The crimson witch

so singularly peaceful up until now that he had carelessly left it with the food and the wine. He backed toward the sack where it had been thrown in the first moments of the battle. If he could reach it and grab the knife, he would be on more equal footing with the demon.
        The manbat, however, seeing the direction in which he edged and apparently grasping some of the import of his retreat, leaped into the air, cawing madly, and threw itself upon him once again, digging knifelike claws into his shoulders and bearing him to the earth in a flutter of leathery wings.
        Jake smashed a fist upward and felt flesh give before it. It was an altogether satisfying feeling under the circumstances. Blood burst out of the creature's shriveled nose, a rich, scarlet blood. It spattered across his face, warming him where it touched, exciting him. He drove the fist back again, skidded it over the manbat's cheek, slashing his floppy ear along the edge so that blood leaked out there, too.
        The manbat loosened its grip and flopped off him, staggering back a few paces to assess its wounds. It hissed, wiped a wing across its battered face, trying to staunch the flow of blood.
        The knapsack lay behind.
        The fight had advanced.
        The knapsack lay too far behind to reach in time.
        Jake didn't wait for the enemy to decide upon a course of action. He acted first. He rushed it, leapt upon it before it could completely judge the meaning of his movements. He throttled it to the ground, hands laced about its skinny neck, choking it, firmly pinning its shoulders with his knees. It screamed, frothing blood and saliva about its yellowed teeth. It twisted its neck, trying to snap at his wrists, but he held it too solidly, his grip strengthened by panic, and it could not gain its freedom that way. It writhed under him, furious for a means of escape, finally throwing its feet up and clutching at his sides with the terrible, sharp claws. Again he felt the nails bite into his flesh and twist left, right, left. Again, he began to seep blood. But then his hands had done their work. The thin throat suddenly crushed inward upon itself. Blood bubbled out of the beast's mouth and over Jake's hands, bathing his fingers in gore.
        But panic still coursed through his fingers, charging them with jerking, electric power. Still he throttled it, unwilling to cease until the panic had drained from him and the demon was dead beyond doubt. He could feel the sharp points of broken bones punching through the thing's flesh, and he could see the blood streaming from its mouth and nostrils, but he wanted to give it no chance, and he wanted to let it suck the horror from him, as if the contact of his hands about its neck could do just that. A madness filled him that bordered on hysteria. When he had finished and the madness was nearly gone, he had almost wrung the manbat's neck free of its shoulders.
        He stood, trembling, wiping his stained hands over his jeans. He ached in every muscle from the exertion of the battle, but there were other, more serious aches that were wounds. He caught hold of his head as it threatened to go dancing again, stopped the spinning lights. He staggered to his knapsack and plopped down next to it, stripping off his shirt and examining the wounds-two small ones in his shoulders that had already ceased to bleed, and several longer, more active cuts on his sides where the claws had raked. Still, the cuts were relatively clean. The demon had had little chance to work at and worry them into raggedness.
        “Are you all right?” Kaliglia asked, lumbering close to him and clucking his mammoth tongue in sympathy this time, not in admonition.
        He shook his head, anxious now only to suck the air and replenish his dried and aching lungs.
        “I warned you of Lelar.”
        “What-” His lack of breath denied him words. He sat drawing air for a while longer until the dizziness went away and his throat felt less constricted. “What was that?”
        “A manbat. Lelar uses them to guard his castle walls, but I had not thought to warn you of them, for they never appear this far from the castle itself. It is a very strange thing to find one here.”
        “His army, then?”
        “More or less.”
        “I'm afraid of infection,” Jake said, tenderly touching his wounds, spreading the lips of the cuts and watching the clean blood well out to wash away as much