He quickly took his bearings and leapt into the air, aimed for the feasting tree. Pain jolted through his sails where they’d been wrenched by the tree runners. Every beat was an effort and he hadn’t gone far before he had to land, struggling for breath. He was unbelievably weak, his muscles still saturated with the berry’s enervating juices.
Again he threw himself into the air, but most of his progress was downwards. He simply could not muster the power to beat his sails. He whimpered with fury and frustration.
The ground was not far below him and in the dying light he saw a dense green clump of plants. Tea. He flew to it immediately, landing hard on the ground, and tore a leaf from the stalk. He chewed hastily. It was bitter, and made his eyes water, but he ate another for good measure. The effect was almost instantaneous. His heart picked up speed and a restless tremor jittered through his limbs. His head cleared. He wanted to move.
His sails churned and lifted him off the ground. He felt taut and alert. The sun had almost set and darkness was clotting between the trees. He used his echovision to plot his course, veering around branches and cascades of vines. His breath came raggedly, but he pushed himself harder still. He sniffed and listened as he flew, wary of the monster. Had she already passed this way?
In the sharp, silvery world of his echovision, everything looked so different that he almost overshot the feasting tree. He wheeled and spiralled down. On the broad lower branches he made out the dark shapes of his colony. It took him only seconds to realize none of them was moving. There was not a single tree runner in sight.
“Dad? Sylph?”
Cautiously he fluttered closer, sniffing for his family’s familiar scent. But in the air hung the sickly perfume of the same berry that had plunged him into sleep, exhaled through every chiropter’s slack mouth. They were not dead, just unconscious—and completely helpless—sprawled amongst the remains of their poisonous feast. Dusk’s skin felt clammy beneath his fur.
“Wake up!” he shouted as he clambered over the chiropters, trying to find his father and sister. Some of them stirred, muttering indignantly.
“Sylph!”
He found her slumped in a cluster of other newborns. He nudged her head with his. She shifted but did not wake. In the forest, something crackled.
Dusk went rigid. He stared into the darkness. It was truly silent now. The usual night throb of insects was missing. Then came a second crackle, and a third. The slow, deliberate pauses in between made him realize he was hearing the advance of some enormous two-legged creature.
“Sylph,” he barked into his sister’s ear. “Wake up!” He bit her, and she gave a furious cry, jerking up.
“Did you just bite me?” she demanded angrily.
“Start waking everyone up. Be as loud as you like! Bite them if you need to, just wake them up!”
“Where were you?” she asked, frowning in confusion. “You weren’t at the feast, and—”
“Never mind, Sylph! Something’s coming. Where’s Dad?”
“Over there, I think.”
More footsteps crackled through the forest, and Sylph looked at him, unblinking. “It’s big,” she murmured.
“Hurry,” he told her. “And get everyone awake to help you.” Dusk hurried across the branch, intentionally stepping hard on every chiropter in his path, hissing at them to wake up. Nova, Sol, and Barat slept near his father. He butted his head against Dad’s, calling out to him again and again. He knew that his voice likely carried well into the forest, but he couldn’t help that now.
“What is it?” Icaron said after a moment, his voice thick. “Dad, something’s coming to eat us!”
His father shook himself and stood, blinking. “Where?”
Dusk tilted his chin.
The silence was as heavy and congealed as the darkness. Dusk sniffed, but he was upwind and smelled nothing.
“Are you sure, Dusk? Where are the tree runners?”
“Long gone. I saw Adapis talking to a creature in the forest. I tried to come back and warn you sooner, but they caught me and put me to sleep. Just like they did you.”
Icaron frowned, struggling with his memory. “We were feasting and—”
His father glanced around in alarm, saw the dark forms of all the sleeping chiropters, many now awake and moving sluggishly.
Two more footsteps crackled through the darkness, the loudest yet. Then silence. Whatever it was, it was close. Dusk remembered the scat he’d seen, the size of it. His insides churned.
“Wake everyone!” Icaron bellowed. “Tell them to climb high! We’re in great danger!”
He turned and set about rousing the other elders. Dusk fluttered over to the next branch and began waking more of his colony, trampling, nipping, shouting at them, doing whatever was necessary to wrench them from their unnatural slumber. The more he woke, the more helpers he had, but most of them were badly weakened by the berry’s poison, and Dusk worried they’d not be quick enough to reach safety. The tree runners had cleverly laid the feast out on the lower branches, some no more than four feet off the forest floor. “Get to the trunk!” he shouted. “Climb as high as you can!”
Unexpectedly the breeze shifted, and Dusk’s nostrils twitched at the reek of decayed flesh. Others must have smelled it too, for he saw many chiropters turn their heads and flinch.
Massive footsteps thundered through the night.
Dusk froze, unable to look away. Branches and ferns and bushes thrashed as the monster burst into view.
He did not know what she was—bird, beast, or saurian.
Walking erect on two vast sturdy legs, her feet were those of a bird, three thick taloned toes in front, and one wickedly hooked claw at the rear. Her gigantic head seemed too big for her body, with a broad lethal beak. Her muscular torso was densely haired, but the wings were practically nonexistent—nothing more than little feathered stubs, surely incapable of flight. A thick array of ragged tail feathers sprouted from her rear. She stood ten feet high, her head well above the branches where the chiropters had been slumbering. A long scar ran across her right leg, and she limped as she ran, her appalling smell cresting before her.
For a second she hesitated, craning her neck to take in the chiropters, who surged in terror along the branches and trunk.
“You were to be sleeping!” she shrieked, and galloped towards them.
Dusk looked around desperately, trying to find Sylph and his father, but all was chaos now as terrified chiropters clambered over those who still slumbered.
The monster reached the low branches and attacked. Her powerful shoulders heaved forwards, neck stretching, beak agape. When she reared back, two chiropters were impaled on her hooked beak, and then flicked inside by a muscular grey tongue. The monster’s head swivelled, eyes flashing violet. Wet air hissed from the slits in her beak.
Again and again she struck, snatching up chiropters, sleeping and awake, from the branch. Nothing seemed to slake her furious appetite. She wanted more. She wanted them all. The trunk crawled with chiropters heaving themselves higher; others, trapped on the branches, leaped and glided earthward, hoping to hide in the undergrowth.
“Climb high!” he heard his father shouting off to his left. “It can’t follow! Climb high!”
Dusk wanted to fly to safety, but not before he’d made sure Sylph was all right. The monster lifted her left foot onto his branch, gripped it with her talons and snapped it in half. Unconscious chiropters tumbled to the earth. Dusk flew clear and caught sight of Sylph, sails spread, gliding to the forest floor. He dropped down and landed beside her. The monster’s legs were not five feet distant, towering over them.
“Hurry!” said Dusk, scrambling with her over the earth towards the trunk of the nearest tree.
For the moment, the monster’s face was turned away from them as she plucked up the unconscious chiropters and shook them down her throat. Dusk and Sylph reached the trunk and started climbing.
“Just fly,” Sylph hissed at him.
“I’m
fine.” He struggled to keep up.
The monster exhaled noisily. Glancing back, Dusk saw her glaring at the feasting tree. Its lowest branches were all but empty now. With relief Dusk saw that most of the chiropters, sluggish as they were, had managed to climb beyond the reach of that deadly beak.
“This is no feast!” the thing shrieked.
She turned, and was still. In the near dark, Dusk couldn’t be sure what she was looking at. He sang out sound, and his echoes illuminated the monster. Her head was turned straight towards him, eyes blazing. She blurred as she lurched at them.
“Keep climbing!” he cried to Sylph, and jumped into the air, sails unfurling.
He needed time for Sylph to get higher.
“Hey! Look here!” he shouted at the monster, flapping to meet her.
The creature’s head jerked to and fro, trying to fix him as he fluttered past erratically. Suddenly she lunged. He wasn’t prepared for her reach. The beak hurtled towards him, and Dusk braked, rolling to the side. The creature’s rancid breath crashed over him and the beak clipped the tip of his left sail, snapping him round.
He crashed against the thing’s neck. Her oily feathers were dense and for a moment his claws got tangled up in them. The monster whirled, trying to impale him. Dusk tore his claws free, thrashed his sails, and leapt clear. The monster’s own stubby wings fluttered uselessly as she screeched in frustration.
Dusk took no more chances. He circled high above her head, hurling insults until the creature’s jaws foamed with fury. She jumped for him, but was too heavy to go far. When he thought Sylph was high enough to be out of harm’s way, Dusk flew back to the tree. She was safe. He settled beside her, out of breath.
The monster careened back to the feasting tree, searching for any unconscious chiropters she had missed. She tilted back her muscly neck and gawked up at the survivors beyond her reach, then let loose a terrible high-pitched trill that made Dusk’s ears vibrate in pain. “Where’s Dad?” Sylph asked.
“He got clear. I think he did. We should get over there.”
“Adapis!” the monster shrieked. “This was not a feast! You promised me a feast, Adapis, and you will provide me with one!”
“Adapis was going to feed us to that thing?” Sylph exclaimed. Dusk winced and nodded. “We were the feast.” Below, the monster finally gave up trying to climb the feasting tree and went shrieking off in the direction of the tree runners’ nests. Dusk felt his stomach tighten. He thought of Strider and his friends. Surely they couldn’t know about this terrible thing their parents did.
“I hope it eats them all,” Sylph muttered darkly.
“Dusk! Sylph!”
It was Dad, calling from high in the feasting tree. They climbed a bit farther and glided across to him. Dusk was happily folded into his father’s sails, alongside Sylph. Dad was alive. Dusk didn’t know how many had died tonight, but the three of them were still alive. “What was that thing?” Sylph asked.
“A diatryma,” Icaron said, voice hoarse with exhaustion. “A flightless bird.”
“A bird that can’t fly?” Sylph said, amazed at the very idea.
“She protects the tree runners,” said Dusk, remembering the conversation he’d overheard. “That’s why their forest is so quiet. She scares away all the predators. But the tree runners have to give her food.”
“Why can’t she feed herself?” Sylph asked.
“Her leg. She limps.”
Icaron nodded. “The diatrymas need speed to chase down their food on the grasslands. She must’ve come into the forest hoping for smaller prey she could catch by stealth. But she’s a clumsy thing amongst trees. Without Adapis to bring her prey, she’d starve.”
Dusk shuddered at the fiendishness of the whole arrangement. He remembered Knoll saying that lots of animals passed through the forest, but never stayed long. He wondered how many Adapis had lulled to their deaths.
“They seemed so friendly,” Sylph said, clearly unable to understand how any creature could do something so terrible.
For the first time Dusk noticed the blood on his father’s fur. His old wound had torn open. “Dad, your—”
“I know. I’ll worry about that later,” he said. “We can’t spend the night here. The tree runners are strong, and who knows what other treachery they’re capable of. We’ve got to move.”
From the branches all around came the whimpers and moans of terrified chiropters. Icaron raised his voice so all could hear.
“I know you’re exhausted,” he called out. “I know you’ve suffered. But we must leave this place now. Think of the new home that awaits us. Twenty years ago, when I was expelled from my colony with Sol and Barat and Nova, we feared we’d never find another home. But we discovered the island. Now we’re homeless once more. But I promise we will soon have a new home, and it will be bountiful and safe. Think of that tonight as we travel.”
Icaron turned to Dusk and said, more quietly, “There’s enough moonlight if we travel high. You and Sylph stay close to me. And, Dusk, we may need your echovision to guide us safely through this night.”
With Panthera at his side, Carnassial emerged from the cool of the hillside caves to begin the twilight hunt. As the rest of his prowl emerged, he stood looking over the valley with immense satisfaction. It had been a good choice for a home. As was his custom now, he carefully scanned the treetops and skies, listening for the mournful hoot of the predator birds. But there was no danger overhead.
Instead, it arrived on foot.
Carnassial did not even smell the creatures before they burst into view. He was so startled by their sheer size, he thought they must be saurians. But their speed, and their fur, told him they were beasts—bigger than he’d ever seen. Their hindquarters were striped black and white, and their upper bodies were an earthen colour, tapering to dull black around their powerful muzzles. They ran on their toes without planting their feet, and their legs were taut with muscles. Jutting like fins from the sides of their elongated skulls were sharply spiked ears. There were six of them, and they immediately spread out to trap as many felids between them as they could.
One faced Carnassial. It was four times his size. A pair of oversize canines projected over its lower jaw, all the better to grip its prey. But it was the ridged teeth farther back that made Carnassial’s sinews tighten. He sensed how easily they could crush bone and tear flesh. He could smell the meat on its humid breath.
Still he would not back down. He had already fled his territory once because of an invader, and would not do it a second time. He was glad to see that some of his prowl had already made it up into the trees, and were poised on overhanging branches, hissing and yowling, ready to jump. His other felids remained on the ground, tensed, set to attack at his command. Panthera crouched beside him, hackles raised. “This is our territory,” she spat.
When the creature spoke, its throat and mouth seemed unaccustomed to forming language. Its words were barks. “We—seek—Carnassial.”
“You have found him,” he growled suspiciously. How did they know of him? He didn’t let his astonishment dull his fight instinct. He was taut and ready. He watched them all carefully.
“You are Carnassial?” the creature grunted in seeming disbelief. “A saurian killer?”
“It was I who killed the last of them,” Carnassial hissed.
“No,” barked the beast. “They live.”
“It’s not possible,” Carnassial said, amazed and insulted both. He and Panthera had scoured the earth; they had found and destroyed the last nest. He’d once been known as a hero among beasts. He glanced at Panthera and saw she too was incredulous.
“If there were any left, we would’ve found them,” he told the giant before him.
It coughed out its words. “You—will—kill—them—for—us.”
“Will I?” said Carnassial, his muscles uncoiling just a bit. It seemed these creatures did not come to hunt, but to ask for his help. But the beast clearly disliked his boldness, and took a si
ngle, menacing step closer.
“You must!” it said.
“How did you hear of me?” Carnassial asked, determined not to be intimidated by this monstrous thing. “Felids told us of the Pact.”
Carnassial couldn’t help wondering under what circumstances this beast had talked to the felids. Perhaps just before ripping out their entrails.
“Who are you?” Carnassial wanted to know.
“Danian.”
“And what are you?”
“Hyaenodons. We are many. We eat flesh.”
“As do I,” Carnassial replied.
Danian snorted, as if amused at the idea of such a small creature hunting live prey. “We seek new hunting grounds. But saurians live where we would settle.”
“You’re powerful creatures. Surely you could defeat these creatures by yourself.”
“The adults are sick. They will die soon. But there is a nest.”
“And you’ve been unable to find it,” said Carnassial.
“You are small and stealthy. You will find it.” Carnassial could see that the hyaenodons had no chance of hunting nests successfully. The saurians would easily spot them coming and attack with all their strength. Clearly Danian was not so powerful that he didn’t fear them. For the first time Carnassial noticed a large raised scar on his back. Had it been inflicted by a saurian?
“We can be of use to one another, then,” said Carnassial. These beasts could barely speak. They were likely imbeciles, but terribly powerful ones.
“Who is to say there is only one nest?” Panthera mused aloud. Carnassial glanced over, about to contradict her, but her piercing gaze silenced him.
“The saurians may be more numerous than any of us thought,” she continued. “Carnassial and I can certainly find any saurian nest and destroy it. But if we do this thing for you, Danian, we will expect something in return.”
“Life,” said Danian.
“Yes,” said Carnassial quickly, now understanding Panthera’s cunning scheme. “I propose a permanent alliance between your pack and my prowl. We will not feed on one another. There is plenty of other prey in this new world. We will protect you from the saurians. You will protect us from any other predators. Are we agreed?”