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107

"Stop, don't shoot!!" Mateo shouted, nearly giving everyone a heart attack. Jonah certainly felt like his was beating somewhere around his throat now.

"By the gods, Mat, what!?" Nick yelled, absolutely furious. He had almost dropped the crossbow at Mateo's outburst and was angrily readjusting his aim.

Mateo, breathing heavily, his face covered in blood, then said something none of them expected. "I'll tell you where he lives. Just don't hurt us, okay?"

"No, Mat!" Jonah screamed. "I've got family up there!"

"Shut up, Jonah!" Mateo's eyes blazed from beneath a red and dripping brow. He could barely stand, and yet he was giving off the same kind of feral aura as the Wolves they had been working to save, as if he were more animal than Fox. Even his teeth seemed more pronounced.

Was he really going to sell out Jonah's family for a chance to save his own skin? Surely not? Mateo could be a right jackass sometimes, but even he would never stoop to something so low.

"Through the mouth of the pass you'll find a wooded area. To the left, north, we have a basecamp nestled against the foot of the mountain."

"What the hell, Mat!?" Bartholomew shouted, looking both shocked and disgusted by the Fox leaning against his shoulder, but Mateo ploughed on, speaking faster and faster, knowing he didn't have much time.

"There are hundreds, no, thousands of Foxes in there, most of them armed. Not even you'll be able to get through. What you want to do is -"

Bart swung around and clocked him right in the mouth, knocking him flat on his back in a shower of snow. "You shut the hell up, you snake!" he shouted. "What is wrong with you!?"

Mateo propped himself up on his elbows with great difficulty, a fresh line of blood leaking from his nose. "When you leave the pass, you'll want to turn right, to the south."

Jonah closed his mouth with a snap, the implications of that single word practically slapping him right in the face.

South. Not north, but south.

Mateo snuffled back the blood and kept going. "If you hug the mountain long enough, eventually you'll come out of the woods and into the open. You should see a house, made of stone, all by itself. It has a garden in the front and a well at the back. It's surrounded by open fields on all sides. That's where he lives. In that house."

Mateo was giving directions to his own home, a farmhouse far removed from town, a farmhouse that didn't even have any labourers working the fields right now because it was the dead of winter, a farmhouse that, at this very moment, was completely empty.

Mateo, you are a goddamned genius.

"You bastard!" Jonah yelled. "My cousins are in there! They're just kids, dammit!"

"I can't believe you, Mat," Bartholomew said, catching on real quick. "I know you've got some issues, but what you just did, handing out information to the enemy like that, it's tantamount to treason, isn't it?"

"It didn't even do you any good, you slimy jackass," Nick added. "We're still in the exact same situation as befo-"

"Hey, Fox! Catch!"

It was the strangest sensation, going from hanging to flying in a single moment. Jonah felt those claws digging into the back of his neck, increasing the pressure to an unbearable amount, felt them dragging along the sides, scratching him open, and then they were simply gone. He went from feeling the excruciating weight of his own body pulling him down to having no weight at all. The movement was so quick that his stomach dropped down to somewhere around his knees, and for the last time that day, he had another vision of himself as a tiny little kid, playing with his father. The old Fox would pick him up and toss him into the air at dizzying speeds, catch him beneath the arms, and then hurl him up again, higher and higher, so high he could almost touch the clouds, the both of them laughing so hard they could barely breathe.

This was the exact same feeling, that same dropping of the stomach. Except it wasn't fun. Not at all.

It was terrifying.

Nick's eyes went wide and he raised his arms, whether to protect himself or to aim the crossbow away was impossible to tell, but it was a good thing he did.

Jonah crashed into him like a sack of potatoes and the crossbow fired. Not only did he hear the surprisingly loud twang of it going off, he actually felt the bolt sailing past his ear in a rush of wind.

They both tumbled to the ground in a mashup of limbs and Jonah thrashed and flailed, desperately trying to extricate himself before it was too late. Nick had fired his one and only shot, and that meant only one thing.

You do realise what will happen if you miss, don't you, Fox?

Nick cursed and Jonah rolled off as fast as he could, caught in the throes of a wild panic, certain that Banno was right behind him, certain that he was going to keep to his word by pulling them all inside-out like a bunch of old socks, certain that -

Banno wasn't there anymore. He was off in the distance, no more than a black smudge barely visible through the thick curtain of falling snow, lurching along on his mutilated legs, growing fainter and fainter by the second.

Jonah sat next to Nick, right there in the snow, not knowing what to think, what to do, or what to say, so he just breathed. He breathed and thanked the gods for every single breath, no matter how cold they were.

But as grateful as he was, he couldn't ignore that sound on the wind. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but he didn't think so.

It was the sound of Banno's laughter, fading into the darkness.

"I can't believe that bastard didn't finish us off," Nick said, inspecting the crossbow in his hands. The whipcord was straight, the groove empty, and the bolt shot off to gods knew where. "He had every opportunity to..."

"That thing is crazy!" Jonah blurted out, feeling like he just had to say it, like he had to spit it out like poison. "It was talking about how it was going to 'become one' with my cousin! About how they were made for each other, how they were the only real things in the world, and how much they loved each other and urgh! It makes me sick just thinking of it!"

"How the bloody hell does a Wolf know your cousin?"

Jonah shook his head. "It's a long story, and I don't even know most of the details. It just... ooof..." He sort of flopped back against the snow. The warm lines of blood running across his neck was a reminder he was still alive, and for a moment, for one blasphemously selfish, greedy, self-centred moment, he was happy.

And then he was ashamed.

"We can't stay here, we have to move," Mateo said, struggling to get up off the ground.

Bart hurried over, grabbed his hand, and pulled him back to his feet. "Sorry I punched you, Matty. Emotions were running kind of high, you understand."

"I'm actually glad you did." Mateo wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "It made the whole thing much more convincing."

"You don't have any family waiting for you back home, do you? 'Cuz if you do, there's gonna be one hell of a nasty surprise comin' to knock on their door."

"No, both my parents are in the camp, so it should be fine. Right now we need to gather everybody up and hunt that son of a bitch down, every able-bodied Fox we can find, anyone who can shoot a bow. We know exactly where it's going, so we have the advantage. If we move quickly, we can take it down as it reaches the fields. It won't have anywhere to go except for miles of hip deep snow. It'll be a sitting duck out there."

"I never knew you could be so conniving, Matty. It's downright devious of you."

Nicholas got to his feet and brushed the snow off his legs. "It's a safe plan, but I still wish I could have nailed that bastard, see his brains fly out the back of his head."

Mateo shook his head. "Agatha pulls low. If you had fired her like that, you would have shot Jonah right between the eyes."

"Ouch."

Jonah listened to their talk, but he didn't really hear any of it. He just kept looking straight up at the sky. No, what he was actually looking at was the undulating mass of snow and shadow covering the sky. There were no stars up there. No moon. No nothing. Just a grey nothingness fading to black, bordered by solid walls of frozen rock to the north and south, and even they stood no chance. They rose up for about twenty strides and then simply vanished, as if a giant had taken a great big bite out of the mountain. Lying here in the snow like this, it was so easy to imagine that there really was absolutely nothing beyond that black, empty line, and that the Wolf was speaking the truth when he said the world wasn't real. It was just... so easy. Because in what world was it possible for his friends to die so easily, so mercilessly, so painfully?

"Hey, Jonah? You doing okay there, buddy? You all right?"

Nick extended his hand, but Jonah only looked at it.

"Come on, Joney. You're gonna catch pneumonia lying in the snow like that."

Jonah took the hand, but it didn't feel like he was the one doing it. It didn't feel like he was moving at all. It felt more like he was just a disembodied spirit inside his own head, watching everything unfold, like he was having a dream in which he had no control over his body.

Nick pulled him up and gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. "You okay? Did that thing hurt you? You got a nasty cut in your neck there..."

Jonah did not answer. He couldn't answer, not while he was still stuck in this dreamlike world.

It's not a dream, though. I know it's not. I wish I could convince myself otherwise, but I can't...

He turned around, unable to stop himself, unable to shut his eyes, unable to block out the horror rushing in.

Dean's body, lying on its side, like he was sleeping. And his head, already half buried in the snow. It was only a few strides away, but that didn't matter. Whether it was an inch or a mile or the length of the entire valley, it all came down to the same thing. Dead was dead.

Devin, his face and chest cleaved wide open, the wounds covered in frost. He had had such a huge crush on Rachel, and he never even told her. Now he'd never get the chance.

Peter. Half his neck was gone, bitten away like a crispy apple. The blood had flowed all around his head and seeped into the snow like a crimson halo.

Henry. He had fought together with his friends right up until the very end, but now he was lying facedown in the snow with his arms tucked underneath his body, like he was trying to keep his insides inside, where they belonged.

Flyn. Flat on his back with his arms splayed out, his neck flayed wide open like a piece of butcher's meat.

Samuels. He didn't look so bad. If it wasn't for his open eyes, slowly filling with snow, he might have been sleeping. But then you noticed that his head was all crooked, that there were these unnatural bumps in his neck, that his face was pointing the wrong way.

Gordon. He could have just stayed down, and maybe he would have survived. But he didn't. He refused to give up. Even when he couldn't stand, he had fought with everything he had. And now... now his head was cracked through the middle like a cheap clay bowl. Who was going to tell Germaine? Who was going to tell her that the love of her life had been killed by a Wolf he was trying to save?

Bathed in the howling darkness, he could make out the deep red snow dunes slowly rising against their bodies, as if the mountain itself was slowly devouring them, taking them into itself, savouring them just as the Wolf had savoured the taste of their blood.

Are you real?

All of it suddenly came crashing home in that single moment. The reality of it all. The finality of it all.

Yes. They were real. All of them were real. The blood freezing into the snow was real. The blank, dead look in their eyes was real. They were his friends, and they were real. They were real!!

They had been...

Jonah cried. It was slow at first, but once it got going, he couldn't stop. He covered his mouth and nose in an attempt to keep it all in, but it just burst out in explosive sobs, powerful enough to drop him to his knees. He couldn't breathe. The wind and the snow slapped him in the face and he just kept on crying, feeling the hot lines of tears solidify into drops of ice against his cheeks.

"Hey man..." Nick patted him on the back, but said no more than that. What more was there to say? It's not like Jonah was suffering any more than the rest. Heck, he got off the lightest of them all. He knew this. He knew he should be thankful that he was still alive and capable of crying at all. He knew he was just slowing everyone down with this display, this outburst, this breakdown, whatever you wanted to call it. It was weak and pathetic, but he couldn't help it. Telling himself that he should wipe his face and man up only made him cry even harder. He couldn't stop staring at the blurred shapes lying in the snow, surrounded by clouds of red. Each one of those splotches used to be a life, and now they were gone, just like that. They had mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends, wives, Foxes who loved them, and now they were just gone, and for what? Why? What reason was there? How did any of this make sense? For a life to be there one second and just snuffed out the next, it was something he simply could not wrap his head around, the senselessness of it. These were Foxes he knew, Foxes he used to talk to, Foxes whose faces he used to see almost every day, strolling along the paths, bartering in the market place, working in the fields, hunting in the woods, sitting on their porches, or sometimes just lazing by the river, doing nothing at all, just lying back and looking at the clouds, talking about the stupidest stuff, like which vixen was the cutest, who liked who, who was seeing who, who would win in a fight, just wiling the hours away till sunset, when it was time to go home to a nice, home-cooked supper, a bath, maybe a glass of wine by the fire, and then bed.

None of them would ever do any of those things again.

That could have been me... That could have been me so easily... If I had stood in a different spot... If I had said the wrong thing at the wrong time... If Mat and Nick and Bart weren't here... If anything had happened any differently, I'd be lying in the snow, making a crimson halo of my own...

They are dead, but I'm alive... I'm alive, but they are dead...

I'm real and they're not...

And so Jonah cried. He cried for the lives of his friends, the Foxes who used to punch him in the arm and help him haul sacks of grain and flour back and forth between the mill and the market, the Foxes who used to elbow him in the ribs and ask him if he ever planned on getting a girl before he became as old as his dad, the Foxes who now lay dead in the snow.

But most of all, he cried out of guilt, guilt that he should be alive while they were gone, guilt out of the fact that, for just a moment, he had been happy that it was them, and not him, lying dead in the snow.

"Hey, Jonah." Nick shook him by the shoulder, a bit more forcefully this time. "I know it's tough, gods know I know, but we gotta get moving. Maybe I'm an ass for saying this, but we can mourn them later. Right now we still need to fight. We need to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Can you stand by yourself?"

Jonah wasn't sure if he could, but he nodded regardless. Still crying into his gloved hands, he slowly got back to his feet. He wobbled a bit and Nick had to steady him, but after that he thought he could probably manage on his own. He nodded again, more to himself than the others, but he did not look up or to the sides. He did not want to catch even the dimmest, darkest glimpse of one of those reddish dunes of snow out of the corner of his eye again, because he knew that if he did, he would collapse yet again, the tears would come, only this time he didn't think he'd be able to stop them. Nick would have to carry him back to the base on his back, bawling like an infant.

Jonah did not want that. He had been powerless to save his friends, but at the very least, he wanted to make it back through the pass on his own two feet, if for no other reason than to look their families in the eye when he told them of how bravely they fought, of how he was still alive because of a combination of all their efforts. He wanted to be able to answer their question before they had a chance to ask it.

Why are you still alive? How dare you be alive when my son my brother my friend my husband my lover is gone?

Why couldn't it have been you instead?

Mateo suddenly pointed his crossbow at the northern wall of the pass, making the strap swing back and forth. "Who's there?" he said, snuffling back the blood dripping down his face.

Bartholomew, Nicholas and Jonah stared at the spot where he was pointing his weapon, but it was difficult to make anything out. Layers upon layers of snow were cascading through the air, affording only shimmering glimpses of the black rocks beyond, appearing and disappearing, flickering in and out, creating amorphous shadows that constantly changed form, black shapes that could be anything at all, even a Wolf, playing one last game before it tore the last of its prey apart.

And that's when Jonah saw it; a collection of black shapes that wasn't staying in one spot, but coming closer. A shape far bigger than a Fox, limping and lurching along, grunting and moaning with every laboured step.

"Son, if you don't put that thing down right now, gods help me I will slap the red right out of your fur."

The shape stepped forward, breaking through the last grey layer of falling snow. It wasn't a single, deformed creature, but rather two Foxes holding up a third. On the right was Eric, biting down on his lip in an attempt to keep himself under some semblance of control. Both his hands and the front of his coat were drenched in blood. William was in the middle, his face contorted by paroxysms of pain. Every step he took (every step he was dragged, more like it), he moaned in pain and took quick, tortured gasps for breath that sounded more like hissing.

On the left was Rufio, thick red lines of blood flowing from his temples, but his pipe was back where it belonged, clenched firmly between his teeth despite the big chunk of calabash missing from the bowl.

Mateo lowered his crossbow with a sigh of relief, but Jonah barely even noticed. Seeing those three walk out of the dark like that, coming back from the dead, it lit a fire inside of him. If they could do it, then maybe the others, as well? Maybe Flyn and Henry and Samuels and the others would come walking out of the shadows, too? Maybe Gordie would get up, brush the snow off his shoulders, pull a brand new birch twig from his front pocket and pop it in his mouth, transferring it from one side to the other while he chewed the tip into a frayed pulp. Maybe Devin would come running up to them, out of breath, saying: Wow, that was close, are you guys okay? I just barely escaped! Help is on the way!_And maybe Dean would show up next, clutching the flapping brim of his straw hat with both hands to keep it from flying off. _What's that? You say you saw me get decapitated? How absurd! You know I'd never lose my hat, let alone my whole head! And what then? Then Peter, of course. He'd come sauntering out of the snow, smiling from ear to ear, with a huge silver tray of muffins and cupcakes in his hands.

And maybe none of this actually happened. Maybe there weren't even any dead Wolves beneath their feet, or a whole bloody pile of them at their backs, and maybe the tarp he had weighed down with rocks wasn't covering anything but bare stone. Maybe everyone was okay, maybe everyone was alive, maybe everything was perfect, and maybe he really was just a listener in this story, sitting by the fire with his legs crossed, waiting for the happy ending...

"Jonah?" Nicholas lightly touched his shoulder. "Buddy, are you still with us?"

Jonah believed he might be dangerously close to going insane, but he couldn't stop himself from asking the question he already knew the answer to. "The others? Are they...?"

Eric slowly shook his head. "I checked... but..." He couldn't keep it in anymore, and a huge sob burst out of him, warping his face into that of a child. He covered his eyes with a crimson hand as if trying to push the tears back. "I checked! But they're..."

All that blood on his hands, all the blood staining the front of his coat.

None of it was his own.

It hit him again, the stark reality of it all, but not in the same way as before. No arrow of emotion came shooting through his heart. No explosive sobs came tearing through his chest. There was no feeling at all, actually. Just a numbness to his body, although that might have been the cold, and a hollowness in the pit of his stomach, although that might have been hunger. It was as if the part of his soul previously responsible for all those feelings had simply shattered, and perhaps that was a blessing. Perhaps that was the only way for him to keep going forward without completely losing his mind.

Without even realising it, he had sleepwalked almost the entire length of the pass. There was no transition, only a sudden awareness that the torches lining the broken wall were suddenly much closer, as if a small whack of his memory had been neatly severed.

There's something wrong with me, he thought with no great surprise. Something's broken. Maybe not anything major, maybe just a tiny little cog in the clock. Maybe not enough for anyone to notice, but it's enough to throw off the hands, to slow the ticking, to turn the chimes into a discordant, broken jumble at the bottom of every hour: a single, repetitive note without any rhythm at all.

He could hear them walking by his side, keeping pace. Mateo and Bartholomew, leaning against each other, supporting each other, trying not to pant and heave with every limping step, but panting and heaving anyway. And Nicholas, deathly quiet, perhaps wrestling with similar thoughts. Rufio and Eric were there, too, dragging William along despite him begging for them to stop. The tips of his boots dragged divots in the snow.

They reached the slope leading down to the barren floor of the pass, all rocks and dirt covered in a thin dusting of snow, and Jonah half-stumbled, half-slid to the bottom, keeping his eyes down low, refusing to look up. This was the absolute worst place to look up, because here there was a new sound, different from the howling gale, different from their haggard breathing, different from the occasional pitter patter of blood dripping to the snow.

It was the sound of a tarp, one ragged corner flapping in the wind. The stone had come loose again, and now it was just writhing up and down like a snake in its death throes, slapping the ground with its torn edges, clapping a blasphemously merry tune inside this crypt of stone, this tomb, this place of death.

Thirty-two pairs of feet, but four extra bumps in the fabric. Thirty-two adult Wolves. Four children.

Someone would have to put a rock on that, but only after they added seven Foxes and however many Wolves lay in pieces at their backs.

Jonah covered his ears, but he could still hear it, that grim clapping sound. He could feel it in his bones, shaking him from the inside.

He climbed to the top of the broken wall, moving fast, nearly running past the line of torches, so bright they burned his eyes, stumble-slid down the other side, and still he could hear it, still he could feel it, that dreadful flapping noise, chasing after him like the wings of a great crow, a demon of deepest black, come to peck out his eyes and eat the tongue out of his mouth while he screamed and screamed and screamed...

Something landed upon his shoulder and Jonah almost screamed for real. He twisted around, expecting to see a blood red crow sitting on his shoulder, its feathers slick with gore, rancid scraps of meat hanging from a beak as sharp as a dagger, but it was only Mateo, pointing to a spot on the ground.

Jonah followed his gaze. It was a splotch of blood in the snow, practically nothing compared to everything he had witnessed just minutes ago, but the tracks accompanying it were a different matter. He was no hunter or tracker or any kind of outdoorsy Fox by even the farthest stretch of the imagination, but he would bet no Fox had ever seen any tracks quite like those before.

The ones on the left side weren't all that dissimilar from a Fox stepping on tip-toes, except they were much larger. The ones on the right, though, didn't make any sense at all. They were merely ugly divots in the snow, splattered with blood. There were no toes or pad marks of any kind. It was like someone had stuck a branch into a pot of red paint and poked it into the snow every two strides.

It was him. It was Banno, running on an exposed piece of bone.

I hope it hurts, you sick, demented piece of trash. I hope every step you take is torture.

Mateo slowly swept his finger to the right, tracing the tracks as they zigzagged through the trees.

"It's veering south," he said. "We got him. We got the bastard."

Jonah almost felt glad. Was that a bad thing? Almost feeling happiness at the thought of a fellow living being's imminent death? He supposed so. But at the same time he didn't really care anymore.

Something's wrong with me...

A creature like that didn't deserve to be alive. And if you really wanted to be philosophical about it, letting it live would probably only cause even more deaths. Looking at it that way, they were actually saving many lives by ending just one. That meant they had a moral obligation to hunt it down and put an arrow through its brain. And if he felt just a tiny touch of happiness at the thought, was that really such a bad thing? Wasn't he supposed to feel happy about doing the right thing?

Back inside the pass, the tarp continued its mournful song; a single hand clapping itself to bloody tatters against the sheer walls of the mountain, a single, repetitive note without any rhythm at all.

---

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