Hunted [Wild Hunt Series: 1]

1: The Smiling Dark

1: The Smiling Dark

For the third time this week tracks circled the perimeter of our calving stall. My step dad, Ajax, was convinced the tracks belonged to a grizzly or one of those polar mutants come down ravenous from the northern tundra. After all, here in the lonely dark fields inside the lonely dark forests of the Alaskan wilderness, hungry bears were known to steal calves from mothers. 

The prints, muddy and filled with soot, made for a sinister suggestion in the early predawn. This beast seemed to have crawled into the world through the ash of a dying fire. As the last sulfuric wisps of night shadows pooled in dark impressions, I bent to examine the nearest.

Five toes, pads ticking two-inches deep in ground so frozen even the dead waited for spring's thaw. The thick slant of a wolf's paw but scaled to a grizzly - if a grizzly were burning.

Twenty yards into the field, a grouse shot skyward on stubby wings. My heart skipped a beat – but all stayed quiet and the distant horizon held the sun warmed backs of grazing cattle.

With a mindful eye I unlatched the gate and edged over the blackened ground. "Don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back!" I muttered. It seemed such a crazy thing to say, and yet, after glimpses of fangs smiling from the treeline, I'd rather be crazy than it be real.

As a precaution, we'd even had a quality check on our well.

Nothing but fresh, pure spring water, the kind filling shelves on convenience stores in New York, where I'd be headed tonight to start an internship with some of the best special effects designers in the world. Soon as Mom and Ajax came home, anyway. They'd spent the night celebrating their friend's thirtieth wedding anniversary and must've crashed on a couch rather than make the two hour drive home, leaving me alone in our cabin as howls and hunting horns rose above the mountains and low October moon.

If you could call it sleep, I'd slept with all the lights on, my phone on the charger within arm's reach, and the music blasting.

Daylight was a mixed blessing. Grey clouds slipped across blue sky. A sunset away from Halloween night and I couldn't feel more haunted. This was my home. Nothing's supposed to scare you in your home. I was born here. I'd played with dolls and scraped my knees and done my chores and kissed boys in those woods. I knew everything in those woods.

Except this monster.

This thing wasn't from my woods.

I named it the Smiling Dark.

It was kind of funny that I'd be so frightened when you considered the hideous sculptures lining my shelves, shelves nailed to walls heavy with paintings and sketches of the most nightmarish creatures my imagination could concoct. Mom wasn't sure how she felt about my dream job in creature concept design; especially since she was more of a romantic comedy soul and I had a bad habit of leaving my sculptures around corners and inside closets.

I'd sketched hundreds of creatures more terrifying than our ranch stalker, but they were fake. A different, visceral fear had awakened the first time that hulking shadow passed behind the pale trunks.

This morning, the mere thought of the Smiling Dark had my head on a swivel.

It came last night.

It isn't here now.

With one final, cautious glance at swaying grass and narrow pines, I turned my attention onto the brown-eyed beauties of the calving stall.

"Morning ladies," I crooned. "Marlene, Gracie, Clara."

A trio of happy grunts and snorts greeted me. The mothers, some of my favorite cows in a herd of fifty, had their own troubles: lanky, spotted calves tumbled and fell between their tails.

"Everyone made it through the night okay?" I asked, dusting hay and bedding from Clara's cinnamon hide. Mom and I had to use the calf jack to pull her baby. She'd been straining for hours and finally showed only a hind foot. Ever since, we'd been watching mother and daughter like a couple of hawks.

Clara and the rest looked fine, apart from the usual mess, mess I wouldn't have to clean for a few months, maybe longer, if the internship worked out. Optimistic thoughts buzzing through my head, I swung my keys and walked to the shed to grab a shovel for one last morning of shoveling shit.

I loved my home, I did, but I'd never traveled any place larger than Fairbanks. I wanted new experiences, new people, new ideas, a new pace... And new guys. Pickings are pretty slim when you've grown up knowing the same six or seven since you were in diapers. They were practically my brothers. Lucas especially, no matter how hard he tried to change that.

The shed unlocked with a rusty clank, a noise typically drowned out by honking geese and migratory songbirds, a noise I hadn't heard today.

The hair on my arms stiffened.

Not even our rooster crowed.

Hoping to see a hen scratching her way across the yard, I looked at the reflection in the shed's side window. Like the devil on my shoulder, there in the pane, a hundred shades blacker than my hair, stood the Smiling Dark. Quick as I could, I snatched the shovel.

"You're not real," I whispered, tightening my grip and turning. I would've prayed, but it felt as though every hallowed blessing had been sucked from my soul.

When it comes to dangerous wildlife there are two important rules: know where it is and never look it in the eye.

The Smiling Dark, at this distance I understood now it was some hellish perversion of a wolf, watched from field's edge.

"Hey!" I shouted, as if that would frighten it, as if it were some skittish black bear caught digging through our compost. "Hey, wolf! Yeah, you! Get!"

All at once the cows became anxious, stamping and bellowing and tucking their calves into corners. I waved the shovel, wishing I'd had the presence of mind to grab a rifle out of the gun cabinet.

Harvest moon eyes locked onto mine.

The breath caught in my throat.

On quicker legs than nature should allow, it loped past me, past the chicken coop, straight toward Clara and squealing little calf pressed between her hind and the wall. Smoke danced in the wake of its footfalls, and as the wind changed direction the scent of putrid eggs hit me like a hard slap.

My hands trembled. I clanged the shovel on a rock. "Scat!"

Wreathed in smoke, the Smiling Dark looked over its shoulder with a grin capable of making a freshly sharpened knife seem dull. Volcanic spit dribbled down the sides of its elongated jaws, falling in long cords that turned black and hardened as it hit the ground. From that steaming mouth, like a worm emerging through the crust of a rotted apple, came an orange forked tongue. The tip flipped through the air as it panted.

"Back the hell away from my ladies," I demanded, but the fear leaked through my shaky pitch. I wasn't even sure I could get my legs over there to protect them- but my feet moved an inch, then another.

The Smiling Dark turned fully. First one long, pointed ear twitched back, then the other.

The low bellow of a hunting horn sounded through the pines.

Another horn blared, closer. Ajax's truck roared around the gravel driveway. The moment my head swung back around to the wolf, it was sprinting through the field. I watched it; waiting for grass to catch fire that never did, then leaned the shovel against the stall door and took a deep breath and faced the truck. Mom flung herself from the driver's seat and raced up our porch, screaming my name all the while. She hadn't seen me. Running my hands through my hair to compose myself, I counted to ten before yelling, "Here!"

She whipped around, grabbing the porch rail to keep herself from collapsing. "Oh, thank God! Tay, there's been an accident."

It wasn't until her teary brown eyes met mine that I realized her shirt was covered in blood.