He turned.
The face was Silas’s. Every detail, the jaw, the nose sitting left of center, the scar bisecting the right side of the stubble. The eyes were the right color, amber, that exact shade of pine resin.
His gaze tracked my face with the same mechanical precision Mark’s had on the mountain.
“I followed your scent.” It was almost Silas’ voice, but just a fraction too smooth, like it was recorded rather than live.
I crossed the room toward the nightstand, keeping my movements slow and my face arranged in an expression I hoped read as tired and relieved. My pulse was running at approximately twice its resting rate but there was nothing I could do about that.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About the skinwalker. About needing to stay with you.” I sat on the edge of the bed, positioning myself close to the nightstand, and looked up at him. Two feet away, the bedside lamp sat on the table, a heavy ceramic thing in an ugly shade of taupe. “I’ve just been…” I let the sentence trail off in a way that was supposed to communicate vulnerable and conflicted. “I’ve been scared. And I keep running because I don’t know how to do this.”
It moved closer, smoothly and slowly in the way predatory things are smooth and slow. It had been patient for weeks. It had killed Mark and worn his face to lure me to follow it. It had stood in my hospital doorway in borrowed scrubs. It had learned by now that I ran, and it was giving me nowhere to run, boxing me against the bed more and more with each careful movement.
I leaned toward it slightly and let my voice drop. “I just need you to hold me for a second.”
Something shifted in its expression. Not interest, exactly, but anticipation. It leaned down.
I reached behind me.
My hand closed around the base of the lamp a half-second before its face reached mine.
I brought it around in a full arc that used every muscle, ligament, and tendon from my shoulder through my elbow to my wrist, and the base connected with the side of not-Silas’ head with a crash.
The ceramic shattered on impact, and the thing fell sideways and down, hitting the dresser on its way to the carpet hard enough to knock the framed roadrunner print off the wall.
I was off the bed before it landed.
It changed immediately. Not gradually, not the eight-second restructuring I’d watched Silas go through. This was much faster, its skin splitting rather than stretching, the underlying shape of it forcing itself through the borrowed human shape like something that had never actually fit inside it that well. Silas’s face fractured, and what came through the cracks was the thing from the ravine.
It rose from the floor, its head swiveling toward me, and the voids where its eyes should have been found me immediately.
I grabbed the heavy wooden desk chair and swung it at him like my life depended on it.
The skinwalker dove toward me and I adjusted my swing mid-arc, catching one of those impossible foreleg joints, bringing forth a crack and a screech at a frequency no ear should have to experience. The limb buckled sideways and the creature tumbled to the ground, lurching to the side just in time to avoid me bringing the chair down on its spine.
Staggering back to its feet, it raked at me. Four deep slashes opened across my left forearm, the pain registering immediately, and I hissed and dropped the chair and put the bed between us.
We stood there for a second, me on one side and it on the other, both breathing hard.
Blood was running down my arm. Its foreleg was hanging even more wrong than usual, and something dark and viscous oozed from the spot where the lamp had struck.
Grabbing the cord from the floor, I reeled the ceramic sharded remnants of the lamp in and then flung them at the creature’shead, which accomplished nothing on its own but did buy me the half-second I needed to grab the desk chair again.
It came around the bed and I swung for the fences.
The chair caught it across the face this time, the impact reverberating up both my arms into my shoulders, and the thing was thrown into the wall with enough force that the drywall cracked.
Regaining my balance, I hefted the chair again and slammed the heavy wooden back into its ribcage. I could hear bone snap, and the creature staggered for a moment before pivoting more quickly than should have been possible given its injuries and launching itself at the window.
The glass shattered outward into the parking lot and the creature was off and running as soon as it landed on the pavement, those jagged limbs eating ground in irregular bounds that looked ungainly but covered distance fast, leaving a trail of what I had to assume was its blood behind.
I set the chair down.
“Okay,” I said to no one.
I went to the bathroom and ran cold water over my arm. The scratches were deep but clean, running from mid-forearm to near the wrist, and I held a motel towel against them until the bleeding slowed to something I could manage, then leaned against the bathroom wall and breathed.
My hands were not shaking. It seemed like they should be, but they weren’t. My heart rate was coming down gradually, like a car decelerating from highway speed on the exit ramp. The wolfinside seemed very satisfied with herself and maybe even a little proud of me too.
