"Evan, no-!" Margo shouted, reaching for Evan, but missing him by inches.
Oh.
This was bad. Very bad. This was worse than what'd happened with Esmeralda Vasco. Vampires were survivable.
But wendigoes? The chances were incredibly slim. Regardless, Margo was going to try.
Margo ran after him, but Evan was much faster than her, his legs stronger, his strength carrying him farther. Whomever it was that the wendigo was mimicking must've been incredibly important for Evan to run off without thinking like that.
If you'd told him it was a wendigo faster, then maybe he wouldn't've taken off. He'd have rationally thought about how to act, and he would've listened. Great job, Margo Warren. Gonna get a man killed tonight because you can't talk fast enough or explain anything well enough. You got too excited again, and now you both might die. You talk so much, but you couldn't say the words that might've kept this situation under control!
Margo swallowed her panic and guilt, following Evan's path through the corn stalks. The ones he'd run past were broken, so it was easy to tell where he'd gone.
But Margo stopped.
Wendigoes were hunters. Great hunters. It would know to steer her off, expecting her to run after Evan. She looked closely at the broken stalks, but there was nothing there to tell her whether it had been done by Evan or the creature. Margo stayed still, listening. She could hear Evan running, somewhere else, and she could also hear the rustling around of the creature.
A screech split through the silence once, and then again a short time later.
Margo ran, fast as her legs could carry her until she could see it, towering and ominous, death incarnate. The ultimate hunter whom none could outrun. Its flesh was ashen and grey, like leather stretched over bones. Claws dirty and sharp, impossibly sharp teeth snaggled and crusted with blood, pieces of dried flesh stuck between them from its last meal.
It seemed preoccupied with Evan, stalking closer and closer to him as he lay vulnerable on the ground.
Margo Warren launched herself onto its back, wrapping her legs around its waist tightly, and hooking the long barrel of her shotgun around its neck, and yanking it backwards to ram into the creature's throat.
"I fuckin' dare you to kill me, ugly bastard! You ain't even got a face a mother can love, you toad-faced-" Margo wheezed as the air left her lungs.
The wendigo reached backwards with inhumanly long arms, digging its dagger-like claws into her back and gripping her by the shoulders to pull her up and over its head, throwing her to the ground in front of Evan, and doing so with just one hand.
Margo's mind buzzed, the skin of her back blazing with pain.
No time to feel the hurt.
Margo pushed herself to her feet as the creature lunged. She drew her silver sword, and it halted, drawing back a few steps with a simmering hiss.
"Yeah. You know what this can do to you, huh?" Margo taunted it, grounding herself with a wider stance. She didn't take her eyes off of it as she spoke to Evan.
"Evan Wyrwood, you're the dumbest dumbass I've ever met. Probably my fault, to be honest. But I'm gonna need you to do somethin' for me, a'right? Stay awake." She said to him, adjusting the grip of her sword as the wendigo began to circle them. She followed it, acting as the only thing separating it from getting to Evan, who for all she knew was dying on the ground.
She wished she'd brought some juniper. Margo made a mental note to make some bullets coated in juniper powder. Or fill some with it.
Margo watched the creature carefully, her breathing ragged with fear that she struggled to contain. Only seconds were passing, but it felt like hours. She noticed the creature's stub where it had been missing a hand was no longer a stub. Bone and tendon and flesh had grown back. Not fully, not yet, but it had regenerated the missing hand. The creature launched at her again, a flash of ugly skin in the night, barely visible if not for the moon. It was a miracle that Margo lifted her silver sword in time, and a miracle that she had the strength to catch its claws with the blade and slice its fingers clean off.
It screamed.The horrible and splitting sound flooded her ears, seeping into every part of her brain, a symphony of horror pounding inside of her skull and shaking her eardrums, rattling her bones. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she felt something drip from her nose. Covering her ears did nothing to prevent the sound from harming her, and only caused her to drop the sword. She staggered backwards, and when the scream ended, she was surprised to find herself still alive. One quick glance around and she couldn't see the wendigo anywhere.
It was gone.
Gathering all of the strength she had, and all of her audacity, Margo Warren shouted into the night.
"You keep your goddamn distance, or I'll show you the sharp end of a silver dagger! I am not afraid of you, and I can, and will kill you!"
Her declaration rang into the rainy night. She tried to banish her fear, and knelt down next to Evan.
"Hey. You're a real dumbass, you know it?" She huffed, pulling Evan's shirt up to look at his wounds, "These ain't too bad. Just punctures, and not deep either, maybe an inch and a half- nothing vital hit. You're dumb as hell, but you're lucky. So incredibly lucky, Evan Wyrwood." Margo's voice was shaky, and she wiped blood from under her nose before taking off her raincoat and ripping away a piece of fabric from her knitted sweater. She rolled the piece up and placed it over the wounds, then reached into her bag and produced a roll of duct tape from it, ripping four pieces from it to tape the folded fabric to his chest.
Margo patted Evan's head, and stood up again with a grunt, ears ringing and head spinning, "I've never fought a wendigo before. Kinda hoped I'd never have to. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone surviving a serious attack from one's these bastards, but there's a first for everything! Silver hurts these creatures. We need to destroy its heart, and dismembering the creature and burying the separate parts in a church cemetery would be wise. This thing is gonna hunt us until it kills us, or we kill it." She explained, pushing her soaking wet hair out of her face.
"Okay. Hoo—" Margo exhaled loudly, then inhaled and let the breath out again, "Shit, Evan. Fuck. Just stay awake, okay?" She asked him one more time to not fall asleep, while trying to stay upright herself.
A male voice called to Margo from close by, "Mija? Don't be scared, Mija, I'm here for you. I'm here to help, just follow my voice."
It was the voice of her mother's best friend, her beloved tío Luis.
Margo did her best to not react, even though the sound of tío Luis' voice being used in a foul attempt to lure her out alone into the night infuriated her. The fact that the wendigo knew how to use the voices of loved ones she knew for certain hadn't been around in a while told her that this creature was not new to the area.
Her uncle hadn't been in town for months, now. Almost a full year, actually.
"Evan, if you can get up, I need you to get up as slowly as you can, " Margo whispered, still facing him, her back to the cornstalks. The wendigo was just barely visible in the space between the stalks, a few yards behind Margo.
"Don't say anything. Don't look at it. I'm going to turn around, okay? Be ready." She spoke to him, hoping and praying that Evan was coherent enough to hear her, and see her eyes. And all she could do was keep hoping that Evan would either choose to walk away, or shoot the wendigo while she distracted it. Another hiss emanated from the creature. She knew it could hear.
"Alright," Margo inhaled, slowly tightening her grip on the silver dagger in her right hand, "Three. Two-" Before she got to one, she ran right past Evan, and the wendigo followed, pursuing prey. Margo knew that the creature would hone in on her the moment she ran, and she'd hoped that it would pass Evan up- and it did.
Her plan was simple- draw it away from Evan, and hope he could get up to walk away and survive while she held it off, or shoot the wendigo from behind. And also hope that he had been blessed with stunning aim. It wasn't a super sturdy plan, but it was all she could figure, knowing that once this kind of creature had its sight set on something, it would never give up.
The Wendigo struck her across her back again, leaving bleeding rips in her skin that thankfull hadn't managed to slice too deep. Another moment passed, and it knocked her to the ground. She flipped onto her back, before it pinned her, shouting in surprise as it dug its ugly needle-like teeth into her shoulder.
Still holding onto her dagger, Margo plunged the blade into the wendigo's stomach, then its lungs, stabbing again and again and again in an attempt to pierce its heart, the blade searing its flesh with each strike.