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Sparks flooded my vision.
My fingers slipped across the gun. My muscles weren't working right. I couldn't aim, but lifted and fired nevertheless.
The pressure released in one shrill screech and I was flat on the ground, stunned, motionless, staring up into the bleak night.
The wendigo staggered backward, covering one eye. Blood oozed between its bony fingers. With an earthshaking thump it hit the ground, tripping across Caelan, who’d hauled himself and the four remaining werewolves underfoot.
Shrieking, the wendigo kicked him in the head. The wolf took it with an open mouth, opening a gash above the wendigo’s heel, then the fresher Winnie was commanded into the fray.
I reached for the necklace.
With freakish speed, the wendigo rose over me, twenty feet of gaunt terror. Moonlight glinted off the razor’s edge of its claws. I scrambled backward too late. With an electric screech the demon slashed its nails across my chest with enough force to spin me face-first into the dirt.
I rolled onto my back, stomach on fire. Blood sheeted over my shirt.
A tawny snout pressed into my wound. I flinched, punched the wolf hard; but it was intense brown eyes that met mine. Calico, I thought dimly, tasting blood on my lips. What was she doing here?
Before I found enough air to ask, ears flat, tail tucked, she leaped across my legs and bowled into the mass surrounding Caelan. Perhaps curious at the abrupt intrusion, the wendigo followed her.
When I tried to stand, painful spasms exploded down my spine. I tried to scoot closer instead, slipping in my own blood. If I couldn’t move, I needed the wendigo to come to me, I needed it to bleed on me or the ground beside me. Attempting to draw its attention, I emptied the clip into it. Each shot it jerked backward, grinning something wicked.
When the last shot clicked free, I let the panic rise to the surface of my expressions and pressed the trigger so it would hear the frenzy of emptied clicks. Pain clouded my vision, morphed the battle into pulsing shadows between waves of nausea and blood loss.
When it moved forward, I chucked the emptied weapon at its head. The gun bounced away harmlessly. The bloody heel was so close, right there dripping to the ground, just a little closer…
With a single eye of smoking starlight, it loomed over me, raising its arm for a second strike that would doubtlessly fling me across the lion’s den before I got a drop.
Caelan sank his teeth into the wendigo’s elbow. His momentum and weight dragged the thing into a crouch where Calico was able to leap upon its back, chomping wildly at the base of its neck.
Pain blistered through my organs. My legs weren’t working. I couldn't walk, couldn’t stagger, had to drag myself across the ground, past twitching limbs and gnashing teeth.
A tremendous yelp echoed through the enclosure. The wendigo had jammed its claws into Caelan's throat. He dropped instantly, surrounded by the last of the undead werewolves.
Unweighted, the wendigo slammed its back into the enclosure wall, once, twice. Calico’s grip slipped, paws digging for purchase on the monster’s anemic muscles. As she released, the wendigo shoved its hand into the scruff of her neck and hurled her on the rocks. Her back smashed into the stone at an odd angle and she crumpled. She rose weakly, slipped backward again, unable to stand.
Over bone and sharp stone I crawled; things were dragging, dark blood was spilling out, and I remained inching ever closer but never fast enough.
The wendigo kicked her until she fell flat. Its long fingers flexed around one of the wilted young pines. It snapped the tree at its trunk and stalked toward the she-wolf wielding its makeshift spear. Their shadows glowed in the firelight. The wendigo lunged. I couldn't see what it’d done until it stepped away. The alpha lay impaled, the trunk shoved through a pocket of soft flesh around her stomach.
The wendigo turned toward me, mouth open in a gleaming smile, eye a gaping hole.
To its right, Caelan pulled himself over a twitching torso. He crept forward unnoticed, snagged the fleshy part of its calf and tore muscle from bone.
With a scream that made my world shiver, the wendigo whirled. Caelan sprinted for me; it followed, grabbed the wolf around his neck and wrestled him into the earth mere feet away. And here, I realized, was the disadvantage of being a wolf. The wendigo had hands and powerful limbs with a wide range of motion and flexion. With his body subdued, Caelan had only teeth. The wendigo tore into him.
I ripped the necklace off my throat, held it tight in my bloody fist and struggled for a fistful of sandy blood. I repeated the words.
Nothing happened. I tried again, sinking the black sapphire into my blood and a handful of muddied drippings from the earth.
Nothing. Maybe it needed to be undiluted. The only option left was reaching the source.
The wendigo lifted Caelan off the ground. It dug its hands into the sheriff's snapping jaws and pried them apart.
Caelan's hind legs kicked and beat at the wendigo's chest, scoring away chunks of purple flesh and gore. It pulled harder, cracking back his jaw.
The wendigo was so absorbed in its destruction its eyes never left its foe. It was luck I didn't get stepped on as I shoved the sapphire into my wrecked side. Blood gleamed in the eerie firelight as I removed it, mumbling the spell so fast the words slurred and I wasn't sure anymore if I was asking for an end or a miracle.
I stretched far as I could, straining toward the wendigo's tattered calf.
