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Wolves In A Storm

She ran.

Through trees bathed in moonlight, silver dapples streaking her skin like war paint.

The forest was beautiful at first, dreamlike.

However, the deeper she fled, the more it twisted into shadowed menace.

Bushes thickened, clawing at her, branches lunging at her.

Twigs snapped behind her.

Then came the guttural growls, pounding feet, and the stench of breath not human.

Panic surged. She sprinted harder.

Her dark hair snagged on jagged boughs, her clothes torn open by thorns and bark, blood beading where flesh was stripped raw.

No matter how far or fast she raced, the sounds never left her, snarls that reeked of hunger, hatred, and rage.

She burst from the undergrowth into a clearing veiled in silver shadow.

The hollow she exploded into was a grass and bush-covered glade.

She stumbled into its center, then pain shot through her leg as her ankle twisted beneath her.

She went down hard, breath knocked from her lungs, dirt filling her mouth.

Crawling and scrambling were all useless.

Her limbs shook, muscles burning with spent adrenaline.

The forest pulsed with menace as the strides behind her decelerated. Still hunting.

She slowed, unable to run anymore.

Her chest heaved. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. Still, she forced herself upright and turned to face them, if only to meet her end head-on.

She sat on the cold earth and lifted her chin, defiant.

A trio of spectral, phantasmic, glowing wolves emerged from the trees, fur flickering in erratic waves of tarnished silver and blood-matted black.

Their eyes were blazing scarlet, their mouths slack and dripping with suppuration, and their teeth too long and serrated to belong to anything born of nature.

They stalked in a tight ring around her, their growls vibrating the ground.

While she shuddered, her muscles locked, one sniffed her cheek. Another paced at her back.

The third sat on its haunches and howled.

The others responded with a sickening stillness. Their red eyes locked onto her. They crouched, ready to leap.

Without warning, a roar shattered the night.

A massive force slammed into the pack like a violet-gilded meteor.