Hell Transporter (Between) by Cyndi Tefft Page A

encounter with the hell transporter in between, the same thing he’d told me before.
    “It started out as a swirling black mass with a screeching sound like ravens fighting over a carcass. And that smell...” He swallowed hard and wiped a hand down his face. “Then when it touched down to take the soul, it turned into that wolf-like beast with fangs.” He stared at the ground like the answer was written there. With a hard shake of his head, he turned and picked up another log.
    Crack!
    The sound ripped through me like I’d stuck my hand on a live wire. I started grasping at straws in an effort to make him stop.
    “Did it try to talk to you when you saw it? Were you able to communicate with it using your mind back then?” I asked.
    “No. You’re the only one I’ve ever been able to hear in my head.”
    “Until now,” I said.
    His head snapped up. “What?”
    “Last night, it said ‘Transporter’ and ‘Mine.’ You didn’t hear it? You jumped up and took off running, so I figured we both—“
    He shook his head hard. Staring at me, he said, “I recognized the stench.”
    “Oh,” I said, unable to wrap my head around what this might mean. I could hear the hell transporter but Aiden couldn’t? Or was it just talking to me and not him? Why would it care about me?
    “Is that all it said? What did it sound like?”
    I described the guttural, hissing noise and Aiden’s face grew even more fierce. He wasn’t afraid. He was angry. Muttering to himself in Gaelic, he resumed his ritual slaughtering of the wood.
    Crack!
    I just about jumped out of my skin.
    “Was it wearing clothes? Did it have any specific markings?” I tried again.
    He shook his head. “The beast was lightly furred, with a skeletal face. Part wolf, part reptile... I don’t know. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen on earth.” He wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm and leaned on the handle of the axe. “Markings? No, not that I recall. Just the blood red eyes.” He leaned down to retrieve another log and everything in me screamed to find something—anything—to keep him from making that sound again.
    “Wait!”
    He stopped, the axe clutched in one hand.
    “Um…” Rolling a fallen pinecone between my feet, I racked my brain to find the missing puzzle piece that would give us some clue. “You said ‘touched ground’ like it was in the air before.” He nodded, staring at the chopping block, waiting for me to continue. “So it was a black mass that reeked to high heaven before it turned into the beast. And we heard that screech, too. Maybe last night, it never touched down and that’s why you couldn’t find any trace of it.”
    His eyes met my own for a heartbeat. And another. Hope and guilt warred across his face.
    “It’s not your fault,” I said. His shoulders relaxed a fraction and he dropped the axe to the ground.
    Hope won.
    Relief spread through me. I offered him a weak smile.
    “Perhaps that’s true. But I still don’t know how to defeat it,” he said.
    “Yet,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
    Finally, he smiled.
    “Yet.”

     
    Chapter 10
     
    The remaining days of summer slipped away and the hell transporter never returned, though I swore I felt its shadow everywhere I went. Aiden searched the woods constantly, but never found tracks or any sign of the creature. Unwilling to sit and do nothing, he raided the rusty, spider-filled shed that held tools from when the cabin was originally built decades ago. He fashioned a spear from a tree branch and an ancient pair of clipping shears, forging the metal into a sharp point and binding the tip to the wood with leather cut from an old chair. His ingenuity and determination amazed me, but his constant target practice served as a painful reminder that our carefree honeymoon was over. I forced myself not to dwell on it since having to go back to school was stressing me out enough.
    The day before we had to leave, I was in the bedroom packing