Back to this. And a little back-tracking, too. I needed to tell the readers why the party was there MUCH earlier in the story. Going for the big reveal is a bad habit of mine, sometimes.
“Speaking of,” said Susan, “any scent of our target, Jill?”
Jill waggled one clawed hand. “Yes and no,” she said. “Nothing down here, but the last time I was scouting topside I got a really good whiff. Also some regular trail stuff. Tufts of fur and a couple of cut-up critters. He’s definitely going to hide out in New Haven.”
“He?” said Maddie. “You finally got that nailed down?”
“Yeah,” replied Jill. “He pissed on a tree. Definitely male, yeah. He’s also walking on two legs at least part of the time, unless he likes to aim high when pissing.”
“Yes, thank you for that mental picture,” said Susan primly. “Good to know that he has enough control over himself to not go full beast. Those poor sheep he ripped apart at the Poughkeepsie settlement looked awful.”
“I still think that incident could have been a lot worse,” said Anton. “He didn’t go after any of the surface humans there, and he had a few chances to. Both there, and at the caravan he stole from later.”
“There was that one caravan guard,” Maddie pointed out. “Poor kid got clawed in the arm.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t stick around afterward,” Anton said. “Just ran right past the guard and kept on going. Which was the smartest thing he could do, right? I think that there’s a brain inside that beast.”