Ritual Magic

one came and the wolves—and a tiger—” She gulped.
    Toby felt a rush of relief.
Wolves
, plural, meant the others had Changed and followed his dad, and Grandmother was there, too. Dad wasn’t fighting alone. “Come on,” he hissed, because even though plywood wouldn’t stop a dworg, it was better not to stay in the same spot they’d entered. They scuttled farther down the tunnel and stopped. Listening.
    Toby’s heart pounded so hard. Anyone could hear it, he thought. Any
thing
. Maybe those creatures weren’t really dworg, but something else that looked the way those long-dead monsters were supposed to have looked. Either way, he’d done the right thing. He thought he had. He hoped. He couldn’t just run away. If the monsters were dworg, they’d be too fast, and besides, they’d been between him and the house, so where would he go? That left
hide
and
evade.
This was more evading than hiding, because they’d probably seen him and Julia jump down here.
    But the monsters were big and the tunnel was narrow. Maybe narrow enough they wouldn’t fit. Maybe.
    Then he thought of something else. He should have had Julia go the other way, away from him. Because even though she was really a kid, the dworg wouldn’t know that, with her having such a grown-up body. He’d thought he was helping her, but if those were really dworg . . .
    Dworg had this instinct, this drive. That’s what all the stories said. It’s what had made them so horrible, but it was also their weakness. They didn’t always do the smart thing, didn’t always follow orders, because this instinct sometimes took over. A feeding instinct.
    Dworg ate kids.
    * * *
    T WO minutes and twelve seconds after Isen summoned his fighters, the klaxon was blaring, calling for the immediate evacuation of Clanhome. A few cars were speeding away already, with more car doors slamming at this house and that one as dworg poured over the crest of the hill on the north side of the meeting field. They’d come from the big node, the one not tied to the mantle.
    Twenty-two dworg, Pete had just informed Isen. Twenty-two nightmares from a past so distant humans knew nothing about it. Nightmares that his people had fought in the Great War—fought with tooth and claw, yes, but also with swords. There weren’t many ways to kill a dworg, but cutting off its head worked every time.
    Isen had used every one of his hundred and thirty-two seconds. In the old days, it had taken between ten and twelve lupi to bring down a single dworg. Isen didn’t have enough fighters to pit ten or twelve against each dworg. He didn’t have half of that, and those he had weren’t all here. Some were on patrol. Some he’d sent to the barracks to retrieve weapons stored there. Most of the rest were deployed around the day care, which was where he’d sent Hardy. That’s where Pete now watched from the roof, coordinating their defense. Isen had kept one squad with him.
    Not that six lupi could do much against twenty-two dworg. “It’s in your hands now,” Isen said crisply into the phone he’d borrowed. He’d left his at the house—bad habit, that, and one he should have abandoned the moment they knew themselves at war.
    “Rho, please—” Pete began.
    “No.” Isen had neither time nor patience for argument. He disconnected and tossed the phone down. He wouldn’t be able to use it in a moment, anyway.
    Isen had used every one of his hundred and thirty-two seconds, but that wasn’t much time. Not enough to devise an entirely new strategy against creatures who weren’t supposed to exist. He had to hope these were traditional dworg against whom a traditional plan might work.
    According to the tales, no one could hide from a dworg, for they directly sensed the lives around them because it was life itself they fed on, along with the flesh of their prey. But they had one weakness: their hunger. It held them always in a pack, that being the only way they could maintain focus on their task. Sometimes a few would become distracted anyway and begin to feed before they’d achieved their objective, and then the rest would turn on those few. That could be exploited, though Isen preferred that they not be given the chance to feed at all.
    They hungered most of all for children.
    Not all of Clanhome’s children were at the day care, but many of the youngest ones were. Four babies, three toddlers, and ten between the ages of three and nine. Seventeen babes and children currently