Mel slid to the ground, tears streaming down her face. A fit of laughter tried to bubble out of her throat when she realized that she usually went into the walk-in to cry. Mel held it back.

The lab was empty and utterly ruined. It was as though whatever the wolf had wanted to do to them, it had settled on doing to the building instead. Every glass jar Rosa had prepared was broken. One of the tables was leaning up against the mixer. Three lights were shattered, leaving only one intact in the far right corner of the room.

Mel pushed herself off the ground and turned to survey the damage to the door. Long claw marks raked its entire surface, but it didn’t look like it would give out anytime soon. She brushed flecks of white paint from her back as she listened, trying to make sense of a nearby sound. The werewolf was tearing apart the front room— probably the only reason it hadn’t come running when the walk-in door slammed.

Mel slid along the walk-in over to its side, next to the open pantry. She wiped her sweaty palms on her shirt and tested her weight on the shelves. Rosa had climbed them a couple of times with no trouble to reach some seldom-used gadget from the top, but she weighed considerably less than Mel. 

The bottom shelf, only a few inches off the ground, took her weight without protest. She stepped onto the second shelf and gingerly pulled herself up. Her arm brushed a metal measuring cup, knocking it to the ground in a deafening clatter. Mel held her breath. The chaos up front had abated, but the wolf didn’t react to the fallen cup in any way evident to her. With a couple of deep breaths to reset her nerves, Mel climbed to the third shelf.

She reached across the space between the shelves and the walk-in. Lacking any footholds or handles to grip, Mel didn’t know exactly how she would get on top of it. She didn’t have time to form a plan. Pulling herself to the top shelf and bending awkwardly to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling, she situated herself such that she was facing the walk-in. She threw herself at it gracelessly.

Her ribs slammed against the top edge. Mel grunted, far too loud, and this time heard the wolf huff in response. A surge of adrenaline brought her scrambling onto the top of the walk-in just in time to see the werewolf reenter the lab. Mel pressed herself flat and watched without blinking as it surveyed the room. It sniffed the air, catching and following a scent to the walk-in, beyond her field of vision. It sniffed again, huffed, and hit the door once before stalking away to the back hall.

From the safety of her hiding spot, she took the chaos in anew. In all honesty— and given her position, how much worse could honesty make things?— the destruction was beautiful. How every broken thing seemed to announce the brokenness of other things. The flickering of the lights catching in the shards of glass. Water dripping from the hand sink’s cracked pipe puddling where the wolf had stomped a small crater in the tiles. A slight breeze coming in through the shattered window scattering shreds of Arthur’s green apron across the dry parts of the floor.

Mel wasn’t afraid anymore. She was inspired. If she’d had any water to bless, she would have gladly taken the time to do it with her spirit this light and energized. This thought made her realize that her blessing from earlier in the evening had so far held strong; the pot of water remained untouched. On pure instinct, Mel closed her eyes and let her ego go. The will of the universe came to her, and she greeted it with joy.

Mel had never performed this ritual lying down. She’d never had a reason to. At a great distance from herself, she watched her worry arise but find no purchase. Energy unlike any she’d ever felt before streamed through the base of her skull. She directed it away from her spine, over the top of her head, out through the middle of her forehead to the water below.

She opened her eyes. The water emitted an iridescent white glow and, if she strained to hear it, a faint and unidentifiable tune. This was far beyond any minor blessing she’d ever performed. 

“I’ll save you, Rosa,” Mel whispered. She added, “And I’ll avenge you, Gus.”

Mel awkwardly shuffled herself around until she found the off switch for the walk-in. She hit it with more venom than necessary.

It took Arthur a few moments to put together what had happened. Then came a flurry of muffled screaming, of fists and boots against the inside of the door. The terror that shot through Mel made no sense. He couldn’t hope to get to her before the wolf got to him. She could already hear its claws clicking in their direction.

The wolf walked back into the lab on all fours, watching the walk-in door with frustrated intensity. Mel saw intelligence in its expression. She saw something familiar, too.

Arthur cracked the walk-in door open and screamed, “Turn that back on right now!”

Mel shrank away. The wolf leapt clear across the room, crashing against the door with all of its weight, closing it again. Arthur cried out, then quickly silenced himself. The wolf beat on the door over and over again, the blows reverberating against her belly, before finally stepping back and letting out a long, hate-filled series of barks and growls.

It squatted in the middle of the room, its back to Mel, rubbing its head and neck with its front paws in frustration. She squirmed her way slowly, silently forward. She’d seen that body language before. When Arthur’s voice came screaming through the laptop speakers at the start of their team meeting— she’d seen it then.

Kit.