Greykin Valley

| 27 | The River

Wilson mumbled, "Huh...so if they're super rare, why don't they just...have babies and make more?"

"Because an incubus is an incredibly rare occurrence. When a succubus has children, their daughters are always born as succubi, but if they have a son, he's just born as a normal Lilidian demon. But in the Zenith's case, he was born with powers similar to but much more advanced than those of a succubus. A succubus can kill someone by having sex with them, but an incubus can drain the life out of someone with a single touch," Sebastien explained.

Alastor laughed quietly. "Death by sex."

Wesley, Brando, and a few of the others giggled.

Tokala then cleared his throat loudly.

Everyone mumbled their apologies to Damon and Tokala and continued forward in silence.

Jackson had more to ask, but they needed to be quiet, so he went back over to Damon and walked with him. "Sorry, I just wanted to know more about demons."

"It's fine, but there will be plenty of time for talk later," the Alpha said.

With a nod, Jackson followed along quietly.

The pack navigated the thick, silent woods. Snow started falling, and the sound of flowing water soon filled the air.

But there was something else.

A chill ran down Jackson's spine when he figured out that what he thought was distorted, distant wind brushing through the trees was actually the muffled snarls of cadejo colliding with the loudly flowing water.

Everyone slowed as they approached the tree line, and Jackson was quickly consumed by dread and horror once he spotted what waited fifty yards ahead.

On the other side of the river, at least thirty cadejo lurked. Most of them were standing in place, snarling, and twitching. The only cadejo that was moving was much taller and slimmer than the rest....

A prowler.

The rotten monster grunted and groaned as it prowled through the crowd. It sniffed the air and dragged its feet along the snow, looking around frantically.

"We can't risk getting too close to that thing," Julian whispered, terrified. "Their sense of smell isn't as good as ours, but it's way better than that of a normal cadejo."

Damon nodded and started leading the pack to the right. "We'll follow the river from a distance and find another path across."

The pack hastily followed.

Jackson felt more and more uneasy with each step he took, though. The snarling, the smell, and knowing that there were more cadejo than they could handle just fifty yards away terrified him. The cadejo hadn't seen them, though, and they weren't going to. That was what Jackson needed to focus on.

Damon led the pack further upstream and away from the cadejo, but just when the sound of snarls and growls began fading...the same noise echoed up ahead.

"Chief," Tokala said cautiously.

Jackson lifted his head so that he could see over the wolves ahead of him, and where the river bent, there was another crowd of cadejo on the other side. A prowler was with them, too, and there were more of them than there had been back down the way they'd come. Jackson spotted several once-human zombies, too. Two of them were wearing the same armour that the rest of Riker's hunters wore, and the other three looked like villagers, dressed in bloody, torn casual clothes.

"Do you think they're attracted to the sound of the river?" Remus suggested.

"Maybe," Damon answered, continuing through the trees. "We'll keep travelling up. There has to be an area where we can cross."