The Silver Tongued Devil Chapter 4: Chapter 4 - Combat Data Pending

Read chapter 4 of The Silver Tongued Devil by The Vilkas on NovelPedia.

The next howl came closer. It rolled up the slope in a jagged wave, snagging on rock and root, stripping warmth out of the air as it went. The last echoes curled under the stone overhang above my head and lodged there, vibrating behind my teeth like someone had struck a tuning fork against my skull. My right hand tightened around the dead phone until plastic dug into my palm. "Active participant," I whispered. "Sure. Let's see how that works out." The mailbox in the top-right of my sightline kept up its lazy four-count pulse, the little red flag ticking up and down like it was bored. No fresh text, no tutorial, no pop-up offering a handy Wolf Murder 101 course. Just that faint blue-green rectangle and the sense that something was watching and taking notes. Another howl answered from my left, higher up the slope this time. A third came from below, deeper, so low I felt it as much as heard it, a pressure that ran up through the stone into my spine. "Four," I muttered. "Because of course there are four." The alcove that had felt like a smart move ten minutes ago now felt like half a grave. Good back wall. Overhang. One open side. Also exactly one way out, across a slope that had already tried to kill me once without teeth involved. Boots scraped stone somewhere up-slope. Careful steps. More than one pair. A murmur of voices rode the sound, low and sharp, words blurred by distance and accent into something that tugged at my brain without resolving. Hunters, my gut supplied. Not hunted. Which still left the question: what did that make me? The forest below went quiet again in that wrong way- no insects, no birds, just the slow sigh of leaves and the occasional knock of stone on stone as something big shifted its weight down there. I angled myself so I could see as much as the alcove allowed: the dark drop, the gate wall to my left, the sliver of sky straight ahead, gone the color of old primer. Something moved between the trunks. At first, it was just a thicker shadow, slipping from tree to tree with a smoothness that made my hackles rise. Then it hit a gap where the underbrush thinned, and I caught pieces. A shoulder higher than my chest even hunched. Fur that wasn’t any respectful earth brown but a muddied charcoal shot through with paler streaks, like ash dragged through wet soot. A long muzzle tilted up toward me, and eyes caught what little light there was. Duller. Heavier. Like coals that had burned down but refused to die. My breath tried to stop. I shoved it back into motion. "Big coyote," I told myself. "Big coyote with anger issues." The lie didn’t help. The thing flowed forward, paws eating distance without seeming to try. Claws ticked on exposed stone as it left the safety of the undergrowth and began to angle across the open slope below my alcove. The surface that had done its level best to dump me downslope didn’t bother it at all; it adjusted weight as naturally as I shifted on shingles to keep from sliding. Another shape slipped out of the trees to my right, then another to the left, until there were four of them on the hillside---no neat formation, just a loose net tightening in my direction. Combat data pending. The ghost text flickered at the edge of my vision, half-formed and gone again before I could pin my eyes to it. "Yeah," I breathed. "No kidding." The boots on stone came closer, still out of sight. The voices snapped something back and forth---short words, quick, businesslike, the tone of people on a job, not hikers surprised by local wildlife. For half a second, the stupid part of me wanted to stand up, wave my arms, and yell Hey, guys, over here, weird human, totally not from around here, please fix this for me. The rest of me remembered that I was unarmed, bleeding, and wedged into a hole in a haunted monastery wall on a mountain that didn’t exist on any map I knew. Roofing had taught me a few things. Don’t trust a surface that looks too smooth. Don’t stand under weight you haven’t checked. And if you f