Chapter 5: Into the Wild
POV: Adam Carter
The Colorado forest stretched before them like something out of a nightmare, all twisted pines and shadows that moved when they shouldn't. Adam's scar had been aching since they'd crossed the state line, a low, persistent burn that felt like someone pressing a heated coin to his wrist. Every breath tasted of pine sap and something else—something wild and hungry and wrong.
"Remind me why we're hiking through Deliverance country at ass o'clock in the morning?" Dean muttered, adjusting his grip on the flare gun. His voice carried the forced casualness of someone trying not to think about the fact that they were hunting something that could tear a man in half with its bare hands.
Elena consulted her GPS, her military-precise movements at odds with the chaotic wilderness around them. "Because wendigos are nocturnal hunters, and we've got maybe four hours of darkness left to track this thing before it goes to ground."
Sam was studying claw marks gouged into a pine tree, his flashlight beam revealing scratches that went six feet up the trunk. "These are fresh. Maybe an hour old."
Adam tried to focus on the conversation, but the forest was loud—not with sound, but with something deeper. His scar pulsed, and suddenly he could sense movement in the darkness. Deer, maybe fifty yards north. A family of raccoons denning in a fallen log. And something else, something that moved too fast and smelled of old blood and winter starvation.
His body responded before his mind could catch up.
The world shifted into crystalline focus as Adam's system engaged, his mental energy dropping from 80% to 70% in a heartbeat. Suddenly he could move—not just fast, but with the fluid, predatory grace of something born to hunt. His muscles coiled like springs, his senses expanded until he could track the heartbeat of every living thing within a quarter mile.
And with the speed came the hunger.
It hit him like a physical blow, a starvation so profound it made his stomach clench and his mouth flood with saliva. The deer—he could smell them now, warm and alive and delicious. His muscles tensed, preparing to sprint toward the scent of fresh meat, and for one terrifying moment Adam understood exactly what it felt like to be a predator.
[You're swallowing their instincts, kid.] [Spit them out.]
The system's warning cut through the red haze of hunger just as Adam took his first stalking step toward the deer. He stumbled, his enhanced reflexes turning the motion into an ungraceful sprawl that sent him crashing into a stand of saplings.
The noise echoed through the forest like a gunshot.
"Jesus, kid!" Dean's voice was sharp with alarm. "You trying to send up a flare for everything with teeth in a fifty-mile radius?"
Adam pushed himself upright, his face burning with embarrassment and residual hunger. The wendigo's instincts were still there, coiled in the back of his mind like a sleeping snake, whispering about the taste of warm blood and the satisfaction of a successful hunt.
"Sorry," he managed. "I just—the ground was uneven."
Sam's flashlight beam found the deep gouges Adam's stumbling had left in the earth—claw marks that looked suspiciously similar to the ones on the pine tree. His eyes narrowed. "What exactly did you trip over?"
Before Adam could answer, Elena's GPS started beeping frantically. She stared at the screen, her face going pale in the blue light. "We've got a problem. Motion detector's picking up something big, moving fast, about two hundred yards southeast."
"Define big," Dean said, already checking his flare gun.
"Bigger than a bear. Faster than anything that size should be able to move."
A low growl rumbled from Adam's throat before he could stop it. The sound was purely involuntary, his vocal cords responding to the wendigo's instincts still flooding his system. The hunger was getting stronger, not weaker, and part of him wanted to follow the scent trail that led deeper into the forest where something warm-blooded was moving through the trees.
Sam's stare felt like it was peeling away his skin layer by layer. "Did you just growl?"
"No," Adam said quickly, then immediately growled again as a deer's cry echoed through the darkness. The sound triggered something primal in his mimicked instincts, and his hands actually twitched toward claws he didn't have.
[Retribution: Growl involuntarily for 24 hours.] [Beast mode, kid.]
"Stop growling, Fido!" Sam snapped, his patience finally reaching its breaking point. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Adam's mental energy had dropped to 60%, and he could feel his control slipping like water through his fingers. The wendigo's hunger was a living thing in his chest, demanding fresh meat and the thrill of the chase. Every small sound in the forest triggered another involuntary growl, and Sam was looking at him like he was deciding whether to shoot first and ask questions later.
"He's stressed," Elena said diplomatically, but her hand was resting on the grip of her knife. "Some people make weird noises when they're nervous."
Dean was studying the claw marks on the tree again, his expression thoughtful. "Kid, come here. Take a look at these scratches."
Adam approached carefully, trying to suppress the growls that kept bubbling up from his throat. When he got close enough to touch the gouged bark, his enhanced senses immediately locked onto the scent trail. The wendigo had been here recently, marking its territory, and the smell was rich with information—male, old, desperately hungry, and definitely aware that humans had entered its hunting grounds.
"It's close," Adam said, his voice rough from suppressing growls. "Maybe half a mile northeast, moving toward the campground."
"How can you possibly know that?" Sam's suspicion was practically crackling in the air.
Adam scrambled for an explanation that wouldn't involve admitting to supernatural abilities. "The scratches are angled northeast, and I can hear... vehicles. There's a road that way."
It wasn't entirely a lie. His enhanced hearing could pick up the distant rumble of cars, and the wendigo's trail did lead toward the sound. But the real information was coming from instincts that weren't his own, predatory knowledge that told him exactly how his prey would move through familiar territory.
Elena was already plotting coordinates on her GPS. "There's a state campground about three miles northeast. Popular with hikers." She looked up, her face grim. "If it's hunting there..."
"Then we need to move. Now." Dean shouldered his pack, flare gun at the ready. "Elena, you take point. Sam and I will flank. Kid—" He fixed Adam with a stare that could have melted steel. "Try not to howl at the moon while we're tracking this thing."
As they set off through the forest, Adam forced himself to focus on moving quietly despite the growls that kept escaping his throat every few minutes. His enhanced speed made him want to race ahead, to follow the scent trail at a dead run until he caught up with the creature that shared his borrowed instincts.
But every time the hunger spiked, he remembered the system's warning: You're swallowing their instincts. Spit them out.
The problem was, he wasn't sure he could.
[Achievement: "Into the Wild" – Found the lair.] [+10% Mental Energy.]
The reward bumped his energy back up to 70%, but it didn't quiet the predatory whispers in the back of his mind. If anything, having more power just made the wendigo's instincts stronger, more tempting.
"There," Elena whispered, pointing through the trees. Flickering orange light painted the darkness ahead—campfires, lanterns, the warm glow of human civilization completely unaware that something ancient and hungry was stalking through the woods toward them.
Adam growled again, low and involuntary, and Sam's hand dropped to his gun.
[You're hunting monsters, kid.] [Don't become one.]
In the distance, carried on the night wind, came an answering call. Not quite human, not quite animal, but filled with a hunger that made Adam's borrowed instincts sing with recognition.
The wendigo knew they were coming.
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