I turned to Kira and held my hand out.

"Give me the dagger."

Her brow tightened for a second. Her fingers hovered over the sheath at her belt, the confusion working across her face while she tried to figure out what I wanted it for.

Then her eyes widened.

The corner of her mouth pulled up in a small, dark smile. She drew the blade and pressed the hilt into my palm without a word.

"Everyone else. Hide."

I pointed at the boulder line ten paces down and left of the cave mouth. A shelf of dark rock had shed enough snow to leave three or four decent gaps behind it, deep enough to break sightline.

"Behind those. Stay low. Don’t move, don’t talk, don’t breathe hard until I tell you to."

Kira moved first. Tom scrambled after her. Lena pulled her hood tight around her face and slid into the second gap without looking back at me.

Edgar started to follow.

"Not you."

He stopped mid-step. "Me?"

"Stay here for now."

I crouched at the lip of the cave and turned Kira’s dagger in my hand. The blade was decent. Sharp along one edge, the point clean, the handle wrapped in fine dark leather that had absorbed the cold from her belt.

I pressed the edge against the pad of my index finger and drew it across in one shallow motion.

Just enough.

The skin split under the blade. Blood welled up along the cut, a fat dark bead in the winter air, then a second, then a third when I flexed the finger. Warm on my hand. The smell hit my nose a beat later, iron and salt.

I turned to Edgar.

"Use your wind to push the smell into the cave. Small gusts, not a hurricane. I want it to drift in like meat on the wind, not blast in like an announcement."

Edgar’s face was pale, but he nodded. His hands came up between us. Pale threads of wind gathered in his fingers, thin and controlled, and he angled his palms toward the mouth of the cave.

The gust moved past me. It caught the scent of the blood on my hand and carried it in through the seam in the rock.

I let it flow for ten seconds.

"Good. Now hide with the others."

Edgar didn’t ask. He was already moving, boots scuffing snow as he ducked behind the boulder line beside Lena.

I turned back to the cave mouth.

I let the blood run down my finger onto my palm, then dragged the palm across the front of my uniform. A wide red streak on the pale grey fabric. I flicked another handful of drops onto the snow beside me. Then another. I worked the pattern out in a loose arc around where I meant to lie, painting the ground in enough spatter that a hungry animal would come in confident.

Then I lowered myself onto my side in the middle of it.

My cheek pressed into the cold snow. I let my mouth fall half-open, my eyes half-lidded, one arm bent under me at the angle a dying man’s arm would fall at. Kira’s dagger sat under my palm where the pattern of blood would hide it.

I made my breathing shallow.

Then I waited.

The wind kept cutting along the pass. From the boulder line, I could see the top of Kira’s hood over the edge of the rock. Her dark eyes were locked on me. Tom’s head appeared beside her, then dropped back down as she pulled him under cover.

The first sound came from inside the cave. Then, it began to draw closer.

Whatever it was, it was small. The steps were light, and I could hear it easing along the inside of the seam, testing the air, following the wind Edgar had pushed in for it.

Two metres in.

One metre.

The scrape stopped just inside the mouth.

At this point, my breathing had stopped completely. Holding it in for as long as possible. My eyelashes half-shut over the last sliver of a sightline.

A pale pink nose appeared at the edge of the frame, twitching slightly.

The whiskers were long, silver-white, spread wide at the tips. The head that followed the nose was flat and low, the ears tucked back against a skull covered in fur so white it lost itself against the snow. Two ice-blue eyes, slit pupils narrowed against the daylight.

The frostpanther.

A solitary ambush hunter. About the size of a large dog when full-grown, lean through the ribs, fast enough on a straight sprint to run down a fleeing awakener in under three seconds. At the peak of e-rank, dangerous in confined terrain, less dangerous in the open.

It eased forward another half-step.

Its shoulders cleared the frame. Then its ribs. Then its haunches. Its tail flicked once behind it, the tip twitching, ready to pounce.

Its head lowered.

The muscles in its shoulders bunched.

Now!

I lunged.

My weight came off the snow in one motion. My right hand shot up, palm flat, and the heat came down my arm in a rush.

[Buddha’s Palm]

The gold light gathered in front of my hand and rushed forward across the short distance.

The frostpanther barely saw it coming. Its whole body twisted sideways at the last moment. The golden palm passed a fraction to the left of its ribs and clipped it along the flank.

Despite grazing it, the impact still spun the frostpanther.

It went over sideways in the snow with a wet crack from something in its back leg, tumbled twice, and came up in a low crouch with one hind leg dragging. Blood matted the fur along its side. Its lips peeled back from a row of thin white teeth. A hiss came up out of its chest that was more like a scream than a growl.

Behind me, a gust of wind lifted.

Edgar’s wind blades came in fast. Two thin ribbons of pale wind that hissed across the snow at head-height, catching the frostpanther across the shoulder as it tried to turn. The cuts opened along its fur in shallow red lines. It hissed again, dropped a fraction lower to the ground, but stayed on its feet.

Edgar’s wind wasn’t a killing element at E-rank.

I glanced over my shoulder.

Kira was already up out of cover, her dagger back in her hand, eyes locked on the animal. Tom was one step behind her with the baton up. Lena had her hands out at her sides, water gathering at her wrists.

"Go. Fight it."

Three heads turned toward me in confusion.

"You need the experience. It’s injured. You have the numbers, you have the angles, and it’s not going to run past me. Go."

I stepped to the mouth of the cave and planted myself sideways across the seam. My shoulder blocked the gap between the rock lip and the outer frame. Anything trying to slip past me back into the dark was going to have to go through me first.

The frostpanther’s ice-blue eyes tracked from me to the four of them and back to me.

Its ears flattened.