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The noise of Von and the others clapping vanished as soon as I ran through the archway and entered the jungle. Kira stood there, waiting for me. Surprised, I almost crashed into her. Her hand found mine, the warmth of her fingers a comfort to me. Around us, the others bolted in multiple directions to pursue their marks.
“I thought you were gonna leave me for a second there,” I said.
Kira grinned at me. “Nah. I need you around in case I have to trip you. It’s like they say—you don’t have to outrun a bear; you only have to outrun the person with you.”
“Very funny,” I grunted. “What’s the plan?”
“I think we should go for the wendigo first. We know what it looks like and have a basic idea of how to fight it. Once it’s been taken down, we can go after whatever the hell I’m supposed to be hunting.”
“Then Mika?” I ask.
“Yeah. We’ll need to see if we can check his progress.” She sighed and looked into the jungle. “I kind of wish he’d stayed with us. We could help him get—”
I pressed a finger to her lips, then looked over at the camera hovering a few feet away.
Kira’s eyes popped wide. The cameras were around all the time, essentially part of the scenery. We didn’t want the showrunners to know what our plan was for Mika. We had to play it off like whatever happened to Mika was what the showrunners expected.
I took my finger away, and Kira played it off well. “Getting touchy there, aren’t you, big guy? We can have some fun once we’re out of this death trap. Anyway, like I was saying, I want to see if we can help Mika get his banshee hunted down. But first, the wendigo. Have you caught the scent yet?”
Tilting my head back, I pulled in a deep breath, catching the creature’s scent. It was at least a thousand yards away.
“That way,” I said, pointing to the east.
We ran as fast as our human legs would allow, the pungent stink of the thing drawing nearer with every step. When the smell grew stronger, I put a hand on Kira’s arm, signaling her to stop running.
“Are we close?” she asked.
“We are. We don’t want to attack it head-on, though. They’re incredibly dangerous.”
“Flank it?” Kira suggested.
“Yup,” I said, pointing to the northeast. “If we go that way, we’ll be downwind of it. We can get close and attack before it realizes we’re there.”
“Are we sure that’s going to work? These things aren’t actuallylivingcreatures. It could sense us some other way.”
Wendigos were one of the few magical creatures not fully understood by our world. Some legends said they were once humans who had to resort to cannibalism. Others claimed they were remnants of demigods associated with hunger and feasts from some long-forgotten religion. The one common thread between all the stories was that they had a ravenous hunger and attacked indiscriminately. In my experience, anything that hunted still used its five senses to track.
“I think it will,” I said. “And if not? We improvise.”
“Wow. Good plan.”
“Smartass. Come on.”
Kira and I moved through the jungle, angling in behind the wendigo. Even Kira could scent the thing now. I thought I could hear tearing sounds as well. I wasn’t sure what that was, but it came from the same direction as the scent. In the back of my mind, the seconds ticked away on the clock. We’d already been in the jungle for more than five minutes. An hour wasnota lot of time to accomplish everything we had to do.
After another minute or two, I finally caught sight of the beast. My hand tightened on Kira’s, and I pointed through the foliage toward it. She froze and knelt, gazing out to where I pointed.
The thing shouldn’t have been able to move. There were almost no muscles in its body, just skin stretched over bones. Patchy fur hung in loose clips up and down its limbs like mange. It hunched over what looked like a dead tiger—the black-and-orange stripes stood out in stark relief to the gray and brown of the wendigo. It was probably a feral tiger shifter that the monster had hunted down.
Kira and I flinched as the thing yanked its head to the side, tearing a hunk of flesh and fur from the tiger. Blood sprayed across the leaves around it.
I watched in disgust as the wendigo tilted its head back and opened its skeletal mouth. The entire mass of meat slid down its gullet. The emaciated thing swallowed, and its belly distended as the flesh settled into it. After swallowing, it went right back to the meal, burying its head and shredding more meat from the corpse.
With a few hand signals, I told Kira to wait there while I snuck up on it to take a bit of fur. If I could go silently, I might be able to get it without the creature ever knowing, but I’d have to be nearly silent. Shifting, I inched forward. My wolf paws were much quieter than my big, booted human feet.
Every inch brought me closer to a dangerous creature. If it had taken down a feral tiger shifter, there was no telling what it could do to me if I made a mistake. Keeping my eyes locked on the thing’s back, I crept ever closer. I hunched directly behind it, the awful reeking stink of it making my wolf eyes water. Fuck. How would I take the fur without it noticing?
Frozen by indecision, I watched it swallow another chunk of meat. It had to be getting full. At any moment, it might turn around, satiated, and find me there. Even if it wasn’t hungry, it would still try to kill me. What could I do? Reach out and yank a chunk of its fur off, bolt, and hope for the best?
