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The hunter turned, showing his face. Around thirty, white, long brown hair. Hard. Weather-bitten. Light eyes. A long ragged scar crossing the nose bridge. Something with claws had marked him, but must’ve died before it finished the job. Derek bared his teeth. He’d make him choke on that fur.
A tall bow of wood and bone hung over the hunter’s shoulder. The hunter raised an arm shielded by leather. A shriek tore through the night, and a bird dropped from the sky like a stone and landed on the arm. Ugly, bearded, big, with a vicious beak. Didn’t look like any bird he’d ever seen.
The hunter studied the boar-hound, then raised his head and surveyed the area. His gaze passed over their shelter. He peered into the gap. Derek looked into his eyes. Magic rolled over him in a dark cold wave, dousing the agony of silver with ice, and he saw a long, frozen winter night under the moon. He felt the cold snow under his paws. He smelled his own blood, bright and hot, as it fell onto the snow, and heard the long, undulating howl of hungry hounds.
This is the way it always was. This is the way it had to be now. He had to run, run into the trees, before the arrows and hounds found him.
Nice try, asshole.
The urge to run was overwhelming now. It was taking all of his will to just stay still.
A moment dripped by. Derek waited. He was a wolf. He had all the patience in the world.
The hunter whistled softly through his teeth. The boar-hound shook its head and moved on. The hunter turned away, tossed the bird back into the night sky, and the massive horse resumed its steady walk.
They lay still for another three minutes before they quietly slipped out of the gap. Julie grabbed his hand, pointed to the pole, to herself, and up.
Lift me.
He grasped her legs and held her up. She plucked the arrow from the pole and they melted into the night.
THE BIG BUILDING GAPED OPEN, its front wall gone, scattered in pieces on the ground. Half its roof was missing, but the back offered shelter. He was limping now, running slow even for a human.
“Almost there,” Julie whispered.
He squeezed one last burst of movement from his body. He was shutting down.
“Almost there,” she repeated.
He followed her across the dirty floor to the metal staircase leading up, up the stairs and to the far corner of the empty building. He sagged to the ground. She dropped beside him, yanked a small knife out of the sheath on her waist, and pulled his hoodie off. Her eyes went wide.
“It’s over your neck.”
He knew that already. The flesh over his neck and chest felt dead. When she touched it, he felt no pressure. The skin on his chest had turned duct-tape grey.
Cutting the chest wouldn’t do it. The silver was still in his bloodstream and moving up. If it hit his brain, he would die. He had to expel it before it reached that far.
He snatched the knife out of her hands.
“Don’t!” she gasped.
He slit his carotid artery. Blood sprayed in a black-and-red mist. He smelled the metallic stench of dead Lyc-V.
A howl, close, almost to them.
Julie whipped around and dashed down the stairs, her satchel in her hand.
Blood kept gushing in a heated flood, drenching his shoulder. Normally Lyc-V would’ve recognized the neck cut as fatal and sealed it nearly instantly, but the virus that granted his regeneration was dying in record numbers. He bled like a human, getting weaker with each beating of his heart. His hold on consciousness was slipping. His brain, starved of oxygen, was going to sleep like a dying fish. He hooked his claws into reality. A normal human would’ve been dead within seconds. If he could stay conscious, if his heart pumped enough silver-poisoned blood out for Lyc-V to recover, if the silver didn’t reach his brain, he might survive.
Below, Julie drew a circle with white chalk around the stairs. A ward, a defensive spell. He doubted the chalk alone would hold the hounds or the hunter. She pulled the arrow from her bag and scratched a second line into the concrete floor, making the second ring inside the first chalk line.
The boar-hound appeared in the gap where the front wall used to be, silhouetted against the moonlight. He willed himself to move, but he could do nothing.
Julie yanked a small squeeze bottle out of her bag and poured a puddle in front of her, inside the circle.
Get up, he snarled at himself. Get the hell up.
The boar-hound let out a triumphant snarl of pure bloodlust.
