IT PEERED INTO AVA’S FACE, its eyes bright with insane light. Blood caked its chin and stained its teeth, its breath pluming thick whorls into her face. She was terrified yet she still knew, right in the core of her being, that it wouldn’t harm her.
Ava did not flinch from its gaze. She murmured, ‘Trigger.’
It stopped panting. It cocked its head to one side then the other. It whined so uncannily like a real dog’s puzzled plaintive that their nape hairs spiked. For a fleeting moment, humanity returned to its eyes, the name a spell to calm it. It stepped off her and they all breathed deeply, straightening their squashed bodies. It turned its face into the freezing wind and sniffed. Paul eased out from under then Ava saw him slowly, quietly, take the flick knife from John’s undamaged hand. When its gaze returned to their sprawled heap and saw the weapon, it snarled and plunged its teeth into Paul’s flesh exposed just above his boots then it bit into his wrist above the hand that held the knife. The crunch of bone was despicable. It was then the Wolf was kicked in the head.