Erik felt naked. His borrowed shirt and trousers were too thin for the wind and the snow and the night air. The armored warriors and fishermen looked like iron gods beside him, heavy and solid, and most of all, warm. Erik was freezing. Even with his blood roaring and muscles burning, he was freezing.
Somewhere down below on the dark pebbled beach was his spear.
Gone. Useless.
The knife in his hand felt tiny and just as useless as he stared into the huge stinking maw of the beast below him. It was impossibly big. Twice as tall as a tall man, at least. And probably four times as heavy.
Is this what I turned into?
Did Wren see me like this?
Did Freya?
The monster pulled its arm back, yanking Freya’s foot out from under her. Erik darted forward, but she kicked free before he could take a second step, and she started to get back up. He held his knife at the ready, though every instinct in him was screaming to rip the harpoon away from the man next to him so he could do more than wait for something to stab with his little blade.
Freya stood up, her back to the beach.
The huge reaver shot its claws forward, not swinging them down onto the wall as before, but driving them straight on as a hunter drives a spear into a boar.
Freya!
He felt his lips and jaw moving, instinctively forming her name, screaming at her to run, to jump, to get down, and his free hand was waving, fingers signing as fast as he ever had signed in his life. But he made no screams and no one heard him. He beckoned madly with his hands, but she was looking at the old fisherman on her other side, and not at him.
The claws rushed forward.
Erik dashed across the wall, grabbed his wife with both hands, and spun her off toward the surprised fisherman.
The claws slammed into Erik’s back, four curving blades thrusting into his flesh, cracking his ribs, and snapping his spine. He felt his insides moving downward as his skin stretched and split. His arms snapped out to his sides all on their own, as though they hoped to reach back and take the claws out of his body, but just couldn’t reach. His legs kicked wildly, also beyond his control. The pain was everywhere, shrieking up and down his spine, and his jaw locked open as his neck strained to hold his head up.
He couldn’t think.
He couldn’t even feel.
He was the pain and the pain was him, and he stared up at the dark sky, at the thick clouds obscuring half the stars, at the tiny flakes of snow tumbling down toward him, and he didn’t understand what he saw.
As his head fell forward, he saw Freya. Her beautiful face, framed in white-golden hair and crowned with fox ears, her beautiful face turned toward him, her beautiful face red and white with rage and shock and sorrow. Her mouth was opening, her lips moving slowly.
Dimly, he knew she was screaming, but he couldn’t hear her.
He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t move his hands, and he couldn’t think of anything to say, and he couldn’t feel his…