“One of the women took his arm and smiled into his face until he looked at her. “We’re going to dance in the woods later, when the moon comes up. You’ll have to join us, of course,” she said. She batted her eyelashes and added, “It’s a full moon, so we’ll go skyclad.”Simon frowned, trying to work out what she was saying. “Naked, you mean.” His mouth fluttered as if he was trying to decide whether to grin sheepishly or lasciviously.”

“My pleasure. Listen,” he called after her, “this is as far as I can go. They poisoned the water out there and I can’t follow you now. If you do see Powell, will you give him a message for me?” “Sure,” she said, turning around. “Tell him I have his boots in my truck. In case he’s looking for ’em.” Chey smiled. It felt wrong on her face, but she liked it all the same. “I’ll do that.”

“He did not waste time greeting her, but fell upon her at once with a vicious snarl. With his powerful jaws he tore at her, pulled her apart. He ripped open her guts and they spilled with a rank smell across the broken road surface. He tore off her leg and threw it into the darkness like so much poisoned meat.The pain was intense, but she could not complain or fight him off. She lacked the energy to even raise her head. He tore and bit and ripped her apart and she could only experience it passively, as if from some remove.Somehow she knew that he wasn’t killing her.That he was saving her.When he was done, when all the silver was torn out of her body and cast away from her, she breathed a little easier, and then she sank into a fitful sleep. He stood watch over her throughout the night, occasionally howling as the moon rode its arc across the night sky. Occasionally he would lick her face, her ears, to wake her up, to keep her from fading out of existence altogether. Once when he could not wake her he grabbed her by the back of the neck and shook her violently until her eyes cracked open and her tongue leapt from her mouth and she croaked out a whine of outrage.”

“He looked right into her and then he said, “In a second I’m going to ask you if you’re okay. Your answer is extremely important. If you can keep fighting, or at least keep running, you have to say ‘yes’. Otherwise we have to run away and let them win this one. Now. Are you okay?”

“Hey.” He glanced away from her, instead looking down at the coffin. He looked back at her and raised his eyebrows. “Want a peek?”

“Caxton crawled into the back while Arkeley took the front passenger seat. His fused vertebrae trumped her sprained ribs, he announced.”

“Do we have a plan?” she asked.“Yes,” he told her. “Shoot everything that moves.”