Marcus found the creek by following the deer trail downslope. The dogs were ranging ahead—Kara and Bell, his tracking pair—and they'd stopped at the water's edge, ears forward, tails low.
He slowed his approach. Something had spooked them.
The creek ran clear over smooth stones, bordered by alder and willow. Twenty yards upstream, where the banks narrowed and the water pooled, he saw movement.
A woman was bathing.
Marcus froze.
She was kneeling in the shallow pool, water to her waist, washing her arms. Her clothes—or what looked like clothes—were draped on a flat rock nearby. Her back was to him. Dark hair, loose and wet, fell past her shoulders.
He took a careful step backward. Quiet. No sudden moves. He'd stumbled onto someone's private spot, and the right thing—the only thing—was to leave silently.
The dogs whined.
Bell's whine was soft but sharp. Kara shifted her weight, uncertain. Marcus raised a hand—the command for quiet—but Bell whined again.
The woman turned.
She looked directly at him. Her face was calm. Not startled. Not angry. Just... present. She met his eyes, held his gaze for a moment that felt longer than it was, and then lifted one hand and flicked water toward him.
A gesture. Not hostile. Almost playful.
The water droplets caught sunlight as they arced through the air. Marcus watched them fall. They landed on his chest, cold through his shirt. He blinked.
When he looked up, the woman was gone.
The dogs found him two hours later.
He'd been walking—he thought he'd been walking—but he couldn't remember the route. He was still near the creek. Farther downstream, maybe. The light was wrong. It was late afternoon now, but it had been morning when he reached the water.
Kara appeared first, emerging from the undergrowth at a cautious trot. She stopped ten feet away and growled.
Marcus froze.
Kara didn't growl at him. She'd been his lead dog for six years. She knew his voice, his scent, his posture. She knew him better than most people did.
"Kara," he said. "Easy."
His voice sounded wrong. Not hoarse. Different. The pitch was off, the resonance strange in his own ears.
Kara's growl deepened.
Bell came next, flanking from the left. She moved low, head down, hackles raised. Both dogs were watching him the way they watched deer—focused, intent, predatory.
"Kara. Bell. It's me."
He raised his hands, palms out. The gesture felt awkward. His hands didn't move the way he expected. He looked down.
His hands were wrong.
The fingers were too long, the joints too sharp. The skin looked darker, rougher, textured in a way that made his stomach turn. He tried to flex his fingers and they moved—somehow—but the motion was foreign, like controlling someone else's body remotely.
He took a step toward the dogs and stumbled. His legs didn't respond correctly either. The weight distribution was wrong. He looked down at his feet and saw—
Not feet.
He didn't have words for what he saw. Hooves, maybe. But that wasn't right either. Something between. Something in the process of becoming something else.
"Kara," he said again. His voice cracked. "It's Marcus. I'm—"
Bell lunged.
She didn't reach him—Kara barked and Bell pulled back—but the lunge was real. Not a warning. A strike.
Marcus stumbled backward. His hands went to his head, reflexive, protective, and he felt—
Antlers.
Small, still growing, sharp at the tips. Bone pushing through skin. Pain that wasn't quite pain, pressure that shouldn't exist but did.
He tried to speak. To say his name. To command the dogs—the dogs that had followed him for years, that knew his routines, that slept by his cot at night.
What came out wasn't words.
It was a sound. High, sharp, animal. A bleat, maybe. A cry. Not human.
Kara's ears flattened.
Bell crouched.
Marcus turned and ran.
The pack caught him at the ridgeline.
He'd been running for—he didn't know. Time had stopped making sense. The sun was lower now, slanting through cedar branches, turning the forest into alternating bands of gold and shadow.
He could hear them behind him. Not just Kara and Bell. More. Other dogs, drawn by the chase or by scent or by something he didn't understand. Wild calls and coordinated movement. Pack behavior.
He tried to climb. There was a rock face ahead, steep but manageable. If he could get above them, if he could—
His hands wouldn't grip correctly. The fingers bent wrong. He slipped, fell hard onto his side, scrambled upright.
Kara hit him first.
He knew it was Kara because he recognized her patterns—the low approach, the target angle. She went for his hindquarters, drove him forward and down. He felt teeth, felt the snap of jaws closing, felt pain sharp and immediate and disorienting.
He tried to speak. Tried to command her off.
The sound that came out was the same bleat. High. Panicked. Not a command. A plea.
Bell came next, from the front. She'd always been the bold one. She locked onto his neck and pulled.
Marcus—what was left of Marcus—thrashed. He couldn't coordinate his limbs. Couldn't tell which way was up. He lashed out with something that might have been hands or might have been hooves and connected with fur and felt the dog yelp and release.
But there were more now. Four, five, six dogs. Some he recognized. Some he'd never seen before. All of them moving together. All of them doing exactly what dogs do when they've cornered prey.
He didn't feel the moment it ended.
One instant he was fighting, thrashing, trying to speak through a throat that wouldn't form words. The next instant the pain became something else—distant, numb, fading—and the forest was quiet except for the sound of dogs panting and the soft rustle of wind in cedars.
The ranger found the body three days later.
Male, early forties, partially consumed by scavengers. Identification was difficult. The face was damaged. The ranger noted defensive wounds on the hands and arms, lacerations consistent with animal attack, evidence of a struggle.
Two dogs were found nearby, both injured. One had a broken rib. The other had deep scratches across her muzzle. Both wore tracking collars with the name MARCUS CHEN engraved on weathered brass tags.
The ranger collected the collars. Filed a report. Marked the location on his map.
Predator activity in the area, the report noted. Advise caution.
The creek, twenty yards upstream from the ranger's position, ran clear and cold over smooth stones. The water pooled where the banks narrowed, bordered by alder and willow.
No one was there.