Erza styles's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Erza pressed his back to the door and listened. The claws had stopped scraping. That was worse. He could hear his own breath and the tick of the stove cooling. The light through the windows had gone the color of rust. He had maybe an hour before dark. The truck sat twenty feet from the step, and twenty feet was too far with that thing in the trees. He worked the problem the way he had worked it in the truck. Knife. Axe. Flashlight. One door, two windows, one creature that could open none of them yet. He dragged the table against the door and jammed a chair under the knob. He shoved James's pack aside and crouched under the front window with the axe across his knees. Something heavy moved along the north wall. Claws dragged the logs, slow, testing. Then a second sound, farther out. Boots. Running. A man's voice, raw and shouting, no words Erza could pick out. He stood and wiped the glass. A big man burst from the treeline with a length of broken branch raised over his head. Red hair down to his chest. Gray shirt filthy at the belly. He was screaming at the creature and swinging as he came. Erza's hand went flat against the window. James. James was dead. The woman had said so. Two weeks in the woods, and here he came out of them at a dead run, going straight at the thing that had taken him. The creature turned from the wall. Three white eyes fixed on James. Its mouth split open below them, red and wet, too many teeth. It moved low and fast across the clearing. Erza tore the chair out from under the knob. He threw the table aside and hit the bolt. "James!" His brother swung the branch and caught the creature across the snout. The wood cracked. The creature did not slow. It took him at the waist and drove him down. James got one arm up. He was still shouting. He was still James, tattoos on the forearm, the belly, the bad temper, all of it alive and here. Erza came off the step with the axe. He swung for the ridge behind its eyes and felt the blade bite. The creature screamed, high and wrong, and rolled off James into the dirt. It scrambled backward on three-toed feet, one eye shut and leaking, and vanished between the trunks. Erza dropped the axe and hauled his brother up by the shirt. James's belly was torn open along one side. His eyes were pale and did not track right. "You came," James said. "I've got you." Erza got an arm under him and dragged him toward the door. The clearing was empty. The light was almost gone. The creature was out there bleeding, and it knew the cabin now, and it knew his brother was alive.