Uncomfortable with any talk about my flaws, I shake it off. “I don’t sense any other vampires around. We should be safe.”
RJ flops to the ground and stretches out. “Good, because I need a break.”
Good idea.
For four days, there’s been nothing but the hollow chill of stone around me.
I flop beside her, spreading my arms, making an angel out of dead leaves and disturbed moss. My back spasms like it’s not sure what to do with this new position and all the space. Every muscle has spent days molding themselves into something new, cramped, small.
A snap of a branch is the only warning we get.
The smallest crack of sound before a glint of what I thought were stars between the trees resolves into two eyes.
The wolf charges.
Wind blowing away from us sends the distinctive reek of moon madness in the opposite direction. Proximity brings it back.
Skin falls in slender trails from its ravaged forearms and along its bulging spine. Moon madness tears fur and skin free, and lights the wolves’ eyes with smoldering fire.
Saliva drips from a gaping mouth, the inside wet and red. All this resolves itself in a heartbeat.
I surge upright fast enough to go dizzy and grab for RJ, floundering. The world around us slows.
A second shape splits off from the darkness and another wolf, as cursed as the first, stands to its full height.
This close to them, the horror is sharp and profound. It needles through my skin.
How did they find us?
A coppery taste of pennies casts a film over my tongue and my vision narrows, splitting between the two of them. The night gave them away and I hadn’t realized it. Profound silence stretched, permeating my cells.
The bats knew better than to search for food. Not when the woods fill with a predator more vile and dangerous. Outside the natural order.
A growl rumbles through the first wolf and I step in front of RJ, marking her shake of the head from the corner of my vision.
“Don’t worry, Mandi,” RJ whispers. “It’s going to be all right.”
The glow of their magic comes slowly, both sisters lifting their hands like magic will do something against the madness.
In my experience? It doesn’t.
Long shadows cast from the glow marks the horrific changes in the wolves taken by the curse.
They are feral and rotting from the inside. The nearest has shards of cracked and seeping bone poking out from its upper arm. Both are too far gone to notice or care.
A curse, yes.
Nothing else would push a wolf to this kind of extremity.
Saliva slips away between sharp canines, stretching toward the ground on the creature’s growl.
“No more time,” Aimee agrees.
Fear twists my tongue, twining together with the penny taste.
The sisters let their spell rip at the same time. They tunnel through the dark maze of trees to blind the pair.
I’m useless.