We rejoin out SAVE HQ in Seward, Alaska, a few months after the incident with the
djinni. It's early April, and the weather is getting slightly warmer, but there's still quite a lot of snow on the ground. Nicholas Failor gets a call from Sheriff Parker Horne, a fellow he knows from north of Seward around Moose Pass.
Sheriff Horne asks if he's talked to Gary Golden recently. Nicholas knows Gary - he's a guy in his 60s who lives on the side of a mountain. He moved out here from...Texas? New Mexico? after making a bunch of money in manufacturing. He retired, built a cabin, and travels during the summer. During the winter, he hermits, rarely seeing anyone. Nicholas has given him lifts out of the area on occasion.
But Nicholas hasn't talked to him - he's been doing supply runs as far south as Baja and hasn't really been in Seward (since healing up from a
werewolf bite). Sheriff Horne says that back in early February he got a radio transmission from Gary and he sounded distressed, but the connection was bad and he didn't use any of the emergency codes or language, so he figured it wasn't an immediate concern. Anyway there was so much snow on the mountain that he couldn't have gotten up to see him if he'd wanted to. He drove by the road to Gary's today and thought about it again, but noticed that the way was blocked by a fallen tree.
Nicholas offers to do a flyover, and Horne says he'd appreciate it. He's got his hand full today anyway. Nicholas asks why, and Horne says that a couple - Wil and Natalie Kane - have gone missing. They were cleaning a cabin they own, getting it ready for renters, but they're just...gone. Cars are still there, but it's like they walked out into the woods, which they wouldn't because they're both locals.
Nicholas, a sinking feeling in his stomach, gets on the group chat and asks if anyone is available to go up and do a flyover today. He explains the situation, and a few envoys respond.
Kat Jameson is working out and enthusiastically agrees. She's spent the three months or so since her
last case working towards her blue belt, and she's getting pretty good both at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and throwing axes.
Kayla Vanderhoven is teaching a yoga class, but when she finishes she responds with a series of emojis that indicate she'll go up. She's been bumming around the SAVE HQ since her last case (same one as Kat), teaching yoga, and generally living her life.
Tristan St. Cyr is at the SAVE HQ working on his thesis. He's been doing that, and also collating the info and archives that SAVE has. He sees the message and, seeing that Kayla is going, gets his ritual implements together.
Britt Lepus, like Nicholas, hasn't been on a case since the affair with the werewolves. She's spent her time on mundane pursuits like getting a job - she's been bartending and working for a local caterer. She responds with two emojis ("sleep" and "bunny"), but eventually gets up and joins the others at HQ.
Nicholas explains the situation, and that the idea here is just to fly over the area, land at Quartz Airfield near the mountain, see if there's anything they can do, and head back today. After making sure everyone has the right kind of clothes to go up (it's colder up in the air, obviously), the plane takes off!
Right away there's a slight issue; Kayla is afraid of heights. She's usually able to fly, but that's because she's always flown commercially (and perhaps wasn't quite honest with herself on how anxious this makes her). She manages to white-knuckle through it without freaking out too badly, at least initially.
Everyone else looks out the windows with binoculars, and Kat spots something - there's a big hole in Gary's garage door. It's too far away to tell much detail, but it doesn't look like he hit it with a car. It looks more like something smashed through it - maybe a bear? Nicholas also spots the tree that fell over the road and notes that there's no other storm damage, so it doesn't look like this happened because of lightning or even snow weight. It wasn't deliberately chopped or sawn down, so that's something, but it still looks almost deliberate.
Tristan gathers himself and focuses on the cabin, sensing the Unknown. It's a long ways off, but he sees the cabin remain in color while everything else goes black and white - the usual sign that something is wrong.
Nicholas radios down to Sheriff Horne and reports what they're seeing. Horne says that he's not in the area at the moment, but arranges for Nicholas to borrow a jeep from the airfield. Nicholas brings the plane in for a landing (Tristan gives Kayla a blanket and she curls up into a ball), everyone disembarks, and there's a discussion about whether they're staying here tonight (which annoys Britt, because that's not what was discussed earlier), going back, and if they are going back, how Kayla is getting there because she's not interested in getting back on that plane.
In any case, the envoys borrow a jeep from the guy working at the airfield (Ned), and head out to the sheriff's office. They stop in and talk with Horne's deputy, Patti Frears, and decide to go and look at the cabin where the Kanes disappeared - getting up to Gary's place is going to take more daylight than they have left.
They arrive at the cabin and start looking around. Tristan uses his Clairvoyance discipline and looks into the middle of the cabin. Looking around, he sees cleaning supplies, but no sign of a struggle. Britt touches the outer wall and uses Schematic, getting a mental map of the building. Nothing untoward.
The door is unlocked, the envoys enter and look around. Kat looks around for more evidence of the Kanes, but then knocks over a bottle of spray cleaner and it spills on the floor. She goes to clean it up while everyone looks about - no purse, no other bags, it looks like they were cleaning and then just...left.
Nicholas and Kat go outside and look at the treeline. The snow has melted off a little, so there are no footprints that they can see, but Nicholas finds a boot...covered in blood. Nicholas looks around trying to find a blood trail and spots something that looks like it, but then Kat steps on it (lots of botched rolls happening). Frustrated, Nicholas activates Postcognition...
Wil Kane is standing in the snow, yelling, "Natalie! Nat! Baby, where are you?" The desperation is in voice is obvious, but he hears no response. Everything is very still, no birdsong, no wind, and then very faintly, ragged, crying breaths. Wil starts to run in that direction, but then a hand - a hideous, misshapen human-looking hand with sharp, yellow claws - reaches out from a snowbank and grabs his ankle. It yanks him down and into the bank, and his other foot catches on a tree. The creature, whatever it is, pulls with enough force to fold his leg outwards, and his hip snaps with an audible crack. The hand pulls him into the snowbank, there's a scream and a tearing noise...then silence.
Nicholas comes out of the vision, pale as the snow. He pulls Kat back inside and gathers everyone up to explain what happened. Britt uses Skeleton Key and opens Natalie's car, and finds her purse on the seat. Nothing special inside - dead cell phone, hairbrush, wallet - but Tristan takes a clump of hair from the brush and uses Clairvoyance again.
He immediately wishes he hadn't. He feels a weird barrier, some factor that that's making it hard to focus. He "backs up" and focuses on the hair, and that works. He sees Natalie's head...detached from her body. It's in a den of some kind, and there must be light coming from somewhere because he can see. There are human body parts, all with big chunks of meat torn out, strewn around. And unfortunately, Tristan projects his sense of smell as well.
He immediately throws up (but fortunately was doing this in the bathroom). After a minute, he pulls himself together and comes out to the living room, informing the others what's happened. The envoys decide to get the hell out of here, go back to the sheriff's office, and report this so that the police can do a head count. There are only about 250 permanent residents of Moose Pass, but a lot of them keep to themselves.
They head back, and find that Sheriff Horne has returned. The envoys explain what's happened (leaving out the Art-related parts, of course; they focus on the boot) and the sheriff nods. Recently a widowed lady named Janna heard something at her door and later found gouges. The sheriff had a look, and thought it was a prank - it's not normal bear behavior, and the marks didn't look like bear claws anyway. The pattern looked more...human.
Since they have three points of reference, though, Nicholas triangulates the creature's territory. It looks like it covers most of the mountain, and butts right up against the residential areas of Moose Pass.
Sheriff Horne has Patti get on the phones and start doing a head count of the residents. Nicholas offers their help in case a search party is necessary, and the sheriff thanks him; he's not sure how he wants to handle it yet (the terrain isn't safe and if there's a dangerous animal out there he doesn't want to put people in jeopardy). The envoys asks if there's a hotel (their initial idea had been to stay in the cabin, but that seems...unwise), and the sheriff says there isn't, but he's willing to put a couple of them up if Patti can handle the rest. The girls go with Patti, the guys with Horne.
Britt does a little digger on yetis and bigfoots and whatnot, and finds that the popular perception of them is mostly that they're not dangerous...but a lot of that is written by people who want it to be true. Tristan, back at Sheriff Horne's place, looks into the SAVE archives that he's put online and finds a fragment of Ruby Garrett's Report on Monsters that talks about "unknown hominids." Her data says that they follow biological urges - that is, food - but that they aren't animals, so they don't always act like animals.
There's also an interesting debate in SAVE about them. Some folks believe that such creatures are monsters, creatures of the Unknown, sure, but utterly non-human. And then there's a school of thought that says that yetis and the like are people who died far away from other people, desperately lonely, and that what they really want is companionship.
As Tristan is musing over this, he sees a reflection in his laptop screen - a hideous, ape-like maw with massive fangs. He screams and turns around, but sees nothing. Nicholas (who was doing the dishes) runs in, but there's nothing there. Tristan insists on what he saw, but there's nothing, just the wind beginning to pick up.
