And so she waited.

The pack snarled and skinned their lips back from long yellow fangs. She fancied she could smell the foul odour of their breath, and even in the darkness there was light enough from the moon and stars that their eyes shone like silver dollars laid on the orbs of a dead man. She knew the attack was moments away when two of the animals moved, attempting to flank her on both sides. Ears pinned back, they lowered themselves onto their haunches, where massive knots of muscle and meat quivered and twitched with anticipation of the kill. The sound of their growling slowed, like a powerful engine winding down.

Sophia took a long, deep breath.

The pack leader lunged forward ripping out a fusillade of barks, snapping its jaw like a threshing machine, as its pack-mates launched themselves in from the side. They came flying at the girl as though hurled from catapults. But she had already moved, leaping towards the dog to her left as she swung the machete in a vicious blur of sharpened steel that connected with the animal just below its ear. The sickening crunch of blade on bone and gristle was simultaneous with the horrified, outraged howl of the beast and the crack of the pack leader’s skull as it impacted the brick wall where she’d been standing. A fraction of a second later, and she heard the dull thud of the third animal colliding with the top dog as she used the momentum of her first strike to draw the blade down and out while she pivoted around for an upward stroke that sliced off the snout of the nearest dog, halfway along its jawline.

The attack collapsed in a hideous discord of animal shrieks and yelps. She was drenched in hot blood and urine; the dogs’ and her own. But the threat had dissolved in a heartbeat as those that could flee did so. The beast she had all but decapitated spasmed at her feet. She brought one booted foot down on its head in a hammer kick, telling herself she was putting the mutt out of its misery as her father had always taught her. But knowing that, in a darker place, she was punishing the thing for having attacked her, taking vengeance out on a dangerous but defeated enemy.

And then it really was over.

The protests of the vanquished pack drifted further away until she could hear them no more. Adrenaline backwashed through her nervous system, bringing with it nausea and tremors. She had to lean up against the wall and take a minute to breathe deeply and slowly. For the first time since Sofia had realised she was being hunted, she heard the twittering song of night-birds again. She listened hard for any sound of footfall or human voices. But heard nothing. The short, savage caterwauling din of a dogfight was not unusual in Temple, as she had learned.

Time to move.