I walked forward, not waiting for my team to follow me. When I passed Mikal, I nodded in his direction but kept walking. The scent of desire swirled with his dominance and excitement for battle. The assembled wolves kept it from being overpowering, but it was still disgusting.
I knew now there was no way I would avoid a mate challenge from him; he was making his attraction plenty obvious to anyone within sniffing distance. It was only a matter of time.
But I didn’t have time to deal with an amorous wolf right now.
I had bigger monsters to slay.
Chapter 8
Kaliya
I stalked into the cave without hesitating. I couldn’t show weakness in front of my team. When the rank odor of night stalkers reached my nose, I grimaced but resisted the urge to gag; the stench would only get worse before we were done.
When I reached the back of the entrance I turned to my team. “Group one sweep right, group two left, then three down the middle after me,” I ordered in a whisper. “I’ll lead, keep your eyes peeled. There are at least a dozen.” I eyed the newbies. “If any of you lose your shit and shift, I’ll kill you myself. Got it?” They nodded, eyes wide with trepidation, clutching their weapons with white knuckles. I tipped my head toward the yawning mouth of blackness and led forward without another word.
My ears picked up the hushed gags as the second wave of rot reached my nose. It was truly foul; despite what I’d said in the truck, breathing through your mouth didn’t help. It just made it easier to taste death.
With swords raised above my shoulders, I cast a circle of reddish light around the cave. From the low movement of air, I knew this room was small. I heard a faint clatter of rocks ahead to my left.
Ah, there you are, you filthy bastard. Come and get it.
I moved left, sweeping my swords together to scissor off the head of the wraith who dove at me from the cave wall. Even though the buggers didn’t seem to stop breeding, they didn’t get any smarter. The swords crackled when they met his pale flesh, the small amount of fluids in his neck sizzling as electricity cauterized the slice. My new swords cleanly removed his head from his shoulders and his gaunt white body dropped to the floor like a stone.
I traced the rolling head by the sound; it was a peculiar noise, an undead head severed from its body. Sort of a gasping hiss that was periodically interrupted when his face hit the ground as it rolled. When it stopped, I held one sword up to defend my back while I verified the location of the head in the light of the other.
This was a young one, no more than twelve or thirteen years. His nearly translucent skin covered a bald head, with long, pointed ears and milky-pale eyes. His nose was practically non-existent, reduced to slits that widened and narrowed rapidly as he scented me. Sharp, protruding needle teeth chomped desperately as if he could sink his fangs in my flesh from sheer force of will.
With a hard swing, I hammered my sword through the head, neatly slicing it in two through the jaw and burning the edges to a crisp. It still didn’t kill him, but at least it would keep his head from biting anyone that came too close.
I followed the sour scent of fear back to my team of pups; they had huddled together in the middle of the cave where I’d left them. The other groups and the rest of the teams had joined us, and I heard the occasional sweep of a sword through wraith-flesh. These battles tended to be eery and quiet; both sides tried to keep the edge of surprise, so we all made as little noise as possible.
“Hey,” I hissed to the pup team from outside the reach of their swords, waving my own so they wouldn’t freak out and attack me. “Let’s go.” I moved one sword closer to my face so they could see me tip my head further into the cave. Their footsteps followed me deeper, and I heard my other two groups rejoin us as the sides of the cave merged, signaling the end of this room.
“Two,” someone whispered from my right. “One,” another whisper from my left. “One,” I replied. So far we’d killed four of the bastards, no telling how many the other teams had taken but there were likely more deeper in the network of caves.
We walked through the narrow passageway, a foul breeze hitting my face as we spread out once again. This cave was bigger and probably had another doorway near the back. I raised my swords for light just in time to see a pale shape drop from the ceiling.
I spun out of the way and swirled around it, preparing to remove the head from behind. Then I paused, choosing to allow our newest warriors the chance to get their swords wet.
It was utter chaos, but between the four they managed to dispatch the creature. It lost both arms before one removed the head and split it, but at least no one got bitten. We continued our slow, careful passage through the cave, waiting for the other teams to meet us when we reached the end of the room twenty minutes later. The count bumped up to eleven, and we crossed into the third cave.
The air was distinctly fresher here, and we didn’t encounter any wraiths as we crossed the room in five minutes. My suspicions were correct: the next room was another cave entrance. Fortunately, we hadn’t stumbled across an enormously deep cave, but a cave with two entrances gave us two places to monitor. My team regrouped and we exited into the new cave opening. I needed to determine where this cave let out, but I didn’t recognize the area. I sent groups One and Two back to sweep the cave, rejoin the rest of the raid party, and inform Mikal that my newbies and I were going to make the trek overland to figure out where the cave let out.
We crossed the threshold into bright, direct sunlight, the pups gasping the sweet, clean air of the forest to clean their senses from the filth. I breathed in deeply but was less obvious about it than the rookies. The cave faced east, hit with morning sun and a fresh breeze. After stowing my swords, I climbed the rocks to make my way roughly back the way we’d come through the cave, weaving through trees until I encountered a trail. The team followed quietly. They were likely still in shock after their first encounter with a wraith nest. It was rough the first time, and it never got easier; you just got used to it.
A long time ago, for whatever reason, the Ancients created the monsters. The Ancients had an incredible society, according to the elders; few among us could read their texts any more. But the stories lived on, as well as a few pictures in crumbling tomes that I wasn’t allowed to touch. I still remembered the image of one I’d seen as a girl: Giant, shimmering buildings of steel and glass, millions upon millions of people driving cars on paved roads, flying in winged metal tubes in the sky, traveling over oceans to lands I’d never see.
Because the Ancients created the night stalkers. No one knows why, whether or not it was intentional. But at some point, they developed a serum that turned ordinary humans into mindless, blood-seeking monsters. They grew impossibly large teeth, became incredibly fast and powerful, and supremely sensitive to sunlight.
But the worst part? If you survived a wraith bite, you turned into one of them within several days. People suffered horrible deaths, only to be reborn as a night stalker and attack the family that was grieving over their formerly dead body.
The self-inflicted disease swept through the Ancients’ world, and their response was to make another kind of monster.
Us.
For some reason, wolves seemed immune to the wraith’s bite; a wolf, once bitten, did not necessarily die and become a wraith-wolf. So they reasoned that wolves had a natural protection against the night stalkers, and that was the world’s only chance of surviving the monsters they’d created.