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I snatch it up. It’s a scrap of paper all folded.

The breath rushes out of my lungs.

Origami.

It’s a piece of origami.

I flash back to the little frog I made Artie before. This scrap perfectly matches up with one of its legs.

My throat tightens and I plunge over the log, waving my light around frantically for some other sign. I know I should be hollering for the guys, but I can’t, not yet. This is my hunt.

Further on, there’s another scrap of green. Then I’m in the dark for a long time, searching, seeing nothing. I got so lucky with those two pieces. The odds aren’t great that I’ll find another.

I glance back over my shoulder. The lights of the others are distant, like fireflies blinking in and out.

I turn back around and there’s something red on the ground almost beneath my boot. Artie had been so happy with the first frog that I had made him a few more, one blue and one… red.

Did he have the frogs in hand when he was kidnapped? That’s the most likely explanation but damn, what a smart boy, to use them as breadcrumbs.

He got all those smarts from his mom.

I find no more of the red frog. The whole blue frog is pierced right through its little amphibian chest by a thorn. That sends me much farther to the left than I had been pointed. As I swing in that direction, I see it.

I turn off the phone light and drop to a crouch, my stomach clenching so tight I almost puke.

A hulking shadow crouches in the trees, a shade grayer than the black layers of forest behind it. There’s a sound like the wind, though the air is still. That has to be the river.

I found the cabin.

All the lights are off, or the curtains are drawn. The hairs all over my body prickle and stand on end. Was Malcolm looking out? Did he see my light?

I now can’t yell for backup even if I wanted to. The chances are too high that I’ll be overheard. I check my phone to see if I have any service so I can text my club brothers, but there are no bars.

I struck out on my own and now I’ll finish this.

I stay low as I approach, moving from one hiding spot to another. My senses ramp up while the world around me slows down. I can taste the forest. I hear the river like it’s the blood coursing through my veins.

Closer and closer, my eyes adjusting. The curtains are drawn, but a little light leeches past them. I’m coming at the building from the side. The trees open up around it to form a clearing that would probably be pretty and picturesque at any other time. It sure does look like a good place for a vacation cabin. Too fucking bad a demon owns it.

There’s a gap between the last tree and the side of the cabin, where there’s a porch and a door. That’s no man’s land, where the worst is most likely to happen.

I decide that I don’t care.

I spring upright and sprint across the thin strip of yard, leap up onto the porch, skipping the steps entirely. I grab the doorknob. It’s locked. I surge back to the very edge of the porch and throw myself forward again, ramming my shoulder into the door. Something snaps, maybe a bone, maybe wood, and the door bursts inward.

A man stands right inside, pointing a pistol at my face. Time still moving slow, I watch his trigger finger squeezing. I rush him as the gun goes off, the report blasting my eardrums. Pain burns across my upper arm, a distant sensation. My entire focus is on the demon underneath me, the pretty-faced bastard whooping in a breath even as he points the gun again.

I grab his wrist and bend, hard. That time, I know the snap is bone. Malcolm screams. The pistol drops from his now-limp fingers and lands on his chest. It goes off again and splinters fly as the bullet strikes a wall. I feel one cut a fine, thin line on my cheek, and my whole world goes black and red.

This, this is a time for anger, for rage.

I barely know what I’m doing. My body moves on its own. I slam my fists down on Malcolm’s face, his chest, then grab his shoulders, lift him up and shove him back down on the floor. All I know is the thud and whump of contact, the splash of hot blood on my fists. My eardrums ring from the gunshot, and what little hearing remains is taken over by the thumping of my pulse.

I grab Malcolm, heave him across the floor, knocking over something. A side table, a stool. Don’t know, don’t care. I yank him back toward me and hammer on his stomach with one fist over and over.

Hands grab at me, four, eight. I struggle against them as they try to pull me off, shouting, telling me that it’s enough. It’s not. It will never be enough. I keep striking until someone manages to slip around us and drag Malcolm out of my reach. I watch him go, limp, soaked in blood, several bones jutting at odd angles, and lunge for him, but the hands thrust me back in the opposite direction.

I claw at the floorboards, lurching up to my feet. My brothers barge into the cabin, filling it with leather, and the scent of leather, and sweat, and the forest. They form a wall between me and the man I want to make sure is dead. I clench my bloody fists. I’ll fight them all. I’ll force my way through them to make sure I finish this. I-