Gabriel shoved him toward the door, muttering, “Get inside. Need to get inside,” a note in his voice making the hairs on Ricky’s neck rise, as if he wasn’t hearing Gabriel, wasn’t hearing Gwynn, was hearing something older, something deeper.

Gabriel grabbed the doorknob, twisted, and yanked. When it didn’t give way, he wrenched, frantically, as if in panic.

“Here, let—” Ricky began.

Gabriel inhaled deeply, and came back with, “No, I have this,” sounding himself again as he pulled picks from his pocket.

That’s when Meic said, “No!” and Ricky turned and saw the sluagh—the true sluagh, the darkness—a black funnel cloud shooting for the hounds.

Meic shouted something in Welsh and Ricky started to run, seeing Lloergan out there, the sluagh heading straight for her, and thinking, I need to be there.

And then he was. He slammed inside his hound. There was not even a split second of darkness. Ricky was running for Lloergan and then he was Lloergan, racing behind the other cŵns, the earth pounding under her paws.

The sluagh struck. It hit the lead hound, and the poor beast somersaulted backward, and all he could hear—all Lloergan could hear—was the cracking of bone. The hound flew into the air, body limp and lifeless, and then blood, as if in afterthought, burst from the beast’s stomach, blood and viscera, as the sluagh slammed through the hound like a fist.

Lloergan saw it—saw her pack brother ripped apart, the sluagh bursting through—and she let out a stifled yelp, as if she couldn’t even find breath.

Another scene flashed through her mind. A forest. A cŵn being ripped apart by something Lloergan couldn’t see, a blur of black against a night equally dark.

In the memory, Lloergan leapt to save another pack brother, but she couldn’t find anything to grab, her jaws passing through shadow and fog. The thing hit her. Glanced across her face, barely seeming to strike it while leaving fire in its wake, red-hot pain in her eye, her ear, blood spraying as she howled in pain and rage.

She twisted, fighting half blind. The fog caught her by the leg, sending her up, flying through the air, the only thought in her head that she had to save the others, save her brothers and sister and protect her Huntsman.

She would hit the ground and bounce back. She had to bounce back, fight with everything—

She hit the ground, and the world went dark.

Lloergan snapped from the memory. Ricky knew what it was—the terrible fight that had crippled her. She’d woken in that forest to find her pack dead, and she’d slunk off in shame, to self-imposed exile, never understanding what had happened, what enemy they’d fought.

Now she knew. She saw her new pack brother ripped apart, and she understood.