A thick muscled paw smashed his head. The world teetered. Colored circles burst before his eyes.
He sliced again, pinned down by the creature’s weight. Two bolts, two cuts across the neck. It should’ve been dead.
The next hit knocked him into a woozy, furious haze.
Half-blind, William thrust the knife into the beast’s flesh and locked his hand on it.
A thick leg swiped him, clenching him in a steel-hard clamp. William shook his head, gripping the knife. The woods slid by him in a flurry of green stains—they were moving. The beast clutched at the trunk of the oak like a lizard and climbed up to the crown, dragging him with it.
William twisted, spreading the fingers of his left hand, jammed the sleeper against a vein bulging underneath the creature’s pale skin, and squeezed. The needle punched into the blood vessels, squirting the contents of the capsule into the bloodstream. Enough narcotic to drop a grown man where he stood.
The creature snarled and shook him like a dog shakes a rat. William snarled back, punching the needles into the beast’s neck in rapid succession: one, two, three. The sleeper clicked, out of ammo.
The beast hissed and dropped him. William plummeted in a shower of broken branches. His fingers caught a tree limb. He grabbed it, nearly dislocating his shoulders, swung himself up and over like a gymnast, and dropped down to the forest floor.
His vision cleared. He jerked his head up. Above him, the beast descended the tree, moving down the trunk upside down, headfirst.
Bolts, poison, knife, enough narcotic to drop a twelve-hundred-pound bull in mid-charge, and it still moved. William backed away.
The brute leaped to the ground. The moon tore through the clouds, flooding the beast in silvery light. Long and corded with hard muscle, it stood on four massive legs, equipped with five thick, clawed fingers. Coarse brown fur grew in patches on its powerful forequarters and along the sides, thickening to cover the pelvis but failing to completely hide the wrinkled flesh-colored skin. Flat cartilaginous ridges guarded the curve of its spine, flaring into bony plates to sheath the top of its narrow skull. The long serpentine tail lashed and flexed, coiling. Two deep bloody gashes split his neck.
In his entire life, William had never seen anything like it.
The creature dug the ground with a clawed paw, more simian than canine. The malevolent eyes glared at William. The flesh around the wounds on its neck shivered. The edges pulled together, the red muscle knitted, the skin stretched, and suddenly the cuts were gone. Nothing save the lines of two thin scars remained.
Fuck.
The beast’s mouth opened wide, wider, like the unhinging jaws of a snake. Crooked fangs gleamed, wet with foamy drool.
“Nice.” William raised his knife and motioned with the fingers of his left hand. “Come closer. I’ll carve you up the old-fashioned way.”
A pale furry body shot from the bushes, baying like some hell dog. Cough danced around the beast, snapping and barking and foaming at the mouth. The beast shook its ugly head.
William gathered himself for a charge.
The beast recoiled, as if shocked by a live wire. A moment later William heard it, too, a low female voice singing, rising and falling, murmuring Gaulish words.
The beast shuddered. Its maw gaped open. It howled, a low lingering wail full of regret and pain, whirled, and took off into the night.
“Come back here!” William snarled.
The voice came closer. The tiny glow of a lantern swayed between dark pines.
William dived into the thicket, leaving Cough alone in the mangled weeds.
The bushes parted, and Grandmother Az emerged. She raised her lantern, the shaky light carving the age lines deeper into her face. Lark peered from behind her, dark eyes huge in her pale face.
The dog trotted over and pushed against the old woman’s legs, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“There you are, Cough.” Grandmother Az reached over to pet Cough’s foam-drenched head. “It’s all right.”
“Is it gone?” Lark asked.
“Yes, he’s gone now, child. He won’t come back tonight. You have to stay out of the forest for a while. I wish you would’ve told me he had come around. Come. Let’s go home.”
Grandmother Az took Lark’s hand with a soothing smile and walked back into the woods. The dog followed them, growling quietly and talking shit under his breath.
William sat up. His chest hurt, and his shoulder felt like it was a single continuous bruise. The thing had regenerated before his eyes. Not even the Hand’s freaks healed that fast. What in the bloody hell was that?
Slowly the reality of the situation sank in. He got his ass kicked, learned nothing, and got saved by a dumb dog and an old lady.
If he lived long enough to make a report to Nancy back in Adrianglia, he would have to gloss over this part.
NINETEEN
THE morning came way too fast, William decided as he finished shaving. He’d slipped back into the house and caught a few hours in bed, but most of him still felt like he had been run through one of the Broken’s dryers with some rocks added for the extra tumble.
At least his room had a bathroom attached to it, so he could clean up in relative privacy. His shoulder had gone from blue to sickly yellow-green. The yellow would be gone by the evening—changelings did heal fast. But then, healing fast often just invited more punishment, he reflected.
Something had happened early in the morning. He remembered waking up to some sort of commotion, but his door had stayed locked, so he went back to sleep.