I made it inside the structure just as the wolf nipped at my heels. I spun around and smashed the side of my broadsword against the side of her head. She growled and flew at me with her great, clawed paws. I used my sword to bat them away, but suffered a nasty tear in my swinging arm in the process. As a wolf, she was stronger than I was, especially since I had to be careful as ever not even to want to kill her.
She came at me again, jaws protruding from her lips. I changed sword hands, and with a measured blow, slashed into one of her front legs, spilling blood onto her fur.
She howled with pain and anger. I scrambled away and climbed the ladder up to the hayloft, thinking it would give me a moment’s reprieve to heal the pulsating gash in my arm.
The brown wolf passed under the ladder. I wondered if she were contemplating changing back into human form in order to climb up after me. But I should have known better.
The wolf took ten paces back and then jumped up into the hayloft, landing only a few feet from where I sat. I clambered to my feet and ran, heading for the far end of the hayloft. The rotten floorboards creaked and cracked under my pounding feet, and I remembered that this was the area where that kid had fallen through the floor last month, forcing Frightmare Farms to be shut down. I jumped over a hole in the floor and ran for the window that overlooked the barnyard. Maybe I could make the jump?
The wolf growled. I glanced over my shoulder and saw her rearing back to leap at me again, claws extended. In a moment of either panic or brilliance, I threw my sword at the small metal box that protruded from the haunted barn’s wall. It swung blade over hilt and slammed into the large red button on the box. The same button Brent had shown me earlier as a trick. The wolf lunged into the air, and I ducked as a thick, bicycle-sized faux battle-ax came swinging out from a metal contraption in the ceiling. I knew the ax wasn’t sharp, but it caught the brown wolf midair and sent her flying backward. She hit the rotten floorboards with such force, they crumpled under her and she went crashing through the floor of the hayloft. I heard her whine as she fell, and then a sickening sound that made me flinch. I moved quickly and carefully over the cracking boards and gazed down through the hole she left behind.
What I saw made a shudder of nausea rip through me: the body of the brown wolf, skewered through her belly by a broken pole below.
The wolf whimpered and writhed and then fell silent and limp, hanging like a piece of bloody meat on the end of a kabob. I knew she wasn’t dead. The pole was iron not silver, and it hadn’t decapitated her, but she was most likely in terrible pain. The blood loss would keep her out of commission for quite some time.
A horrible shiver overtook my body as I looked down on her.
Close, child. Close, whispered my inner wolf. I could feel its glee over my near kill. Its anticipation of the next.
I am so close to being freed. Finish her off.
I cupped my hands against my ears to feel the calming warmth of the moonstone earrings, shaking my head. no, I told the wolf. I have no intention of killing her. I don’t want her dead.