“Think what you like, but it’s the truth. He was in poppy withdrawal and lost his balance trying to cut the ruby off my face.” I drop an inch and Emeric’s hand slips onto my knit cap, pushing it off and leaving him with only a fistful of wool. I duck under his arm as he lurches forward.
Then I freeze.
Godmother Death is standing behind Emeric.
One hand stretches for him.
“I don’t need your help!” I yell, and hurl myself at his side to knock him out of her reach. I get a brief glimpse of his flabbergasted face before we topple to the ground.
A thunderous crash echoes from where Emeric was just standing.
When I roll off him and look up—
I don’t know what I see.
It’s something like a warhorse, but with the hairless moldy-pale hide of thenachtmahr, its mane and tail like tin smoke. I can see holes in its heaving sides like rotten canvas, and the mud sizzles, bakes, and cracks where its hooves fall.
I’ve never heard of amahrthis large. Never heard of one so solid in the daylight. One that drops from thin air.
But if Emeric’s looking for murder, he’ll find it in those burning blue eyes.
Themahr’s nostrils flare once, twice, as I slowly push myself to my feet. There’s a scrape as Emeric rises behind me.
A fat gray-black tongue worms out from between themahr’s decaying lips, baring teeth sharp as a wolf’s as it tastes the air.
“Run,” I say, “now—”
We run.
Hoofbeats and howls rip down the alley at our backs. I look over a shoulder and find Ragne as a black kestrel, swooping and clawing around themahr’s thrashing head.
Then I’m yanked into a gap between houses. It’s so narrow I have to turn sideways to thread between the walls of plaster and lumber. Emeric is already squeezing through, headed for the open lane on the other side. I follow. With luck thenachtmahrwon’t fit and we can give it the slip.
Incredibly, I catch a mutter from Emeric: “Ithadto be horses.”
“That’sthe issue?”
We’re halfway to the street when themahrfinds us. It thrusts its head and neck into the gap, teeth gnashing, but its shoulders are too broad, and Ragne is still diving at its eyes, and I think for a moment maybe I’ll make it—
Then something horrible happens.
The creature stretches, lengthens like warm, wet clay. Its horselike skull thins, cords of muscle fluttering in ripples under the rotting skin, fangs bared.
I snatch Emeric’s knife from my satchel, slashing wildly at themahr. Like before, the steel blade doesn’t faze it in the slightest. Every cut that opens along its snout looks weeks old.
Teeth close on my hand.
I scream and pull away, and just in time. Themahr’s fangs snag on my raggedy glove and rip it off instead. The knife falls with a clatter.
A much more human grip drags me farther down the gap. “See? Horses are the worst. Do you know if it’s agrimling?” Emeric sounds both too close and too smug for my comfort, but since we’re both wedged between the moldering walls, I have bigger complaints.
Besides, I’m too busy watching those teeth shred the glove to do more than gasp, “Nachtmahr.”
“Copper, then,” he mutters. A black sleeve thrusts past me as themahr’s neck stretches even longer. There’s another knife in his hand, a similar make to the one I just dropped, but the blade is penny red.
This time, when it catches thenachtmahron the snout, the beast screams.
There’s a squeal and a pop as windows shatter above us. I hide my face from the shower of glass. Emeric keeps pulling me through the gap, mumbling a rhyming string of words in one of the northern Almanic dialects. I’ve heard of spoken charms to ward offnachtmären, but this creature is either immune or highly motivated, and I don’t have time to find out which.
