“Don’t move!” Jon hissed. “It’s right the—”
Something big, with flashing claws and dagger-like teeth, exploded from a thicket and slammed into Jon. They tumbled down the embankment, crashing through the brush in a tangle of thrashing limbs.
Jon battled the creature as he fell, desperate to keep its mouth away from his throat. Ugly, formerly human, the thing’s shredded clothes hung off its thin, skeletal frame, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Its unhinged jaw gaped wide, its huge maw filled with sharp, blackened teeth that dripped with stringy saliva.
Blade half-jumped, half-slid down the slope after Jon. He body-slammed the thing, barely saving Jon from having his face bitten off. The monster snarled and lunged for Blade, but he was ready, armed with a branch as thick as Scotty’s thigh. He struck out, knocking the creature into a tree with a satisfying crunch.
Scotty followed up with a throwing knife, catching the creature in a sunken, black eye. The thing screamed, and in the blink of its other eye, it disappeared into the brush.
“Son of a bitch,” Scotty breathed. “Was that a wendigo? Did it bite you?”
Panting, his skin glistening with sweat, Jon frantically patted himself down for injuries. “I’m fine,” he said, but his voice shook as hard as his hands. “I’m fine. Really. Couple of scrapes from the brambles is all.”
Blade knelt next to him. “Let me check you out. Don’t want you spontaneously turning into one of those fucking things.”
“Right.” Jon eyed a scratch on his hand. “You’d love to chop off my head.”
Maybe a little.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to put down an ally after they changed.”
The grim reality of what they were all facing settled over them like a shroud. But the good news was that Jon’s wounds were minor and most likely caused by the tumble down the ravine. Blade had them healed within seconds.
Skoll returned from fetching Jon’s pack from where it had gotten hung up on a tree limb during the fall. “I’m digging the healy-healy,” he said, as he tossed the pack to the ground next to Jon. “Maybe we should get a Seminus demon on our team.”
Blade snorted. “Like any Sem would want to work with you assholes.”
“Other way around, man,” Jon muttered. “Other way around.”
“Hey,” Scotty called out. “I found something.”
Skoll and Blade helped Jon to his feet and joined Scotty at the top of the ravine, where the wendigo had attacked Jon.
“What the hell is th—?” Skoll recoiled, caught his heel on a root,and would have repeated Jon’s tumble into the ravine if Scotty hadn’t caught him.
Blade shoved a tangle of leafy branches aside. A partially eaten skull, one eye dangling from its socket, stared back at him. “It’s a human head.” He glanced at a lump a few yards away. “And a torso.” That, too, had been ravaged, the internal organs strewn about, the ribs broken, the spine twisted.
“Ooh, lemme see.” Holding her breath, Scotty got in close and poked the head with a stick. She loved the gory shit. “Must be one of our missing persons.” She used her comms to get some images for later victim identification and reports.
“We need to find this thing,” Blade said, but Scotty was already on the move, heading north in the direction the creature had gone.
They’d barely started after her when something ahead of them screamed—a grating, bone-chilling sound unlike anything Blade had ever heard.
The sound came again, this time from the east. Then another, this time from the northwest. And another from behind.
“It’s four wendigos,” Skoll said, his voice low. Shaken. “Fuck me, there are four of them.”
Chapter 8
Gods, Mace hated Underworld General.
He’d practically grown up here, in the hospital that was basically the family business. His parents, Lore and Idess, worked here, too, although their jobs didn’t really involve saving lives. In fact, both worked with dead people—Lore in the morgue as the medical examiner, while Idess spent most of her days guiding human spirits out of the place.
But with as much time as he’d spent here in his early years—first in the nursery and then later, roaming the halls with his cousins—he now avoided it like the plagues the staff treated.
Medical shit creeped him out. He didn’t like the sickly odors of death and disease, the wailing patients, or being reminded of his mortality. A five-hundred-year lifespan probably sounded like forever to humans, but it seemed like a pathetically short amount of time to him. Especially when so many of his friends were immortal.
Like Scotty.
