Chapter 83 Understood.

Chapter 83: 83 Understood.

The portal opened at 12:07 AM, right on schedule.

It said something profoundly bizarre that monster dropping portals were the most stable thing in my life at this point.

I’d been standing in the field for about ten minutes, sword in hand, rolling my shoulders to work out the tension that always built before these nightly encounters.

Ayra bounced on the balls of her feet beside me with her war hammer resting across her shoulders like she was heading to a batting cage.

Elsa had taken her ideal position on a stump about thirty yards back, wrapped in a bathrobe and blankets I’d brought her and holding a thermos of hot chocolate.

Juniper had positioned herself between us and Elsa, arranging her coils in a compact spiral that allowed quick movement in any direction.

Clementine was on the back porch. She’d refused to come out.

When I asked when she might be willing to experiment with actually helping out, her exact words had been "Fuck you, fuckface." Given what I learned about that nickname recently, I wasn’t able to conjure up any indignation.

Besides, she was still more than justified in feeling overwhelmed by the situation.

She’d been here two days, and only after turning into a magical sexy humanoid pony supermodel.

Forcing Clementine into combat before she was ready would be stupid and cruel, and I’d learned enough about her by now to know that pushing her toward anything only made her dig her hooves in harder.

Hmm. Accidental racism with that last observation, maybe, but the point still stands.

The air in the field started doing that thing where it shimmered like heat off asphalt, and the purple glow intensified until it was bright enough to cast shadows across the grass. I tightened my grip on my sword and focused.

"Incoming, ladies," I said. No one replied in any way beyond taking more serious stances. Except for Elsa, who just sipped her cocoa more loudly to signify her acknowledgment.

The tear ripped open with a sound like fabric being shredded. Two shapes bolted through before the portal had fully stabilized, moving so fast they were just dark blurs against the purple light.

Not one creature tonight, but two. That was new.

They hit the ground running and immediately split apart, one breaking left and the other right, circling our position in opposite directions. I tracked the nearer one and got my first clear look as it passed through a patch of moonlight.

A wolf. Or what a wolf would look like if you asked someone to imagine a very evil wolf on steroids and PCP. It had jet-black fur that drank in light rather than reflecting it.

Its eyes were like hot coals, burning red in the dark, and it was bigger than any wolf I’d seen on nature documentaries. It was maybe the size of a Great Dane but longer, leaner, built entirely for speed. Wisps of shadow trailed from its body like smoke.

The second one matched the first. They moved in tandem, maintaining a fixed distance from each other as they circled us, locking on.

"Shadow Wolves!" Ayra called out, her tail going stiff and straight behind her. "Pack hunters! They coordinate!"

"Why are there two? Is this going to be a new thing?"

Juniper’s voice came back a bit shakier. "Not regularly, I imagine? It’s likely some manner of experiment, but it would take a great degree more power to do this every night."

These things weren’t mindless rushers like the trolls or lumbering tanks like the ground dragon.

They were circling with purpose, probing for gaps, and, most notably, testing our reaction times. Every time one feinted forward, the other adjusted its position to cover a different angle. I hadn’t seen anything fight like this since the girls arrived.

"Weaknesses?" I asked, keeping both wolves in my peripheral vision and hating that it was physically impossible to watch two fast-moving targets at once.

"Fire works well enough," Juniper supplied from behind me. "And they’re vulnerable when separated from each other. The pack bond amplifies their speed and coordination. Alone, they’re manageable."

"Then we separate them. Ayra, take the one on the left. I’ve got the right. Juniper, frost the field between them so they can’t regroup."

"Understood," Juniper said, and I heard the sharp intake of breath that preceded her frost attack.

After that there was about forty seconds of exhausting combat that felt more like forty minutes.

I charged the right-side wolf, angling to drive it further from its partner. The thing was fast. I mean stupidly, alarmingly fast.

It dodged my opening slash by dropping flat and sliding under the blade like it had no bones, then snapped at my trailing leg with jaws that I could feel heat radiating from.

I twisted away, brought my sword back in a reverse arc, and caught it across the shoulder. The blade connected but the cut was shallow. The shadow-stuff trailing off its fur seemed to cushion the impact.

Behind me, Juniper exhaled a plume of icy fog that spread across the ground between the two wolves, solidifying the grass into a brittle covering of frost. The cold barrier wouldn’t stop them from crossing, but it would slow any attempt to regroup.

Ayra engaged the left wolf with a whirlwind overhead swing that would have pulverized a troll’s skull. The Shadow Wolf was too quick, though. It sidestepped the hammer, lunged in, and raked its claws across her forearm before she could recover her stance.

"Ayra!" I shouted.

"I’m fine, Master! It’s shallow!" Blood was running down her arm, but she’d already repositioned and brought her hammer around in a sweeping lateral strike that forced the wolf backward. "Worry about your own! You can punish my backside for my carelessness afterward!"

Good advice, because mine had circled behind me. I only knew this because of a vague sense that tingled at the back of my skull.

I spun, dropped to one knee, and brought my blade up just in time to meet the wolf mid-lunge.

My sword caught it across the chest and this time the cut went deep. Black blood, or whatever passed for blood in a shadow monster thingy, spattered across the frosty grass.

The wolf yelped and tumbled past me, rolling twice before finding its footing. It was hurt but far from done. Those coal-red eyes locked on me with renewed purpose, not desperation—not yet.