The sound of his boots faded into the distance, leaving only me.
Andit.
The beast stood just out of my sightline, its breath coming in quick, snarling pants.
Like it was angry. Looking for something else to kill.
Someoneelse to kill.
Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!
I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut, literally playing dead like some cartoon must have taught me when I was a kid.
More crunching snow under what sounded like extremely heavy feet. Then came a hot snort of breath, so close it brushed over my closed eyelids. I waited for the claws, the teeth—whatever terrible thing was coming next.
Instead, the beast… licked the entire length of my face. Its tongue dragged across my skin, soft and weirdly sticky, leaving a streak of warmth against the biting cold of the night.
What in the…
My eyes snapped open, and there it was. Hulking. Black as midnight. Glowing red eyes glared down at me. The beast was so large, it blotted out the moon.
It stared at me, unblinking.
I stared back, my breath hitching as I tried to process what I was looking at.
Not a horse.
And definitely not a human. It sounded too feral, too primal.
A bear.
That tiny iota of deductive reasoning fought its way through the fog of pain and panic to insist that the creature standing above me—the one that had taken out the biker in seconds—was one of the ursine predators this mountain town was clearly named after.
The beast pressed its wet nose into my face, then dragged it down to my neck.
My heart hammered against my ribcage as my mind scrambled for some response—any response. But all I could do was lie there, helpless, as it audibly sniffed along my body.
Like I was something it planned to savor… before eating for dinner.
“Please,” I whispered, though I didn’t even know what I was asking for. “Please don’t…”
Some last-minute burst of adrenaline let me start to sit up, despite my mangled leg—but the bear’s massive paw pressed against my chest, pinning me back to the ground with terrifyingease. Its razor-sharp claws pricked my skin through my coat as it raised its head to freeze me in place with its glowing red stare.
A beat of cold, suffocating quiet.
Then...
Its jaws opened to reveal a mouth of gleaming white teeth.
“What are you doing? No... no... no!!!”
I instinctively threw my arms over my face—only to have all those teeth close around my forearm.
Not a random mauling, but a precise, purposeful bite. Like it had chosen this particular place to start its meal.
A spin on an old adage suddenly dropped into my panicked mind:What’s the best way to eat a human? One bite at a time.
A new pain shot through me like lightning, sharp and electric. It lit up every nerve in my body.
