It was a Catoblepas.
The species ate only poisonous plants, for few other demons would consume them and so their fodder was plentiful. It could gore an attacker with tusk or horn, whichever came first, but even these were not the demon’s most potent weapons. No, it was the green-tinged saliva of the demon itself, where the natural toxins of the plants would concentrate. A bite was as good as a death sentence, and its misty breath was so poisonous that it would blind any attacker, or kill any that inhaled it. And now it was staring at Fletcher with its red, piggish eyes, and was turning slowly, its muscled haunches bunching and flexing with every slow, deliberate step.
A screech from above echoed through the trees—Athena, attempting to distract it. The noise did little more than stimulate a flick of the Catoblepas’s ears. Ignatius had been left with Sheldon to protect Alice, half a mile back. The others were hunting even farther afield. He and Athena were on their own.
The demon grunted, spraying a gout of steam from its nose. The moisture sizzled on the mulch of browning leaves that coated the ground.
Spells were not as effective against demons, and shields even less so, for the demonic energy that formed demons’ bodies was able to pass through them with ease. He thought of his pistols—they were both loaded, but the crash of gunfire might alert nearby shamans searching in the skies above of their presence. It would have to be the bow.
Ever so slowly, he eased back on his bowstring, taking the strain with his weakened muscles. He was bone tired, so much so that the arrowhead seemed to swim in and out of focus, twitching as the tendons in his arm seemed to clench and lock. Inch by inch, the bow creaked back, until it was at full draw. Still, he did not fire, even as the monster scraped the ground with a hoof, its hunched back a round silhouette against the fading dusk light.
The beast’s head was enormous, but Fletcher had a decision to make. The skull was too thick to penetrate—only a direct hit in the soft tissue of its eyes would kill the beast. A difficult shot for the most practiced archer.