Page 131 of Bone Year

A black streak shoots past me at ground level.

Noctis hits the bear’s flank in a leap, his jaws frothing, and locks down on something with his teeth.

The bear is swallowed by darkness as it disappears deeper into the forest. Wolf and shadows and bear and snow, gone.

“Maelis.”

I turn at the sound of my name. Draven glares at me.

“Cover me, or he’s going to die.”

I nod.

He drops back to his knees beside Tomas’s father. He’s already pulled the spines out of the wound. Long dark slivers lie in a pile in the snow next to him, four of them, five. He’s cutting away corrupted tissue with quick, efficient strokes like he’s done this before. He has a small pouch open in his other hand, and he’s pressing powder into the open cuts, one after another, sealing the bleeding without stitches, because there isn’t time for stitches.

Tomas’s father has gone limp under his hands, passed out I think from the pain, I hope.

I turn my back on them and face the storm.

I can still see the dark shape moving in the trees. The shadow bats are dispersing now, returning to nothing the way they came from nothing. Noctis’s tail flicks once where I can see it through the gaps in the trunks and then goes still.

The bear is not coming back.

Then I hear a shriek.

It comes out of the snow above the rooftops, and I look up. The spineback is already in its dive.

It folds in on itself in midair and drops at us like a thrown stone, wings collapsing in toward its body, tail whipping behind it, the upside-down beak opening as it falls.

The dagger in my hand is too small for this, but there’s no time for anything else.

I plant my feet over Tomas’s father, bring the blade up, and scream.

The spineback adjusts at the last second. It veers. Its claws miss me by inches, and I feel the wind off its wing in my hair. My dagger snags on something as it passes overhead. The blade skips off bone, catches, then tears through membrane.

The spineback hits the snow ten feet from us with a sound like a falling tree.

It shrieks again and flails. One of its wings is half open and won’t fold.

Draven is on his feet in one motion, his blade out.

“Stay with him.”

He charges.

The spineback is already trying to take off again, flapping its undamaged wing and shrieking, the damaged wing dragging in the snow. Draven crosses the distance, and the spineback turns its head toward him, the upside-down beak opening, the long ribbed tongue lashing out, and Draven sidesteps it cleanly and brings his blade up under its upside down head.

The blade goes in, all the way to the hilt.

The spineback shrieks, then the sound cuts off, and the body collapses.

Draven yanks the blade out and turns, scanning the sky.

“Draven.”

“I know.”

“It’s still up there.”