Caleis had stayed back as well, and she still had the blanket they'd cut a hole in draped over her, so Simon helped Danya up onto her back while Yore mounted Atticus.
Just before they left, Simon pulled Danya's head down and pressed their lips together. "Be careful, okay?"
"He will be fine," Atticus assured him. "He will be with us the whole time. Perfectly safe. Save your worry for yourself."
"I live by the first rule of dealing with vampires," Simon said.
"Nothing ever goes to plan," Yore said. "I know. I'm not going to let you down this time."
"That's not how I see what happened last time," Simon said.
"Then you're too generous," Yore said. "Okay, Atticus. Let's go."
And then Danya found out just how fast a centaur could really move and it was all he could do just to keep hold of Caleis' neck.
They were moving too quickly for Danya to take in much of the view, but he noticed when they cut onto a track through the woods heading in the opposite direction from the mage's settlement. Several minutes later they cut away from it again, through sparsely treed woods. Danya was sure they would hit something or lose their footing at the speed they were going, but the difficult terrain hardly seemed to hinder the centaurs at all.
The village blended into the woods so well that Danya didn't even notice it until they were nearly beside the first of the neatly built log buildings.
The first person who spotted them shouted Yore's name, and before Danya could process what was happening they were surrounded. Danya received a few curious glances, but it was Yore they all wanted to see.
A woman came out of one of the log buildings and the growing crowd parted as she rushed over. By the time Yore was off Atticus' back, into her arms, she was crying. Danya was so busy watching them that he didn't notice the approach of another woman until she was there, wrapping her arms around both the first woman and Yore.
They were both large women — broad shouldered, muscular, and almost as tall as Yore. Everyone gathered around them was huge. Even the children watching curiously from the sidelines were so big that it was difficult to judge their ages. Some who looked like they hadn't yet hit puberty were taller and bulkier than Danya.
"You're so skinny," the first woman murmured as she patted Yore down. "Are you hurt? What happened?"
Yore stroked a reassuring hand over her short, chestnut hair. "I'm okay, mum. I'm fine."
"Slone has been looking for you," the second woman, who had black, wavy hair that resembled Yore's, said. "Did he find you?"
"Not exactly. Mum, this is Danya." Yore held an arm out in Danya's direction. "He's one of the escaped mages who have set up camp just beyond Atticus' territory. He's also a friend of Slone's."
Danya tried to climb down from Caleis' back and gratefully accepted the help of hands that reached out for him.
"He didn't know what Slone was, but he knew he was different and kept it a secret," Yore continued. "When he found me, in wolf form, he trusted me and set me free without hesitation."
"Where were you?" the chestnut haired woman asked.
Yore tilted his head to the side so that she could see his neck. "Lainton."
She covered her mouth with her hand. She looked like she was about to start crying again.
"I'm Zunda, leader of the Casmea Border wolves, and this is my wife, Emity," the black haired woman told Danya. "We owe you a great debt, Danya."
"Well, it's time to pay it," Yore said. "They were down in those tunnels looking for a friend of theirs. A mage. There's a storm coming in and they still haven't found her."
Zunda hesitated. "Yore, you know we don't go down there. Or... I thought you knew that."
Yore shut his eyes for a moment and let out a slow breath, but when he opened them again he only looked more determined. "I made a mistake. Trust me, I was down there long enough to realise that. But, mum, now someone else is in my place. They'll keep her chained in the darkness, feed off her. I can't let that happen."
"I know it's terrible, but if you start going down that path..." She shook her head. "Just ask your new friend here. There's so much suffering in this world, and you can't save everyone."
"But we could save her. This one girl. We could go down there and we could tear the throats out of every single goddamn vampire and be done with the whole mess once and for all."
"It's not such a bad thing to have them there. There don't bother us — as long as we're sensible," she gave Yore a stern look, "and they keep the human population in Lainton manageable."
"I saw how they did that," Yore said. "I heard it and I smelled it and they tried to make me taste it. You want to keep the human population manageable? How about you face the reality of that and cull their children yourself."
Zunda just looked at him for a moment, her expression slightly pinched. "Okay."
"Okay what?"
"I can see you won't be able to move on from this unless we do something." She turned around and faced the rest of the crowd. "I won't order anyone to get involved in this, but I won't forbid it either. If anyone wants a piece of the monsters who have been torturing my son for the last few months, this is your opportunity to get it."
"Excellent," Atticus said. "My people have set up a perimeter around the city as best as we were able. If your people flush the tunnels, we will do our best to cut down any who try to escape."
Already, the people around them were shedding clothes and dropping onto all fours. Emity squeezed Yore's hands, slipped out of her dress, and transformed into a wolf with reddish brown fur.
Yore hauled himself back onto Atticus and nodded for someone to help Danya. "I can't shift again right now, so Danya and I will stick with Atticus and Caleis. Treat any humans or mages you see down in the tunnels as allies. They're our friends."
"Human friends," Zunda said with a shake of her head, but she didn't seem overly bothered by the concept.
When they rode back out again, it was with dozens of huge wolves sprinting alongside them. Once they reached the trail through the woods, wolves gradually started to split off and find their own paths through the trees. They reached the Southeast entrance and the last few wolves who had stuck with them dashed inside.
Thunder rumbled overhead and Atticus looked up at the sky. The wind was starting to pick up. "The storm will be here soon."
"We're ready for it now," Yore said, his eyes fixed on the entrance to the tunnels.
Atticus retrieved his bow and a silver tipped arrow. "Indeed."
Heavy drops of rain had just started to fall when the first vampire bolted out of the tunnels, moving so fast Danya struggled to track it with his eyes. It jerked back and fell to the ground, a silver arrow lodged in its skull and another in its throat. Atticus went to retrieve them while Caleis readied another arrow.
Danya opened his mouth to shout a warning as terrible energy flooded his mind, but it was too late. A torrent of vampires poured out of the tunnel, perhaps a dozen, but moving too fast for Danya to count. And one of them had a pale haired girl flung over its shoulder.
Caleis managed to dispatch one of them with an arrow, then her hooves kicked out wildly as several more of the vampires dragged her down. As he slammed into the ground and rolled to safety across the mud, Danya saw her cave in one of their skulls with a well aimed hoof.
"It's a distraction!" Yore shouted, and Danya looked around to see the vampire holding Lynna already halfway towards the dense treeline. The centaurs wouldn't be able to pursue it there.
Danya ran after it, already knowing he was much too slow, not knowing what else to do. He could no longer see it once it disappeared into the trees, but he stumbled into the tightly packed foliage anyway, trusting his mind to guide him in its direction.
He was too slow, much too slow. It was getting further and further away.
And then... and then he felt new, familiar energy and a large, black wolf leapt past him and bolted off into the woods. Danya ran after it, but the energy was getting fainter and fainter and then he was left lost, alone in the woods, rain soaking his body and drowning out all other sounds.
All other sounds until a loud howl cut through it, echoing through the trees. Danya ran in its direction.
Lynna was leaning over the prone form of a large, black wolf. Yore. A short distance away the vampire lay torn apart, its energy snuffed out. Danya rushed over to his friends.
"Are you okay?" he asked Lynna.
She nodded, though he could see the fang marks on her neck, the tears in her eyes.
Danya ran his hand over Yore's fur and felt his body twist beneath his skin. He was breathing heavily, his teeth clenched in pain.
A wolf sprinted into the clearing, and then another, and another, and suddenly Slone was there, leaning over his brother in human form.
"Fuck," Slone whispered, his hand stroking over Yore's ears, down his back.
Yore's body tensed with pain and his muzzle shortened slightly.
"No, no, no," Slone said. "No, you fuckin' don't do that. It's over. This is it now."
Yore's muzzle grew long again and it seemed for a moment that he was listening, but then his whole body tensed and fur retracted back into his body. Danya thought it was sprouting back out again, but no — that was blood. As his body shifted from wolf back to human, tiny pricks of blood began to well up from every inch of his skin.
"You're a fucking idiot," Slone murmured with no real malice.
"What's happening?" Lynna asked. "Is he going to be okay?"
Slone looked up at her, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to answer. "We need to get him back home."
Slone carefully lifted his brother into his arms. It was raining heavier now, watering down the blood that covered Yore's skin and leaving a trail of pink behind them.
Atticus and Caleis were still waiting for them past the treeline. There were wide, bloody gashes across Caleis' flank, but she seemed solid on her feet.
"Is this...?" Atticus asked when he saw Yore, trotting over.
Slone nodded. "He shouldn'ta shifted so soon."
Atticus shut his eyes and let out a long breath. "I apologise. I prioritised helping Caleis over taking Yore in the direction he needed to go."
"It wouldn't have made any difference," Danya assured him. "He still would have needed to shift in order to catch up to the vampire."
"He wasn't even armed," Slone added. "He couldn'ta won against a vampire without shifting even if he had caught the damn thing. He knew what the choice was and he made it. That ain't on anyone else." He gave Lynna, who had been hugging herself and staring at the ground, a pointed look. "Including you."
"None of them got away," Caleis said. "I know that is a small comfort, but it was what he said he wanted. For every one of them to die."
"You hear that?" a middle aged woman, who had shifted out of wolf form, said as she turned to face the rest of the werewolves. "Not a single one of these monsters is getting out of here alive. I want four of you to stay here and guard this entrance. The rest of you, back in the tunnels."
The wolves hurried to obey, organising themselves quickly.
Slone gave the woman a grateful nod and together they got Yore up onto Atticus' back in front of Slone.
"Climb up," Caleis said to Danya and Lynna. "I will take you both back to the wolf settlement. You will be safe there until your people can collect you."
"We won't hurt you?" Danya asked. Her wounds were still actively bleeding.
She found the torn remains of the blanket on the ground and draped it over herself so that it covered the cuts. "I will be fine. Get on."
The same woman who had helped Slone with Yore came over to help them up, and then they were moving again.