He was halfway to it when the wolf noticed what he was doing. A low, bass rumble started somewhere deep in its throat then rolled upwards into a bloodchilling snarl. Its movement was so swift Veitch barely saw it. Those golden eyes were shining before him, and then suddenly he was encompassed in darkness and the foul stink of the beast's breath. He felt its fangs sink into the flesh at the top of either cheekbone; fiery pain ran deep into his temple. It had his entire head in its mouth; it had to exert only slightly more pressure and his skull would shatter.
It held him like that for a few seconds while every desperate thought he had ever had rattled through his mind, and then, mysteriously, it released its grip. Before he could begin to fathom what was happening, it had released the crushing pressure on his chest and was padding away and out of the door.
All the other wolves had gone too, but the room looked as if it had been torn apart by a tornado. Shattered furniture lay all around, covered with shards of glass and torn material. Tom was slumped in a daze in one corner, but as he struggled to sit up it became apparent he wasn't badly hurt.
McKendrick, however, lay on his back half in, half out of the bedroom. His face was covered in blood and his gun was nowhere to be seen. Veitch scrambled over to him and raised his head so he could dab at the wounds with a remnant of curtain. After the shock of his appearance, the cuts seemed mainly superficial and it wasn't long before his eyes flickered open. Veitch began to speak, but the panic that flared in McKendrick's face silenced him instantly.
"They've taken Anna," he croaked.
The winds had moved off across the mountains with the first light of dawn as they picked their way across the chill, dew-laden hillsides in search of Anna. Veitch took pole position with Tom at the rear; between them was McKendrick, who looked like a spectre, his skin grey, his eyes filled with a painful desolation; it was the face of a man who had seen his entire world destroyed in an instant.
They hadn't been able to bring themselves to discuss Anna or what was likely to have happened to her after the wolves took her. Instead they had attempted to understand why the pack had acted so unnaturally, and there were no easy answers there either. And so, silently and unanimously, they had agreed to pursue the creatures to bring back Anna, or what was left of her.
Veitch felt numb. His emotions about Anna and Ruth had been so confused, although even his usually superficial self-analysis admitted that Anna's minor problems were a psychological substitute for Ruth's more intractable ones; solving the former had been his unrecognised key to achieving his heart's desire. And he had been thwarted again.
The track was easy to pick up, even for the untrained eye: flattened grass and too many splatters of blood, which they tried to convince themselves belonged to the wolf McKendrick had wounded. They made quick progress downhill, but there was no sign of the wolves ahead of them. The pack had moved away from the croft with alarming speed.
They soon found themselves on the perimeter of the new-grown forest, which already seemed to have attained its own ecosystem: thick forest floor vegetation, woodland flowers and a wide array of birds. Mist had settled in the depths of the valley and among the trees like candyfloss. The more they penetrated the shade beneath the verdant canopy, the thicker it became, blanketing all sound, obscuring what lay on every side.
After they had moved through it a little way, Tom pulled Veitch on one side. "This is insanity. If the pack attacks here we don't stand a chance. They could be circling five feet away from us now and we wouldn't know."
Veitch agreed, but he couldn't turn back. "If we retreat now we'll lose the trail."
"You can't help saving damsels in distress, can you?" Tom said sourly. "It's a pathological obsession."
"I might listen to what you're saying if you weren't so fucked up yourself." Veitch marched back into the lead with an irritation that came from knowing Tom was right. He had to save Anna because that was what heroes did. And if he couldn't be a hero, he had to be the person he always had been, and who could live with that?
They'd progressed about half a mile into the thickest part of the forest when they first heard movement, all around. McKendrick's finger jumped to the trigger and Veitch had to rest his hand on the barrel to calm the crofter; he looked like he was about to have a breakdown.
"Take it easy, mate," he whispered in a strong, calm voice. "You'll end up blowing one of us away."
McKendrick's bottom lip was trembling. He plunged his teeth into it and a trickle of blood ran down on to his chin.
The mist continued to distort the forest sounds; the birdsong seemed to come and go, and when they heard the vegetation crushed beneath loping paws it was impossible to pinpoint the location. But the pack was undoubtedly nearby, possibly surrounding them, as Tom had feared. Twigs cracked from somewhere behind them, grass or a bush swished just ahead. Yet despite the muffled nature of the sounds, something about them didn't sound right to Witch's heightened awareness; the weight burden was wrong, the movements not as sleekly lupine as he would have expected.
"They're moving closer," he hissed.
"How can you tell?" McKendrick's gun was wavering so much Veitch thought there was more danger there.
"I can hear things clearly." These days, he mentally added. He truly did feel a different person to the woolly-minded, sluggish old Ryan Veitch. The Pendragon Spirit had given him the chance to rise above himself.
Tom moved in close so only Veitch could hear him. "So what's the big strategy now, warrior-boy?"
A large figure shimmered in and out of the tendrils. "There!" McKendrick cried and raised his gun.
Another shape erupted out of the mist and knocked McKendrick flying; the gun disappeared into the undergrowth. Veitch lashed out instinctively and caught the attacker a glancing blow. It howled sharply before it was gone.
He dropped low, whirling around. "That wasn't a wolfl"
As if in response to his words, another figure dropped out of the air in front of him, obviously from a tree branch above. It was a man, but oddly different to any man Veitch had seen before. His long, matted hair was a deep black and his skin swarthy, with an excess of body hair. His bone structure was clearly defined above his sharp jaw, forming handsome features which suggested both pride and an incisive intelligence. He was naked, his body lithely muscled, filled with power. But it was his hands and feet that caught Veitch's attention; they were over-sized, the fingers long and gnarled, with sharp, jagged nails that more resembled talons. He was sweating profusely from his exertions and there was a sheen of forest dirt across his skin. Gradually Veitch's attention was drawn to his thick, dark eyebrows which menacingly overhung glowing golden eyes; Veitch knew instantly he had seen those eyes before.
Veitch went to lift his crossbow in warning, but the man raised his arm quickly with a strange hand gesture that had the little finger and index finger extended while the others were folded back; oddly, it was filled with a threat Veitch didn't feel comfortable opposing, and he let the crossbow drop.
"Who is this?" McKendrick said in a broken, uncomprehending voice. Tom helped him to his feet.
"The Lupinari have returned to the deep forests," the man said in a deep, almost growling voice which rang with an unplaceable accent.
Recognition suddenly dawned on Tom's face and he took a step towards the strange, beast-like man to communicate, but he was halted in his tracks by the same threatening hand gesture.
Tom held his open hands up, palms outwards; a primal gesture. "I never encountered your people in the Far Lands."
The man eyed him coldly. "Then you never ventured into the forests of the night."
"No, I never did."
The man let his hand drop slightly and used it to gesture around. "The Far Lands, for all their twilight appeal, were uncommon grounds to us. These are our homelands. This is our world, where we have hunted since time began."