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31

Kiana pushed against the dead Wolf with all the crazy, panicky strength she could muster, gasping for air and expelling it again in hysterical half-screams. Her hands kept slipping off his blood-drenched neck and his face kept slapping onto her chest. She could see Banno's reaching fingers reflected inside the yellowish depths of his dead eyeballs, five lines of darkness, dripping blood, coming closer and closer...

Kiana bit down on her bottom lip and pushed harder than she had ever pushed against anything in her life, sitting up and sliding the dead Wolf's corpse off her body in a single, panic-fuelled burst of strength.

She tried to stand up and immediately fell back down again. Her legs were still trapped!

"Get off, get off!!" she screamed, yanking her legs out from underneath the dead Wolf's body. She -

Banno's fingers were in her hair. She could feel the heat of the blood and the tips of his claws dragging along the top of her head.

"Noooo!" Without looking back, she got on her hands and knees and crawled. She managed to scramble halfway across the dead Wolf's body before she was yanked back. A thousand pins and needles stung her scalp as she reached for the exit less than three strides away.

"Dorin!" she screamed. "Dorin, help me!"

Dorin lay motionless in a spreading pool of his own blood. He did not perk his floppy ear or even open a single, bleary eye. He was dead to the world.

He can't help me no one can help me...

Kiana strained against Banno's grip, reaching for that sliver of blackness beyond the exit, reaching for outside. If she could just get outside, everything would be fine. If she could just get outside...

Banno was pulling her back, craning her neck and forcing her head up until she couldn't see anything other than the pointy ceiling of the tent. She could feel her back arching, could feel her centre of gravity slipping backwards.

"Nooo!"

She grabbed a double-fistful of the bone-chewer's pants and used his weight to anchor herself in place. She strained forward, turning the pins and needles in her scalp into a burning cap of fire. She could hear the soft pops of her hair snapping, strand by strand, until she finally ripped herself free in a burst of pain that barely even registered in her panic.

She scrambled to her feet, gasping for breath, her eyes set on that thin sliver of darkness, that glimpse of the pathway outside, dotted with clumps of snow, so close!

One step was as far as she got before she was yanked back with such force she nearly lost her feet. She looked back over her shoulder, refusing to believe that something like this could possibly be happening to her.

Banno had grabbed her tail. Strands of her hair still clung to his bloody fingers.

"Not so nice, is it?" he said, flashing her a soulless grin.

Kiana went berserk, thrashing and flailing like a wild animal caught in a snare. She grabbed at his fingers and tried to pull them off, but it was like trying to break steel chains with her bare hands. And now he was pulling her closer, dragging her towards that single eye, staring in at her from the four vertical slashes in the tent, unblinking.

Kiana found her feet and tried to dig her heels in, but her shoes simply slid over the bottom of the tent, rumpling it into useless wrinkles. She pounded his arm with her fist, aiming for the deepest cuts in his forearm, where the fur had split to reveal the red and shiny muscle tissue beneath. Soon her hand was saturated with blood, but it didn't make any difference.

Her feet slid out from under her and she splashed down into a pool of the dead Wolf's blood. She sat up immediately, but the blood was too slippery and Banno simply pulled her along, right up to the wall of the tent, and no amount of flailing or grabbing could bring her to a stop. She tried to scream, but the moment she pulled air into her lungs, she felt that hand tighten around her throat. She felt the claws digging into the soft meat of her neck, four on one side and a single thumb on the other, squeezing and squeezing, cutting off her air, slowly crushing her windpipe down to the smallest slit.

She saw something red appear on the other side of the rip, moving from one side to the other, a dripping piece of meat cut into four, like a snake glimpsed sliding through tall blades of grass, and Kiana realised that she was looking at his tongue. Banno was actually licking his lips. "I can feel your heart beating..." he whispered.

Kiana could feel it, too, and not just in her chest. She could feel it pulsating in her neck, struggling to force blood through the spots around his fingers. She could feel it pounding away inside her temples; dull throbs of exquisite pain building up inside her head, sending waves of darkness passing before her eyes.

I'm passing out, by the gods I'm passing out, if I pass out, it's over, if I pass out he'll kill me...

He'll kill my baby...

Banno ripped at the side of the tent with his free hand, cleaving it open like a fresh kill. Gashes appeared in groups of four as if by magic, each one affording its own tiny glimpse of the monstrous body just beyond that thin barrier: tufts of black fur and streaks of blood, cloven flesh weeping blood and puss, and a smell like rotting animal carcasses.

"I knew it would be you..." he said. His voice sounded like he was speaking through a mouthful of gravel. "It had to be you..."

He pushed his snout through the rips, forcing them wider and snapping the strips between. It was like watching a demon being born right before her very eyes.

Kiana's hands fell away from his fingers - there was nothing she could do to pry them loose, not even if she was ten times stronger than she was now - and began to paw at the ground behind her back, looking for a sharp piece of glass.

His head was through all the way up to his shoulders now. Bits of shredded canvass hung over his face in bloody tangles.

"It's okay... I've got you..." Banno whispered. "I'll make sure you feel every beautiful moment..."

Her fingers closed over something smooth - an apple that rolled away at her touch. Next her hand closed over something long and thin - a candle that broke apart in her panicked grip.

Banno sighed like one about to sit down to an exquisite meal. His foul breath washed over her face, and although she couldn't breathe any of it in, she could still feel the heat on her nose and inside her mouth, disgustingly intimate.

She strained against his grip, pulling back as far as she could, feeling his claws dragging against her neck, and suddenly her fingers closed over the long, heavy handle of a pickaxe. She grabbed it, knowing full well that she could barely swing it with both arms, let alone one, but she also knew that such a 'fact' simply didn't matter anymore. In order to protect her baby from this monster with the dead and staring eye, nothing mattered.

Banno was forcing his way through the opening, oozing through like some terrible bug crawling its way out of the shredded remains of its egg sac, but his left arm was still outside. His shoulder was caught against the side of the tent, making it bulge inward.

He could either let go of her throat, or he could take the iron tip of this pickaxe right through his forehead. The choice was his.

Kiana raised the pickaxe above her head (in this dreamlike state between fighting and dreaming, it weighed almost nothing at all) and swung it down with all the force she could muster.

The amount of time it took the pickaxe to complete its deadly arc couldn't have been more than a fraction of a moment, but in that infinitesimal amount of time, Kiana had the most vivid flash of memory. She saw herself, trapped inside that terrible cage, with thunderclouds booming above her head and a thousand snarling faces screaming for her blood. She heard the clang of stones hitting the bars of her prison and bouncing back, felt the lucky ones striking her shoulders, her arms, her legs, her injured ankle. She saw herself picking up one of these stones, one side dry, one side dripping with her blood, and hurling it through the air, aiming at the one who had caused her so much pain. She saw it tumble, end over end, flickering in the pale half-light of the storm, grey and red, grey and red, flickering between two states of being, and then -

Banno's jaws slammed shut around the pickaxe's metal spike, stopping her swing dead. The curved iron tip had punched out one of his teeth and scraped a jagged furrow through his gums, but his solitary eye stared at her as if nothing had happened, and his smile, if anything, was growing even wider, spilling fresh rivulets of blood over his shredded lips.

Kiana tried to twist the pickaxe like a key and wrench it from his grasp, but the clouds of shadow -

(thunderclouds, pregnant with rain...)

• were back, filling up the edges of her vision. The pressure around her neck was still there, building and building. The tips of his claws were actually going inside her body. She could feel them dimpling her skin, piercing it, drawing blood. She could feel a hot line of saliva traveling down from the corner of her mouth, but that sensation was disappearing, growing faint and prickly. Her lips were going numb.

Is he going to crush my neck, too? Is he...

With a splintery crack, Banno wrenched the head off the pickaxe in much the same way he would have ripped a chunk of meat off a skinny winter doe, spraying his own blood across the walls in a crimson arc. He turned his head and spat the business end into a corner. It was no more than a few strides away, covered in blackish splotches of blood, but it might as well be on the other side of the world for all the good it did her now.

No... No, Kiana! You can't let this happen! You have to fight!

Kiana took the broken handle in both hands and swung it straight down. It connected with the top of Banno's head with a sickening crack, sending shockwaves of pain racing through her arms.

She raised her weapon for another strike, but before she could get any speed behind her swing, Banno simply reached over with one monstrously long arm and snatched it out of her weakened grip.

Both arms were inside now. He had crawled in all the way up to his torso. Broken arrows stuck out of his back like porcupine quills.

The birth was nearly complete.

Her mouth opened and closed, but the only sounds Kiana could produce was a faint gargle, forced out through a bubbling mess of white froth.

"You know... you actually are kind of beautiful..." Banno said, caressing her face with his free hand, slowly dragging one black claw across her cheek, down, down, down towards her neck. "All you have to do is stop fighting. Stop fighting, Kiana. Just let it happen, and it'll all be over soon. Just let me..."

His hands came together around her throat, and now she could feel both of them clamping down, doubling the pressure, cutting off every last drop of air.

"Just let me taste you..."

Kiana reached up, but it was as if her hand wasn't attached to her body anymore. Numb and far away, slowly crawling up Banno's arm... it was like watching some pitiful, half-dead bug trying to climb a tree. She found his face and tried to push it away. Coarse strands of fur coiled around her fingers in black and red clumps, sticking fast, but no matter how hard she pushed, he only seemed to be coming closer and closer, an infinite grin of infinite teeth, a gate beyond which there was a bottomless red hole, leading down to hell itself. She could feel something hot and sticky dripping down onto her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. Blood and drool, flowing from his broken face. Drops of puss leaking from his eye like tears of joy.

With her other hand, Kiana swept the floor of the tent. Her reaching fingers brushed against something metallic - a hinge. They bumped against something smooth and cool that rolled away almost immediately. She kept searching, tapping her fingers across the fabric. They touched something rough and rectangular that could only be a piece of flint, barely big enough to fit her palm. The corner of a blanket. A waxy piece of broken candle. A length of rope. The bone-chewer's hand, cold and dead.

Banno opened his mouth. Thick red lines of saliva connected his teeth, stretching long and thin before snapping through the middle. His throat was a tunnel of flesh, coated in blood and shadows.

My baby...

Kiana's fingers closed around something wooden. It was too thin to be a part of the pickaxe, and her vision had clouded over so badly that she could barely see what was going on right in front of her. It was just a shifting mess of black and red, of eyes and teeth and tiny white dots, growing bigger, more numerous, blinking in and out. The only thing she was acutely aware of was the immense pain in her throat, the weight pushing down on her, pinning her down, and the dull throbbing in her temples, slowing... slowing...

Kiana swung what was in her hand in a sideways arc and a wet, meaty thud met her ears a moment later.

The object in her hands was a small carpentry hammer, and its head was now coated in a thin layer of blood. A sticky clump of fur drew wavy black lines across the shiny metal.

Banno was still bearing down, coming closer, apparently unaware of the bloody bump rising from his left shoulder.

Knowing that this would be her very last chance, Kiana twisted the hammer around and embedded the hooked end deep into his arm, right above the elbow. Fresh torrents of blood ran down his arm and over his fingers, seeping through her fur and settling against her skin, blazing hot.

Let go of me!

Kiana wrenched the hammer free and struck him again. The sound of that curved hook slamming into Banno's flesh was no different from a tenderising hammer pounding a juicy piece of steak.

Get off me!!

This time the claw went in so deep that Kiana had to wiggle the hammer back and forth in order to rip it out again. Fresh drops of blood splattered against her face like summer rain.

A shred of raw meat now hung off Banno's shoulder like the torn page of a neglected book, but despite this, Banno did not cry out in pain, or even wince. It was as if he wasn't even aware of the damage being inflicted on his body.

Kiana did not have the wherewithal to put these scraps of information together, but she instinctively knew that she had to end this right now, with one, single blow.

She extended her arm. The hammer felt like it was constantly pulling her down, but she couldn't afford to let go. She blinked her eyes, trying to clear the fog, if only a little, if only to give her one moment of clarity, just enough so she could see what she was aiming at.

Banno's face swam out of the grey, a hideous black mask of teeth, hatred, and unbridled ecstasy.

Please... please let me end this... let me...

Kiana swung the hammer with the last bit of energy she had left. She felt it curving above her head, felt the weight going with the arc instead of against it. Felt the dull shock in her arm, heard the wet thwack of metal piercing flesh.

The hammer connected squarely with the bridge of Banno's snout. Thick streams of blood spewed past the hammer's claw in rhythmic bursts. And Banno...

Banno was still smiling...

Waterfalls of blood flowed over his exposed teeth, and he was still smiling...

No... This can't be happening!

His face was so close now. She could make out every vein in his singular eye. Every spot of bald flesh where his fur had been singed away. Every cut and bruise and burn and weeping sore.

Higher... I need to aim higher...

He was close enough now. He was within reach. If she could plant the sharp end of this hammer right between his eyes, it would all be over.

Kiana pulled the hammer back. She felt it dragging along the floor behind her head, snagging against every little bit of detritus strewn about the tent. She didn't know if she'd be able to lift it again. It felt like it weighed a thousand pounds...

"Let me taste..." Banno whispered, licking his lips. "Let me taste..."

She tried to swing the hammer. It caught on the underside of something hard and bounced back to the floor. A moment later she heard the chair tip over with a bang and a clatter.

Banno was right on top of her now, the weight of his body pressing down on her chest like a stone -

(Something heavy why is it so heavy why do my fingers hurt Layla is that you please get off me I can't breathe something is wrong oh Layla it hurts please help me it hurts!!)

Flashes of deep red, of sunlight glimpsed through closed eyelids. A breeze on her face. Sharp twigs and pine needles prickling against her back. A sharp pain in her fingers -

(The nails got torn they tore away when I fell I was falling into a new life falling into some place I've never been before falling down into the dark...)

Something heavy on her chest, her lungs filled with dust, birdsong on the breeze, blades of sunshine cutting through the gaps in the trees, a counterpoint to the long shadows falling across the carpet of leaves, tiny bugs flying through the air, spots of white hovering in the sky, the sound of water -

(A river there's a river nearby I want to see it I want to clean my hand I want to wash my face I want to have a cool drink my throat hurts it hurts so bad why does it hurt so much why can't I move this stone someone please please help me!!)

She couldn't move the stone. It was crushing her chest, her lungs, she couldn't breathe. There was something around her neck, something hard, tightening like a noose.

The light was fading. Was the sun setting already? Was she going to have to spend another night here?

Mother and Father must be worried sick...

The sun was gone and a bloody horror had risen in its stead. A hideous face, big enough to blot out the stars, a broken face, the flesh peeling off its bones in thick, meaty chunks. Blood poured from its hollow eye sockets. Rotten breath issued from between fangs like spearheads.

"Let me taste..."

Kiana swung the hammer one last time. It connected with the monster's head, but it had no real force behind it. It simply bounced off and slipped free of her grasping fingers, falling down, tumbling along the rockfall at the mouth of the mountain pass, never to be seen again.

"...your death."

A sickly heat touched her mouth. It reeked of iron and rot. There was something wet and warm pushing against her lips, forcing them apart, and now it was inside her, sliding across her teeth, slipping over her tongue, winding its way down her throat.

It's tasting me, oh dear gods it's tasting me...

There was no more light. Only blackness, and the hideous intimacy of that tongue.

No... it's not...

Immense weight. Immense pain. A ring around her neck, pulling tighter and tighter. Throbbing in her temples. Numb lips, devoid of all feeling. Waves of decomposing breath washing over her face.

Kiana's hand fell away and thumped to the ground. Her fingers closed convulsively over empty air, then relaxed again. She didn't feel it. She didn't feel any of it.

It's tasting something else...