Page 54 of Nexus
WE RAN FOR A COUPLE of hours, which drained us both physically. Ruen’s distended belly shrank until he looked skeletally thin again. He needed blood to keep up such a fast pace and I needed food to keep going. By mutual agreement, we slowed to a walk, still following the trail that was leading us to the shortest mountain.
“I really need to find some food,” I complained when my belly rumbled louder than ever. It was so noisy it startled a bird into flight. Just like in the vision, it had mangy fur, beady yellow eyes and leathery wings. The trees were gnarled, twisted and bent into strange shapes. Nothing on this world looked or felt normal to me. Even the air smelled weird.
“You could try eating that,” Ruen said, pointing at another bird that was crouching beneath a log just off the path. It was a very different species from the mangy, batlike bird. This one had iridescent feathers in shades of blue and green, not unlike a peacock. It even had a crest on its head. Its eyes were green and looked terrified, but not of us.
At that thought, a low growl came from our left. I turned to see the underworld’s version of a dog advancing towards us. The size of a small pony, it had reddish brown fur and a disproportionally small head compared to its powerful body. Its growl deepened and the bird tried to shrink itself down even more.
Another growl came, this time from our right. “I think they were chasing the bird and cornered it here,” I said.
“They appear to think we’re going to steal their prey,” Ruen mused.
“You did tell me to eat it,” I reminded him.
“I was joking.”
“They don’t know that,” I said, gesturing at the dog on our left.
Taking my movement as a threat, the animal howled in rage and sprinted towards me. I didn’t have any rocks on hand, so I scooped up a large tree branch. I swung it at the hound when it leaped at me. The branch smashed into the creature’s head, killing it instantly.
I turned to see Ruen duck under the second dog when it jumped at him. He caught hold of it by its back leg while it was in midair and yanked it to the ground. His fangs latched onto the beast’s neck and he began to feed. Blood ran from the corners of his mouth as he swallowed it down with great, noisy gulps. The hound thrashed for a few seconds before it expired and went limp.
“That’s so gross,” I complained as the bird cautiously emerged from beneath the log. Instead of taking off now that she was safe, she fluttered her wings. One of them hung limply by her side. “You poor thing,” I said, amazed at how pretty she was. “You can’t fly, can you?” Eyelashes that were too long and lush to belong to a male lowered sadly. “Do you want me to carry you?” I asked, feeling like an idiot for talking to a bird. In response, she hurried over to me and looked up expectantly. “Aw, aren’t you the cutest thing in this world?” I crooned and bent to pick her up.
Ruen finished feeding and licked the blood from his mouth and chin in satisfaction. He scowled when he saw me cradling the bird and petting her crested head. “The last thing we need is for a wild animal to be following us around,” he said in disapproval.
“She’s just thankful we saved her from the bad doggies, aren’t you?” I said in a sickeningly sweet tone. The bird chirped in reply, then snuggled against me. She didn’t seem all that wild to me. I’d never had a pet before, so I had nothing to compare her to.
“Do you think you could eat one of these dogs?” Ruen asked, nudging the corpse with his ratty shoe. They were no longer sneakers and had turned into something like sandals.
“I can’t eat it raw,” I said with a grimace. “I might be able to choke it down if we cook it.”
“Let’s move off the path and try to make a fire,” he suggested.
The bird promptly extended her uninjured wing, pointing off the path and into the trees. “I think she wants us to follow her directions,” I said.
Ruen rolled his eyes as I picked up one of the dead animals. He didn’t bother to argue with me and merely grabbed the second dog before following us. The bird led us to a clearing in the trees to an old campsite that hadn’t been used in years. It was a few hundred yards from the path and we would be out of sight.
“What a clever little bird,” I said, then sat her on the ground.
“Do you know how to make a fire?” Ruen asked.
I hazarded a guess. “By rubbing two sticks together?”
“You’re lucky Lord Gilden sent me with you. You wouldn’t have made it out of the crevice alive without me,” he said, but without his usual dourness. Deep down, I was pretty sure he was enjoying himself.
He gathered a bunch of sticks and dead leaves and placed them in the ring of rocks. Next, he picked up a couple of rocks that had scrape marks on them. He scraped them together to create a spark on the kindling, then blew on it to start a fire. While he didn’t technically need to breathe, he could suck and blow air when he needed to.
Soon, my assistant had a fire started and carried one of the carcasses away from the camp. I watched in growing unease as he expertly sliced the corpse open with a knife I’d loaned him. Cutting the meat from the bones, he made a pile of steaks and carried them back to the fire. I skewered one of them with a stick and roasted the meat over the flames.
“Well?” Ruen said impatiently when my first steak was done. “Are you going to try it?”
I’d never imagined I’d find myself in one of the nine realms of the underworld, sitting at a campfire in ogre form and eating a dog, but here I was. “Here goes nothing,” I said with an internal wince. I took a small bite, chewed and swallowed.
“What does it taste like?” the vampire asked.
“Utterly disgusting,” I complained, then stuck the whole thing into my mouth. “More!” I demanded as my hunger roared to life. The meat was chewy, gamey and gross, but at least it was food. I ate the entire dog, then Ruen butchered the second one.
Dawn was only a couple of hours away by the time I’d cooked and devoured my second meal. The bird climbed onto my lap and was cooing softly and contentedly. I stroked her gorgeous feathers, wishing I could take her back home with me if we survived this ordeal. But she belonged here and I couldn’t exactly have a pet living in my small apartment with me anyway.