Read Chapter 9: The Eighth

The wind had died by the time they reached the lakeshore, which was worse than the storm. Silence in the deep winter meant the cold was settling in for a long stay. Declan kept his eyes on the two figures below, their arms still waving, their shapes dark against the blinding white of the frozen lake.

Maya grabbed his sleeve. "That's Jules. And Ansel."

They were close enough now to see the blood. Jules, a wiry man with a scraggly beard and round glasses fogged with frost, had his left arm bound in a makeshift sling made from a torn thermal shirt. The fabric was dark, soaked through. Ansel stood beside him, shorter, stockier, a cartographer's measuring tape still looped around his neck like a noose he'd forgotten to remove.

Declan quickened his pace, snow crunching under his boots. "Jules. Where's the wound?"

"Chest. Shoulder. Arm." Jules's voice was thin, reedy, the voice of a man who'd been screaming for hours and had nothing left. "He got me good."

"Who got you?" Declan asked, dropping to his knees in the snow. He pulled the thermal shirt away gently. The gash ran from Jules's collarbone down to his elbow, four deep furrows, skin peeled back in ragged strips. The flesh around the wound was already pale, bloodless at the edges. The cold had staunched the bleeding, but that was a temporary mercy.

"The thing," Ansel said. His eyes were wide, fixed on something behind Declan, as if he were still watching it happen. "It came out of the trees like—like it wasn't even moving. It was just there."

"Where's Dr. Evers?" Maya asked, her voice careful, controlled.

Ansel's jaw tightened. He shook his head.

Jules let out a wet cough. "Evers is dead. Torn open like a deer. We couldn't—there was nothing left to bury."

Declan's hands paused over the wound. "And Elias?"

The two men exchanged a glance. Ansel spoke first. "He was alive when we last saw him. He was running deeper into the woods. Chasing it." He swallowed. "There was another one with him. Dr. Lindqvist."

Declan's blood went cold. "Lindqvist. That name's not on any manifest I saw."

Jules laughed, a short, bitter sound that turned into a grimace of pain. "Of course it's not. Nothing about this trip was on any manifest."

Maya shifted behind Declan. He felt her presence, the weight of her silence. She'd been quiet since the tent, since the thing had circled them in the dark. He didn't turn to look at her.

"Who was Lindqvist?" Declan asked. "What was his role?"

"Her," Jules said. "Dr. Astrid Lindqvist. Researcher. She came with us from the university. She was studying—" He stopped, wincing as Declan pressed a clean compress against the wound.

"Studying what?"

"Petroglyphs," Ansel said. "The same ones you're pretending you don't know about."

Declan's jaw tightened. "I'm not pretending. I'm trying to keep you alive. But I need to know who I'm tracking."

Jules's eyes found his, glassy with pain and something else. Something like fear. "She wasn't on the manifest because she wasn't supposed to be there. Evers arranged it. Quiet funding. Quiet permits. She was the one who found the cave drawings in the first place."

"The Nest," Declan said quietly.

Jules blinked. "You know about the Nest?"

"I know a lot of things I wasn't supposed to." Declan finished the field dressing, wrapping the bandage tight around Jules's shoulder. "We need to move. The cold's going to kill you faster than that wound if we stay still."

Ansel pointed north, across the lake. "There's a ranger cabin. Two klicks through the treeline. We marked it on the way in—thought we might need it."

Declan followed his gaze. The ice stretched flat and white, a blank canvas. And there, cutting across it at an angle—tracks. Clawed impressions, deep and deliberate, heading northeast. Not toward the cabin.

Beside them, a second set of prints. Human boots. Walking in parallel.

Declan studied them, his breath fogging in the frigid air. The boot prints were fresh. The snow hadn't filled them in yet. They were made after the wind died.

"Those are Elias's boots," Maya said, reading his thoughts. "He was wearing those leather work boots when we left. I remember the tread."

"Walking beside it," Declan said. "Not running. Not fleeing."

Ansel's face had gone pale. "Maybe he's tracking it. Trying to keep up so he can—"

"Nobody walks beside a thing that size," Declan cut in. "They run. Or they hide. They don't stroll."

He looked again at the tracks. The beast's claws were deep, biting through the ice crust. But the boot prints were steady, unhurried. As if the person walking there had all the time in the world.

Or as if they weren't afraid at all.

"Who else has boots like that?" Declan asked.

Jules shook his head weakly. "Just Elias. He brought them special. Said they were his father's."

Declan's stomach turned. Thomas's boots. Thomas, who had seen the wrong tracks years ago, who had marked a place called the Nest on a map he'd hidden in a leather pouch. Thomas, who was dead.

He turned back to the group. "We're not going to the cabin."

"Like hell we're not," Ansel said. "Jules needs—"

"Jules needs to not have that thing finish what it started." Declan pointed at the tracks. "It's heading northeast. That's the direction of the Nest. If we go to the cabin, we're sitting ducks. It knows where we are. It was circling our tent last night."

Maya's breath caught. She hadn't told them about the tent. Declan didn't look at her.

"We follow the tracks," he said. "We find Elias. And we find out why he's walking beside the thing that killed your team leader."

Ansel opened his mouth to argue, but Jules touched his arm. "He's right. We can't outrun it. But maybe we can find out what it wants."

Declan hauled Jules to his feet. The geologist swayed, his face a mask of pain, but he stayed upright. Maya moved to his other side, draping his arm over her shoulder.

"Lindqvist," Declan said, as they started moving. "What did she look like?"

Jules took a ragged breath. "Tall. Blonde. Blue eyes. Looked like she belonged on a magazine cover, not in the bush." He paused, and his voice dropped. "But there was something off about her. She never ate with us. Never slept in the group tent. She'd just disappear for hours and come back with scratches on her arms."

Declan filed that away. "And the night Evers died—where was she?"

Jules's face twisted. "She was there. She was standing over him when we found him."

"Standing over him?"

"Like she was checking her work."

They walked in silence across the ice. The tracks stretched ahead of them, two sets, side by side, disappearing into the trees at the northern shore. Declan's mind raced. An eighth person. A researcher who wasn't on any manifest. A woman who never ate, never slept, came back with scratches.

He thought of the boot print walking beside the beast's tracks.

And he thought of what Maya had said in the tent the night before. *He comes back when the snow falls.*

The trees swallowed them, and the cold closed in. Behind them, the lake lay still and white. Declan didn't look back.

If he had, he might have seen the tracks at the far shore, where the beast's prints ended in a deep furrow—and where a bare human footprint, still steaming, stood at the edge of the ice.