“Come on, little brother,” I panted, my arms straining around a stone table. “Heave!”

I had led my siblings to Butcher Boys territory. The area was relatively unmolested by scavengers, given the local’s propensity for taxing adults half their teeth for the privilege of passing through. Uninhabited houses filled the area, already stripped of all of their valuables, however abandoned furniture wasn’t particularly pricey given the city was full of them.

The opportunity saw us looting any decent tables or chairs and piling them up on a makeshift cart my sister had put together. It would take two or three trips to gather enough to refurbish our battered home, but eventually, it would be done. Hopefully before Ma got back and realised my delinquent behaviour had trailed me home.

Of course, all that required us to actually be able to remove the best pieces from each house. My brother and I were trying to lift one out. It wasn’t working.

“I do not believe the table will fit through the door, Orvi.” Sash spoke from behind, carrying a much smaller chair.

I was rapidly coming to the same conclusion, however my pride wouldn’t let us give up so easily. “What if we… widen the doorway somehow?” I suggested.

Dash’s legs were buckling. “Let’s put it down, please?” I nodded, and together, we gently placed it on its side. He leaned over, panting. Almost immediately the weighty table lilted, then began falling. I yanked my brother out of the way as it fell where he stood moments ago. The floorboards collapsed beneath it, and it slumped down to the foundation of the house, a few inches below.

The twins became even paler than usual. I opened my mouth to speak. “It’s a shame, but maybe we leave it for now.” The two of them bobbed their heads so rapidly they nearly lost balance. Our failure was infuriating – it was a really nice-looking table, with little carvings and splashes of faded paint as ornamentation. However, it would almost certainly break the scrap cart Sash had built.

We exited the building and stood in the street, looking over our pile of purloined objects. Despite sprawling across the avenue, at its highest point the mound still came very close to being taller than Dash. I had also thrown a few lovely looking dressers and cutlery sets into the mix. Surely the restaurant could use more of those, right?

“I think we have enough, Orv.” Exclaimed my brother, who had been staring at the small hill of unassorted furniture.

I tutted. “You’re thinking too small, oh brother of mine. There’s an entire-“

Sash interrupted me, shaking her head. “No, we have gathered enough. It is about time to pick a few and take them home.”

That was bad. It was rare for me to have two additional people to help me hoard things; I couldn’t let them go without a fight.

“Now hold on a second, you two.” I protested, scouring the dark corners of my brain for anything to use. “What if more things break? Shouldn’t there be some sort of back up? There are plenty-“

“Orv.” Dash was looking somewhere behind me.

Losing a target’s focus was a death knell for any swindler. “Come on, help me help Ma.” I sighed, and brought out my most lethal of weapons. “I carried you two across a-“

“Orvi.” Sash whispered fiercely, having joined her brother in ignoring me.

I sniffed. “I didn’t want to have-“

The twins grabbed my arms and spun me around. I struggled gently, only to realise what my siblings had been trying to tell me.

At first, I thought the silhouette was human. It was bipedal, had four limbs and a head – what else stood like that? Yet the grey light revealed something far stranger: a malformed creature dressed in the tattered remnants of human clothes, hairless face bulging with a wolfish snout, its feet flat and long like the back legs of a dog. One arm was lean and long, tipped with yellowed nails, while its left was far smaller. The flesh was distended, rippling, like it was filled with maggots, surging towards its wrist. The hand at the end was tiny, resembling a child's.

I gently pushed my two siblings behind me, and we began slowly creeping backwards. The monster sniffed the air, its disconcertingly human nostrils flaring. My thoughts raced. It tilted its head down, staring directly at us. Its ashen body was completely still. Beneath a tattered shirt, its sunken ribs barely moved. I had seen enough feral dogs to know what was going to happen next.

“Sash,” I whispered, “you need to find Ma, bring her to the old storehouse nearby.” Sash began to protest, but I shut her off. “We need her help, and you’re the fastest.”

Without turning, I addressed my brother. “Dash. Do you know where my stash is?” There was no reply. My eyes flicked over to him, seeing the boy entranced by the monster. Slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves, I pushed the side of his head. He startled slightly, then turned to me. I repeated the question.

“It’s… near the garden… I think.” His teeth were chattering.

“There’s a small hole in the rubble nearby. A sword and two bottles filled with red liquid are on the other side. They’re potions. I need you to bring the sword to me. If you or Sash or anyone else gets hurt, make sure they drink those potions.

“I’m going to lead it to the storehouse,” I continued, pointing at the three storey building a few hundred meters away. “Trap it inside, hopefully. Do you two understand?”

They nodded, Sash’s eyes blazing while Dash’s lips quivered.

“Alright. When it comes after me, you run.”

I pushed them backwards, and began approaching the creature. I opened my arms wide, keeping my palms open, squatting slightly. It stayed almost perfectly still.

“Easy,” I crooned, “easy there, pal.” The black eyes of the beast were inscrutable, twin pits of endless darkness buried in its skull. “No need to fight, no need to fight.” In my mind, I only knew one thing for sure about the thing: its gaze was focused solely on me. The twins had been all but forgotten.

Closer, I crept. “Let’s not have a bad time, yeah?” Fifteen meters. “There’re no problems, no problems.” Ten. “Leave my family alone, please.” At eight, it struck.

Suddenly it was moving, galloping on three limbs, its small arm tucked limply against its chest. Despite its impairment, the creature crossed the distance between me and it like a stone from a sling. I kicked a stray chair towards it and ducked into a house, slamming the flimsy door shut behind me. The sound of splintering wood echoed from outside, quickly followed by a clawed hand punching its way through the door. I moved through the small building, scooping up a stool and diving through an empty window ahead of me.

The monster panted, moments behind me. Its deformed snout poked through the window, breath stinking of blood and too-fresh meat, and I smashed the stool against it, immediately turning to continue fleeing. A shockingly human howl shattered the silence of the area, and I began yelling, telling the world that something horrible had been let loose.

Still gripping a flimsy fragment of wood, I sprinted away, air coming out of my throat heavy as lead, more from fear than exertion. The street was wide and empty, the nearest door nearly a dozen paces away. I could hear the strange, stuttering gait of the beast’s three limbs hitting the ground, coming closer and closer. For a brief moment, it slowed, then the sound stopped. I dove to the side as the monster came crashing past me and into a wall. My feet pounded packed soil, and I crashed into another building.

We had visited this one what felt like hours before. Distantly, I remembered a bookcase, metal inlays torn from their casings. Even still, it was a handsome piece of furniture, just too heavy to carry home. Now, I heaved it in front of the entrance, intending to block the beast’s progress, only to accidentally squash the monster beneath instead. I backed away. The creature flailed, screeching at me. I searched for another way out, but the house had no windows. The only path out was guarded by a rabid thing.

Its struggles halted. Pops began resounding from beneath the heavy furniture, its joints and limbs beginning to flop in unnatural ways. I blanched as it slowly began to slither out, and placed a nearby chair on the top of its head. Its vision blocked, I leapt on top of the rich wood of the bookcase, only for claws to slash at my calf in a boneless motion. I staggered, slightly off balance, however the wound was superficial. As I ran down the street, an awful realisation struck me like a pile of bricks.

Its nails had grown longer. It was still growing.

For a whole minute, my journey through the streets remained unmolested. Mud and sandstone brick flashed by. Adrenaline rattled through my body. The world was suddenly completely clear, outlined in shining precision, while my limbs pumped with seemingly endless energy. Yet my mind was unclear, muddled, and my thoughts moved like snails on a knife’s edge.

Maybe that was why I didn’t hear my hunter approaching. Abruptly I was rolling across the ground, a human wrapped up in the inhuman. Lines of pain coursed down my back and I felt blood dripping down the back of my shirt; in an almost random movement, I twisted my neck to get a better look at my assailant, only for a mouth full of teeth to snap past my larynx. My throat had nearly been torn out.

I plunged my shard of wood into the monster’s eye, and it reeled backwards, screaming. I screamed too; the fear temporarily dispelled any rational thought. Instinct controlled my limbs as I scrambled backwards, scuttling like some primordial crustacean. It took a moment to find my feet, and then I was picking up speed and crashing into a nearby building.

The front door was more hole than wood, so I searched nearby for some way to slow the creature’s advance. There didn’t seem to be anything, just rusted bits of junk and assorted tools; not that the two seconds I spent parsing it was enough for a decent look. I spent far too many moments trying to decide whether to grab a chisel or a hammer – I ended up grabbing both, then rushing out the back exit.

Howls echoed through the streets madly; I couldn’t tell whether the beast was right behind me or dozens of yards away. Still, the immediacy of the danger was less ‘about to disembowel’ and more ‘going to disembowel’ – a marginal difference, all things considered, but I felt fractionally more myself for it. The human psyche works in mysterious ways.

The shock of nearly dying having temporarily left me, I began crafting theories as to what my dogged hunter was. Undoubtedly, it was a monster, the raw physicality of its abilities making Fox or Oxkin seem the most likely. Dirk’s stories featured them prominently: both were common as far as monsters went, given the Ox’s propensity for gaining wounds and the Fox’s tendency to give blood away. I had no idea where it had come from. My best guess was that one had wandered into the city from the desert, however this particular beast was growing rapidly: a sure sign its blood had been acquired recently.

The thought was bizarre though; the Foot had two or three resident Blooded at most. And I couldn’t imagine that those who survived the Raven would fall on some random day, eight years later. A murky idea began to coalesce, however it evaporated as soon as I realised the monster was loping across rooftops behind me.

If it was a Foxkin, which I thought likely, then when it matured into its blood it would be able to kill me faster than I could blink. In that regard, its stunted hand was a handicap in my favour. Unfortunately, my role was to buy time, and the more time I bought the more powerful my foe would grow. And there was no way of knowing if or when its arm would mend. At moments like these, I wished I had done the homework Stitch set for me; I vaguely recalled Blooded biology being amongst her lessons.

The storehouse was only a few alleyways away, but moving through them would leave me with no space to dodge. Intending to cut through another building, I dived through another empty window, and began moving towards the door opposite. Some strand of errant intuition stopped me. Something felt wrong.

My mind caught up to my gut. The skittering of the creature’s nails on the sandstone roofs had stopped, directly above me. It was waiting to ambush me. I moved away from any entrances slowly, trying not to make a sound.

I was in a house much like all the others around here. Like most, it was only a single room arranged around a fire pit, filled with moth-eaten tapestries and unpleasantly rotted furniture. Luckily, it wasn’t one of the ones I had looted earlier; there was a table big enough to prop against the window I had come through. Moving slowly, I carried it across the room and placed it sideways, blocking that entrance. A few stacked cupboards handled the door – or at least, would trip up the monster chasing me. There was one more window, which I handled with a stinking straw mattress. Maybe the smell would chase it away.

I crouched in a corner, as far away from my shoddy barricades as I could get. I strained my ears, listening for any signs of movement, but there was nothing. My heavy breathing remained my only company. We waited like that for a time.

The tension was unbearable. Had an hour passed? A minute? Had the creature left? I had no way of knowing. The stand-off seemed to be in my favour: the longer I stalled for, the more likely it was that Sash would bring Ma. Yet terrible premonitions flashed through my vision. Dash coming back, carrying my sword and potions, sliced open like a cleaver through meat, his only mistake to trust that I would be where I said I would. Sash and Ma approaching the storehouse, focused on its doorway, dead before they knew what killed them.

The monster’s sharpening claws and grotesque form would feature in my nightmares for years, if I survived. Its teeth snapping past my throat replayed through my head, over and over. Only once had I ever been more terrified. Yet I had to do something.

I was scared of the monster, but I was more scared of my family dying because of me.

A way out. I needed a way out. One that wouldn’t get me eviscerated. And then I needed to get to the storehouse. Without being eviscerated. And then trap the creature in the storehouse. Without being eviscerated.

Stitch always told Sash that breaking problems into steps can help make them seem more manageable. It didn’t seem to be working.

I whacked my head like I was trying to get jam out of a jar. The process didn’t make my brain work any better, however it did convince me that I was getting nowhere squatting in an abandoned house. It wasn’t like me to sit and agonise over things. That was for other people to do. Like Dash, after we vandalised the Bushwhack. Or Blake, after we robbed someone. The line of thought was familiar. I felt like myself.

Still holding the hammer and chisel, I inspected the floor, trying hard not to think about what sat above me. Wood lay beneath me, boards nailed haphazardly across one another. Mouldy, like the rest of the house. I recalled the table crunching through similar floorboards earlier, opening a passage down, beneath the building. In my hand were the right tools to do something similar, just more quietly. I thanked the stars that the floor wasn’t just dirt.

It took a long time to wiggle the floorboards up. Progress was slow and halting, the occasional scratching of nails from above causing me to freeze. I was dead if the monster came in. Every scrape of my rusty chisel or tapping of the hammer was excruciating. Yet my fears weren’t realised; the monster never came in. Maybe the splinter through its eyes had struck a bit of mortal terror into it. Maybe it had already mapped my every move. Regardless of the reasons, I managed to open up a gap large enough to squeeze through.

The boards scraped my stomach as I slid down. I was forced flat on the ground, the crawlspace too small to kneel or crouch in. Slivers of light cut through mud bricks blocking my route out. I shuffled forward, and even more cautiously than before, began unstacking the bricks. Fortunately, they weren’t glued together with mortar, so moving them was a soundless affair.

An opening was made. I stared through it, into the pale light of the afternoon. My destination was close. One more building, a bit of quick thinking, and then I was done. The temptation to sit and map out a route was seductive, however I knew any plans I made beyond the next few seconds were useless. I wasn’t the Spider, and even if I was I was too far out of my web for any amount of brainpower to matter. Licking my lips, I crawled out.

My bare feet crept across the earth. Ma had always told me that rapid movements draw the eye, so despite the urge to break into a sprint, I leaned into the shadow of a nearby building, shuffling along it towards an alley ahead. Slowly, slowly, I sidled along. A glance back saw the beast on top of my previous residence, staring intently at its feet. Its claws had elongated by several inches and its teeth gleamed cheerfully. The tiny hand seemed even smaller.

In a strange inversion of childhood fears the darkness of the alleyway was comforting. I had reached it unseen, exonerating a lifetime of petty crime in the dead of night; at least thieving had taught to move unnoticed. As soon as I was out of its line of sight I was running, silently padding across the ground. I reached the front of the storehouse, undid the exterior bolt and yanked open one of its large double doors. It was bizarre to think I had fallen off of its roof in an effort to save some kid just two weeks before. I was struck by the vain hope that Blake was around and whispered into the black interior, but there was no response.

A creak resounded through the street as the door complained at its mistreatment, and I hurriedly went inside, merging back into the shadows. My eyes adjusted a tad too slowly, causing me to smack into nearly every crate, plank, and pile of stone on my way to the back. A silhouette passed across the crack of light coming from the entrance, and suddenly I knew the monster was in here with me.

Once again, I felt trapped. Survival seemed distant, like the sky from inside a well. I didn’t know where it was, and even if its eyes weren’t good enough to see me creeping across the street I was certain its ears or nose would be able to track me in the darkness. Yet I was completely blind. Any movement risked exposing me.

I was reminded of another hole, in another place, a long time ago. I lied and tricked my way out of that one. I could do the same here.

I threw my hammer across the room, and began feeling my way across the room. There was a dull thump as the tool hit the dirt floor, then the rattle of objects being knocked over. Sniffs echoed, quiet as death. I was halfway to the exit.

I threw the chisel to the corner behind me. A hiss sounded as something moved very quickly, followed by the shattering of a dozen or so bottles. I ran blindly, holding my breath, reciting every distantly remembered prayer I knew, hoping that there would be no trips or fumbles, that my legs would move true.

They did, and moments later I was back in the light. I shouldered the door closed and slammed its bolt shut. I walked forward limply and fell to my knees, spent of all energy. My breathing was thick and ragged.

“Sash!” I yelled, victorious. “Dash! I’ve done it!”

There was an answering bellow, faint and indecipherable. Even so, I knew the twins had found Ma. I blinked away the tears forming at the edges of my eyes. If anyone asked, I had got dust in them. I was going to brag about this for years. This was almost an ‘I dragged you across-

Wood splintered behind me and I wheeled. It had punched through the heavy door, its previously stunted hand now fully grown. The beast groped at the bolt, but my focus was on a torn bracelet that had been sent flying outward, the force of the impact flinging it off the creature's wrist. It landed at my feet. I stared. At home, a nearly identical accessory was tied to my new backpack.

Strung on a cheap piece of thread was a broken wing.

I looked up as what used to be Bab opened the door and stabbed its arm through my stomach.