were on their knees, surrounded by nawia. Ren wondered, acidly, if they had even put up a fight. She was not especially surprised, but she was disappointed. A part of her—a very small part—had hoped the Wolf-Lord might be capable of more.
“I need to save Jakub!” protested Felka. “You have to get him before the others.”
For some reason, the name was familiar. Ren didn’t have time to dwell on it.
“You said there are no others,” replied Ren firmly. “We cannot take the nawia alone. And look . . .” The small nav had bent toward the third man, holding his hands in hers. Ren didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it couldn’t be good. “Look, he’s safe for now.”
“You don’t know that—” began Felka.
“He is surrounded on all sides,” interrupted Ren. “We need the soldiers’ help.”
Felka looked furious. Ren knew she would have been equally adamant if Czarn or Ry? had been on the line. She did her best to be reassuring:
“Felka,” she said, and the name felt strange on her tongue. “No one is going to die tonight.”
Then she turned and started down the hill, hearing Felka behind her. As they slipped down the mulchy hill, the smell became overpowering. Like blood and rot. Ren’s bare foot came down on a bone, which broke with a tiny snap.
The nawia turned toward them. Up close, they were not nearly so beautiful, with black eyes that took up half of their elongated faces. They looked almost like insects. For a moment, Ren saw her own face reflected in a thousand pairs of black eyes.
“Move!” she shouted.
She and Felka broke into a mad dash. The song turned into a scream. The nawia hurtled toward them.
Ren tried to ignore the bodies that she kicked aside as she ran, tried to ignore how the limbs flopped as her feet interrupted their decay. The nawia closed in. Ren was faster, ahead of Felka.
“HEY!” she screamed. “HEY!”
But Lukasz and Koszmar were far gone. One of the nawia was already slipping white arms around Koszmar’s neck, his head bent back, staring into her large black eyes. Ren watched the white claws gleam against his pale skin, and she doubled her pace.
A nav cut her off. Ren skidded to a halt just as a hand swiped the air inches from her face. The spidery fingers resembled jointed claws with sawtooth edges. A second nav, this one behind her, lashed out.
Its blow caught her across the ribs. Ren went flying. Her head bashed against a breastplate. She gagged, and yet another nav bore down on her, screaming. Its black mouth loomed, filled with thousands of needlelike teeth.
Panic and fear burned hot, changed. Fury.
Ren hissed.
The nav hesitated.
There it was, the raw, rushing surge she knew so well. Ren fell to her knees as the rush of power bristled in her neck, wrapped around her throat. More nawia joined the first. Ren had no idea where Felka had gone, and she had no time to care. Her hair crawled on her head, raced down her back. Her legs shortened, bent up. Her spine stretched out. Ren climbed to four feet, her clothes slipping off her back.
For a second, no one moved. The nawia surrounded her, close enough that she could hear their claws clicking, like a thousand insects ready to pick the flesh from her bones. Ren could feel her own saliva freezing on her teeth. She could see the frost forming on her fur. She could see her breath, rising like smoke, from her whiskered lips.
And Ren struck.
They crumpled under her claws. They collapsed under her fangs. Blood, silvery and ice-cold, flowed down their bodies and froze on the ground. They were a storm of black eyes and needle teeth, screaming. Dying.
Ren tore her way through them. She threw aside their elegant bodies. She made her way toward Felka, who was swinging a curved sword, red boots dancing in the black.
Ren was impressed. The girl was tougher than she looked.
“Come on,” shouted Felka. Silver blood spattered across her striped skirt and bathed the corpses at their feet. “We have to get to the others—”
They were already almost across the field, nearing the two soldiers. Their attack had temporarily distracted the monsters, but the two men lay still amid the dead.
Ren sank her claws into Lukasz’s jacket, tried to shake him awake.
“Get up!” she shouted through her animal teeth. “Get up, you fool!”
Ren swiped, claws retracted, across his face. He groaned. She whacked him again.