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Winnie.
The pair meted out destructive glee upon anything within fifteen feet of their bright eyes and wagging tails.
Caelan surged ahead, bowling through filthy bodies, taking the paths less travelled as we moved through the landscape in search of the necromancer.
The flashlight kicked around beneath combatants, illuminating red fangs and clouded eyes. Hulking bodies smashed against each other, fell apart, and crashed again in the bleak recesses, a silhouette carousel of the dead and soon to die.
The path ahead split into two distinct trails. Caelan paused, tilting his back to regard me, and in that moment, a woman in jeans and a ragged blouse sprang. She lunged from a pile of rocks at our rear, claws hooking my ankle. Her other hand struck Caelan's back. He kicked free, only to headbutt a male version of the reanimated corpse. I wrapped my arms around the sheriff’s neck, but the female was strong. We were nearly the same height, but her muscles were of a different construction and brute force. Her grip climbed from my ankle to my waist, and then the dead weight was too much and I fell. We tumbled between the sheriff’s legs.
As the sheriff dealt with the male, he stopped a split second to snap one of the woman’s legs up into the air and drop her again. Her face smashed into the pavers and I was able to roll on top. The woman screeched into my ear, blonde hair ripped from her scalp in moldy clumps as she twisted. I pinned her arms down. She thrashed against me, straining upright. She rose off the ground a few inches, but a deep pocket of strength arose in me and forced her back.
Caelan had grappled the man onto his knees, flexible paws gripping the man’s shoulders as he ripped the head from the corpse. He backed up, hind claws sliding in the fat of the woman’s thigh, chunking out a section of brown meat. I scrambled back to let him deal with her.
To my left, four of the undead sprang upon a grizzled brown wolf. The wolf stumbled backward, spinning in narrow circles, cleaving great chunks from bone to no avail.
There were always more teeth.
One of the dead hooked its hand in the brown wolf’s snout, tearing its nose off in the process. Yelping, the wolf careened blindly into Caelan, dragging its attackers along with it. I threw myself to the side as they converged. Someone’s paws crushed my shoulder, but I was able to drag myself free.
I ran to the signpost, ripped off a board (Golden Tamarins ->East), and battered the face of the nearest monster as Caelan yanked them off his ally one by one, but it was too late. The wolf lay in a puddle of blood with a half-pinned female gnawing its ear.
Caelan circled me, ears flat, sniffing in the direction of the fallen.
The wolf’s paws twitched. It rolled onto its feet as if having gained a second wind. The female stopped gnawing and crouched under its belly.
A chill swept through my body, a pressing cry to leave this behind.
In a deft motion, Caelan struck low, forcing the wolf off balance, his fangs working the front paw off at wrist. Shutting his eyes against assault from the female, he shook and tore the second foot off. On bones, the brown wolf, unsteady, toppled. The sheriff took the bottom of its gnashing jaw next.
I beat at the female’s head, forcing my sign between her teeth and Caelan’s ear. As he moved to address her, something huge and black smashed into his side.
The Louisiana reaper snapped his fangs into Caelan’s shoulder, attempting to wrap his paws around his younger brother’s neck, forcing him onto the edge of an exhibit pit. Caelan recovered his footing to tear into August’s cheek, but the damage was done.
He’d separated us.
As realization dawned, an enormous, gray-backed wolfman drove me into the ground. His face was nearly skeletal. Wide jaws of sinew and bone cracked open. A foul odor washed across my face. I jammed the board into its mouth and pressed my hands into its shoulders, forcing it back. The board splintered. My fingers slipped straight through the meat of its shoulders. Its giant head sunk lower. Spit slapped my cheek.
A brown, bipedal wolf wrestled it away, using the two halves of my sign to smash its head to bits and pin the flailing body to the earth.
“Thanks,” I panted, standing.
A padded hand struck the side of my chin. I tripped on a curb and hit the ground, conscious of a heavy weight against my chest. Huge, hairy feet smashed weeds around my throat. Bracing her foot on my shoulder, she grabbed my arm and started to twist. I gasped in pain. She leaned down. Eyes of wicked glee, separated from mine by the length of a contorted snout, made it clear Winnie had no intentions of being quick or easy.
“I don’t have time for your shenanigans,” I said.
The gaze staring back was narrowed, angry, then rapidly surprised as the sound of the gun shot rang out. Dropping my arm, she staggered back.
At the sound, the pair of sheriffs disentangled.
Clutching her chest, Winnie dropped to one knee.
The hairs along August’s back rose. We made eye contact across the putrefied battlefield, and I knew right then if I didn’t find the necromancer in the next few minutes, I’d be torn apart.
Light streaked across the sky over Winnie’s pointed ears. She fell onto her back, dead.
Whatever the light was, it hit the barrier and exploded. There came a sudden downward rush of air, of smoke and flame, and the barrier I thought might have given way.
At the second streak, I was certain it had.
