At the bottom of the field the trees closed in. The shadow leapt into the blackness of the copse. No branches snapped back and no twigs broke under paw. It melted into the dark like cigarette smoke into the choke of a burning building.
Raven arrived at the edge of the trees fifteen seconds or so after the shape had. His feet were already crying murder; his shoes were black and laced and not meant for pelting down grassy slopes. He couldn't see where the wolf had gone, and the moonlight had yet to reach full strength, so he holstered his gun, took a torch from his belt (regulation to have it strapped to you at all times was something he'd thought stupid until now; why not just use your phone's light?) and plunged into the trees.
Despite the torch beam giving him some sight, Raven still had to pick his way through. Underfoot was uneven and treacherous, with endless thick roots and loose rocks threatening to send him to grazed hands and knees. Shadows danced at the corners of his vision. The slight wind rustled the carpet of brown leaves underfoot, the cold air turning them slightly crispy with the first touch of frost. A smoky cloud of breath moved like a ghost in the white light.
When he came to a small burbling stream that fed into the river not far away, Raven stopped. He cast the torchlight around him but the shadow of the lycanthrope had merged with the gloom. Backing himself against a sturdy tree trunk for safety, he took out his gadget (Really need to give it a proper name because Moonbeam isn't great) and scanned. The screen took a moment to get a read of the area, and then the sensors started kicking in. Up on the display came a vague map, not detailed enough to show every tree or stump but the stream was there, the edge of the forest roughly marked. Far off ahead of him was a road that led up and away towards a marked-off area with a large building in the middle, a few more clustered around. Raven hadn't checked the area in detail enough to know what it was. Could be a chicken factory or an outdoor pursuits centre for all he knew.
On screen were a few flashes of trace lycan scents. Once again, however, the readings were strange. It was as if the readings were of something only half werewolf.
Theoretically, that shouldn't be possible. He'd programmed the thing himself and had fed it the possible inputs based on the known information on lycanthropy. It was always possible the software would come up with something unusual, but the signs suggested something which, according to the biologists, didn't exist.
Snapping branches off to the left. Raven shone his torch in the direction of the noise. Nothing. Empty blackness.
What the hell is going on? Nothing makes sense, nothing works, nothing is right.
As if anything could be 'right.' In the time he had worked for The Conservatory, he'd come to learn that 'right' was a relatively flexible term, as was 'reality', 'law', and 'sense'. The world was constantly throwing up strange definitions of all his previously held beliefs, and he had to constantly pause and bring himself back to some sort of calm. If he didn't, he knew he'd lose any form of sanity remaining tucked away inside his head very quickly.
He checked the screen again, and when nothing seemed to have changed, refreshed the parameters. This time he widened what it was searching for from strictly lycanthropic life to any life forms big enough to pose a threat. Hopefully this would help him pick up on whatever it was that he had run after.
It was a wolf. I'd stake my reputation on it, not that that would count for much. I've spent enough time with Hysteria by now to know what a werewolf looks and sounds like. I recognised that shape. I must have made a mistake in the coding for this thing, because that was a wolf, whatever it says. I know, because I got cold. I always get cold in a specific way when I see a wolf. Even Hysteria.
Not that he'd admit that to anyone. He managed to put on a brave face whenever she changed, whenever she went snarling and snapping. Still, bloody terrifying, even if you were her handler.
The screen refreshed. Several dots appeared off in the direction he had just looked. Deer, most likely. Got to live somewhere, although this wasn't exactly the largest woodland in the world.
Then, over and beyond the brook that ran at his feet, a new signal. Just like the one he had seen before. Hazy, but definitely a lycanthrope life sign.
Raven jumped over the stream, one foot going stray behind him and splashing in the cold water. He felt it chill his flesh through his trouser leg but he brushed it off and jogged after the signal. It was stationary. Stopped. What the hell could it be doing?
Getting closer but still not seeing anything in the torchlight, Raven turned it off. The world went black, the moonlight only filtering through the trees in mottled blotches, like colouring on a moth's wings. The screen was still lit up, but it wasn't strong enough to see by. Nothing he could do about that. Hopefully it was easier for the wolf to miss him in the near dark than the bright light of his torch. In the near pitch, he could make out vague silhouettes of trees though not much more. He moved slowly to try not to trip over large stumps and roots. His wet foot rocked violently as he trod on the rim of a divot in the ground. Leaves swished in his wake no matter how quietly he tried to move.
Raven stopped. There was no sound up ahead, no scent, but the screen showed that something was there. Did he only feel a presence close by because his device had told him so? Was that information convincing his body to respond to a stimulus that didn't exist?
No way to tell for certain. But he sensed something, something big and hulking and dominating in sheer size and power and something else besides. Fear gripped him, rippled his flesh and dripped ice down his spine. It was more than a wolf. Somehow. It felt like it did when he saw the shadow out on the Whaterly road, the shadow that had turned out to be just trees and the dark. Yet it wasn't. It was something the same but a world apart.
Steeling himself to whatever lay ahead, Raven put a foot forward.
Silently the blip on the screen moved away from him, toward the edge of the trees that butted up against the large roped-off zone with the building in the middle. Raven wanted to go slowly, stay still even. Chasing a werewolf in the dead of the night was not what he had in mind. But it was his job, and there was something that pulled at him. A curiosity he didn't think he'd experienced before. He had to know what it was, if only to make sure his device (what are we going to call it?) worked the way it damn well should do. He'd put enough hours of his life into it, pouring week after week into the little scanner, and the sky would fall down on him before he put it to bed without finding out what was messing it up and giving him those bizarre readings.
Ignoring the beginnings of a stitch in his right side, Raven turned his torch back on and set off in pursuit once again. The trees were still thick, sentinels hiding dark secrets. The land began to slope upward ever so slightly and his feet protested as he dug into the hill. Still no sound of anything moving ahead of him, but move it did.
Moved until it vanished. At the edge of the trees the blip disappeared as if it had never existed. Raven paused, then ran to the spot it faded from.
Moonlight hit him like a tidal wave as the trees abruptly stopped. A barbed wire fence strung itself out in his way, hemming in the copse, separating the woodland from a vast expanse of perfectly kept lawn. No sign of a wolf. Not a whiff of dog scent or drop of saliva on the ground.
Raven turned his attention to what lay beyond the fence. In the distance on a low hilltop, moon shining down, a great country hall squatted like a mighty toad. Towers at each side seemed to pull in the wings like compressor walls crushing everything between them. A fountain stood quietly in the middle of a gravel driveway that led away from the Roman columns of the main entrance. Behind it, the tops of what were likely barns or other outbuildings could just be spotted.
In the silvery light, the building looked as if it might stand up and stride across the lawn to meet Raven, crush the pitiful fence beneath it, and gather him up between its tower-like jaws to swallow him whole.
Raven watched it with awe and dread. He wasn't artistically minded enough to regard a building with any kind of emotion under usual circumstances, but right then he nonetheless felt a wave of dread emanating from the hall. Somehow it was even worse than the cold feeling of the wolf. It was nothing to do with an anti-aristocracy sentiment he told himself he didn't have. It wasn't to do with culturally inherited images of gothic mansions in horror movies. It was simply that he didn't like the look of it. In fact, it made him want to turn and run for his life.
To try and take his mind off it, he looked back at the screen of his device. Enlarged the radius of scanning to see if the wolf had simply moved to a different location without him seeing. Hoped that was the case. Scanner came up empty. Still nothing, save for the almost unnoticeable traces of lupine activity at Delia Purse's house.
Where did it go?
No. That wasn't the question. That was too easy, too simple, and too far off the mark of what was important. The question wasn't even what it was, wolf or not, shade or shock of fang and fur. The real question was something he didn't want to ask himself. Not with that house in view.
Thankfully he didn't have to, because at that moment his phone rang. He put his scanner in the hand with his torch (I need more hands) and took the phone from his pocket. Didn't recognise the number at first, but then it came to him. "Yeah?"
"It's Jack. I've got you on tracker. I'm at the road about three hundred meters off to your left outside the woods. Just over the bridge going back towards Whaterly. You get it?"
"No. It vanished."
Quiet. "Vanished?"
"Yes."
"What do you mean, vanished?"
Raven looked back at the device, then turned it off. No good now. The wolf had, as he said, vanished. "I don't know. I'll get you on tracker and meet you. Need to make a report to Persephone."
He hung up before Cold could say anything else. The device went into his pocket.
He turned back to look at the mansion again. Phone and torch in one hand, he took out his gun. He felt better with it out, despite the tension that gripped him. Up ahead, the windows the moon caught an edge of seemed to wink at him, even from a good fifty meters away. The feeling of revulsion came over him in a wave and the gun shuddered in his fingers. He wanted more than anything at that moment to raise it and shoot for the windows. Stupid, he knew, but there was something about it that called for a few well-placed slugs in its ancient brickwork.
Raven left the fence and began edging a path through the trees to the road. As he did so, he finally allowed himself to ask the question he had put off before.
Why did it disappear there? Why did the thing vanish at the edge of the woods, up against the fence? At that specific spot? When it was bathed in moonlight, why did it seemingly dissolve when confronted with that house?
He needed to talk to Persephone. He didn't know how or why, but something about that house linked into Whaterly. Not only that, but he also needed Hysteria out here. That Raven knew he was being proven right in his initial gut instinct that something was wrong out in the countryside was little comfort to the feeling of impending doom that followed him to the road.