He raised his hand to survey the cut he’d inflicted on himself. Beneath the wet crimson that glimmered in the low light, it was already healing. Careful not to touch any of the blood with his open wound, he knelt beside the fallen creature. This much closer, he saw that it was quite large even if it had little mass to its bony limbs and chest. He dipped a finger into its blood, the last thrum of life draining away. Nasty, infectious stuff. The eyes on the severed, upper half of its head were so human, a deep, rich brown, nestled into patchy, matted fur on a face neither human nor animal and creased with anger and pain, not a fate he wanted for himself. It had been a mercy kill, surely, but there was little chance this was the only one.
Damien swept around and strode back to his mount. He scanned the swamp again as he climbed astride, not expending another spell to feel for more creatures—he knew what he was looking for this time—and then his eyes fell on her.
Her face was drawn into a mixture of terror and awe. That was appropriate for what he’d just done, he supposed, but she still hadn’t seen what he could truly do, not yet. “Holy gods,” she whispered.
“Infernal darkness,” he corrected, then urged his knoggelvi on. “This is no place to stop. We—”
A splash in the muck to their side cut him off, and a howl cut up through the swamp. They smelled the fallen, surely, and his display had failed to turn them away. So, theywerethat stupid then.
“Go.”
The knoggelvi took off down the mucky path as werewolves burst forth from the dense fog at their sides. Damien didn’t bother to count them for tearing down: the knoggelvi were faster and, judging by their pursuers’ withering mass, would have more stamina too. As long as they could stay astride, they would outrun them.
But of course the girl was already struggling with that, not to mention shrieking. He watched her grip the reins, white knuckled, as she bounced against the knoggelvi’s back. Between her tiny frame and lack of armor, she barely had enough weight to keep herself in place as it galloped. Damien groaned in the back of his throat, unable to reach out and push her down, but she managed to dip her head low and hang on.
Then Damien was slapped in the side of the face by leathery skin and bony wings. He grabbed at the imp who had lost his grip on the stallion’s head, holding him out by the nape of his neck. Fleetingly considering just letting go, Damien instead jerked the squirming Kaz down against the knoggelvi’s neck and wrapped him up in the reins to keep him in place.
The knoggelvi leapt, and even Damien found himself lifted off the beast’s back at such a speed. They cleared a river of swampy water, splattering mud upward as they landed, behind them the calls of wolves and the sound of many paws splashing in pursuit.
The path ahead widened, and Damien thought for a moment they might be relieved as he spied a ramshackle hut, but the new space only proved to reveal another wolf standing just in the way, the building clearly abandoned. Damien reopened the wound on his hand with his dagger, familiar now with the cursed blood in the beasts, but called up a new spell. A crackle of black and violet burst all around the werewolf as it attempted to charge, slamming into the arcane wall of magic instead. He again tightened his fist, and the spell coalesced around the beast, strangling it just as their knoggelvi parted to pass by on either side.
The girl shrieked again as her mount changed course, the werewolf’s cries muzzled by the spell that finished it off. She threw her arms around the knoggelvi’s sinewy neck, sliding to the side, but remained atop it. At this rate, they would make it to their destination half a day sooner if they could keep pace. But they would also need to stay astride.
Another beast broke onto the path from the bog, cutting off the other knoggelvi, snapping at its hooves. It kicked instinctively at the werewolf, connecting with its head and knocking it back with a sickening crack of bone and a whimper. The knoggelvi stumbled then reared back, coming to a too-quick halt.
Damien whipped around to see the girl slide off backward and land in the mud as the knoggelvi regained itself and sped off again. Free of a rider, not to mention one it despised, it galloped on, past even Damien as he pulled his own mount’s reins, choking Kaz who was tangled up in them. The beast below him did not want to stop, and so Damien flung himself from its back with a curse, slapping it to continue on after the other.
Werewolves were feral things, but had the ability to reason—hopefully they would decide the knoggelvi would be easier targets and be led away, and if their mounts kept speed, they could outrun them. If Kaz survived, he could find them later, but that was not for Damien to worry about now—he needed his focus and energy here instead. Because ofher.
“Bloody Abyss,” he swore, assessing the path as the sounds of squelching mud beneath hooves disappeared. Werewolves hunted in packs, he had killed two, and the knoggelvi had fatally injured a third. That could have been the lot of them, but they’d already had a fair share of luck so far, and Damien was devout to no god, including luck’s deity.
The girl rolled onto her side. At least she hadn’t knocked herself unconscious in her fall off the mount, but then she groaned into the silence left behind, the swamp creatures scattering at the pack’s attack. A splash from the wetlands signaled that something heard her moaning, and another, violent splash told him it was headed their way.
“Fuck,” Damien swore again, closing the space and standing over where she was pulling herself up out of the mud. There was a glint and a shadow beyond the trees, and then another of the pack stepped out onto the path, rising up onto two feet. Tall and sinewy, the creature was just as wrong as the others, but this one was bigger. Body like an animal with stringy muscles and legs that bent backward, its too-long limbs reached out, amalgam of a human and canine face twisted and snarling. It came to a stop yards away, assessing them and smelling the air, likely less confident all on its own.
The girl scrambled to her knees, dazed, but much too slowly for Damien. He dragged her up by the arm and put her right on her feet. When she finally saw the towering form of the werewolf, jaws quivering over elongated fangs, she reached backward, grabbing his side and pressing herself against him. The terror she’d reserved for him once was redirected now, though he supposed a blood mage was the better option when werewolf was the other; a blood mage was easier to reason with, if he were feeling like it. Usually.
As the girl clung onto him, Damien stood a little straighter and unsheathed his dagger. He dug it into the healing cut once again, the pain barely registering. He sheathed the dagger on his bracer and pressed both hands together then flung them out. Like cuts made material, blades of blood sliced through the air just as the werewolf lunged for them. The creature redirected, caught mid jump like the first, and earned deep, oozing wounds all down his back, falling out of the air and skidding into the mud right at their feet.
“Oh, gross,” she whispered, and her words broke Damien of any gallant feeling that might have been creeping up his sides along with her tightening grip.
Then the thing lifted its head even as blood poured from it and snarled.
“Run,” he commanded her, and she complied as if he had used the talisman’s magic. The two flew off down the soggy path, the knoggelvi long gone. Winding through the fog and puddles of muck, neither were quiet, and sounds out in the bog let them know they hadn’t lost the rest of the pack yet. Following the makeshift road, there was a small row of seemingly abandoned huts ahead. Dilapidated, they were cover at the very least.
Damien was much faster than she, so he slowed, grabbed her wrist, and jerked her into one of the makeshift cabins. Its door was lying flat across the entrance, and as they crossed it, it broke beneath them with a wet squelch.
Inside, the cabin was just one room and quite dark, but there was old furniture within, a table, a knocked over chair, a sagging cot, and a big box of a closet-sized larder that was still intact. The larder’s door squeaked as he wrenched it open and dragged her inside, pulling it to behind them and shutting out stray moonlight.
Her breathing filled up the tiny space, too fast and too loud. Damien was slightly winded from the run and expense of arcane energy, but the flood of fear she’d no doubt experienced was not helping her to catch her own breath. He looked down at the top of her head in the cramped larder, the color to her hair light enough to be seen in the dark. Her chest heaved against him, and he briefly and embarrassingly thought what a disappointment it would be to not survive this.
“Quiet,” he said as low as he could, trying to listen against the wood for the sounds outside in the swamp. They were so covered in mud and muck that the werewolves might not be able to sniff them out, but all the noise she was making would waste the stench they were coated in.
She shook her head, taking another ragged, too-loud breath. “Those are werewolves,” she coughed out.
“Well, I did say,” he murmured back.
“And you just…” She tilted her head up, and even in the dark he could see the blue of her wide, roving eyes. “You killed them.”
