The wolf, much more comparable to a vehicle in his true form, stood on the edge of the light, snout thrust forward into the darkness to catch a whiff of something sour and rotten. Light warmed his dark pelt, giving him a ruddy back glow as he shook off the blood of the change and the remnants began to dry. There was no time now to bury or eat the remnants of skin, for though the instinct to cover was strong, the want of a fight in his veins was stronger yet.

Both when she was a human and now as an animal possessed, Marcy was one of the few things to ever push him so close to death he could feel the life welling up inside his lungs for one last, final, exhale. At this point in time, she was also one of those few things still alive, his primary prey being the green-eyed darkness that took her delicate artist's hands and turned them to shearing claws. He wanted to smell that cat tonight, wanted to scour the perimeter of the property and determine its location and destroy it.

The cat, if it was here, however, had likely holed up in the front of the house or someone like the roof where Caelan would have more difficulty and spend more energy trying to gain access only for the demon to ghost out somewhere new. Not to mention, Caelan had to live with his neighbors, and the last thing he wanted was for certain morons knowing what he looked like or calling more cops because a giant dire wolf was fighting a monster.

So he settled for hunting down his little monster. Marcy would not be difficult to find; she was small for a wendigo, small being a relative term when you considered the last one he'd face had been capable of lifting him into the air and breaking his jaws. She was more on par to his size on all fours- far more slight, far more slender, far more unpredictable. What came over her in those moments was the demon, no doubt about that. Why and how it changed her physicallly in the moments where she wasn't a wendigo Caelan had never understood and had yet in his research come up with a viable explanation. He suspected it had something to do with the night in Frontier Land. That himself, Mrs. Finn and Marcy had all awoken from a near death state to be alive and well . . .

Marcy had woken in the ash of the necromancer's fire.

Something had to have been wrong with that. Perhaps the answer was to catch a necromancer alive, if that was at all possible given who controlled them.

Movement flashed around the side of his porch; with it came a sound like nails peeling paint off his siding. Knowing full well it was likely Marcy, knowing full well she would stay within the boundaries Zakar had created for as long as he wanted, Caelan braced himself to find her and prepared a strategy to get her where she wanted to be. She thought this Toby was the best chance? Then to Toby he would bring her. Not since the trail cam recording had he gotten any true glimpse of her, and he rather wished he could go back as he took a wide trot around the corner, one eye wary of the roof.

As he rounded the corner, he let out a low sound almost like a 'woof' a short, "I'm here."

Marcy, or the thing that she'd been turned into, was standing on two long, lean legs. The wendigo was a creature of a misproportion- nothing about it seemed right. Her arms were long, ended in long, thin fingers with black claws. She braced herself on three limbs as he approached, a picturesque version of something feminine and yet diseased. Her torso was grey and stretched to give her more of deer's motion except when she stood, where it put a hunch in her back. She was coated in a soft, silvery fur dappled with coppery spots along her haunches. Her ears were long and dropped against the alabastor tines of her antlers. Her face was the troubling bit- a mutated skull of a deer with jagged fangs that faded into grey, rotting flesh and then fur around her enchanted, sometimes silver, often times emerald, eyes. Like a carcass worm-eaten and rotten, her snout and thin, gaunt figure could have anyone believing they'd stumbled upon a dead thing if ever she stayed still for more than a half second.

She wasn't still now, dropping the last long forearm to the ground, eyes small pinpricks of a terrible light. They fixed upon Caelan, and though there was little expression to be found in a face reduced to bone and disintegrating sinew, somehow the skull was smiling wider. 

The problem with wendigos, Caelan noted, was that they were not rotted nearly enough. With magic as a core insulator, trying to tear one apart was as tough as blowing down a house with a wolf's breath. He could wound, certainly, but they did not go down. They were undead, after all. 

The second problem was that this silvery maned thing looking at him with one bright eyes and waving its claw to beckon him closer, the second problem was this was Marcy. Possessed, but it was Marcy nonetheless.

The wolf part of him had always wanted to sink his fangs into her and turn her; nothing had felt so good as that moment when he'd bitten her hand and the warm sweet blood flowed and his instincts had been filled with the satisfaction of creation.

But she had not turned, and that, in the hot rage of a werewolf frustrated- that meant everything was fair game. She was tough, she could handle it. He didn't want her to, but he could feel a fight coming and bared his teeth and found a certain delight when she swayed on her haunches and hissed at him. 

He moved within an arm and a half's length in front of her, ears flat, amber eyes filled focus. Her hind legs were quivering, vibrating with energy, readying herself to spring.

The green in her eyes broke back to silver. 

With a motion that had his jaws clicking closed on empty air, Marcy sprang away with a game leap, running awkwardly but speedily on all fours toward the distant jaguars. A little white tail bobbed up in her wake like an alarmed, carnivorous doe. He sprinted after her, mouth open, ears pricked forward, running because he loved the chase he loved the hunt, running because his ears would flatten again and his teeth would sink into her belly and he would drag her into the earth and . . .

She stumbled. Whatever was left of Marcy inside took a hard dive sideways into the grass and cried out in pain. Its shoulders shook, shook and then it was laughing and had turned to swipe the rapidly approaching werewolf off course. Caelan dodged, came in hot underneath the long, thin arch of her spine and reached up to bite her stomach. 

The wendigo twisted around like lightning and sank her teeth into his ear. The long paw of her right hand bit into his snout with a splash of blood, and then again just as quickly they punctured his shoulder. He snapped wildly left and right, slow compared to the pale bloody creature- but the hits he landed were serious, and the wounds ripped fur and flesh alike. His turn of foot was too weak, the length of her arms too long. With one more slash she sprang away, but he was chased after her, blood coursing over one eye and a limp in his front paw. 

His fangs sank into the flesh of her shoulder, and his teeth took more and more and his grip only slackened to climb toward her throat. Eyes shut against her struggles, he took several strong blows to the head and throat, shook her again, harder, clamped the vice of his fangs into the bone until one arm dragged underneath her immobilized. In a series of strong jerk and tugs he dragged her kicking and screaming through the brush, out into the beginnings of the forest.

It was here the being that wasn't Zakar stood, with its deepset eyes and flaring nostrils and paws that clenched the base of a club. There were blades or teeth of some kind embedded into the painted wood. It scraped one side against the nearest bark, watching Caelan's progress with a certain sense of a hunter's anticipation and concern that the query may yet stumble back onto its haunches and tear off through the woods.

But there was no tearing Caelan from Marcy. All the strength he had was poured into sustaining progress, this despite the spattering of blood and fur as she reached around and struck him again and again to stop.

Behind them, the cat, dwarfed by the larger predators all around, could only hiss and claw weakly at her and the wolf that held her in his teeth. There were no corpses here to raise, nothing worse than splintered antlers and a few unfortunate rabbit's feet. Clearly it did not have others at its beck and call tonight, but perhaps it did, and they were late or Zakar had some greater plan than this at works.

Everyone wanted Marcy dead. It was just a matter, for now, of getting her to the entity that might keep her alive the longest, and with minimal agony.

Ahead, the jaguars paced more excitedly, jaws quivering, eyes following every strained movement closer. They knew now the path he was taking, stalked out to receive the pair just over some invisible boundary.

The line to cross was nothing felt by the living- it stopped neither Caelan from releasing his grip and bounding a few yards into the undergrowth nor did it stop Marcy from rolling onto her feet, front arm hugged protectively against her chest and stomach, and chasing after him with a furious howl.

It did, however, halt Zakar in his tracks. The demon slunk forward as if about to test the line; after all he was its creator, the one who could dissolve the spell at once, then he trotted along it several paces, green eyes forced to content itself with observation as the pair of jaguars leaped in after them, too.

Zakar was afraid of this other, Caelan thought, snout swinging around for the briefest of seconds to pinpoint Marcy's location. Zakar was afraid of this Toby, whomever he was.

And this Toby was running after them. Caelan skidded to a halt, dropped to the ground and let Marcy rush past him. Her claws dug into the top of his back, but she slipped in the leaves and went dashing several yards past. For a moment, looking into her wild silver eyes Caelan thought she just might've had control, that she was going to run and go off on her own.

But there was no alone when your soul was bound to a devil.

She staggered, seemed almost aware that she was out of some small section of Zakar's influence, and moved back beyond Caelan. On all fours she moved, graceful and fluid like a rabbit or some vulpine creature- and she stopped in a crouch, doe's ears flicking, blood-smeared face turned up toward the man. Still clutching her arm to her body, she extended the claws of her other hand in a gentle, pleading gesture as if to ask him to take her hand.

This Toby thing watched her, eyes unreadable at this distance from Caelan. The wolf padded closer, head cocked, wary of any situation involving Marcy's potential death. She wanted to be drug out to here, thought for whatever reason this being was her best chance at- at what?

With a sudden, loud smack the man hit her across the face with his club. She hissed, slunk backward and with her eyes on him lunged back toward Zakar. The jaguars hit her halfway, one her back, the other flung bodily aside as she twisted to get at the first. With a loud bang she slammed her back against the nearest tree. The animal dislodged with a screechy wail.

Panting, Marcy backed away from them, another step nearer Zakar- a change of heart most certainly- head lowered, snorting blood and something darker. She kept her head down, swinging it back and forth, shaggy silvered mane hiding her eyes.

The cats set upon her again.

Caelan got the second as Marcy's antlers drilled the first into the ground. The cat in his jaws scrambled madly, there was a definitive click of bone breaking and the animal burst into a fine gold powder that left the wolf sneezing and pawing at his face. The animal on the ground lashed violent, then it too burst into a dust. Covered in gore and gold, Caelan stayed beside Marcy long enough to nose her back toward Zakar. The green-eyed demon was on the edge of a small rock, tail lashing, gaze flat and impassive. Behind him, a U-Haul was pulling into the driveway.

Toby walked forward slowly. Before him, the dust was rising off the ground and reforming into familiar feline shapes. Caelan growled, snapped in warning, and Toby stopped.

Marcy passed across the intangible border. As a squat ugly river cat Zakar leaped onto her shoulder, crawled up into her antlers and the sight of them running off was the last thing Caelan saw before a rock pinged off his snout. He turned, snarling, and there instead of a half-human hybrid was a plain man of medium skin tone, with a large nose, heavy eyebrows and a shit-eating grin so much a match for the demon Caelan had surrendered Marcy back to. He was older, dressed in a colorful vest and pants belted far above his waist.

"You go that side of wall," he said, gesturing with an ornately carved walking stick, which had once been the club. "I this side. We talk."