She made the mistake of looking back.

Izzy and Elizaveta had turned. The Earth stunk of blood, it matted in their lovely coats. But they were war machines, the Sentinels. The strongest at his disposal. Tisper understood that now.

They'd come from nowhere, a few at first and then dozens. Wolves—so many wolves that she couldn't tell just which ones were fighting on her side. She didn't know if they were real or were—but she supposed the answer was in the painful, demoniac sounds in the distance. They weren't to harm real wolves. But these ones...she feared what they'd look like after Elizaveta was through.

She glanced over her shoulder as she ran, just in time to see two silver coats flank one of the blustering beasts. They took him down with their jaws, Elizaveta and Izzy. They'd done it so many times already, twisting away from harm, bouncing on their haunches and launching themselves into the neck of another wolf. Their jaws dripped with blood and the fur from manes that didn't belong to them, trapped between the crevices of their stained teeth. Tisper turned away just in time to hurdle over a pit before the mud sucked her in.

"Come on, Tis" Matt shouted back to her, ducking beneath trees, launching himself over toppled trunks and jagged stone. "You have to keep up." He'd lost his hat somewhere in the brush. His favorite hat.

Tisper clutched the strap of her quiver, her lungs burning, heart punching a hole through her chest. They were following Quentin, but Christ, he was fast. Fast and accurate, shoving branches from his way, tearing through bushes and bark and thorns. And then all at once, he stopped.

Tisper nearly rammed into the broad wall of his back, had it not been for the roots she stumbled over first, catching herself on the soft forest floor.

"What are you doing?" she worked out, barely cutting the words between hard breath. "Why did we stop?"

Quentin didn't say anything. He just stared ahead. And then Tisper saw the shapes beyond the incline of trees. Some of wolf, some of men.

"There's more," Matthew heaved. "Are you serious?"

Quentin didn't waver. "Get back. Hide."

Tisper knew it wouldn't do any good. They'd smell them, they'd seek them out. They'd find them and tear them to shreds. But she hung back anyways for fear of the eyes lurking in the trees across the knoll.

"Hide?" One of the figures approaching tittered into the night. "Really, Quentin. I know you're not much of a fighter, but hide?"

Quentin glowered, his breath running deep, delivering a voice much too rough on the ears. "Let us through, Kera."

The woman he was speaking to—this Kera woman. She wore an army on her back, wolves breathing hard at her feet, men and women clustered in close; crowded in the cracks of the trees. She was an alpha. She had to be.

"You're adorable, Quentin." Kera ran two hands through her long red locks, binding them back on her crown. She smiled, a certain kind of smile Tisper had seen before. The crooked, thorny kind of grin that only ever seemed to cross evil villains on television shows. "But you know as well as I do that Ziya rewards her wolves with riches beyond your dreams. And it just so happens, I have a job to do."

Instinctively, Tisper reached into her quiver.

Then the wolves and men surged, barreling down the incline towards them.

She pulled back and released so quickly, she'd hardly felt the arrow leave her fingers. One of the wolves toppled over with a yelp and burst into the powdery red vapor. The body of a human laid there now, a small pile of woman bloodying the ground. But Tisper was already reloading, sending another arrow into the air. Again, it pierced the hip of a wolf, sent the beast rolling, spurting into blood and then man.

Something rushed by, and when Tisper looked beside her, Matthew was pinned, a beast pressing down on him, fat paws and sharp claws digging down into his chest. He'd blocked it by the throat with his forearm, the wolf snarling and snapping at his face with insidious yellow teeth. Tisper reached for her arrows, slotted them into place and pulled to reload—then something hit her. The arrow fell from her hands, and she was trapped between the metal of her bow and the jaws of a wolf.

He was heavy—so heavy, she could feel the metal of her weapon digging into her ribs, taking the air from her. She felt the ground, searched the leaves in a panic. And when she found her arrow buried beneath, she gripped on tight and swung up, jamming it into the neck of the wolf. The beast fell to its side, and before it could burst into blood like the others, she rolled over to Matthew who was trying to shrug his own beast from the blade of his hunting knife. The wolf collapsed to the ground beside him and Matt yanked the blade from its belly.

The both of them launched up at the sound of a shout.

Quentin was fending off three wolves at once—one latched onto his right arm, one jaw-deep in his shoulder. The other stalking closer, eager to pounce. And with his free arm, Quentin wretched the beast from his back by the fur of its neck. The other, he caught by the snout, fingers curling into its mouth, cranking it back by the jaw until its teeth unhooked from his flesh. It too, he tossed to the ground where the wolf spilled onto its side with a whimper, and flopped back onto its feet, trotting in retreat to its alpha.

Only one unwounded wolf remained, lips curled and gnarling, stalking ears pinned back on his head. Quentin was watching him, eyes fixed on the wolf, observing, waiting. And then it charged. Quentin blocked its bite with his forearm, letting the wolf sink into his flesh. He slammed the beast to the ground by its own grip and held it down by the side of its skull. It was after the wolf had settled and its snarling turned to frightened little whimpers, that Tisper noticed the men who laid scattered about.

In the time that she had Matthew had been dealing with one wolf of their own, Quentin had taken down half of the pack with his bare hands. But it wasn't without loss. His arms were ravaged, blood pouring from bite wounds, rugged tears in his flesh, the left thigh of his jeans painted red as he shoved himself to his feet—the vanquished wolf escaping to the tree line.

"Is this really your goal?" he shouted to Kera, his voice more wounded than he was. "Killing your own kind like this? Putting your own wolves in danger?"

"Some of us need to make a living." She watched him with terrible disgust in her eyes. "Don't flatter yourself, Bronx. You didn't kill anyone."

"Not yet." Blood dripped from his fingertips as he closed in. Her loyal company, frightened by what they'd seen, began to slip back into the shadows.

"What are you doing?" she shouted to her dutiful wolves, who backed away into the brush. "Where the hell do you think you're all going? You'll stay and you'll fight!"

"Why would they listen to you, Kera?" Quentin sounded almost calm—treading up the incline toward her. "You're no alpha. Look at them. They know you're about as good a fighter as you are a leader. You were never fit to be alpha—the opportunity fell into your lap and you took it, but that doesn't make you powerful. That doesn't make you anything."

"And what'll you do?" she dared. "Kill me yourself? Please, you don't have the stomach for it. You're a bleeding heart, Quentin." And as he neared closer, Kera reached behind her. Tisper felt a cold trill up her spine as the object she revealed met the light of the moon—glittered with flashes of orange iridescence.

She reached for her quiver, her hands finding nothing. That's right. It'd fallen off from the impact of the wolf, she remembered feeling the loss. She didn't have time to find it now. She didn't have time.

As Quentin stepped closer, Kera brought that shiny metal up and aimed the barrel of her gun within an inch of Quentin's forehead.

"You've seen these, right?" she looked him down like a cat to a mouse. "They're new. Silver bullets, cored with bane, dipped with bane. Designed to explode on impact. No? Well, shit. I guess I'll just show you."

Tisper reached out blindly for Matthew, and as Kera curled her finger around the trigger, Matt yanked her in close, held her against her shoulder so she couldn't see. She waited for the sound to come—the loud finality of a point-blank bullet. But the silence lingered on and when she raised her head from Matt's shoulder, Kera was frozen still, distracted by something in the distance.

It was from the corner of her eye that Tisper caught a sheen of something dashing in the shadows. It moved lightning fast as it tore through brush, so fast it hardly shook the foliage around it. Like a blade, it cut through the forest, through the trees, through the air. And then it was only a flash of silver, pummeling into Kera so hard, so fast, she tumbled onto the forest floor, rolled until she met a tree, her back slamming against the trunk with such force that she screamed out from the pain of it. And the beast was on top of her, snarling, blowing her hair back with each outward huff of breath.

Then it opened its jaws, and this time, Tisper did hide in his shoulder. Hid until the gruesome sounds stopped. Until Matt quit tensing the way he did. Matt, who'd been skinning deer since he was eight years old. He was like a statue in her arms until the sound of the woman's cries went mum.

There was a dragging sound—something heavy towed along the forest floor. Everything fell silent, and Tisper parted from Matt, just in time to see the sole of a shoe as the woman's body was pulled off into the darkness of the forest. She watched it go, and when all sight of her was gone to the darkness, she watched the darkness instead.

Somewhere distant, the leaves crunched under heel, growing nearer and nearer, louder and louder. And the face that emerged from the shadows was sheened with blood. Her long tawny legs took sharp strides forward, hips snapping with each powerful step. Imani wiped a hand down her face, flicked the blood to the ground and licked the taste of it from her lips. "Pretty face. Does not taste as good as she looks."

Quentin fell on his backside to the comfort of the forest floor, wiping the sweat from his brow. It was a relief to see him grinning. "Never thought I'd be so happy to see you."

Imani hummed pleasantly. "Felix was not happy to be left behind. Begged to join me."

"Probably can't even turn like he is." Quentin lifted his arms, inspecting the deep wounds. As gruesome as the holes in his flesh looked, the bites had stopped bleeding already. "Thank you, Imani."

"Do yourself a favor next time," Imani said. "Fight as a wolf."

He picked himself off the ground, wiping the debris from his bloodied thigh. "I was trying to avoid fatalities."

"Well obviously, fatalities were not avoiding you."

In the distance, the gallop of sprinting, panting wolves wolves closed in. Quentin didn't react. He was digging through his backpack for the bottle of pills he'd given the man before, administering them around to wolves who'd taken the poison of her arrows. Healing his enemies. He really was a bleeding heart.

As the pack met them at the clearing, they slowed to little prances and trickled in one at a time. Two silver ones—the ones she thought to be Elizaveta and Izzy. They were nearly identical in every way, save for a slight variation in size and the shade of their coat—one more brown than gray. Then there was another, a rustic, golden-red color, like a fox. It was much larger than the others—moved slower, it's back leg limping with every step. By the size and the scars that left imperfect little patches in its coat, Tisper knew this was Leo. He must have had the strength to turn somewhere in the mayhem of it all.

The last one was larger than Izzy and Eliza, smaller than Leo. He was begrudgingly slow to enter the circle, but god was he magnificent. She'd never seen Bailey as wolf until now. He was so different from the others—his fur shorter, his face sharper, his ears larger. The base of him was a gentle gold, but traveling up the spine of his back, he was flecked in dark specks—concentrated at the center of his back and scattering down like he'd rolled in a vat of black ink. They moved up his neck like the stripes of a tigers, cut over his face in variant markings. Beautiful and breathless like the windowed wings of a butterfly. Patterns within the patterns.

He wasn't a normal wolf, and as much as Tisper wanted to inquire, she had more important matters at hand. She searched the ground until she found her quill a few feet away, her arrows scattered in the leaves. Only a few vials were left. The rest were only wooden.

She gathered them into her basket, watching as one of the silver wolves approached Quentin, nudging at his hand with her snout. He smiled and gave her a scratch behind the ears. "Yeah. I'm alright, Izzy. You did good."

"The supplies..." Matt was still shaking, she could hear it in his breath. "They're back at the clearing where they turned."

"It was mostly first aid." Quentin popped the last of the pills into the mouth of an unconscious man and rose to sling the backpack over his shoulder. "Hopefully we won't need it."

Izzy and Elizaveta had settled on their haunches by Imani's feet. Her bloody fingers dragged through their dense manes. "Where to, oh valiant leader?" she pured, so comfortably nude in the cold of night. "You do know where you're going, don't you?"

Quentin turned from her and hiked ahead, up the incline where Kera's army had retreated into the night. His wolves followed, bumping hips with one another as they swarmed rearward. "No, but I can feel him. We're close."

"Ah. You can feel him." Imani squelched a laugh. "Then either we are getting close, Quentin, or you're getting anxious."

Quentin looked over his shoulder at her, eyes hooked on the sharp edge of her smug smile. He didn't say anything, but turned from her again and entered the thicket in stride. The tree trunks were denser here, but the overhang wasn't so low. After a few steps, Quentin was swallowed up by the forest, nothing left of him but the bushy tails that swung as they followed suit.

In a burst of red, Imani was wolf again, racing up the incline to join the others. From behind, Tisper watched as he led his pack through the densest part of the forest so far, each blood-bathed wolf trotting behind with tails flicking and curious snouts sniffing at the leaves and dirt below. Bailey took the lead beside him, nose busy inspecting the breeze as it whisked by, raising the fur on every wolf in a single harmonized upheave.

Maybe it was because of his kind nature that Quentin didn't seem like much of an alpha. Maybe because he didn't want the position, maybe he didn't believe in it. But she saw it now, how he could lead a coalition. Not so much an apha and his wolves but a man and his pack.

For another mile, Quentin led them through the firs and the pine trees. Every sound she heard made Tisper jump, every owl and crow and critter hopping about in the bushes. Even a wolf on occasion surprised her with a nudge on the arm. They each followed in the shadow of Quentin, cast by the crimson moon—clustered in close, mesh to one another.

It was suddenly that Quentin stopped, froze there between trees for the longest time. And when Tisper and Matt squeezed their way between wolves, the first thing she saw was the sharp drop from the forest down to the white broken lines of a pavement road.

"Look to the horizon," Quentin said, and in the far distance, she could just make out the white of a building, clipping through the tree-tops.

Matt scuffled closer to the ledge. "That's it? That's where Jaylin is?"

"Has to be," Quentin said.

Matt heaved out a tired breath. Tisper could feel it too, the pain in her calves and the burn in her chest. Exhaustion was weighing on them.

"Okay," Matt said, "but how do we plan to get there? And what do we do once we make it? Not like we can just knock and ask to have him back."

A silence fell over Quentin and his eyes dragged slowly over the tree line. Then he looked to Matthew. "Can you drive a truck?" he asked.

"A pickup? Sure."

"No," Quentin said. "Not a pickup."

It was only then that Tisper heard an engine in the distance. As the sound grew closer, so did the bright of its headlights, glaring against black gravel asphalt. The truck came into view, maneuvering patiently around the corner, an emblem on its side of a single golden sun.

Quentin pushed off, raced down the incline. He was sliding in the dirt, gripping onto surfaced roots to keep from falling too fast. And as Tisper started to follow after him, Imani stepped in the way, sitting elegantly as her barricade. Tisper obeyed, staying put while she watched Quentin hit the pavement below.

"What is he doing?" she asked Matt.

Matt shook his head and watched with a slight twinge in his jaw.

Quentin came to a stop in the center of the road and he stood—just stood. And when the headlights came, they came fast. They washed him in white and Tisper felt her heart hit her chest like a hard punch. "Quentin!" she called after him, but she couldn't hear her own voice over the sound of screaming brakes. The truck horned out, bellowed in the quiet of night. And it rolled forward just a few more feet before it finally came to a stop before him. So closely, Quentin reached forward, slammed his hands down hard on the hood. And if the look on his face wasn't enough to frighten the driver inside, the wolves began to howl from their perch atop the bank. One by one, they lifted their snouts to the sky and sang, their songs lulled into the wind.

It was the loveliest thing Tisper had ever heard.

The voices of five beautiful monsters in the night.