Quentin turned first, then Imani, the both of them imploding into a bloody shower. She caught the smell instantly, their coppery mist carried by the wind. Not quite the smell of rot, but the perfume of what she imagined death to be. She covered her nose, watching them shake the damp from their coats.
“Shit,” Felix cursed, and unable to turn like the others, he looked around for something—anything to use against the beast.
Imani cut the distance in a sprint, it looked as if her feet hardly touched the ground. She bounded into the chest of the beast and caught the creature by the muzzle, blood dripping from the slack of her jowls. The creature snarled. It wrapped it’s frightening claws around her and tossed her to the ground, then it was reaching for Quentin. He out-stepped its looming grapple and dashed to its backside. And before it could track him, Imani had it again—this time by the leg. She thrashed, thrashed and tore until the beast picked her off again. So easily, like she was a mosquito, stubborn and starved for blood. But by then, Quentin had the time to sound a howl. Loud and frighteningly beautiful, his voice carried into the distance. The others would hear it. His wolves would come. Matt prayed so, at least.
Quentin leapt for the lichund, teeth popping into the leathery flesh of its throat. The beast curdled out a wretched cry, but with a swing of its arm, it had sent Quentin slamming into the ground, tumbling onto the grass. And with Imani struggling up, the creature had no other opponents. No one but Felix, bouncing a heavy gardening rake in his palms.
“C’mon then, ugly,” he taunted.
The beast thudded closer on the pads of its bony hands, lips curled and a frightening mouthful of sharp, wicked teeth gleaming in the red night. It snarled and took to a lopsided run; hand then foot, hand then foot.
Felix swung the rake with shocking force and the metal cracked against the monster’s jaw. It staggered there, jaw unhinged. And with its humanly inhuman hand, the beast cracked its bone back into place and bellowed out a scream that sounded much too human.
Felix danced to the side and swung again, smashing the beast in the snout. Again it staggered and again he swung. But this time, the beast caught the rake in its spindly fingers, ripping it away from him with a rageful cry.
Felix stumbled back, weaponless now. “Shit.”
The beast swung a large powerful hand into him and Felix was thrown into the side of Matt’s wrangler, the metal denting under the impact. He laid there on the ground, groaning, clutching the side that had taken the brunt. The force had been enough to pop open the passenger door, so Matt was broke across the yard, launching himself over Felix and into the front seat. He didn’t know where in the Wrangler it was, but Matt knew what he was after—what laid tucked away beneath the back seat, sealed in a leather case.
And sure enough, when Matt dropped from the wrangler, he had her in hand. His dad’s Remington shotgun.
The lich no longer had its sights set on Matt. It stalked toward the veranda, where Sadies and the others stood, helplessly locked in its gaze.
“Get inside,” Alex said numbly, but he himself couldn’t look away. Saide’s knees buckled and she caught herself on Alex’s shoulder. No one seemed capable of moving—they all stayed frozen, gripping onto one another but too paralyzed by those eyes to lift a foot from the veranda.
It crawled forward to them, its tongue spilled out over rows of crooked teeth, its hungry, beady eyes pining to devour them whole. Matt took aim and fired. A blast hit the beast, tearing into its chest. The monster stumbled back, rolled its head to Matthew and watched him with those gaping eyes as he lowered the weapon from his eye line. He was looking for blood—for wounds, for anything. But the beast gave a shake and the shrapnel, shed from its flesh like loose dust.
Already Matthew was cocking, firing again. The second blast hit the beast in the shoulder with enough impact to send it stumbling back. The beast shook its head, guttering from the pain, but it recovered angrier than it had been before and it turned to Matt, screeched it’s nettled cry and started to charge.
Matt fired again and hit it in the leg—took the ground out from beneath it. The beast simpered as it slammed into the grass, but again there was no blood. The bullets were but beanbags to a creature like this. It dug its fists into the earth and rose again.
“It won’t matter.” Imani said from beside him, clutching her battered ribs. She’d turned back at one point or another, and stood nude and bloodied and drenched in the pouring rain. “I could barely get my teeth through.”
“A bullet’s better than a bite,” Matt said, taking aim again.
“Not when you’ve bitten through bullets.”
He fired, his blast cracking once more into the chest of the beast. It sunk to the ground before it could even gain its footing and Matt lowered the gun and watched as its movements stopped. Finally still. Finally down.
He took a step forward to see if he’d done it. To see if he’d killed the lichund. But Imani barred an arm across his chest.
Then movement.
The creature stirred, heavy hands planted into the mud as it pushed itself back up on his arms, found ground beneath its feet.
It dug its claws into the earth, leaving long, horrible scars in the soil. And the beast rose, tall and hellish in the moonlight. Sadie felt a hopelessness grow heavy in her. If a shotgun couldn’t take it down, what the hell could?
Then like shadows, something broke through the forest lining. Dark things latched onto the beast, one, then two, then four. They jumped it like fleas, dragging the lichund to the ground. More broke from the trees and the brush, a throng of them leaping onto this monster, giving every tooth and claw to the flesh of its back, the scruff of its neck.
They hung to it like leeches, but one by one, each wolf was ripped away by those monstrous hands and crushed to the ground, thrown against the trunk of evergreen trees. Two of the sentinels had already turned back, small, naked women, coated in a paint of their own blood and wailing wounded in the rain.
Matt couldn’t tell where Quentin was anymore. Somewhere in the pack, flinging himself into danger like the others. There were too many bodies now—he couldn’t shoot. But it wouldn’t matter if he did; his gun was no help but to stun the beast. The wolves weren’t drawing blood like Imani had. And one by one, it was turning them back from wolves to women.
Beside him, Imani dropped her arms to her side. She stood up straight and her chest grew with a deep, courageous breath. Then she was turning again, bursting into wolf, charging to the beast. She latched onto the skin of its jowl, hung there thrashing herself like a croc. But it wouldn’t make a difference—she was too easy to pluck off. And more wounded women were crawling to safety by the second. There would be no wolves left at this rate. No wolves to take it down, no bullets to break the flesh.
Then, from the bosk a smaller wolf came sprinting—thin and gangly and painted in petals of brown and gold and gray.
And unlike the others, who leapt on the beast’s back, Bailey faced it head-on. Instead of flesh, he went for bone, latching onto the creature’s fingers, snapping them in half under the strength of his jaw. To this, the beast screeched—a sound that shivered the windows of Matt’s wrangler; a cry that made him tremble himself.
Felix had found his strength to rise, and wounded, he stumbled to the pile of clothing that Quentin had shed from his body. He shuffled through the pockets of his jeans, pulled a pistol from the denim.
Then he stood tall. Weary, but tall, lifting the gun to eye level, flicking off the safety. And the moment it was clear, the moment there was no wolf to jump in front of his bullet, Felix pulled the trigger.
With a pop, the bullet struck the beast in the chest. It cried out with a god-awful sound, a scream that barreled beyond the clouds, louder than thunder itself. The creature wavered from one foot to another and fell forward, slamming onto the sodden grass.
The wolves dropped from its body and crept backward as they sniffed for the scent of its blood. From somewhere among them, Quentin rose, man once more. The rain washed the red from his face, but it still stained his arms and coated his legs as he waved the others back. “Get away from it. Everyone, get away from it,” he ordered. “Something’s not right.”
Felix scowled and clutched at a dislocated shoulder. “What the fuck do you mean something’s not right?”
The wolves had begun to stray from the beast. To tiptoe a safe distance backward. All but Quentin, who moved closer,
“There’s silver in those bullets. But it’s not in pain,” he said. “It’s not screaming in pain. The bullet didn’t break the skin.”
“So what?” Felix groaned. “It’s unconscious?”
“Looks like it.” Quentin gave the creature a nudge, but it was nothing more than a limp mound of dark fur. “Get the bane. We need to reverse the—”
Just then, one of its mighty hands came to life, it rose and slammed down into him, too fast to avoid it. Too fast for anyone to stop it. The claws pierced his shoulder, pinned him to the earth below, and the beast rose on its hands to look at the pray it had ensnared. Saliva strung from its jaws, every sharp, thorny tooth exposed by the depraved curl of its lips. The wild, unblinking darkness in its eyes.
A wave of silence rippled through the air, the trees, the wolves. The world held its breath as Quentin suffered under the weight and the pain of its impalement.
Felix was the first to react, shooting twice more with his special bullets. But it only angered the creature, who pressed its weight into Quentin, crushing him until blood upsurged from his pieced shoulder.
Quentin cried out, his fists prying at the talons that broke his skin, the ones that pressed in deeper, cracking into his bone.
Felix didn’t shoot again. Even Matt lowered his gun. He feared doing anything at all could anger the beast. And the wolves—Quentin’s wolves—urged to move forward, to defend their alpha. But they too lingered back with their ears pinned, helpless to his suffering.
It peered out among the faces, waiting for retaliation. And when the creature was sure nothing was to come, it curled forward, close to Quentin’s face. And it caterwauled with that awful scream of its—two voices in one, ripping through the air and the rain like the cry of a banshee.
Quentin’s heels were digging into the earth, all of the muscles in his arm stoney, engorged as he used his own strength to ease the weight. Matthew looked to the others on the porch—Lisa, looking like she might vomit any moment. Sadie folding her hands together, whispering words to herself. Spells that would do no good for anyone now. And then there was Alex, holding back tears, teeth clenched so tight Matt could see the agony in his jaw. It was a face of helplessness, and god it was haunting.
It was over. No one could do anything. Not without risking Quentin. Not without giving this creature motive to crush him dead. Even Felix dropped his gun, let the pistol hang from his fingertips.
Then the beast cracked open its jaw, wide and unhinged like a snake. It roared again to the sound of thunder and craned down until its bone-breaking teeth and its putrid breath lingered inches from Quentin’s face.
Then a flash of silver.
Something pierced the beast’s abysmal eyes and it threw itself back with a curdling scream. It wasn’t until the beast raised its head that Matthew saw the fletching of an arrow. And for the first time, blood raining down its horrid face.
He looked in the direction it’d come. The downpour had fogged the distance, rain pelting the ground so hard, it turned everything to mist. But a shape was closing in, and when finally he could make out the face of the beast that approached, Matthew couldn’t breathe.
Another one. Not another one.
But there was a second shape, nested in the space between the creature’s shoulder blades. She hung on by the thick, wet mane of fur on its neck, and as the beast charged on all fours, Tisper dug her knees into its sides, raised her bow to the sky and fired.
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