Page 71 of Dark

“Stay away from me, freak,” she shouted, backing away.

I blinked, the world spinning.

“Ellie?”

She sucked in a sharp breath of recognition. For half a second, neither of us moved. Lightning illuminated the field. Something warm began to trickle down the back of my neck.

“You’re one of them,” she accused, making no move to come any closer.

I felt behind my ear and came away with a smear of blood. “Yeah. Hear all those howls?I got up at four a.m. this morning to make your sister a stack of chocolate-chip banana pancakes that would have put anyone else into a sugar coma. Those guys out there want to eat you. Pretty sure that makes you Team Haythan.”

The maze marker trembled in Ellie’s hands. “I don’t trust you.”

Just then, something crashed through the corn. Ellie whipped around.

“Sorry, but it looks like you’re gonna have to.” Grabbing her arm, I dragged her back into the dark sea of corn.

We splashed through the mud, slipping and sliding, taking the turns too fast. Lightning branched across the sky, strobing my vision in and out against the oppressive blackness of the maze, my phone gone where I’d dropped it. I tripped, skidding into Ellie. She shrieked, and I caught her hand.

“Last one to the entrance is dog food.”

She huffed. “Helpful.”

The smell of soil, wet hay and rain permeated the air. Howls echoed behind us, gaining every second. Panting, we burst into the clearing I’d previously been in. With the force of the gusts laying the corn down flat, then sending it screaming up towards the furious night sky, I could barely make out the exit on the far side, probably wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t already been here. I was about to shout to Ellie to hurry when a scream shattered the night.

We froze. It was maybe a hundred yards off. But directly in our path. Right. So not that way.

“Gonna have to off-road it,” I barked, jerking my chin towards the lights in the distance.

But Ellie was already a step ahead of me, diving headfirst into the corn. Despite what it may look like on Harry Potter, running through a six-foot high field of anything is a total clusterfuck. I punched down cornstalks as we ran, rasping leaves grabbing at my clothes, every one that sprang back a cold slap to the face. With a cry, Ellie tripped and went down. I yanked her back up.

“My glasses—”

“No time!” I shouted as a growl sounded in the black void behind us.

We had twenty seconds. Thirty, at best.

And oh yeah, Ellie heard. Lightning flashed overhead, her eyes going wide as saucers. And I knew then what I had to do. Hayden had already lost everyone else in the world who mattered to her. She couldn’t lose her sister, too.

“Keep going until you’re out. Don’t stop, no matter what you hear.”

“Ethan—” she started, for once using my name, like she was going to try to convince me to come with her. When we both knew we were out of time.

Go!” I roared, shoving her towards the highway.

Stumbling, Ellie ran ahead, disappearing from sight—

—just as the first wolf exploded through a gap in the corn. I snarled, my wolf ripping from my skin with the power of a star going nova. We met in midair, the collision sending us pinwheeling in a knot of fangs and fur, flattening rows of cornstalks in our wake. Instantly the huge brindle male launched up, teeth snapping for my throat. Tucking and twisting to the side, I flipped him onto his back in the mud, claws raking across the underside of his belly in a blow that sent him yelping back into the shadows.

Lightning struck off to the west, illuminating a rail-thin woman in threadbare jeans and a dirty flannel shirt with holes at both elbows. Matted blond hair hung to her shoulders, her bare feet caked with mud and oozing blood.

Fur rising, I righted myself just before she lunged, a wicked knife gleaming in the dim light. But where the brindle male was fast, she was off-balance, her movements uncoordinated, her pupils fat and twitching. Missing me by miles, she crashed onto her hands and knees in the dirt. Totally high.

They both rushed me at once, him from the side, her waiting until I was cornered to try the Buffy thing again. Yeah, not happening. I sank my teeth into her arm, wrenching until I heard bone crack. The female screamed and dropped the knife, blood gushing from the wound. And before I could blink, I was getting plowed down by two hundred pounds of pissed-off male wolf. I briefly contemplated whether they could be mates and this was their cracked-up version of date night. Just my luck.

The night sky swirled above me, the world narrowing to flattened cornstalks, mud in my eyes, and hot feral wolf breath at my throat as we rolled. We skidded to a stop, and I flipped free of his teeth, but not before he opened a vicious wound across my shoulder with his claws. Pain seared up my arm like an electrical jolt, short-circuiting my brain, my howl of agony mostly swallowed by a crash of thunder. In the back of my mind, I registered Brody’s presence, realized he was somewhere out in the night, trying to find me. The male and I faced off. One of his eyes was swollen shut, blood running into it with the rain, and my left front paw was dangerously close to lame. But hell if I wouldn’t keep fighting until I had nothing left. I wasn’t letting them get to Hayden.

The male’s lips pulled back off his teeth, his muscles coiled to spring. And then a sharp, herbal smell suffused the air, my skin exploding in pain like the one time when I was a kid and had hurled myself straight through a pane of glass. Vision swimming, I distantly registered screams. But it was too late, my legs slipping out from beneath me as if my muscles were made of jelly.