We flew. Everything froze around me in a ridiculous caricature of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Archer held me tight around the middle as he dragged us away from the immediate threat. I stared at the werewolves, catching strange miniscule details as I couldn’t look away. One’s face looked darker and had little scars around its half-lupine muzzle, a notch in its left ear. The middle one stood a foot shorter at the shoulder, still massive compared to me and even Archer, and its tail had a kink in it from breaking and healing improperly.
Probably difficult to get a veterinarian to treat werewolves.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up in my chest. About to die in the jaws of a crazed beast and all I could think was the logistics of taking said beast for medical treatment.
Archer shouted in my ear, “Ryan, move,” and tried to hand me off to the broad-shouldered sound expert.
A shotgun blasted on my right, so close my ears rang and didn’t stop, and though I saw Archer’s lips move, none of his words reached me.
One of the werewolves slammed into Ryan and sent him to his knees, looming to take a bite, and Archer dropped me to tackle it. I backed away as the werewolves focused on the individuals trying to kill them.
My mind clicked still images out of the chaos.
Ryan bracing his boots in the werewolf’s guts and throwing it over his head so he could roll upright.
Giselle running out of crossbow bolts. Grabbing the rifle slung across her back. Moving efficiently and without any remorse on her face.
Isidro’s bum leg soaking blood through his pants and drawing more attention from the werewolves.
I couldn’t hold onto more than one thing at a time. But in the middle of it was Archer. Fighting, taking the brunt of the biggest werewolf’s ire, turning to yell at me periodically. Telling me to run.
Running from a predator was the worst possible decision to make. Hopefully I had time to explain that to him later.
Something else moved in the darkness and my heart sank. Another one, and we were toast. The team barely held their own against the four already in the mix. Only one werewolf showed signs of slowing down, bleeding from half a dozen wounds, but the rest only grew more aggressive.
Something moved slowly and deliberately… Something camouflaged remarkably like a tree trunk. Wanting to remain invisible. No wings, no dragging arms, no serpent’s tail, nothing but a human form. With a bushy beard and wild hair.
My eye went right to him. I knew it was male. Knew it was human, or had been. My breath caught as I studied him. Not a sasquatch, but not as feral and terrifying as the werewolves I’d seen in their human shape. Something stuck much closer to human. My lips parted. Maybe he would understand me. Maybe he could help.
The rest of the world faded away to blurred nothingness. It felt like moving underwater, walking at the bottom of a pool, as everything distorted and echoed. I reached for the figure and stepped into the trees. One halting step after another took me closer to the darkness, closer to the mysterious form lingering in the shadows.
A growl vibrated through my bones and a hard weight threw me into a tree. I landed hard and cried out, rolling to escape, but a massive paw landed on my chest and pinned me there in the mud and muck. Cold seeped through my jacked and left the rest of my freezing but sweaty from adrenaline. My brain catalogued the beast standing on me as its drool splattered on my chest and face.
Fucking gross.
I tried Ryan’s move of putting my feet in its stomach and heaving it out of the way, but the cast kept me from maneuvering. It walloped the beast’s side and annoyed it, but nothing more. I fumbled the bear mace. It hadn’t killed me. It hadn’t bitten me.
Its head swiveled to the side, in the direction of the mysterious figure, and another vicious snarl slid like icepicks through my soul.
Aim the can at its eyes. Arm across my face to protect my face. Squeeze the button.
The weight disappeared from my chest and a cloud of absolute misery lingered in the air.
Oleoresin capsicum. Lower concentration than pepper spray but with a much wider distribution of the oil. Meant to deter a charging bear and not for self-defense against an up-close threat, but it seemed like a better option than a four-inch knife.
The werewolf sneezed.
In my face and hair. Across the arm still trying to protect my skin. Everywhere.
I choked on the urge to vomit and the blinding heat of the mace. Terrible idea. Awful idea. Definitely needed to hand back my degrees. Pay them more tuition to make up for apparently ripping them off by getting scholarships. Maybe hunt down the runners-up for the scholarships, apologize for stealing their rightful place, and pay off their student loans.
But jaws didn’t lock around my throat in vengeance.
I crawled away and fought the urge to wipe my face. Everything blurred into green and brown blobs. I coughed as my eyes and nose ran. What a fucking undignified way to die. I’d probably shit my pants when I went, too, just so the rangers could really enjoy retrieving the body. Unbelievable.
One of the brown blobs moved, detached from a tree-like blob, and eased closer.
The snarling and snapping in the clearing slowed. Strained. Turned to yips and growls.
The figure said something my ringing ears couldn’t catch, the sharp tone obviously done with their shit.
And then they left.
The werewolves scattered and crashed into the undergrowth. They groused and grumbled the whole way, too, like kids arguing about an early bedtime. But they went, moving so fast the sound faded before I even knew what happened.
The silence echoed in the stillness, broken only by the gasping and panting from the team.
“Track them,” Archer said.
He sounded remarkably unaffected by the shitshow that had unfolded in front of me. Maybe he’d seen something completely different. From where I still sprawled, only that strange blob in the trees saved us. Told the werewolves to cut their shit and get the fuck outta there. Without that intercession… I shivered.
Ryan and Giselle strode into the trees like there weren’t four werewolves potentially waiting to ambush them, while Lars helped Isidro evaluate his leg and a few cuts.
Archer coughed and stayed a couple of feet away as the mace dissipated slowly. “You okay, Ada?”
“Not particularly,” I said. I coughed and spat. “You got any water?”
“On the 4-wheelers,” he said. Archer eased closer, testing the air, and helped me stand. “Did any of them touch you? Bite or scratch you?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But you’d be a better judge of that than me. I can’t see shit.”
He snorted and held my shoulder, steering me in front of him. “I don’t see anything but a muddy ass.”
“I’m not sure that’s mud, pal.”
Archer chuckled. “I’m confident it’s just mud. What happened? I told you to get out of there.”
I groaned and leaned over to spit more of the nastiness out. My arm shielded me from most of it, but enough hit my nose that my face turned into a fire hydrant of mucous. “Never run from a predator in the woods. Don’t you know that?”
“They’re not intelligent enough to think like that. So long as there’s prey in front of them, they won’t change focus.”
“Then why did they just run away?”
He didn’t answer, just murmured, “ATV is on your right. Sit down and I’ll get the water.”
I sat. My skin ached and burned, but the agony settled in my nose and eyes. Fire danced through my face and there was nothing to do but endure. As Archer retrieved water and had me tilt my head back so he could wash my eyes, my thoughts wandered. The werewolves terrified me. Did they count as cryptids in the same sense as sasquatches or waterhounds? Or did they fall into another category, along with vampires?
Archer blotted the bear mace oil and rinsed with more water, and I fumbled to take the damp handkerchief from him to do it myself. “Do you think that other one had something to do with them running away?”
“What do you mean, that other one?”
I winced and leaned over to rinse my mouth and spit more. Voices grew closer but weren’t raised in alarm, so apparently the werewolves didn’t pursue them. I dabbed my eyes and tried to remember a time when my face didn’t feel like an overdone Thanksgiving turkey. “The thing in the trees. It looked at them and they ran away.”
More silence.
“You guys were probably too busy trying to kill the other ones.” I cleared my throat and went through another round of hacking up my lungs. “What happened? Did you track them down? Get any good video?”
“We’ll do a post mortem on the interaction after I take you home so you can get cleaned up.”
Archer gave orders quickly and efficiently, then put me on the back of the ATV to return to the vehicles. I leaned into him and wondered whether I’d hallucinated the figure in the woods, or yet another unknown stalked the mountains. Just wonderful.