Page 40 of Red Demon (Oria #1)

Wild Dogs

T he Nara didn’t have dogs before we Chaeten got here.

The Asri found the idea of a meat-eating pet repellent, but we Chaeten loved our pups.

When we went to war, outnumbered, we modded them to kill.

These feral dogs that roamed the woods descended from those war dogs, and my ancestors did not re-engineer these creatures for their looks.

As a child, Mom never allowed me in the woods alone until she was sure I could defend myself.

Dogs would take toddlers or young children who wandered too far, but they shied from a good knife.

Most armed adults had no fear of them; the deer were easier prey.

But I was unarmed, alone, limping. My breath hitched in my dry throat.

I was afraid to turn my back to them to find more behind.

The pack stood furred in a range of matted, earthy colors, scarred and growling low.

Overgrown muscles strained against taut skin that could barely contain their bulk, each movement showcasing honed predatory power.

Their eyes, gleaming cold, fixed on me with more intelligence than I remembered. Wide, long jaws, sharp teeth and claws.

Eight. I counted eight.

“Faruhar!” I called out, hating how vulnerable I felt. “I need your help!”

A low growl rumbled from the largest of the pack. On his hind legs, that tan beast would stand as tall as me, and those teeth—voids, if they got anywhere near my throat I was done. I had a walking stick; that was it. The dogs took a collective step forward, muscles coiling beneath mottled fur.

“Faruhar! Please!”

Ears pricked, tails held high. I knew what that meant.

The pack lunged. I gripped a tree branch for balance as terror took hold, and swung my stick-cane straight at the nearest dog’s eye with all my might, connecting with a thwack on the skull.

The beast yelped and stumbled back, but three others were already upon me, and one sunk its teeth into my bad leg.

Adrenaline surged through my veins, and I lashed out with the cane again, the wood splintering under the force.

I barely deflected a snapping jaw, leaving a hot streak of slobber and pain across my arm.

But now I had two sharp pieces of that wooden cane.

I got one through a dog’s throat before it found mine.

A black mass of muscle grabbed my arm and pulled me across the ground as others tried to gut me. I roared, kicking back despite the pain; a primal sound ripped from my throat.

“Faruhar!”

A searing pain erupted in my calf as teeth sunk into flesh. I kicked out with my best leg, connecting with canine ribs, forcing a temporary release. I stabbed another off and rolled atop a furry body, flinging the stick and snapping its neck with my hands.

Taking down one in the pack should be enough to drive the creatures away. Why weren’t they running?

A searing pain in my shoulder, a whirlwind of jaws and teeth. Guttural growls, mine and theirs as I twisted at any head that came within reach, between ragged gasps for breath.

My last half of the walking stick got stuck between a furred ribcage as I felt the hot breath of a dog against my neck, then a blur of red and brown-studded leather slammed into the pack.

Faruhar had three dogs dead in seconds, both swords flashing in the dappled sunlight.

The last two put their tails between their legs to flee at full speed.

She tucked her swords and ran them down, her eyes glinting as she sliced with her curved blades.

The first mottled beast fell with a thud, her sword buried deep into the matted fur before it even had time to yelp.

She went after the last, almost out of sight when it crumpled, twitching to the ground.

I leaned against a tree, adrenaline washing away. Faruhar scanned the clearing as she jogged back, then locked eyes with me. At best, I saw a flicker of relief before she scowled at my wounds.

“I told you not to come out, idiot,” she snapped, rushing to my side.

Standing slumped against a nearby tree, the fight drained from me like water over a broken dam. Or maybe that broken dam was the blood running from my leg, arm, and shoulder.

“Where were you?” I slid down the bark to the ground.

She scowled. “Well, look around.”

All I saw was dog carcasses strewn around me and leaves drifting to the forest floor.

“Even if these ruren-sa aren’t able to get into your mind, it doesn’t mean they can’t get into a wild dog. You’re lucky there’s no people around for them to claim.” She winced as her eyes landed on my leg, bloodied and torn.

I blinked. Ruren-sa. Ghost demons. “Ghosts? In dogs?”

“Just—shut up and take off your pants.”

My mouth stuttered open.

She rolled her eyes. “To wrap your wounds before you bleed out.”

I heaved down my pants to the cold earth, grateful that the lack of leg splints meant I had been able to get a pair of underwear on this morning. She yanked off my shoes and wasn’t gentle about it.

“Tell me how these ruren-sa work, please.”

“Not now,” she growled, taking those oversized linen pants and ripping them into strips.

“Faruhar...” I trailed off, unable to voice the fear. “How do the ghosts do what they do?”

She sighed. “What don’t you know? The bastards are everywhere. Ask them.”

I looked around the forest again. No birds, no chirping insects, which was a little odd. Nothing.

“I can’t see them. I can’t hear them.”

She stared me down, tightening the fabric around my thigh. “Then that’s all the more reason to get you back to the cave.” Her eyes flashed. “Bria, shut up!” she said, turning to empty air.

The breath whooshed out of my lungs. “Your sister is a ghost?”

“Stop bleeding! Maybe if you weren’t talking so much you could concentrate on that!”

I sighed, watching her work.

She swore, looking at my torn leg dripping through the bandage, then stared at me as she ripped more of my pants into strips.

“These ruren-sa are riled up, swarming. They each want a human mind to hold their pieces together. When there isn’t much left of them, a wild dog is enough to keep them from fading to dust.” She cursed again under her breath, continuing to wind the bandage.

I thought back to Galen, his final words. “What happens if a ghost gets into someone’s mind? Is their host alive too?” I needed to hear it, even if I thought I knew.

“With these ghosts? No. They claim the mind as soon as they are in, make the host kill until they can’t anymore.

If you’re fast, you can destroy the ruren-sa when you kill the body they stole.

If the death is slow, they can sometimes wriggle out in time and find someone else.

Bria wants me to kill them all, every time. ”

My breathing came fast, heart pounding. She looked up from where she’d finished the last of my shredded pants around my wounded leg.

“That’s why you killed Galen.” I felt gutted, trying to shake that feeling off. “He was dead already.”

She didn’t look up.

I felt the ground sway beneath me, and I gripped Faruhar’s arm to steady myself. “You’re trying to help?”

Two dead towns. A destroyed mine . Mal, after he seemed to come to his senses, more or less. I still couldn’t trust her.

She turned her attention to my forearm, still trickling in dark red gushes where the jaws clenched in. “Fuck.”

“What?” I said, feeling light-headed. Iden… She’d spared him until he’d lost his mind.

She began unzipping her leather chest armor.

“You’re weakening; cold. And that arm needs wrapping too.”

I blinked, taking time to process what she said. She lifted the leather armor over her chest and long hair, and all my dwindling mental capacity turned my attention to where she was ready to pull up her undershirt.

With a glare, she turned around, and I saw her scars extended across her back, thin over tan skin and muscle.

“It could have been my shirt,” I said, trying to be practical.

“It would be no one’s shirt if you did what you were told.”

“Okay,” I said. She bent over to grab her armor from the ground, glaring at me as she shrugged it on. The sharp movement of her neck, the feline shade of her eyes: I needed that. A reminder that she wasn’t human, not—

Two dead towns I’d seen with my own eyes , I reminded myself, even if some of the deaths weren’t what I thought. She had a hand spreading SBO. There were all the other names in the book. The deaths Galen told me about.

“Tie that shirt around the wound with your good arm, idiot. Don’t rip it,” she said, zipping up the armor on her chest.

I obeyed, although she untied and rewound it all with a frown the minute I was done.

“On your feet. We’re going,” she said.

I hauled myself up, using the tree for support. My vision swam, and I crested past a wave of nausea. She was there to hold me, dragging me into my first step, and carrying most of my weight back to the cabin.