Fer went from seeming to be in pain to grinning, and then growling as it crouched down onto all fours, hairs sprouting from its smooth skin, face deforming from human to bear-like. Its mouth foamed, and in its eyes Vince saw the same madness he’d witnessed in the infected Kin. They went from dark to a soft burning yellow as the fires of infection were stoked deep within. It shivered and shook, muscles squirming beneath its skin as they shifted from form to form. More hairs sprouted through its skin, and then dropped out. A thick scale-like growth smoothed across its neck and fell away again. Its limbs lengthened and grew thick, then shortened again, strong and sleek.

As Fer lowered its head and took a couple of shambling steps forward, Vince knew what it was asking of him.

He pressed the point of his spear to the back of the Kin’s neck, ready to jam it through into its spine. His heart hammered in his ears, matching the creature’s heartbeat. He tensed. Blinked. He wasn’t sure he could—

The spear jarred down, piercing the shapeshifter’s hide and protruding from its throat. It gurgled and twisted, started thrashing, and then blood gushed from the wound where the makeshift weapon had struck an artery.

Shocked, hands still gripping the wood, Vince looked around.

Angela stood behind him with both hands folded and pressed flat against the spear’s upper end. She was close enough for him to smell her breath, warm and fast. The smell, the feel, gave him a sudden and jarring flashback to lying in bed one Sunday morning in their maisonette in London, both just woken from their own dreams and looking forward to the day before them, not talking and not needing to.

“We can’t hesitate,” she said, and he blinked to bring himself back to the terrible present.

“I know.”

“Not with them. Not with the Kovo. It stays in the valley and we put it down. If we don’t, Mallian and his cronies will mean nothing. If this infection gets out...”

“What about us?” he asked. Fer was dead now, still impaled on the end of his spear. Its blood had splashed his hand. He wiped it on his jeans, knowing how ineffectual the gesture was.

“Fer had that poor thing’s blood in its mouth.” She nodded at the dead werewolf, a shrivelled and skeletal thing. “Her saliva was in its wounds. And... I think that’s something we worry about if and when the time comes. Don’t you?”

Vince nodded, but the truth was already out there. Last time the powers that be needed to cover up the infection they had released, they gassed the whole valley and then flooded it to keep it hidden away. What they would do this time was anyone’s guess.

And the army was on its way.

“Mallian,” Sammi said. “He’s close, and coming closer.”