Chapter 4: The Kneeling Gift
The warmth in his gut wasn't just from the slow, deep pull of energy. It was a complex thing, layered with the ache of exertion, a flicker of fear, and a low, undeniable hum of pleasure. Her mouth was hot and skillful, but it was the intention behind it that undid him.The deliberate, careful tenderness. The focused reverence. She wasn’t taking; she was receiving a gift he’d offered, and the gratitude in every movement was palpable through the bond.When she finally pulled away, it was slow. She rested her forehead against his stomach, her breath coming in soft, shaky puffs against his skin. The gnawing void in his center was there, a definite depletion, but it felt… clean.Managed.Not the ravaging hunger from before.She had sipped, not gulped.
“Okay?” he asked, his voice a rasp.She nodded against him, not looking up. “The noise is… quiet. For now.” She gently fastened his jeans, her fingers surprisingly steady, and sat back on her heels. In the faint glow from the stove’s embers, her face was softer than he’d ever seen it.The predatory sharpness was absent. She just looked like a beautiful woman, kneeling on a dusty floor, wrapped in his oversized clothes. “Thank you,” she whispered.He offered a hand. She took it, her skin cool now against his, and he pulled her up. They stood close, the bond humming between them like a live wire wrapped in velvet.He could feel her steadiness, the temporary peace she’d taken from him. And she, he could tell, felt the echo of his own lingering fatigue, a background thrum she seemed to cradle carefully in her awareness, respecting its edges.
“You should sleep properly now,” she said, smoothing the massive sweater over her hips.“I’ll keep watch. The bond… I’ll feel her coming long before we hear a bell.”
He didn’t have the energy to argue. He nodded, laying back down on his sleeping bag. This time, she lay down opposite him, facing the door and the window, her body a taut curve between him and the outside. He fell asleep watching the line of her shoulder under the grey wool.
He woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of a cracking branch.His eyes snapped open. Morrigan was still by the window, but she was standing now, rigid. The sky outside was the pale, watery grey of pre-dawn.She held a tin mug in one hand, forgotten. Her other hand was pressed flat against the cold glass.“What is it?” he asked, already reaching for the rifle.
“Not Felicia,” she murmured, her voice low and tense.“Something else.Something… old. And heavy.” She tilted her head, as if listening to a frequency he couldn’t hear. “It’s on the lake.”
Marshall got to his feet, joints protesting. He moved to the other side of the window, careful not to silhouette himself.He peered out at Lac Noir.
The vast sheet of ice and snow was a monochrome blur in the weak light.Then he saw it. A dark shape, moving with a slow, impossible gait from the far shore toward the middle of the lake.It was massive, shaggy, walking upright on two legs. A bear, his mind supplied.But no bear walked like that, with such a deliberate, almost plodding purpose. And the proportions were wrong—the arms too long, the shoulders slumped into a powerful hump.
“What the hell is that?” he breathed.
Morrigan’s knuckles were white on the mug.“A memory.A story your people tell around fires but stopped truly believing. It smells of deep earth and frozen time.” She glanced at him, her green eyes troubled. “It is what Felicia should fear.”
The creature stopped in the center of the frozen lake. It seemed to look toward the shore, right at their cabin, though the distance made it impossible to be sure. Then, with a slowness that was more terrifying than any speed, it bent over. It plunged one huge, dark arm through the ice as if the foot-thick crust were tissue paper. The sound of the shatter reached them a full second later—a sharp, echoing crack that rolled across the still valley.It straightened, lifting something massive and silver from the hole. A fish, thrashing. The creature held it up, bit the head clean off with a single, lazy crunch, and dropped the body back into the water. It turned and began its slow, plodding walk back the way it came, vanishing into the treeline on the opposite shore.
Silence reclaimed the lake.Marshall realized he was holding his breath.He let it out slowly. “Bigfoot.”
Morrigan took a sip of her coffee, her hand finally steady.“A name. It is a spirit of this place.An old one.It is not malicious. But it is… territorial.And it has noticed the discord.Felicia’s poison in me.Her violence. My weakening of you. It’s a sour note in its quiet woods.”
“Is it a threat?”
“Not directly.Not unless we threaten its peace.But its presence changes the game. Felicia is a chaotic predator. That,” she nodded toward the lake, “is a slow, patient force of nature.She will avoid its hunting grounds. Which means, for now, we may be safer here than I thought.”
“But it doesn’t like us being here either.”
“No. It tolerates. For now.” She finally turned from the window, handing him the other mug of coffee.“We are borrowing its silence.We should not abuse the privilege.”
He took the coffee. The bond between them felt different in the wake of the sighting—tighter, more alert. They were sharing more than energy now; they were sharing a world that had just gotten much stranger and infinitely larger.“So we lay low.You heal. We don’t make a mess.”
She gave a faint, humorless smile.“Exactly.A quiet tenant is a live tenant. And we need to figure out how to evict my unwanted pest without burning the whole house down.”
He grunted in agreement, sipping the bitter brew.“Any ideas?”
“Ideas? Many. Feasible plans?” She shook her head, her mint-green hair catching the dull light.“The poison is woven into me.Pulling one thread might unravel everything. I need to be stronger than the infection to purge it. A circular problem.” She looked at him, a new intensity in her gaze.“Your energy sustains me, but it doesn’t fundamentally strengthen me. It’s fuel, not repair.I need… I need a different kind of power source. Something catalytic.”
A cold trickle of dread dripped down Marshall’s spine. “What kind of source?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, frustration edging her voice. “Something from my own world, not yours.An artifact.A focus. Something that could amplify my own essence, let me burn the sickness out from the inside.” She laughed, a short, sharp sound. “But we are in the Canadian wilderness, not a vault in Makai. There are no demonic arsenals here.Only trees, ice, and… that.” She gestured toward the lake.
They spent the day in a tense, watchful routine. Marshall checked the perimeter for any tracks other than their own and the massive, deep prints now etched into the snow at the lake’s edge. He cleaned the rifle. Morrigan sat by the window, seemingly doing nothing, but he could feel the low-grade concentration through the bond, a constant, quiet scan of their surroundings.
The bond itself was becoming a tangible layer of his existence. He’d be chopping wood and feel a spike of alertness from her—a rabbit startling in the brush he hadn’t noticed. He’d feel a wave of her focused calm when his own thoughts spiraled toward the sheer absurdity of his situation. In return, she’d shift positions, stretching a stiff muscle, moments before he thought to ask if she was uncomfortable. It was invasive and intimate in a way that went far beyond the physical.As dusk began to stain the sky a deep purple, the hunger returned. Not the violent, desperate pull from before, but a deep, resonant ache that started in his own bones and mirrored perfectly in the subtle tension he saw in Morrigan’s posture. She was trying to hide it, to manage it alone.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” he said, not looking up from the fire he was nursing in the stove.She was quiet for a moment. “Yes.It’s… building again. Like a tide.”
He stood up, dusting his hands on his pants. “Then let’s not let it become a flood.”
This time, there was less ceremony, less trembling uncertainty. It was a necessity, a part of their strange, shared metabolism now.She came to him, and he sat on the edge of his sleeping bag. She knelt again, but this time her movements, while still gentle, were more efficient. The bond was a direct line now. He could focus the flow of energy toward her, a conscious channeling, and she could take it with precise, targeted draws. It was less like being fed from and more like donating blood—a steady, purposeful transfer.
When she finished, the connection didn’t just snap shut.It lingered, a warm, open circuit between them. She stayed kneeling, her head resting on his thigh, breathing slowly. He put a heavy hand on her hair, not stroking, just holding.The quiet in the cabin was profound.The distant, crystalline sound of a bell shattered it.
Morrigan flinched as if struck. Marshall’s hand went to the rifle beside him.
The bell chimed once, twice… not from the woods, but from the direction of the lake. It was followed by a high, taunting yowl that was definitely Felicia’s.It echoed across the ice, a challenge thrown at the silent trees.
Morrigan looked up at Marshall, her eyes wide.“She’s not coming in. She’s luring.”
“Luring what?”
Before she could answer, a sound answered Felicia’s call. It was a deep, vibrating huff, like a bellows made of stone and ice.It came from the treeline across the lake, where the massive shape had disappeared that morning.
The spirit of the place had been challenged.Felicia’s answering laugh was a manic ripple of sound. Then they heard the rapid, light crunch of paws on snow, moving away from the lake, heading north along the shoreline.A deliberate, provocative retreat.
The deep, huffing sound came again, closer this time. A tremendous crack of splintering wood echoed—a tree being shoved aside.
“She’s leading it away,” Morrigan breathed, her voice filled with dawning horror. “Or… leading it on a hunt.”
Marshall was already pulling on his boots.“If that thing gets her scent, gets agitated…”
“It could sweep through this entire area. It could stumble right through this cabin.” Morrigan stood up, her face pale. “She’s not trying to fight me herself now. She’s siccing the neighborhood on us.”
He stood, slinging the rifle over his shoulder.“We can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”
“Where do we go?” she asked, the vulnerability flashing in her eyes again.“We’re in its territory now. Running might look like prey.”
“We don’t run. We move with a purpose.” He shouldered his pack, throwing her the smaller bag.“We follow them.At a distance. We need to know where she’s leading it, where it ends up. We need to be somewhere else when it doubles back.”
It was a terrible plan, but it was the only one they had. They slipped out of the cabin door into the biting cold of twilight, the tracks of the massive creature and the faint, erratic paw-prints of Felicia already filling with blowing snow, a trail of chaos leading north into the gathering dark. They were no longer hiding. They were tracking the storm.