AFTER SEVENTEEN YEARS IN THE forest, Ren knew all the monsters by name.
“Strzygi,” she muttered, edging out of the trees. “Why did it have to be strzygi?”
She wasn’t sure why she bothered to keep her voice down. They’d smell her long before they heard her.
But for now, the clearing was still.
The trees curled around each other like lovers, tangled overhead like beasts at war. It was as if any sunlight that found its way down here was trapped forever. Heating, baking, turning the grass to mush and giving everything this sweet, earthy smell. Heat caressed her, seeping through her bare skin. It ran damp fingers across the nape of her neck, pressed sticky palms to her cheeks.
Three shapes, shining and red, sprawled on the ground ahead. Ren took a few more cautious steps forward, earth yielding silently under her bare feet. It felt like the trees were watching her.
They probably were.
She moved through enemy territory as silently as a cat.
“It has to be you,” she said, mimicking her brother. “They’ll come for a human.”
But Ry? had a point. A strzygoń could smell a human from miles away. Maybe it was human blood. Maybe it was human fear. Such a specific, cowardly scent.
And so here she was: pathetically, nakedly human. Ren was the most powerful, the most respected creature in the whole cursed forest, and she got the pleasure—the honor—of being the bait in her big brother’s trap.
“Ry?, I’m going to kill you,” she growled under her breath.
Somewhere on the edge of the clearing, Ry? laughed. Ren rolled her eyes. Wherever he was, safe in the shadow of trees, he was probably grinning that feline smile. At least he was nearby.
The red shapes were bodies: two men and a woman. Ren cringed as her feet squelched in the bloodied mud.
The dead man still clutched part of a rifle in stiff hands, its steel barrel shorn clear through by monstrous claws. Ren recognized their clothes from the village: dark coats and vests, white shirts, and striped skirts and trousers. Now blood obliterated every color. The strzygi had been feasting on their guts.
Ren snarled. The sound was low, utterly inhuman. It echoed in her chest, cut through the brown half-light. And for a moment—for the briefest moment—even the trees seemed to shiver.
Humans. In her mind, the word sounded like a curse. Careless, stupid—
The trees, once so silent, rustled.
Ren stiffened. Ignoring every instinct screaming inside her, she did not move. She blinked, as slow and luxurious as a cat. She felt her vision transform, sliding into familiar angles and shades, as she scanned the trees opposite. The colors had paled, their relative dimness sharpening every movement, every heartbeat in the trees. Everything was still. It was a good thing the humans were dead at her feet. They wouldn’t have taken it well: the black-rimmed eyes of a cat, slit pupils and all, shining in the face of a girl.
Ren turned around.
A strzygoń stood before her.
Her eyes may have been animal, but the rest of her was still human. And right down to the human bone, she trembled.
Run, whispered a tiny voice somewhere inside her. Now.
Though roughly the size of the human it had once been, the strzygoń looked nothing like the corpses in the clearing. It stood on all fours, joints locked. With the bulging eyes of a goat, oblong pupils in slate gray, it considered her. It put its head to the side, feathery brows jutting over those terrible eyes. It looked almost like an enormous moth, and again, Ren trembled.
Run.
But she was rooted to the spot.
The strzygoń began to pace. It retained all the right joints for a human, but its limbs bent in all the wrong ways.
Ren scraped up every last scrap of courage and forced her face into a grin.
“Still hungry?” She jerked her chin, beckoning it toward her. “Come on, then.”
She wasn’t sure if it could understand her. It issued a low hiss, feathers ruffling on the lower half of its face. Ren felt her smile falter.
Run, screamed her still-human heart. Run.
It took one nauseatingly uncoordinated step toward her. It twitched its head. Almost all the way around, like an owl.
“Oh, yuck,” she murmured.
The strzygoń leapt.
Ren fell back. She hissed. And she changed.
Her knees shot to her chest and her spine curled up. Her muscles expanded, snapping into place around her limbs. Power tore across her shoulders. Fur raced over her skin. Her world tilted into focus.