THE KLEE SAW THE TRAPPED LOOKin the eyes of its quarry and was pleased. They belonged to it now, all of them. It would kill them one by one. It would take its time. But an instant later, a little girl appeared from out of the gloom. She rushed toward the others, a tiny figure pinned against the wall of the storm, red hair flying, arms waving, shouting something indecipherable. Her friends screamed at her to get back, to run away, but she kept coming. The Klee turned, its flat head swiveling, its huge body following, blocking the little girl’s way. She seemed to have no sense of what she was doing, charging into the fray with such wild determination that she might have thought herself invulnerable to harm. The Klee reached for her, but the fierce dog knocked the little girl down, and wheeled back to stand over her protectively. Then a second figure appeared, this one more substantial and measured in its approach. A rune-carved black staff levered downward, pointing at the Klee’s midsection, and the demon felt a chill run up its spine. White fire exploded from the black staff, fire so bright and pure that it was blinding. The force of the strike staggered the Klee, burning into it. A second strike followed close on the first, hammering into the low, flat head before enveloping it in fire.

This new attacker was someone the Klee knew. She had escaped it at the cottage home of the blind man. A mistake, it thought, leaving her alive. She was shouting at the other humans to run, keeping up her attack as she did so, advancing one slow step at a time.