The Friday 56This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
The Friday 56 Grab a book, any book.
The Friday 56 Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
The Friday 56 Find a snippet, short and sweet.
The Friday 56 Post it.

from Page 56 (and 57) of:
Ozark Dogs

Ozark Dogs by Eli Cranor

Evail loved his big brother, a bond that went even deeper than blood. In a way, Rudnick was the start of everything all those nights in the field, the kits’ calls playing out scared and lonely. It was just like the hunting. Rudnick had simply asked if Evail would do it, and then he did. Again and again. For a while, the brothers went hunting almost every night. It was the summer before Rudnick’s senior year in high school. Evail on the cusp of sixteen.

And then Rudnick was gone, Evail went to prison, and everything changed. The darkness shifted and the calls howled from the inside out. When Evail returned, he took to the field alone, no longer using the recordings, opting instead for the darkness, working along the tree lines and stalking his prey. He wore the hides of the creatures he’d taken. A mass of fur and bone death-still in the shadows, Evail crouching, waiting, the gun barrel blue in the night. Coyotes were loyal and thick as thieves. When one went down, the others came running. It wasn’t until there was a pile of blood-warm bodies that the big boy would finally come sauntering up from the shadows. The alpha. Rudnick had always been the alpha. He wasn’t anything anymore.