She braces him up as best she can, her nerves spun tight enough to snap at any moment.

Please, God, she thinks. Let him be okay.

The skinwalker's head swivels around slowly. It's a bison, now, if a bison had claws, but even as they watch it changes, becoming something like a wolf and so very not like one at all. Its eyes are red, Murphy notices with a kind of chilly interest.

It leaps.

Nothing should be able to jump that far. From the middle of the auditorium to the edge of the stage with ease, too-long limbs folding tidily under it as it lands. It cants its head to one side, rumbling. Laughing again. Murphy grabs a fistful of Gabriel's shirt near the small of his back to steady herself, the other hand still holding the hilt of her curved blade.

"If we're going to die," she says to it, "we should at least get to know what's killing us."

It grins.

There are too many teeth. Way, way too many teeth. "Naagloshii."

It takes another leap.