The same way I knew to keep running. No matter how many times I fell.
I scrambled and floundered on. The owl’s soft passionless who? who? slid through the woods, bouncing off the steel-hard bole of each frozen tree. There was a kind of halfass trail running along the leaf-strewn floor; I broke through the hard shell of a deep puddle and gasped as icy water grabbed at my ankles. Leapt and landed badly, my ankle almost rolling, stumbled on. The owl called again, hurry up, Dru.
Another inhuman scream lit the night, digging into the meat behind my eyes with razor claws. I let out a miserable, thin, gasping cry and stumbled forward, my hands coming up to clasp my head until the pain was cut off in mid-howl, just like a flipped switch.
What the hell was that? But I had no time to figure it out. I pulled myself into a fist inside my skull, just like Gran taught me. When another scream lifted out of the night, somewhere off to my left and a good ways away, it didn’t scrape along the inside of my head. It just ran hard over my skin like a wire brush dripping with acid, and if I hadn’t been throwing myself forward so hard, I probably would have yelled, too, in miserable surprise and pain.
That’s the trouble with getting involved in the Real World. Once you’re in, you can’t shut it out and go back to daylight nine-to-five. You’re stuck running through the woods at night, risking a broken leg and even worse, while something horrible chases you.
The thin track petered out, the way false trails in the woods do. One minute you think you’re following the road back to somewhere you know; the next you leap sideways to avoid fog that shouldn’t be moving like that, tip into a bunch of friendly thorn bushes, and wonder what the hell happened.
Except when you’re running for your life, those bushes aren’t friends. They spear through your clothes and rip at your skin, and by the time you thrash almost free, the footsteps behind you have drawn much nearer. So near you can hear every shift of weight and crackle of twigs breaking, each splutch of muck on the forest floor as they leap, higher and faster than a human ever could.
Gran’s owl was now nowhere in sight. I froze, tangled in a bunch of thorny vines, and tried to control my gasping. My lungs were on fire; my heart was just about ready to bust out through my ribs and go sailing.
But I tried to be still and quiet. The bushes crackled, thorns scraping. One of them touched my cheek, a cold pinprick. I wanted to shut my eyes, lying tangled on my side, but the idea of being in the dark woods with my eyes closed just didn’t work.
Even the fog was making a sound now. A small rasping, like scales against glass.
My hip, pressed against the cold ground, turned almost numb. Wetness seeped into my sweater and jeans. A cloud hung in front of my face, my own breath, gauzy and translucent.
The footsteps slid around me. There seemed to be two sets, circling each other. I squeezed my eyes shut, lost the battle with myself again, opened them. A line of thorns pressed into my sweater’s back. My sneakers were soaked and my feet were so cold they had vanished into numbness.
Crashing. Snapping branches. Moonlight trickled in, spots of false color whirling in front of my light-starved eyes. The greasy white vapor pulled close, questing through tree branches and reaching down to puddle against frozen leaves with that tiny, horrible sound.
Soft, stealthy movement under the crashing. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and locked my teeth over a helpless noise. Swallowed hard. The fog was creeping closer, closer, little drablets of it touching under leaves. It looked like claw-tipped fingers plucking at the fabric of the forest floor.
Something moved in my field of vision. Once I saw it, everything resolved into sharp focus.
Anything moving is easier to see at night. The trouble comes when whatever it is stops and goes motionless, but this figure had a patch of shaggy white up near the top. It moved like a wulfen, with thoughtless grace, the fur blurring its outlines as it sidestepped a long white rope of seeking fog.
There was only one streak-headed werwulf I knew of, and I’d already tangled with him before. I’d shot him in the jaw, but not before he bit Graves. Christophe had shot him, too, right in front of Dad’s truck. Sergej’s pet, a wulfen broken to his will.
I didn’t think he was here to offer me cookies.
Ohshit. It’s Ash. I pulled in a soft breath. My lungs were starving, crying out for air. I lay still, and a cough tickled at the back of my throat. It always happens when you’re hiding, a cough, a sneeze, something. It’s stupid. The body decides to screw around with you, even though it knows being quiet is the only way it’s going to go on living.
Ash stopped, head upflung, and sniffed. The tickle got worse. His head ducked a little, lean muzzle dipping, testing the air. He stepped sideways, utterly silent, and stopped again. The fog cringed away from him.
Keep moving. Oh God, let him keep moving.
Another soft call from Gran’s owl marred the sudden silence, but I couldn’t see it. The crashing and snapping had stopped. Everything was still, even the spots and shafts of moonlight holding their breath, trapped in reflective veils of white vapor.
Too late I remembered the stiletto in my ass pocket. If I’d thought to get it out, I could be armed now, instead of lying helpless in a tangle of thorns.
The streak-headed werwulf took another three steps, quick and eerily graceful, to the side. His head turned, and the mad gleam of his eyes seemed to pierce the darkness and burn into my skin.
Did he see me? God, oh God. Did he? My hand twitched, wanting to get at the knife. But if I did, I’d have to roll over and make noise. And good luck getting it out of my jeans in time to do anything about the werwulf.