1 Chapter 1
The movie lets
out a little before midnight. The small shops, odd boutiques, and
quaint restaurants that line Richmond’s Carytown district have
closed, leaving behind an empty street through which the wind
whistles as it rustles through trash that lines the gutters. A
small crowd exits Carytown’s vintage movie palace, the Byrd
Theatre, which had played a late show and now locks its doors
against the wintry wind. Hartley Smith takes his sister’s elbow and
leads her away from the theatre down Cary Street, away from the
crowd. It’s late. Not even the bums are out, begging for change on
the street corner.
Giselle wraps a
small hand over her brother’s warm fingers and turns slightly to
smile at him. She angles her head to avoid hitting him with the
large rack of antlers spread out above her long, auburn
locks—strong growths that stretch like branches a good three feet
to either side of her diminutive frame, the antlers put Hartley’s
own knobbly stumps to shame. But she’s ten years his senior and
assures him his own will grow in soon enough. With a practiced nod,
she rubs one of her antlers along the short, bony appendage that
protrudes from his thick, brown hair, as if she knows where his
thoughts dwell. “What did you think of the film?”
Hartley shrugs.
Another sci-fi flick, something Giselle had picked, nothing he
would have seen on his own. “It was all right. A bit unbelievable
though, don’t you think? All those people were so…I don’t know. Too
human, I guess. Nothing animal about them at all. No horns, no
tails, no antlers. No teeth—”
“They had
teeth,” Giselle says with a laugh. “I could see them when they
smiled.”
“All straight
and white and even. They didn’t look like this.” Hartley bares his
own teeth. The long incisors in the front of his mouth are framed
on either side by an open space. The people in the movie had had
teeth filling in that gap. Hartley thinks that would make eating
difficult, all those extra teeth in his mouth. His molars are in
the back, where they need to be. What would he need more
teeth for? The canidae have them, and the felidae, and the ursidae.
The cervidae don’t.
“They
hadteeth,” Giselle says again, driving her point home.
“Too many of
them,” Hartley argues.
They’ve reached
the end of the street now, the intersection of Cary and Sheppard.
Even the Chinese eatery on the corner, usually the only place open
when they get out of a late movie, is closed. Giselle turns right,
down Sheppard and away from Carytown. The two share a condo on
Patterson, only seven blocks away, and though the night is cold,
the sky is clear. Most of the crowd that has followed them from the
Byrd turns off at the parking lot behind the eatery, leaving the
duo on their own in the night. With no streetlights, no traffic out
this late, and no moon above, the darkness is complete. Giselle
clutches Hartley’s hand tighter as she leads the way, picking up
the pace.
Behind them, a
lone wolf’s howl splits the night.
Hartley
half-turns to peer over his shoulder. He sees nothing but the
stoplight at the corner flicker from red to green. Beside him, his
sister gasps. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know,”
he whispers. The movie let out before midnight—they should have
enough time to make it home. The Hunt doesn’t start until twelve;
those are the rules.
Releasing his
sister’s arm, he reaches for his back pocket, where his cell phone
was deposited after he turned it off before the movie started. Now
he extracts it, flips it open, and turns the ringer back on. The
display reads 11:50 PM. Ten minutes. They have plenty of
time.
Still, he
nudges her with his elbow as he pockets the phone. “Walk faster.
We’ll make it.”
“Why do you
always want to chance it?” Giselle asks, unnerved. “You knew what
time the movie got out.”
They’re
crossing Ellwood—one block down, six left to go—when they hear
another howl. Closer this time, it dissolves into a series of quick
yaps that sends shivers down Harley’s spine. Something much faster
than the wind hurries down the sidewalk behind them, running after
them. He whirls around, but only sees shadows and darkness. He
hears heavy breathing, quick pants, claws scraping over tarmac and
the heavy padding of paws on concrete. A low growl seems to erupt
from the night, surrounding them. Ten minutes or not, time is
up.
He shoves his
sister in the direction of Patterson, pushing her hard. “Run,” he
says, hoping his own panic doesn’t creep into his voice. “Don’t
look back. Run all the way home.”
She takes a few
stumbling steps and falters. “But Hartley—”
“I’m right
behind you,” he promises.
