Derrick wheezed. He ached, from head to toe. He was lying in the dirt, and could hear running water nearby, but every effort to move sent a pain through his body so intense that it felt like he would vomit. He pressed his hand up his side until his fingertips found the crudely assembled bandage, already soaked most of the way through with his blood.

He groaned softly and turned his head to the side. Rosa had crawled her way up to her knees, cradling one arm against her stomach, her bloody hair hanging in a sheet across her face. She gave a few shaky coughs, then looked at him, her brown eyes glinting in the firelight.

His brain paused for a moment as he registered that the Mustang was on fire. His thoughts felt sluggish and slow, and he realized he must be rather more injured than he thought. He tried to sit up again but gave up when the pain gripped his chest with freakish strength. He was conscious, on his peripheral, of snarling and grunting coming from the clearing.

Rosa crawled over to him, face contorted into a grimace of pain. A quick look at her arm told him that it was broken. He grunted, tried to speak, and failed.

“Derrick,” Rosa said. It was hard to hear her over the crackling of flame and the soft trickle of the creek as it poured past them.

Derrick forced his eyes to focus on her and was concerned by the amount of effort it took.

“Derrick, Levi and Reinhart are fighting,” she said.

Derrick let his head drop to his opposite side. Reinhart was bigger than he’d expected. Shaggy and brutish, he was on top of some writhing shape. Derrick concluded that it must have been Levi. Reinhart was suddenly flung to the side as Levi managed to kick the Lycan off of him. Levi scrambled to his feet. He was already in rough shape.

“Derrick. He’s losing,” Rosa whispered. “We have to do something.”

“I can’t fight,” Derrick replied, voice hoarse and wet. Every breath was an agony. Even at his best, Reinhart would have been a difficult opponent. Now, with his body torn, after losing so much blood, even walking would be difficult, never mind getting to his feet in the first place.

Rosa looked at him for a long moment, then nodded.

“I can.”

Something surged in Derrick’s body, jolting him to alertness. “No,” he said. That was a terrible idea. As things were, Rosa had a good chance of walking away from this. If Reinhart killed Levi, he’d probably leave them be. Derrick couldn’t walk out of these woods, but Rosa might be able to.

“I have to,” Rosa said, something steely in her voice. “I can’t let him fight and die without help. It’s not right.”

“I should be the one helping. I promised Arthur-”

“And you can’t,” Rosa snapped, cutting off his rasp. “Derrick, you’re barely conscious. You’re right, you can’t fight. But maybe you can help me fight.” Rosa lurched to her feet and stumbled down the bed of the creek and into the water, towards the Mustang.

Derrick tried to call after her, but his voice was a croak in his throat and even the act of breathing was excruciating at this point.

She climbed back out of the creek bed, carrying her duffle bag and his jacket. She went to her knees next to him and dug through his jacket pockets, pulling out a few precious slips of unmarked flashpaper. She pushed them into his hands and then, growling with the effort and the pain, dragged him against a stone and sat him up. He groaned at the way the movement made his ribs pop against one another in his chest.

She unzipped her duffle bag and pulled out something Derrick had forgotten about. A rusty double-barreled shotgun. The one she’d stolen from that cabin. She set it down in the grass, then pulled out a little box of shotgun shells. She tore the cardboard open with her teeth and started dumping the shells into the front pocket of her hoodie, sweat beading on her brow and mixing with the blood.

Derrick thought that, in the firelight, knelt over a weapon and dripping with blood and creek water... she looked hauntingly beautiful.

Derrick pressed his fingers to the bandage on his chest, now entirely saturated with his blood. Levi was pinned to the ground again, and the fighting was utterly desperate. He’d have to hurry... He wrote the runes out with his fingers, trying to ignore the way they shook and stuttered on the paper. He thought about a contract, signed in blood. Thought about Arthur’s easy smile. He’d made a promise. A promise to a friend. He intended to keep it.

When he’d finished writing out three Boosters, Rosa had managed to get the shotgun wedged under her broken arm well enough for her tastes. She snatched the boosters from his hands, rolled them up, and stuck them hanging out of her mouth. Derrick began working on a fourth.

“Just hold on,” he muttered. “Just a few more Rosa, please...”

Rosa bit her lip, then glanced at Levi. She let out a whimper of animalistic pain at the sight of him being torn to shreds on the forest floor. “I can’t!” she cried, climbing to her feet once more.

Derrick scowled down at the Booster he was working on. They were fighting for nothing. With Rosa hellbent on fighting Richard Reinhart, all three of them were going to die out here. But, he had to admit, there was something gratifying about going down swinging like this.

Rosa fired.

The first shell caught Reinhart by surprise. The Lycan tumbled off of Levi, then tried to stand, only to get thrown to one knee by a second shell. Rosa readjusted the shotgun as she opened the breach, ejecting the spent shells, making sure the thing was soundly wedged against her, then putting another red tube in each barrel.

It snapped shut with a pleasing click, and then thunder filled the air again.

Levi was thrashing rather violently on the forest floor as his body tried to repair itself. It was still astonishing, after all this time, how quickly Lycans could recover from horrific injuries.

A good chunk of Reinhart’s head splattered off, and the werewolf slumped to the earth for a few moments, then started climbing back to its feet. Rosa was pushing it back, pushing it away from Levi to give him time to heal. This might work! Goddammit, this might work! Rosa snapped the shotgun open again and-

Rosa dropped a shell.

She made a mistake.

That was all the opening Reinhart needed.

Derrick let out a wet scream as Reinhart’s disfigured form leapt at Rosa.

Rosa didn’t scream. She thudded to the ground, and managed to unleash another shell into Reinhart’s face as the beast attacked her. Reinhart was raving, babbling maddened words as his claws ripped into Rosa. Derrick squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tears beading at their edges.

There was a steely clatter as the shotgun hit the dirt.

When Derrick opened his eyes, Levi was standing. He tilted his head up to the sky, and let out a howl. The keening cry seemed to stretch on and on and on, filled with the bottomless black depths of Levi’s despair and rage and misery. Derrick felt a cold shudder roll through him. Feral. Unhinged. Inhuman.

A breeze blew through the clearing, whipping the flames up and letting scattered beams of moonlight pierce the veil of the treetops and fall on the scene. Pearlescent blues and whites shone against them.

“Everything,” Reinhart said as he stood, shaking with his own hysterical laughter. Half of the wolf’s face was scoured clean of flesh by the blast of the shotgun, only the pale white of bone showing. His remaining eye burned a single blue ember in the shadows of his canine skull. “I will take everything from you.”

Levi began to scream. Even from across the area, Derrick could hear the sound of bones popping, breaking apart, then reshaping themselves.

“Oh God,” Derrick breathed. He gripped one of the Boosters he’d been drawing and burned it, then tried to climb to his feet. “Levi,” he croaked. Levi was going feral. Levi was turning. Turning, for the first time, and without his pack to guide him. There was no coming back from that.

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Levi’s body broke itself down, then rebuilt itself anew. Derrick watched as Levi went through every kind of agony. His skull breaking apart to plates, stretching and morphing wildly. His teeth lengthening in his mouth. Claws tore free of shaking fingers, hair grew wild and ragged.

Reinhart was laughing louder now. Apparently, he found the sight of Levi abandoning his humanity and giving himself to the moon to be very amusing. Derrick managed to stand, though his head spun, and every part of his body ached. He stumbled and leaned himself against a tree, feeling the bark dig into his bare skin. He felt helpless, filled with the fire of anger and completely impotent to do anything about it.

Rosa did not stir on the ground.

And Levi.... Levi stood in the whisps of moonlight. His eyes shone red in the dark. His fur was a ruddy reddish-brown, messy and curling. The feral Lycan dripped with blood, eyes fixed on Reinhart.

Levi howled again, and the sorrow seemed to resonate in Derrick’s very bones. Levi’s breath trailed out of his canine muzzle, creating a cloud of condensation in the cool autumn air.

“This could be Colorado all over again,” Derrick muttered, lurching forward away from the tree.

Levi’s lupine body flexed with muscle like steel cables under his skin. He got low, his red eyes flashing, and then sprung forward like a whip. Reinhart jolted first with surprise, then with the impact, as Levi smashed into him. The red wolf pinned his wrists to the dirt, and only Reinhart’s quick reaction kept Levi’s teeth from sinking into his throat. The bigger wolf twisted hard to the side, with enough strength to throw Levi several feet away.

Levi was moving very quickly.

Levi regained his footing before Reinhart did, snarling as he dashed forward. Reinhart tried to meet him, but at the last moment Levi shot low, dragging his claws across Reinhart’s stomach, then hooking a hand around Reinhart’s side and swinging himself up onto Reinhart’s back. The red wolf sunk his teeth into Reinhart’s shoulder for leverage and started raking claws across Reinhart’s chest.

Reinhart would have to choose. Forward or backward.

He chose forward, and flipped himself forward, slamming his back, with Levi still on it, into the ground. They immediately resolved into a scrambling, slashing mess, clambering over one another on the ground as they struggled for the top of the brawl. Reinhart let out a sharp yelp as Levi’s teeth found his arm, but he slammed the smaller Lycan into the earth with enough force that it must have broken something.

But a feral Lycan feels no pain. Levi spun onto his belly immediately and launched himself forward with the same breathtaking speed he had exhibited in his initial lunge. Reinhart moved to guard his throat, but Levi wasn’t going high. Instead, he latched his teeth onto Reinhart’s ankle. There was a sickening crunch as Reinhart collapsed. The bigger Lycan reached down to grab Levi, but Levi spun on his back, kicking his feet out towards Reinhart’s chest to knock the big wolf flat onto his back. He wrapped his legs around Reinhart’s left leg and sunk his teeth in deeper. Then... he pulled.

Derrick hobbled towards Rosa, but stopped at the horrific tearing sound that issued from the dueling werewolves. Levi was ripping off one of Reinhart’s feet. Derrick felt vertigo flood him. He couldn’t stop Levi like this, and if this went on... If this went on, Levi would finish off Reinhart and get loose, killing indiscriminately. He fell to his knees at Rosa’s side, body vibrating with pain at every movement. Each step he took was a fresh agony, his abused body creaking, his breaths heavy and wet.

He forced his eyes to focus on Rosa’s body... and paused in disbelief.

Rosa was still breathing.

Levi tore off Reinhart’s foot. Reinhart screamed and flailed, but he could not dislodge Levi as he ripped at the exposed tendons and muscle that made up Reinhart’s calf. When he finally disengaged, he did so only to gain his feet and then launch himself forward again. Again, Reinhart guarded his throat on instinct, but Levi attacked his arm instead, ripping the tendons from his wrist free like bloody piano wires. Reinhart roared and grabbed Levi by the scruff with his other hand. He yanked the smaller Lycan off of him, then tried to drag him forward to tear the whelp’s throat out, but Levi kicked his legs down and managed to slam his knee into Reinhart’s beartrap of a mouth.

Levi grinned manically down at Reinhart and grabbed the bigger wolf’s muzzle with both hands, holding it shut around the thick muscle of his thigh so that Reinhart couldn’t pull him away. The new-born werewolf’s smile was bloody and filled with too many teeth. His eyes were a hollow, glowing abyss, red, tunnels leading deeper and deeper into the pits of hell. He shoved his other leg between the back of Reinhart’s neck and the ground, squeezing the Lycan towards him with one leg and pushing down with his weight on the other to keep Reinhart’s head effectively pinned down.

He released Reinhart’s muzzle, now that he couldn’t spit Levi’s knee out, and darted his hands up to grab Reinhart’s other wrist.

Slowly, systematically, he pulled Reinhart’s flailing, scratching arms apart. He gorged his endlessly hungry body on Reinhart’s muscles and tendons, tearing Reinhart’s hands off, taking great, greedy, tearing bites from his forearms, enjoying the way Reinhart thrashed under him like a dying animal.

Derrick watched this in numb, stunned horror. Because the thing ripping Reinhart to gory pieces, the thing relishing his pain and the screams he made in the night, was not Levi. This was the Beast. This was a feral creature that existed for nothing but violence and blood, and it was using Levi’s body to get it. He was disassembling Reinhart.

When the feral thing that had been Levi finally decided to rip Reinhart’s throat out, it had already torn the man’s arms down to blood-spewing nubs. It had gouged out Reinhart’s remaining eye, torn his pointed ears to ribbons, and reveled in dragging its brutal claws across the Lycan’s face. But finally, that creature finished it. He sunk his teeth into Reinhart’s throat and ripped out his windpipe and the mess of muscles, tendons, and arteries that kept Reinhart alive and suffering.

Reinhart made a single, empty rasp, then finally went blissfully, wonderfully still.

The thing that had once been Levi began to eat the Lycan’s corpse. Reinhart’s innards steamed in the cool air, and the wet noises that came from the feral’s carrion feast made Derrick gag.

Derrick burned another booster and started dragging Rosa towards the creek. He had to get them away from the feral. The Tahoe was how Lorraine had gotten to town, surely there was some means of contacting the Bureau inside of it. He had almost reached the flickering safety of the firelight when a new howl sounded from the red-furred feral.

Derrick looked up to see red eyes glinting at him.

The feral had spotted them. Its eyes, wide and round, festered with bloodlust as it stared at them. The forest had gone silent with the presence of the creature, even the insects still and voiceless in the night. It charged for them, and Derrick stepped between Rosa and the monster, holding his knife up in a weak, shaking hand.

The creature stopped, skidding to a halt just a few feet away from him. Derrick couldn’t tell why, until he heard a faint sound from the ground.

“Levi,” Rosa croaked.

The feral cocked its head, nose twitching. It got down on all fours, and Derrick watched as it approached her, sniffing her like a wild animal.

“Hello Levi,” Rosa said. A faint smile drew itself across her pale face. “You are a beautiful wolf. Red and fiery.” She drew her hand across his muzzle, and the Lycan shuddered at her touch, leaning into her hand. “Levi, lovely, I think I’m dying.”

The wolf let out a low, pathetic whine.

“Rosa,” it said, its voice a strained creaking thing, like the word hurt. “Rosa,” it said again.

“Hello, Levi,” Rosa hummed soothingly. Her voice strained, but she was smiling so sweetly at Levi that it took Derrick’s breath away.

He took a stumbling step back as the wolf scooped Rosa into his arms, cradling her close to his chest. He was whimpering miserably as he held her, pressing his big furry face to Rosa’s cheek. Rosa’s body was a torn mess, covered in claw slashes and bite marks.

“I know Levi, I know,” she cooed. “But I have some things to say before I go. Will you listen to me?”

Levi, the feral beast that he now was... nodded.

“Derrick,” Rosa said softly. Levi didn’t look away from her. “Derrick, follow the creek. The pack is waiting for him.”

Derrick gave Levi a quick glance, then looked back at her. “How do you know?” he wheezed, every breath an effort. He burned another Booster.

Rosa smiled, and it was blinding and beautiful. “His mother told me.”

Derrick did as he was told, hesitant, every step agonizing in his broken body... but he waded into the water.

“Follow Derrick, Levi. Let him lead you home,” she urged.

Levi followed him.

Rosa was clearly dying. A combination of injury sustained from Reinhart’s mauling and the strain of using so many Boosters without experience or conditioning was killing her. The way her body hung; Derrick had the distinct impression her back was broken.

But she was alive. She was alive and, if they hurried, if they got her to a hospital, she might live. Without a car, however, and with Levi stuck as a barely controlled animal, muzzle dripping with blood and offal, Derrick didn’t see how that was possible.

He let his mind think through the puzzle. It was a good distraction from the debilitating pain that threatened to swallow him whole, from the fact that he, too, was dying. He held his hand against his side as he lurched through the water.

“Levi,” Rosa said. Her voice was quiet, but the silence of the woods carried it well. “I love you, Levi. I love you so much.”

Levi whined at her words, his triangular ears having fallen backwards against his head. He pressed his bloody muzzle to her face, careful not to brush against any of the gouges near her neck that Reinhart had left. Levi had marks of his own across his face, wounds that were turning to lines of pale white scar tissue against the earthen red of his fur.

Could they commandeer a car? There were houses a few miles up the road.

They’d never make it that far.

Levi could run her down the mountain, but Rosa would likely die on the journey, and Derrick had no idea what would happen to Levi when she passed. In all likelihood, he’d lose whatever tenuous control he had.

Derrick was distantly aware of Rosa speaking still, but he couldn’t seem to focus.

Could Derrick put Levi down before that became a possibility? He didn’t have any silver on him. He thought about the burning Mustang in the creek, but they were well past it, and he doubted Levi would turn around. Not to mention he had no idea how he would turn that fire on Levi.

His mind was sluggish, and his footsteps increasingly clumsy and unsure. His feet practically dragged through the creek, kicking up pebbles and mud and plants.

Derrick saw, ahead, the soft flicker of a torch. He heard voices, voices that called out for Arthur. They called for a dead man as they ran through the water.

“Marco, grab him! He’s about to fall!” came the stout voice of an elderly man.

Derrick’s legs finally gave out, and he tumbled into the creek. The water was blissfully cool against his cheek.