Ryan was dazed when he pulled himself up, his right wrist bent in agony. Skullhead stood before him, bathing him in the acrid heat of his shadow. Ryan made to run and the beast snared him by the head with one immense hand, the fingers of which covered his face. Skullhead drew the spindly, rawboned fingers back, taking Ryan's scalp with them.
Ryan fell to his knees, his scalp hanging by a thread of meat, great furrows dug in his skull. Blood washed down into his eyes and he pushed it angrily away with shaking fingers. He knew he was going to die. There was no question of this; it was only a matter of when. His stomach convulsed at the commingled hot grave odor of the beast and his own rich, flowing blood. He tried to stand, bile squirting into his mouth, and the beast pulled him forward, so he could stare into the merciless face of death one more time.
Skullhead knew it had to be this way. Kill, but take time to savor the fear, to sip it like wine.
Skullhead's face was huge in the grainy moonlight, the color of fresh cream, a tapestry of abraided flesh pitted with sores. And the eyes…crimson, slitted orbs sunk in bony, angular depressions.
Ryan studied this nightmare in detail. It gave him something other to think about than pain or death. He viewed the face like a map. Here were craters, there valleys, and there occasional matted growths of fur that grew in and out of the skin. The snout was pressed in, only vaguely vulpine, the nostrils flattened and wet, the teeth hooked like sickles.
Skullhead growled with a blast of hot, fetid breath and pulled Ryan's arms free with wet, rending snaps. He dropped the limbs and studied the horror on the man's face. It wasn't enough. He buried his claws in Ryan's groin and slit him up to the throat, marveling at the bounty of glistening jewels that bulged out. Ryan slumped and Skullhead caught him. He chewed his face free from the muscled housing of his skull and broke the dying man on the rocks, slamming him against them with titan force until Ryan came apart like a drenched and running rag doll.
Then and only then, did he dine.