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Then I noticed the paw. A huge tiger paw lay beneath the undergrowth to my left. The appendage looked ragged and torn, obviously ripped off during whatever battle had taken place between the two creatures. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was the hunk of ragged flesh hanging from the claw—a sliver of fur and skin from the wendigo. I glanced back and forth, making sure the color and texture matched. Relief flooded through me as I leaned forward as silently as I could and plucked the skin off the claw with my teeth.
An immediate and almost debilitating nausea filled my stomach at the taste of it, but I suppressed a shudder and slowly backed away. Inching toward Kira, I kept an eye on the monster. When I finally made it back, I felt more exhausted than I should have been. I shifted and tucked the skin into a zippered pocket on the left hip of my outfit.
Once we were away from the wendigo, I sighed with relief. “That was intense.”
We stepped out into a clearing in the jungle. Kira opened her mouth to agree, but a piercing scream from above cut her off. We looked up at the massive griffin swooping out of the canopy toward us. Sunlight shimmered across our outfits, making us look like freaking gold coins. The beast’s scream rattled in my brain, making my ears ring.
“Run!” I yelled, grabbing Kira’s hand and ducking back into the jungle from where we’d just come.
Above us, the griffin descended like wrath itself from the sky. Its huge twenty-foot wingspan blotted out the sun as it drew near. Its front paws stretched forward, talons grazing Kira’s back, but it didn’t slice through her outfit. The beast pulled its wings in and tumbled on the ground before leaping up to chase us through the jungle on foot.
The thing was fast. It looked like a hawk and lion had mated and spawned some freak with the body, back legs, and tail of a lion and the head, wings, and front feet of a bird of prey. Even with its bulky wings folded at its back, it managed to duck and dodge the branches growing nearer every step.
As we ran, the panic that seized me made it hard to understand where we were going. We were running directly back toward the wendigo, but if we altered course, the griffin would be on us. It snapped at my heels with its beak, and my suit tore at my calf where it nipped me, missing the skin by a millimeter.
Ahead of me, Kira screamed and jumped to the side. For a second, my eyes widened as I came face to face with the reason she’d screamed. Drawn by the noise, the wendigo had come running toward us. The zombie-eyed creature rushed straight toward me, arms and taloned fingers extended in front of it, mouth open, tatters of flesh still hanging from its jagged teeth. I was about to be smashed between two nightmares. Copying Kira, I leaped to the side, praying to the gods I might survive.
Instead of both creatures leaping upon and devouring me, they slammed into each other. The wendigo and griffin began rolling and fighting across the ground. The griffin outweighed the other creature by at least a couple hundred pounds, but the wendigo’s bizarre, mystical strength made the fight much more even than it should have been. In seconds, the wendigo had shattered the griffin’s left wing. The griffin tried clawing out the wendigo’s throat, but only managed to tear three deep slashes down the creature’s chest.
Kira stared in wide-eyed shock as the two beasts tried to devour each other. Not giving a damn which one won, only wanting to get the hell away while they were occupied, I scrambled over and grabbed Kira’s hand.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. Come on.” I tugged her to her feet and ran.
Behind us, the sounds of the scuffle grew even more chaotic until the griffin’s triumphant screech echoed through the jungle. It had either killed the wendigo or had gotten free. Kira and I hurried on, but soon, the sounds of a thundering, hurt, and angry beast reached our ears. It was still coming for us.
The jungle had given way to a boggy swamp filled with pools of viscous mud and mangroves. Glancing behind us, I took in the silhouette of the griffin running through the forest, dragging its ruined wing behind it. How could the fucker be so fast?
Before I managed to turn back around, Kira yanked me off the side of the path and down into one of the mud pools. She dragged me under, mud coating my body and splashing around my face.
“What the fuck?” I sputtered.
“Shut up,” Kira hissed. She scooped up big handfuls of mud and smeared them over every inch of my body.
Like a light switch clicking on, I understood what she was doing. I started covering her in mud, making sure to get every inch. The shimmery golden fabric vanished under the thick brown mud. The griffin came stomping through a few seconds later. It turned its baleful yellow eyes on us as it passed, but without the temptation of the gold, it continued on. Once it was well away, I lay back in the mud, sighing with relief.
“Pretty smart, huh?” Kira said.
I grinned at her. “I mean, it would have been better if we could have tried to cut the outfits off. My day would have gotten a whole lot better seeing you running around the jungle all naked and sweaty, but I guess mud-wrestling will have to suffice.”
“Would you shut up? You realize we’re fighting for our lives here, right?”
Wiping a glob of mud off my chin, I chuckled. “Hey, if I’m gonna die, I’ll die with a smile on my face.”
“Well, as romantic as your advances are, I don’t think you want your dangly bits to be bitten off by some passing monster.”
I winced. “Point taken. How much time do we have left?”
Kira looked at her bracelet. The bracelets all had a small display that functioned as a watch. “Shit, we only have thirty-three minutes left.”
Crap. Going after the wendigo had taken far longer than I’d thought. The griffin attack had eaten away nearly ten minutes, too. We had to hurry.
“Do you have the scent of your creature?” I asked.
Kira dug her fingers through the mud to find the zippered pocket. She pulled the fabric out and took a long sniff, then scented the air and frowned. “I’m not getting anything yet. Maybe we’re too far away from it?”
I sniffed the air, too. Maybe I could help. If it was unusual or strange, I might be able to pick it up. Though, it wasn’t the smell of the monster I noticed. Instead, it was a couple of scents I knew very well.
Kira saw my eyes go wide. “What’s wrong?”
