A mewling sound accompanied it, like a strange breakbeat backing track.

Where the fuck did that deer come from?

She blinked. Tried to raise her head. Agony shot up from her shoulder and stars flooded her vision again. She wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. She doubted Mavis and her passenger would bother to help her or even call for an ambulance. They'd be more likely to watch her die in the road like a wild dog.

The Caddie's engine rumbled. Gravel crunched under its whitewall tires and the headlights swept across the pines and tall black spruces toward her.

She saw the buck's antlers in shadow, its body writhing. Her mangled bike.

They're gonna run me over, she thought.

The car rolled forward until it was only a few feet from her and stopped, catching her in the headlights. Mavis ran the engine, waiting. Nadine couldn't turn her head to see.

"You gonna just sit there?" she screamed over her bleeding shoulder, her throat raw. "Huh?"

A rumble came from the woods. Branches swishing and snapping. Something was out there.

Something big, moving toward her.

"What is that?" she cried over the suddenly deafening, thundering sound.

A moment later they burst forth from the trees—a stampede. Bucks, does and fawns trundled up from the ditch and onto the road, kicking up gravel.

Before Nadine could even attempt to drag herself out of their path they were trampling her, hoofs pressing hard into her flesh, breaking her bones, kicking her teeth in, smashing her jaw, her ribs, her spine.

Then they stopped and gathered around her in a tight semicircle. Panting. Black eyes unblinking. Her blood on their hoofs and flanks and throats. Leaving her in agony, ragged and bloody.

All she could think was that they'd come to defend their fallen brother. But why wouldn't they attack the Cadillac? Why would they circle so tightly around it, from headlight to headlight, as if the vehicle was one of them?

As though Mavis was their alpha?

The largest buck bowed its head. Its black eyes regarded her and it snorted, clear phlegm spurting from its nostrils, bright in the headlights. Then it dashed at her.

She threw up her one able arm to defend herself. The antlers impaled it, shredding through her jacket and her skin. They penetrated her sternum, her throat, her ribs and stomach.

The buck raised its head, lifting her roughly into the air. Every movement was excruciating, her bones made of shattered glass. She hung loose over the animal's head. She smelled its hide. Her blood dripped down the smooth, tawny hairs on its cheeks and neck, blinked away from its pretty, girlish eyelashes.

The buck took two sudden, jarring steps forward. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Nadine heard the rumble of the car beneath her. Felt the heat of the engine baking her skin.

She knew then what was happening. The herd hadn't come for revenge. They'd been summoned by some kind of sympathetic magic. The animal was presenting her ravaged body to them, a gift to the old bitch Mavis and the woman in the backseat, to Ruby Savage and the Midwives.