Page 59 of Enslak

I reached for the soap and worked it through my hair, letting the current carry the suds away. Around me the forest hummed with life, calls that weren't quite birds, rustling that wasn't quite wind, the constant ambient conversation of an ecosystem that had never learned humans existed.

For just a moment I let myself have it. The sun on my shoulders, the clean smell of the water, the simple physical pleasure of being washed and warm and alive.

That's when I heard it.

A sound that didn't belong. Heavy and deliberate, coming through the undergrowth with the particular weight of something that wasn't trying to be quiet because it didn't need to be.

I turned toward the far bank. The wrong bank. The one on the other side of the river where I'd noticed Enslak watching the distance with that specific stillness that meant he'd seen something and was assessing it.

The creature came out of the trees.

My blood went cold.

It was enormous, twelve feet of hybrid nightmare that seemed to have drawn on every predator design that had ever worked. The head was elongated and reptilian, like something distant and evolutionary from a crocodile, but with forward-facing eyes that held the focused intelligence of a hunter that pursued rather than ambushed. Its body was armored in scales that shifted green and gold in the afternoon light, but its limbs were pure mammalian muscle, ending in paws built for crushing, tipped with claws that curved like something designed specifically for opening things that didn't want to be opened.

It saw me immediately.

I watched it decide. Watched the calculation move through those intelligent eyes as it assessed distance and size and probability, and found me worth the effort.

Its lips peeled back.

I opened my mouth to scream and found my throat locked shut with fear, that specific paralysis that had gripped me in the half second before your body decides whether to run or freeze.

It launched itself into the water.

Not cautiously. Not testing. It hit the current with the confidence of something that had never in its life encountered a problem it couldn't solve by moving toward it fast enough.

I ran. I tried to run. The water that had felt weightless a minute ago now grabbed at my legs like something deliberate, turning every step into a nightmare of resistance, the current pushing against me as I pushed toward the bank.

I found my voice.

"ENSLAK!"

The creature was ten feet behind me and closing, its powerful body cutting through the water with absurd ease, the spray it kicked up catching the sunlight in ways that would have been beautiful under any other circumstance.

I felt the current change as it got closer. Felt the displacement of water from something much larger than me.

I threw myself sideways as the claws came down, and they missed my torso by less than I wanted to think about. But I wasn't fast enough, not entirely, and when I twisted away, white-hot agony tore up my right calf as one talon caught and hooked and began to pull.

The pain hit first as pure heat, then as the deeper, nauseating sensation of something tearing through muscle that wasn't designed to be torn. The creature was dragging me backward through the water, toward those open jaws, and my body finally overrode the shock and flooded my system with the specific animal terror of being prey.

I kicked out with everything I had. My heel connected with something solid, enough to shift my weight and change the angle, and the claw tore free with a sensation I intended to spend the rest of my life trying to forget.

I half-ran, half-fell toward the bank, my injured leg barely holding me, the water around my feet going red.

Behind me, the creature roared with the frustrated fury of something that had already decided how this ended.

Then Enslak hit it like a force of nature.

He came from the bank in a single trajectory, all dark cream pelt and white-streaked hair and concentrated violence, slamming into the creature's side with enough force to knock it sideways in the current. They went under together in an explosion of spray and churning white water, and for one terrible moment I couldn't see either of them.

When they surfaced, Enslak had his claws buried in the creature's scaled hide, his legs locked around its torso, his teeth sunk into the back of its neck with the grip of something that had made a decision and intended to finish it. The creature thrashed and rolled, its own claws finding Enslak's arms and legs and raking deep, flesh opening in ragged lines that immediately welled blood.

Enslak held on.

His claws worked deeper, methodical and purposeful, punching through scales and muscle. The creature's movements grew increasingly desperate, its roaring turning wet and labored.

I stood on the bank, one hand pressed over my own wound, watching him work with a kind of horrified fascination. This was something the pits had made of him, this capacity for lethal efficiency, and watching it I felt two things simultaneously and couldn't resolve them: gratitude so fierce it bordered on pain, and grief for every day that had built this particular skill in him.