| Bad News

Ava heard the werewolves baying and snarling up ahead of her grow fainter. Her father was leading the other wolves away.

Suddenly she could hear something else: the droning note of a car engine, and the rattling of a chassis as it bumped and scraped over uneven ground. Ava's heart leaped. But whipped up into such a frenzy, would the 'wolves retreat – or simply attack anyone who dared come near?

She got her to answer a few seconds later in the form of an animal wailing close by. It was her mother, crying out in impotent rage. The strange acoustics beneath the bridge took the sound and twisted it, made it echo and re-echo unbearably – but while it half-deafened Ava, the effect it had on the wolves was more profound. She saw their shadowy forms shift quickly past the bridge, answering the keening call, and heard heavy footfalls and scuffling all around. They were being summoned away, back into the cold shadows that harbored them.