For a few, stunned seconds Nathan just stood there, staring at the bodies in the gloom. Then he turned and threw the front door closed, jamming down the bar. The only source of light now was a shutter that hadn’t been closed properly, but at least he could be sure nobody would attack him from behind while he checked the bodies.

Nathan waited another minute for his eyes to adjust, then made his way over to the closed windows, to open another one. They were small enough that he didn’t worry about an attack coming this way.

And he was very worried indeed suddenly.

For all that he liked to call them the circus act, Roy and Bart were experienced hunters. In fact, they’d been on the job longer than him, almost as long as David. Made a living of it, too. They couldn’t be complete idiots, or they wouldn’t have survived in the field that long.

If nothing else, they knew how to pick their battles.

Yet something had caught up with them here.

Nathan looked around slowly, trying to take in the details, hoping for a clue. The inside of the house wasn’t big, just one room with a single wood-burning stove for both cooking and heating in the centre. A chimney took the smoke away. A door in the back connected it to the workroom of the saw mill, built over the river. Nathan threw one look inside, saw nothing suspicious, and threw that door closed, too. Pushed one of the simple but heavy shelves in front of it for good measure.

The shelves were filled with jars of preserved vegetables and fruit. To the side, there was a small kitchen. A bank was built against the front wall. The table that belonged to it stood at an awkward angle, with two more chairs, both of them turned over. Roy’s body lay next to one of them. As if someone had pushed the table with enough force to topple them, too.

Nathan resisted the urge to go over there right away. A ladder led up into the rafters on the other side of the front door. Climbing it was a pain, especially with the crossbow, and all he found for his troubles were two simple beds. Bart’s and Roy’s belongings were stacked underneath the ladder, in an empty spot across from the table group.

There was a surprising amount of space left, especially right around the oven. Now that Nathan’s eyes had gotten used to the gloom, he made out a difference in the wooden flooring there—something had worn them smooth. Perhaps the grandparents had kept dogs? It was a rather large spot, though. Morgulon would quite comfortably fit.

But it didn’t seem likely that the killer was one of Rosie’s grandparents. Could they have harboured the killer perhaps? Long enough to smooth the floor down?

Maybe. Four months might do it, especially if the killer had slept there as a wolf throughout the winter. Maybe they had come back as Bart and Roy had searched the house?

But the two of them had died at the table. Bart’s body was still on the bench, slumped over the table top, his crossbow right next to his head. Roy’s body lay next to an overturned chair, his crossbow on the floor with him. One bolt was missing—Nathan found it stuck in a wooden beam of the rafters.

Whoever had murdered them had been close enough that Bart hadn’t even had time to reach for his weapon. Moreover, the table had clearly been displaced. Had the killer been sitting right next to Bart on the bench?

Nathan pressed his lips together. If nothing else, this told him that the monster could pass as human, not just in the way they looked, but in their act, too.

They had to have proper clothes, too—or used to have proper clothes. They must have transformed on the spot, and quickly, too. Bart and Roy wouldn’t have given them time to take off their clothes first.

Or would they? They had met Greg, briefly, and they had been quite happy to work for David. How much had they internalised the idea that not all werewolves were dangerous?

But surely, they couldn’t be that foolish?

No. Safer to bet the killer was skilled at disguising themselves. And fast at transforming, even on half moon.

How old was this monster?

Nathan had assumed it was someone newly turned, but was it even possible for a months-old to transform fast enough to get the drop on a hunter who had his crossbow at hand? Morgulon could do it, sure. But could Greg?

“Someone’s got to do a study on this, too,” Nathan muttered to himself.

He took another look around—there were some pieces of fabric underneath the table and on the bench, but it looked like the killer had cleaned up after themselves. Why? They hadn’t bothered to hide the bodies? Did that mean they worried that someone might have recognized the rags?

But who would come here? Villagers? The killer couldn’t know about the investigators coming from Deeshire, could they?

But how would they?

Nathan had a good rummage around in Bart’s and Roy’s bags, but didn’t find any hint of what had been going on here. He did find their food supplies—apparently, the killer hadn’t bothered looting anything from them. Since it didn’t look like the villagers were coming by soon, Nathan checked the kitchen’s stocks, too. No point in letting good food go to waste.

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He dumped out Bart’s backpack, and had just started filling it with jars of pickled vegetables and jam, when he noticed the ladder that was hung above the top rack. Finding the trapdoor took him longer: it was covered up by the only rug in the house.

That only made Nathan more curious to see what was down there.

He lit the oil lamp on the table, and carefully checked the downstairs for any movement. The last thing he needed was a tunnel leading to the outside and the werewolf waiting for him—as unlikely as that was. He did feel a little silly when all he saw was an open crate full of apples.

Nathan didn’t even have to climb down there to see the scratch marks on the loamy walls.

Rosie’s grandparents had harboured a werewolf. More than one, unless Rosie had lied to him about both when she had been bitten and the fact that her grandfather hadn’t even known what she was.

It didn’t seem likely that she had.

Nathan rubbed his face and threw a glance out of the window: just after noon. It was tempting to stay here, rummage around a little more, until the shadows fell, and oh, such a shame, nothing he could do in the dark. But he’d find no answers that way. At the very least, he needed to go back to the village, see if someone would tell him about Rosie’s grandparents and if they had housed any long-staying guests.

He pushed the front door open slowly, carefully. He felt silly, hurrying over to Sore, loosening the reins, and jumping in the saddle. Yet his heartbeat didn’t stop thundering in his ears until he was out of the forest again. He suddenly had a whole new appreciation for David, doing this at just fourteen years of age, with almost no experience. Not that he had ever thought it had been easy for his brother.

***

Even from outside the gates, Nathan could hear voices screaming inside the village, a hoarse cacophony that rose and fell with pain. He hoped it was animals, but it might have been human voices, too. It certainly didn’t sound like a regular butchering—if it was one, something had gone very wrong.

Given the screaming, it surprised Nathan a little when his knocking on the gate was answered quickly. Wood scratched against wood, then one wing opened a little. An old man with a crumbled face looked at him.

“Can’t you hear the screaming? Fuck off, boy, it’s not safe here!”

Nathan nodded grimly. “I do hear. What’s the monster done this time?”

That gave the old man pause. “You heard about that?”

“I just found the bodies of my colleagues at the sawmill,” Nathan replied, shrugging his shoulders so that the crossbow jumped on his back. “So what’s going on here?”

The old man sighed. “Some bastard’s going round, cutting off ears from the goats in the village. Done a dozen in the past month alone, another two today.”

“In broad daylight?”

The old man looked at him with a mixture of exhaustion, fear, sadness and resignation. “Yes, boy. In broad daylight.”

“So you wouldn’t happen to know what happened at the sawmill? Not the bit about Rosie’s grandparents, she already told me about that. More recently. Did anyone from the village go there?”

The old man peered at him again. “Just go home, boy,” he sighed, “or wherever you came from. We don’t need another idiot who thinks werewolves are people. Mark my word, you’ll just turn out another heap of stinking black meat for us to find.”

Nathan’s hands curled into fists around the reins he was holding. “Because killing kids and grandparents has improved the situation so much?” he asked back.

No answer. The old man just blinked at him in stupor.

Ah well.

He was about to ride off, when another thought came to him.

“Anyways, I’m Nathan Fleetfood Feleke. Anything you want me to pass on to the palace? No? Then I’ll just turn around and tell the investigators coming here from Deeshire you lot murdered Rosie’s grandparents over nothing. If I were you, I’d start asking myself if you want the rope or the bite. They’ll be here in a day or two, so better think fast.”

He waited a few more seconds, but the threat didn’t seem to have any effect. A shame, but it had been worth a try.

He couldn’t help the feeling that he had been supposed to find the bodies at the sawmill. Cutting off ears in broad daylight and leaving the dead sheep on the pastures? There was a method to that madness, wasn’t it? The killer was proving to the villagers that nowhere was safe. If he was right, then he was fairly certain that the challenge of an official investigator from the big city would draw the killer out again.

And he’d be ready for that attack. Provided he survived the night.

He briefly considered going back to the sawmill, but the whole place stunk of death. More importantly, now that he had announced him, he needed to make sure he could warn the investigator before the man ran into a “helpful stranger” on the road and turned up dead, too.

So he turned Sore down the road they had ridden up just this very morning. The gelding was tired, and Nathan, too, if he was honest. He’d need to find a campsite, and soon. Some nice tree to rest on.

At least there was no shortage of trees. Not even a shortage of trees standing alone. Nathan found himself an old, tall lime-tree at the edge of a pasture, just off the road. The trunk was comfortingly massive and the lowest branches were high enough that he would only reach them from the saddle.

“Sorry, Sore,” he muttered, as he tied the gelding to the trunk. “This is going to be uncomfortable.”

He was no trick-rider, and briefly debated leaving the saddle on for the night. But a literally sore horse might be the death of him tomorrow. So he sighed and took the saddle off, and then had to struggle to get onto Sore’s back. It was a good thing the gelding wasn’t as tall as Bairn. He wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to do it with his wooden foot otherwise. Sore was also a lot more patient than Bairn and barely even twitched when Nathan struggled to stand upright on his back.

It was a pain to get from there up onto the lowest branch, all the more so because he wasn’t going to leave his newly acquired food stash down on the ground.

“Need to do more pull-ups,” Nathan muttered after a minute of struggling, leaning against the trunk. But still, once he climbed a few branches higher, nothing short of a bow should be able to reach him.

He made himself comfortable and had a glass of jam with some of the hard tack from his supplies, washed it all down with water. It was a shame that he couldn’t make at least tea.

And he should have brought a book. Something to distract himself with. It was a bit early to go to sleep just yet?

Just as he was considering taking the silver out of his crossbow and shooting some birds to pass the time, a sound interrupted the silence of the spring afternoon. Someone was riding up in a hurry.

Nathan cursed softly. Now what? It couldn’t be the investigator, right?

But no. It was a single rider, coming down the road from the village that Nathan had taken twice today.