Her heart stopped for a second, before beginning to race. She’d stayed still far too long, gazing into the far distance and making plans, when she should have been walking. Now she might have to run. Something she could do, but not for very long. Enough to outrun a store detective or the drugged-up wildlife she grew up around. Not wolves, though. Not them.

Mary stretched her calves, rising up on her toes, like she might have known what she was doing, and started down the ridge to go back among the trees.

She lost sight of all her landmarks, and felt only the pressure on her back, pushing her on. She ran a little, walked a lot, and tried to keep a good pace overall. In keeping with the pattern of when the wolfman put in his first appearance, the gaps between howls were almost unbearably long.

He had wolves, so she guessed he was going to find her. That part was out of her control. What she was determined to do was find someone to protect her from him before then. As she kept on, it grew darker, and the tree trunks began to merge with the gaps between them.

The moon hadn’t yet risen, though the threat of it was in the sky ahead, the highest clouds rimed in white. When it did, she’d be able to see again, but for now, her advance slowed to a crawl, banging between trees like the steel ball in that old pinball machine they’d had in the games room of the first home she’d been in.

The wolves called again. They sounded closer. No, they sounded close. She didn’t know how that worked. Did they pick up scents like dogs, follow them with their noses to the ground, and drag their handlers behind them, like she’d seen in all those cop films? If so, she’d done the right thing in crossing the river to break her trail. Could she do that again?

But there were no more big rivers, just little ones, so she made as much use of those as she could, jumping in their shallow courses and splashing upstream for what she knew might not be long enough before she leapt out and resumed her course.

The moon finally rose, huge and pale and three-quarters full, turning the black forest into a silver miracle. She could see again, and it was enough. She was more tired than she’d ever been, but she knew there was no time to rest. Keep moving. Don’t stop.

The stupid thing was, the old her would have given up by now, sat sullenly against a tree and waited for capture. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? The wolfman had her number, and he was going to track her down with a tenacity beyond that of the most vindictive Met officer.