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didn’t know that we knew, it could give us an edge. A very narrow edge. Narrower than the edge of a straight razor.
    A meadowlark called from off to my left. To my surprise, I understood its message.
    I looked back at Aunt Mary. “Bird said two on either side of the path just past those big rocks,” I whispered.
    She made a small gesture with her left hand.
Keep going
.
    And as she did that, the wind changed. It turned from blowing down the trail to blowing in our faces. And it brought to me the smell of smoke. I swallowed hard, my mouth so dry I almost had to cough. Then I pressed off the safety on the shotgun that I was holding across my chest.
    Maybe twenty steps more and we’d be past the big rocks, each of which was three times the height of a man and flat on top.
    Nineteen.
    Eighteen.
    Seventeen.
    Sixteen.
    Fifteen.
    Fourteen . . .
    â€œHAI-HAI-HAI-HAIIII!”
    Crazy Dog’s battle cry split the air. It came from somewhere past the place where the firewolves were hiding behind those two big stones. A heartbeat later one of the monsters lurched on two legs out from behind the stone to the left. It dropped the piñon pine torch it had been holding and clawed at the center of its throat, where a black arrow with red stripes was buried deep.
    BLAM!
    The sound of Aunt Mary’s carbine came at the exact moment the firewolf’s head was jerked back by the impact of her .44 slug. The firewolf fell on top of its dropped torch.
    Another firewolf appeared from behind the rock on the other side, an arrow protruding from its side. Aunt Mary fired again and the man-beast lurched backward and was lost from my sight behind the huge stone.
    We’d stopped moving and were waiting now. I had the sawed-off shotgun lifted up. From somewhere below us on the trail, I heard a burst of rapid gunshots that had to be Crazy Dog’s AK-47. Aunt Mary’s back was against mine, and she was shooting up the trail.
    BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!
    My ears ringing from those shots, I turned to see what she’d been firing at as the pressure of her back against mine disappeared. She’d stepped away from me, toward —
    â€œAbove you, Rose!” Aunt Mary screamed at the same time I heard a deep growl from above me.
    And I looked up to my left just in time to see a big red-furred demon, its claws spread wide, dropping toward me from the top of the stone.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    M aybe it’s because fear has been such a familiar thing to me, especially when I am uncertain or afraid that I might be doing the wrong thing. Maybe that is why the sight of that firewolf leaping down at me did not freeze me in my tracks like a frightened rabbit. I knew what the right thing to do was if I wanted to survive, and so it had the opposite effect. It made me move that much faster.
    I was so fast that when I dived forward, the creature landed not on me, but where I’d been. And when it turned, its fanged jaws gaped wide to rend my flesh, I was just close enough to jerk up my right arm and shove the barrel of the shotgun into its mouth. Saliva dripped down my arm, and its claws were reaching for me as I pulled the trigger.
    BOOM!
    The shotgun kicked back in my hand, almost breaking my wrist. But that load of buckshot down its gullet did the trick. The firewolf dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
    Two are down, I thought. Two of five.
    I couldn’t tell what was happening around me.
    â€œAunt Mary,” I shouted, looking wildly around.
    No answer.
    Aunt Mary had vanished from my sight in the thick smoke. I was half-deaf from all the gunfire.
    I stood up as fast as I could, racking another shell into the chamber. As I did so, a big paw grasped my left arm. It yanked me around, and the sickening smell of the huge carnivore’s rank breath filled my nostrils.
    â€œGOT YOU!” a third firewolf growled, its voice so inhumanly fierce that I felt it in my bones.
    As it pulled me close, I tried to