A lantern swung in the opening, temporarily blinding them.
An exceptionally elegant man stood behind the light. He was handsome, except for a mouth almost too wide for his face. Despite the darkness around them, he wore dark glasses.
“I’ve heard of rats in a barrel,” he said. “But I wasn’t expecting them to be so big.”
“We’re Wolf-Lords,” said Henryk, extricating himself from their awkward refuge. The wine had soaked through his clothes, and it looked like blood.
The tall man barely moved, except to raise an eyebrow. As he looked at them, the edge of his lip curled.
“If you say so.”
Dr. Rybak looked around, his broad face heavy with disappointment. Wine was smeared, like blood, over one cheek.
“It’s gone,” he said heavily. “We missed it. The basilisk is gone.”
And maybe Henryk felt the call to the mountains, like Tadeusz had before him. Or maybe he just missed his older brother. Maybe he was done with being a stranger in faraway lands, and maybe he missed the wolves.
But whatever the reason, the basilisk was gone, and by the next morning so was Henryk. Lukasz did not see him again.
And for the next six years, he did not see Jakub Rybak, either.
10
LUKASZ SKIDDED OUT INTO THE road, Koszmar sliding into him.
Light flickered at the cross street, just ahead. It looked like every person in the village had come out to watch.
“Come on.” He grabbed Koszmar’s sleeve. “We have to stop them—”
The crowd had closed in on her, left no room for escape. They were shuffling nervously, whispering. Lukasz could hear them breathing, he could hear their pounding pulses. Lukasz knew panic, he dealt in panic, and he loved panic—but tonight, for the first time, it scared him.
“Out of the way!” he roared. He shoved his way through the bodies. “Out. OUT!”
Behind him, Koszmar was shouting at the villagers. They were too terrified to listen. Stricken as deer. Violent as bears. Lukasz needed them out of the way.
“Get them out,” he said over his shoulder to Koszmar. “Get them the hell out of here.”
Koszmar’s eyes widened. “Oh my God.”
Lukasz whirled around. The villagers scrambled back, then broke into a stampede. The tide of bodies pressed against him, trying to shove him backward. He had a glimpse of her, just for a moment; her eyes were closed, and then they opened.
Lukasz went still. The crowd parted around him.
Her eyes were green, with huge, luminescent pupils. Ringed with black, almost perfectly circular in the human face. Human lips drew back from four-inch fangs, and the tongue in her human mouth was rough like a wildcat’s.
Koszmar was shouting. People kept flooding past Lukasz.
She roared.
It wasn’t the sound of a human, but it wasn’t anything like a lynx. It split across the street and stopped his heart for a moment. It rushed over the rooftops and it blasted across the trees, and for half a second, Lukasz was sure it must have echoed in the streets of Miasto.
Somehow, he found his voice.
“It’s okay,” he said, advancing unsteadily. “I don’t want to hurt you—”
A lynx stepped smoothly out of the human clothes, the material slipping off its muscled back.
The lynx paced in front of him, hissing. All the same, he could see her in it. Her eyes were riveted to his. She was calming down. He could feel it.
“Listen to me,” he said, both hands raised. “Please—”
Before he could finish, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. A lone villager remained, and he had just stooped to the cobbles.
“STOP!” Lukasz roared.
He was too late. The stone sailed out of the darkness and thunked into the lynx’s shoulder. Her head snapped from Lukasz to the villager.
“NO!”
Lukasz and the lynx leapt at the same time. They met midair. By some miracle he caught her forelegs in his hands, kept the claws off his throat. She yowled. A strangled sound, almost like disappointment. Then she changed her focus.
They hit the road, and pain exploded in Lukasz’s knee as it bashed off the cobbles. Claws sank through his clothes and raked his skin, teeth gnashing for his throat. She snarled, lines of saliva hanging off her fangs. And she was much, much stronger than he was.
Lukasz caught her by the neck. She thrashed. It took all his strength to keep the slashing teeth off his throat. Every muscle screamed as she threatened to overpower him. The claws tore deeper. The dripping mouth lunged closer. The wicked incisors snatched so close that he felt them scrape his skin.