Look, Todd.
The world was white. Overhead, the moon was so full and fat that she filled the sky, and the snow on the ground caught her light and refracted it a million times until the world itself glowed. The light that flowed up from the ground cast long shadows between the trees, dark places for things like him. Like the hunter.
The hunter’s eyes soaked in the light, even as his feet – bare, like an animal’s – took silent steps between his open position and the nearest shade. The cold crept across his skin, and his breath came out in a grey cloud of steam. He parted his lips in a smile and let the breeze set his teeth on edge, though his jaw was set too tightly for it to travel any farther in. His body wasn’t meant for the wind, after all; his tongue and throat and hunger wouldn’t be satisfied by just the cold.
But there was something on that wind that made his mouth water. He was already downwind from it, even though no one among his prey could scent him coming. The scent was hot, and sweet. Iron, sure, but the surface – the prey itself – burned his nose with the rich scent of cinnamon and apples and jasmine. It was close – he could feel its heat, from here. He could hear its feet breaking the surface of the snow in panicked, sprinting steps.
See the red bird.
The hunter knew its name. He knew what it thought it was by its scent alone, this cinnamon-sweet creature that hopped uselessly in the dead of winter, its wings clipped, left at the mercy of the coyote.
The coyote howled its name, a low, listless hum like he was calling out to the moon itself. His words were laden with honey, a promise of warmth, of safety, of home, of love. It thought he could love it, this bird, and it came to his teeth in a flurry of wing and relief. The blood filled his lungs along with the fear – and the hope. The hope this broken thing had in seeing him made him want to laugh. He did laugh, and it didn’t even notice.
He kissed it, when it came close, setting the snare. It suspected nothing, and his smile was as wet and eager as his lips and tongue as he traced its jaw to its ear to its neck, the skin bare of its usual protective feathers. He drank in its cinnamon scent and its flooding heat for a moment, a moment that lasted a lifetime. The bird’s lifetime, the moments before the fire became embers.
And when his teeth pierced its fragile shoulder and crushed its bones, only then did it sense its danger, and fight him, and run, and fight again.
Of course it fought. It burned and stung, but it was hopeless, in the end. They danced together until the snow was slush and the trees were charred and the hunter’s skin burned and peeled, but the fire was still prey. Even fire submitted to his teeth at last, pinned back against a tree it had ruined in its attempt to save its own life. Even its blood burned his tongue as he finally crushed its throat, and then brought his mouth to its, it that thought he could love it. He kissed, and its last breath would be of its own blood as his teeth caressed its face and peeled it apart.
Whether he finished the meal or not, he couldn’t remember. His attention was pulled away by another scent, a sound of horror and fear, metal and incense and youth.
See the gray wolf.
He knew, of course, that this was meant to be a place of fear. Of dread, of horror, of trial and test. And there was plenty of fear. He looked up, and his blue eyes met familiar brown ones, the starry-eyed pup that retched at the smell of blood. It was not a hunter, though it postured and pretended and even sought him out. It was young and foolish, and it was surprised, of course, by his betrayal.
“Run away, little wolf,” he warned it, humming out the words as his teeth bared again, stained red from the bird. But the pup wouldn’t run. It was a fool. There was no steel in the woods for it to turn into bladed claws or piercing teeth. Without tools, it was helpless.
It tried. It didn’t run, silly thing. It tried to fight him with its hands, with its feet, with its clawless paws, but he was quick and clever. But it was afraid, and he was not. He tasted it in the air with each new flash of crimson against the snow, even in each bruise it landed.
He tore it apart. He remembered the darkness where they first met, this helpless cub, and only when he took its hand and tore it off as he had the prey that night did it finally get the message to flee. He savored it, bite by bite, piece by piece, and the prey never wearied, only grew in fear and dread until at last he looked into its green eyes and pulled its heart free from the cage of its chest. He watched the light die in its too-young eyes as he settled to take in the meal –
Something fell behind him, hit the ground hard. His head rose and snapped toward it, eyes picking out the prone shape in the darkness.
Hear the white cat.
A kitten had fallen from one of the trees. Soft little thing, afraid to pounce, it looked at him with more curiosity than fear. The wolf’s heart forgotten, the fox rose to his feet, head tilted. He reassured the creature as it came to its feet again, purred in its language of kindness and goodness, offered to help. But the kitten had instincts far sharper than the wolf pup, and betrayed itself by running.
He was faster than it, of course; the hunt could have ended before it began. But where was the fun in that? No; no, this was a
hunt, to be savored more than even the meat at the end of it. He lured and baited and chased, followed and flitted between the shadows, climbed trees just to drop right in front of the tireless cat and forcing it to change directions. Unlike the wolf, this one knew the woods, understood the rules of forest and hunt. It knew, out of all of them, that it was
prey, and that he was destined to tear it apart.
At last, when the time was right, he pounced. He sprung upon the kitten’s back, and with raw strength tore free the burdensome layers it wore to hide its true self, its musky scent and thick fur. As with any predator, hair and fur meant nothing to him. He tore it free with his teeth as the kitten yowled. He pulled away the pieces of it that were not human, flipping it onto its back like a turtle to watch him devour it alive.
The fear from this one outweighed the fear of both the others; and yet of the three, this one knew when it was beaten, and resigned itself at last to the death chosen for it by the maker of this wonderful forest.
Be free.
He hunted and played in the snow for what felt like hours, days, weeks. His hunger was bottomless, but even more so, whenever a hunt ended, a new one was ready for him. He ate but was never filled enough to come away from the hunt’s song. Every prey had a different flavor. Coffee, pepper, motor grease, linen, vanilla (but not quite), metal, ozone – even those flavors that wouldn’t make sense only tinted the meat and the blood and the fear. That was all the hunter had to identify them by. That was all the hunter
needed to identify them by.
He had the ozone bird crushed under his heel, pinned and spread out and peeled apart and opened, the last of its labored breaths finally going still, when he caught it again on the wind. The promise of cinnamon, sweet as apple pie.
Again, hunter.
He blinked a few times, pausing in tearing free the pieces of the fallen prey that would keep him alive; hadn’t he scented that prey before? Couldn't he still remember the taste of its blood?
Yet there it was, on the wind; limping and broken, hopping between the trees, the red bird that thought he loved it. He watched it, entirely still and meal forgotten, until it passed; and then he took off in silent pursuit.
He couldn’t resist for long, couldn’t resist the fear and the memory of its sweet blood. This time he simply chased, animal in his liberation. It ran and burned and fought and shrieked that it loved him, that it couldn’t understand why he as doing this.
Of course it couldn’t understand, he told the sweet warm thing.
“How can a fire understand the winter? How can the sun understand the night? How can a songbird understand her predator?”
The predator that loved her the way his teeth loved her bones at last, at last, quit his play and tore her down. Lovely as she was, helpless and afraid, she was still prey; and prey was, ultimately, food. Would his human mind remember the love that caressed her skin and took it away, or would it only see the blood, and be full of fear?
No. No, he couldn’t let himself become that. Fear was weakness, and he was not weak. The weak was prey, and he wasn’t prey.
But he was being hunted. He heard it, heard something, crushing the snow as it tried in vain to circle without being noticed. It stank of terror, and that was how he knew he was not hunted by another predator at all. There was prey here that thought itself predator. Cute, he thought, as he breathed in the incense – and… steel… and… youth.
Run, wolf. Run, run, run.
The wolf ran, this time, but it was not running from the hunter. The pup charged, pounced, but its fear had already betrayed it. He caught it and tossed it aside, and braced as it dashed in, seeking out weak points and finding none. It was clever, this time, but blinded by the knowledge of what it was, and what he was. Even so, its fight to kill became a fight to survive.
And though the hunter savored the second chance to destroy the arrogance that lurked under the surface of the prey’s thick skin, his mind stirred with recognition. He’d had this one before, too. He had already worn the boy down, worn him thin, worn him out, taken out the warrior’s heart as he did now and –
Look! Look up! Look up, up, up!
Something rustled in the trees. He scented the fear from this one, too, as well as the scent that… that was not feline, but still earth and forest. It shivered violently against the wind, curled as it was in the branches, its scaled skin betraying a cold-blooded nature not meant for the beautiful winter around them. But even in its tension, even in its fear, he felt something about this creature that stirred him. Even more than the wolf pup, it seemed young. It felt small. It felt helpless, but helplessness… didn’t suit it.
Didn’t it know what it was? It knew what he was, of course. But it forgot itself in its fear.
He stared at it for a long time, and it didn’t run away. It was too cold to run. The wind tugged at its dark hair, and its opaque white eyes showed more emotion than anything with an iris ever had. That emotion was fear, just fear, wariness, knowing what he was and what she was and what would happen when he decided he was done watching and came up that tree after her.
But she wouldn’t run, would she? She knew how a predator thought. She wouldn’t run away. If she fell, maybe. Maybe the fear would be too much. But… there was something here, something he was missing. An itch at the back of his mind, irritating through the buzz of the hunt. What couldn’t he remember about her?
He thought back. Another tree in the warmer months, with no snow on the ground, when the girl was covered in fur. When she hung dangerously above the ground. He’d been starving then, hungry. He should’ve caught her and bolted, run off with her in his arms. Why hadn’t he? Why had he kept her? Because he’d been human– or human enough? His human heart was soft. It hoped to love the red bird and pitied the wolf cub.
But this scaled kitten wasn’t just pitiable. She wasn’t just resigned. She didn’t know what she was. Or she did, and didn’t know how to apply it. She didn’t know how to fight him, because she was so much smaller – as small as he sometimes thought he was. He fished around, looked in himself for that feeling of smallness, that feeling when he kept his real self, this hunter, locked away.
And in doing that, he remembered her name.
“Adelyn.” He spoke quietly, for the first time since he’d scented the red bird.
“It’s okay, kid. It’s – me. It’s me. I can help you.”
She didn’t move, just stared. Stared like she didn’t recognize him. What had he done, last time? He couldn’t remember. Maybe… alright. Why had he done what he’d done, last time? She had been hanging from that tree. He’d asked her –
“Do you need help?”
She just stared. She knew, of course, that he wanted her. That was the only real reason why he was offering. He didn’t understand why she just sat there, watching him. Eyes on him. He was a predator. A mountain lion. She was a predator, too – but small, and fragile. A gecko, maybe, or maybe just a housecat. Something that watched him and wanted to understand him. She wasn’t like him. There wasn’t anything like him. He’d pretend, of course. Pretend to understand people.
But as he looked at her, colored as his vision was by the hunt, he realized something. He really did want to see… something. Not just see her run, but – see
her, the real her, like this was the real him. There was a hunter under her scaly skin, she just didn’t seem to notice it. She saw it when she looked at him, though. Even when she looked at the human side of him, the camouflage. He remembered how she’d looked at him, when they caught that thief in the alley. He hadn’t hurt the girl, but there’d been something in Adelyn’s eyes.
She’d seen him, both of him. And she didn’t see a difference. She’d see the human part of him as a predator. Would – would she see the predator part of him as human, if he let her? Did she see that, perched up there, on the tree?
He looked back at her face, and saw through the fear. She saw him. Not the way Nat and Sam saw the human with predator’s attributes, or the way that Obsidian had only seen the predator, but saw the thing that was feared as a person. As much as the hunter was a real part of the person, lurking under the surface, the human heart beat under the song of the hunt, keeping time and tempo.
She smiled at him. He smiled back, unafraid to show teeth.
He stepped forward, and held out his arms. There was nothing to fear, even as the moon shone on them, the snow glowed underfoot, the blood stained his hands and face. She didn’t need to be afraid of him. She understood. Of course she did.
“You’re going to need to trust me.”
And she did. Because as much as Cryptid was Todd under the mask, Todd was Cryptid, the hunter lost in the song. He saw Adelyn, and she saw him, and they understood. And when she fell, he caught her. Because she needed his strength. And despite her weakness, he could give some of that strength to her, because under the skin, they weren’t so different. He cradled her close, in his arms, not between his teeth.
And he turned to carry her home.
Well done, Todd.
