It was getting dark, covering the entire scenery behind my window with all the shades of grey that existed. This feeling was reinforced by the fog that was spreading, slowly but surely all around us. The whole thing had an unpleasant aspect of a horror film set. To my great surprise, we had not headed to Charles' house, but to the refuge from which we had just come from. My question on the subject had remained unanswered, as had my few attempts at conversation, so much so that I had fallen silent, my eyes lost in the twilight landscape.

This silence weighed strangely on me, despite the familiarity of it. Loneliness was also no stranger to me, yet today both bothered me. It was that guy who was getting on my nerves, there was no other explanation! I was going to open my mouth to try to engage in another conversation when I felt it. An unhealthy and nauseous sensation, identical to the one in the forest a little earlier, crept into my mind and disturbed the usual background noise. Instinctively, I spread my senses in search of this disturbing psychic signature... Big mistake!

Unlike the previous times when I tried to connect to a particular psychic vibration, I was invaded by a black and oily wave that seemed to want to infiltrate me to submerge me. I had an uncontrollable gag and suddenly struggled to breathe, mechanically carrying my hands to my throat.

Jude realized this and immediately slowed down to a stop on the side road. I shook my head frantically to tell him to keep driving, because one thing was for sure: we couldn't stop.

- 'What is going on?' he asked, worried.

His voice pulled me out of my panic and I concentrated to close my mind and push this thing away, whatever it was. I succeeded, without really knowing how, and the feeling of suffocation decreased, allowing me to take a big breath of fresh air.

- 'Don't stop. Speed up!' I managed to tell him between two hoarse breaths.

He followed my instructions and pressed the throttle without worrying about curves or even fog as he was so focused on his driving. He took winding roads as if his life depended on it, which, given our current luck, was probably the case. At times, his taciturn side was a good thing, I thought ironically. He didn't feel compelled to ask ten thousand questions before he complied. I had to look on the bright side!

- 'What did you feel?' he asked me in a tense voice, never taking his eyes off the road.

- 'I... I don't know. But their auras are like... corrupted,' I breathed as an uncontrollable shiver ran through my body. 'I don't know how to explain it. All I know is that we can't stay here.'

I was still a little queasy and my voice was still hazy, even though I was feeling better. They were always there, I felt them on the periphery of my mind and I knew there were many of them. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Jude was about to ask me a new question, when he suddenly took a deep breath. He then began to shiver as I had just done and began to curse rather creatively.

- 'They're the same ones as this afternoon! This time, I'm not sure I'll be able to lose them,' he said in a tense voice while accelerating. 'Can you determine how many they are?' he asked me, as he was manoeuvring through a series of curves, which sent me into a painful waltz against the door.

His features were contracted and his whole body was stretched by concentration.

- 'No. I just feel like there are several of them and they're getting closer. Why are you only now detecting their presence?'

- 'Because unlike you, I detect them by smell and all this metal disturbs my senses.'

We were driving at breakneck speed on a road surrounded by large flat areas, presumably fields, when indistinct shapes began to appear intermittently in our visual field.

- 'We are not going fast enough,' Jude observed in a frustrated voice.

Without me having time to see him sketch any movement, he found himself holding the wheel with one hand and holding a weapon out to me with the other, with the grip turned in my direction.

- 'Do you know how to use it?' he growled as he straightened up the car in extremis.

- 'N... no,' I stammered, as surprised by his sleight of hand as by his sudden steering wheel movement.

He then released it completely, armed the gun and handed it to me again, all in a split second. I caught it clumsily, amazed by his speed, more to allow him to use both hands to drive than by any desire to use it.

- 'Don't think about it. If these things get too close... aim and shoot.'

Easier said than done. I had never used a gun before and didn't even know if I would have the reflex and especially the guts to pull the trigger.

- 'And if possible in the head,' he continued without looking at me, staring at the road.

He was about to make another dangerous turn when a monstrous figure rushed in front of the wheels.

- 'Shit!'

He turned instinctively to try to avoid it, but the car was going far too fast and he lost control. Everything seemed to be going slowly. We spun around, then the car was suddenly stopped before falling back suddenly on its wheels in a howl of martyred metal. The sudden stop caused me to groan and I was immediately interrupted by the airbags. I tried as best I could to come to my senses and opened my eyes carefully to see where we were.

This single movement sent flashes of pain flying through my head. I saw a strange blur and it took me a long time to understand that it was due to the hot, viscous liquid flowing from my forehead. I wiped the blood as best I could with my sleeve and realized that we had landed on the left side of the road, against a slope that delimited a small wood and that, even more surprisingly, I had not dropped my weapon.

That's what saved us. As I was about to check on Jude, a movement to the right of my vision caught my eye. I only had time to point my gun out of pure reflex before a shapeless mass hit the windshield and it shattered into a thousand pieces, flooding us with pieces of glass. Ignoring any protective reflex, I managed not to put my hands in front of my face and kept the weapon pointed in front of me, but could not stop closing my eyes for a fraction of a second. This probably saved my retinas, but all at the expense of my left arm, which was in great pain.

Looking back, I realized that the thing that had hit us was actually a dog. A very big dog that didn't look like anything known, or at least not by me. An unlikely crossing of a great dane and a hyena! He had a hideous mouth full of yellowish fangs, with a particularly dreadful look, now stuck in my arm, and its body was as slender and muscular as a pitbull's. I didn't even try to think and, staring at its reddish eyes, fired without hesitation. I put three bullets in its head at close range. It yelped, then its jaw loosened and it fell dead, nailing me to my seat. I was about to fire a few more shots to make sure it was dead, when I heard Jude's jerky voice.

- 'Save the bullets.'

It was at that moment that the second dog attacked, crawling its mouth through my window. Damn it, was this personal or what? Unfortunately for it, it was me who had the gun and he quickly suffered the same fate as its comrade. It's hard to miss your target from a distance of three inches. The problem was that I was not very economical in ammunition and I had no idea how much I had left.

- 'We have to get out of here and fast,' Jude whispered in a growl.

He had already untied his seat belt and started to pull himself out of his seat by the right side, his door being blocked by the slope and the hood covered with pieces of glass. I had to untie mine, but I didn't want to drop the weapon and my left arm didn't seem to want to obey me anymore. Jude must have understood my dilemma, because he set out to free me, without success. The belt closing mechanism must have jammed in the accident. I began to wiggle frantically in my seat, when suddenly Jude untied the dagger he was carrying to his ankle and freed me.

I must have been in a state of shock, because although I knew we had to get out of the car and open my door for that, I couldn't bring myself to put the gun down. Jude didn't waste any time and leaned over me to open it for me. In his movement, he touched my wounded arm and I could not hold back a groan. He looked at my arm quickly and an instinctive wince stretched his lips. My first reflex was to look at it, but I held back. Under his impulse, I pulled myself out of the car as best I could and took care not to trip over the dead beast at my feet.

- 'Do you detect others?' Jude asked me, out of breath, as he finally came out of the metal frame. 'Those ones confuse my senses,' he said, kicking the nearest beast.

As I was about to "listen" to the surroundings, a kind of gloomy howl followed by a muted growl reached us from three different directions.

- 'They're circling us! Come on, our only chance is to run!'

Putting his words into action, he ran towards the woods. My reaction time improved because, without thinking, I followed in his footsteps and clumsily tried to follow him.

He slalomed between the trees at a staggering speed, jumping and avoiding obstacles without apparent effort, while I followed him painfully taking all the low branches and thorny bushes that had the misfortune to cross my path. With one arm out of order and the other still tight around the weapon, I had no freedom of movement. However, the repulsive aura that spread around me and the chasing noises that were approaching gave me wings despite my misfortunes.

After ten minutes of this ordeal, my strength began to decline. A pulsating pain radiated from my left forearm and a tenacious side stitch cut off my breathing and made me nauseous. I stumbled more and more often and suddenly realized that I could no longer see or hear Jude.

Panic and then deep despair overwhelmed me, the same as those of my childhood, locked in this horrible hospital. No! I refused to remember that time of my life, it was neither the time nor the place. Jude couldn't have left me? Yet, no matter how hard and desperate I looked at the trees around me... No Jude on the horizon.

I swallowed my bitter tears and concentrated on the intense feeling of betrayal that was coming up inside me and that was gradually turning to hatred. He had abandoned me, alone in the middle of the woods, surrounded by at least three dog monsters ready to eat me. I may not have had a chance at one against three, but I would take as many as I could with me. I collapsed, exhausted, with my back to a tree, then waited, the gun shaking at the end of my hand, for the first one to dare to come near me. Despite all my good resolutions, tears were running down my cheeks. I was terrified, exhausted and despite everything that had happened to me so far, I realized that I didn't want to die.

The resounding noise of their running decreased. I knew they were there. My hand tightened on the weapon, I waited for them; the three canines jumped at the same time, all fangs and claws forward with the obvious intention of tearing me apart. I shot at the one closest to me, a sad smile on my face, when the firing pin rattled empty. I had killed one, but the other two, although stopped in their tracks by the sound of detonations, came towards me again with a menacing look accompanied by muffled growls. The one on the left attacked first. When I could already see it on me, he suddenly jolted and found himself thrown a meter away, an arrow piercing him through and through. The third suffered the same fate almost simultaneously and just a few seconds later, Jude fell loosely from the tree in which he had hidden.

The relief I felt when I saw him was on the verge of debilitating. I wasn't going to die and above all I wasn't alone anymore; he hadn't abandoned me after all. As soon as this thought had crossed my mind, the relief was replaced by a dark and devouring anger. He hadn't abandoned me, no! He had done much worse, he had used me as bait, and that was hard for me to digest. I gathered what was left of my strength to get up, my exhaustion shakings replaced by rage shakings, and threw the useless weapon away.

- 'You used me as bait!' I shouted at him despite the disbelief and tremolos that betrayed me.

What the hell was I expecting? He had never concealed his lack of sympathy for me, and the fact that he tolerated my presence simply because he had no other choice. Yet, at times, he had shown me kindness... Pity rather, a little voice whispered to me. Let's face it: it was the only feeling I had ever been able to inspire in my peers, and it seemed to continue. Jude, on the other hand, looked upset, apparently unable to understand my reaction.

- 'I thought you understood and faked despair to attract them to you!' he said perplexed.

- 'And how could I have known?' I said, angry and hurt.

- 'Because you feel my presence!' he said, shaking his head incredulously as if he were talking to a fool. 'You had to know I was close. At least that's what I thought,' he breathed as he ran his hand through his hair in a raging gesture. 'How could you think I would just leave you like that?'

His eyes expressed such pain that my anger suddenly subsided. I didn't even pretend to step back when he started to move towards me. We were so obsessed with our argument that supernatural senses or not, neither of us perceived the threat until it was too late. As he was only a few steps away from me, he suddenly turned around and had just enough time to push me out of his path before the new monster hit him. They both rolled through the dead leaves that covered the forest ground, in a jumble of limbs and fangs.