The searing pain lit up every nerve in Ethan's body. This engineer who'd never killed so much as a chicken in his life found a startling surge of survival instinct at the edge of death.
"Get off!"
Ethan roared, adrenaline spiking through the roof. Using the momentum of his fall, he yanked his right knee up and slammed his foot hard into the Lycan's stomach. The kick wasn't especially powerful, but it caught the creature just as it was settling in to tear into him, throwing off its center of gravity and knocking it back two steps.
Ethan seized the opening, scrambled up off the ground, clamped his hand over his bleeding left arm, and sprinted toward a faint light deeper in the village without looking back.
"Rrraahhh!"
The Lycan, kicked off its prey, went from angry to full-on rabid. It dropped onto all fours like a crazed beast, claws scraping harsh, grating noise from the cobblestones, and tore after Ethan at terrifying speed.
Fifty meters. Thirty. Ten.
The Lycan's slime-dripping claws were a breath from raking Ethan's back.
On the rooftop, Ryan's gaze went cold, and his right hand finally moved.
A flick of the wrist. That plain red brick, given every bit of kinetic energy he could channel, burst through the sound barrier and tore a piercing shriek through the air.
Crack!
A heavy thud that made the scalp crawl.
The Lycan, mid-pounce, took it like a cannon shell to the face. That enormous skull, bristling with hard bone spurs, ruptured on the spot under the monstrous impact, like an overripe watermelon.
The decapitated body kept going several meters on sheer inertia before crashing hard into the muddy ground, twitching and then lying still.
Running ahead, Ethan heard the massive thud behind him and nearly died of fright, but he didn't dare look back, terrified that the moment he stopped he'd be shredded. He hurled himself at the nearest wooden cabin where a dim light glowed and hammered on the heavy door like his life depended on it.
"Help! Open the door! There are monsters out here! Please!"
A tense scramble broke out inside, followed by the sound of a bolt sliding. The door cracked open, a strong hand shot out and yanked Ethan in, and the door slammed shut and locked again in one motion.
From the rooftop across the way, Ryan watched Ethan make it inside safely and brushed the dust off his hands.
"Kid's got a stubborn streak of luck. Still, can't let him wander off on his own. Be a shame if a couple of Miranda's precious sons got to him before I did."
Ryan jumped down, flicked the dew off his windbreaker, and strolled toward the cabin like a tourist out for an after-dinner walk.
...
Inside the cabin, the light was dim.
Ethan slumped against the door, gasping hard, cold sweat soaking through his pajamas. Only now did he get a proper look at the people who'd saved him. A father and daughter.
The father looked like a weather-worn local farmer, gripping an old double-barreled shotgun and eyeing Ethan warily.
Beside him was a teenage girl. She looked scared, but she'd still grabbed a clean strip of rag and was handing it to Ethan to bandage his wound.
"Thank you... thank you." Ethan wound the cloth tight around his left arm, hissing through his teeth. "I'm Ethan."
"Leonardo Lupu." The man's voice came out gravelly, and the muzzle of the shotgun didn't drop. "This is my daughter Elena. Outsider, you shouldn't be wandering the village in the middle of the night. The nights aren't clean now."
Ethan was about to explain that he was looking for his wife when...
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three perfectly steady, rhythmic knocks landed on the cabin door.
The temperature in the room dropped to freezing. Leonardo shoved his daughter behind him and pressed the double-barreled shotgun right up against the door, finger on the trigger. Ethan was so scared his breathing stopped.
"Ethan, open the door, it's me."
A calm, easy voice came through the door.
Ethan froze, then his eyes lit up with wild relief. He whipped his head toward Leonardo. "Don't shoot! That's my friend! The one I'm traveling with!"
Leonardo stepped back half a pace, unconvinced but willing, and Ethan rushed to throw the bolt.
Outside, Ryan stood there perfectly unharmed, a half-eaten cucumber pinched from who knew where in one hand. He took another bite.
"Ryan! God, you're alive!" Ethan almost threw himself at him.
"Woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Came back, you and Mia were both gone. Saw you running for the mountains in a panic, didn't feel right leaving you, so I came after you." Ryan lied without so much as a blink and walked into the cabin like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He glanced at the tense father and daughter, smiled and nodded, and said in the local dialect, "Sorry for the intrusion. Thank you for taking in my reckless friend."
Leonardo saw how composed Ryan was and the fact that he clearly knew Ethan, and the wariness in his eyes eased a little.
Ryan walked over to Ethan and let his gaze drop to the hastily bandaged left arm.
In Ryan's vision, the black Mold filaments in Ethan's bloodstream weren't wrecking his body the way a lethal virus would. They were devouring and replacing his damaged hematopoietic stem cells and muscle tissue at a terrifying rate.
Ethan's body was being assimilated by the Mold.
"How's the wound? I saw that thing take a bite out of you." Ryan asked, feigning concern.
"It hurts... but, something's off." Ethan loosened the rag and took a look, frowning in confusion. "It was bleeding a lot just now, and now the area around the wound feels numb. It doesn't hurt as much."
No kidding. Your body's already been taken over by the Mold. Of course you can't feel pain.
Ryan let out a quiet sigh. Some things really couldn't be sidestepped. Even without running into Eveline, the gears of fate had still turned tonight, and with a Lycan's fangs as the medium, it had forced "the God of War with the Hand Sanitizer" onto the field anyway.
"It isn't safe here. You two can't stay." Elena spoke up, keeping her voice low, her eyes full of deep fear. "There are bad people in this village. At night, those wolf-like monsters come out to take people... while the fog's still thick, please, take one of the side paths and run."
"Elena! Shut your mouth!" Leonardo suddenly snapped at his daughter. He turned his head, and there was a sick kind of fervor and blind faith in his eyes. "Don't listen to a child's nonsense. The village is safe. As long as we stay devout, Lady Miranda will protect us. She's the guardian of our village."
The Miranda of this moment hadn't yet begun the mass slaughter of villagers in her search for Eva's perfect vessel, and the villagers still treated her as a totem of faith, with no idea they were just livestock being kept around as backup experimental material.
"She is not!" Elena's eyes rimmed red as she shot back, her voice thick with tears. "Father, don't you understand! Mother was taken away last month by Lady Miranda's priests. They said she was going to serve the goddess, and she hasn't come back! Not one of the people they've taken has come back!"
Leonardo was choked silent by his daughter's words. His face went through several shades, and the hand on the gun trembled, but half a lifetime of conditioning wouldn't let him admit the brutal truth.
"I don't care about Miranda... my wife Mia is still somewhere in this village." Ethan pushed through the strange sensation in his left arm and straightened up, his gaze unusually firm. "Someone took her. Even if this place is hell, I'm bringing her back."
He turned to Leonardo and Elena and bowed deeply. "Thank you for saving my life. If I get the chance, I'll repay you."
Ethan turned, took a deep breath, and reached for the door, ready to step back into that night full of monsters.
"Hold on."
A hand pressed flat against the wooden door.
Ethan turned around and saw Ryan standing beside him, tossing what was left of the cucumber into the trash and pulling a reasonably sturdy stick from the firewood pile, testing its heft.
"Going to get yourself killed solo?" Ryan looked at him, his tone as easy as if they were picking a place for breakfast. "We came out here together, and no guide worth his salt leaves his tourists stranded on the road."
Ethan stared at him, and looking into those calm, steady eyes, the hardass's own eyes rimmed red. His voice caught with emotion. "Ryan... you don't have to do this for me..."
"All right, save the tears. Save them for when we find Mia."
Ryan pushed the door open, and the cold night wind of the Carpathian Mountains rushed in. He looked at the ancient castle looming in and out of the dense fog, and the corner of his mouth lifted in an excited curve.
"Let's go. Let me see just what kind of tricks the ghouls and demons in this village have got."
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