Elf [Book One of The Elf Chronicles]

Gooseflesh danced along his skin at the long, drawn-out howl in the distance. His nostrils flared and his gut tightened. Some part of him recognised the sound.
 He also knew what it meant.
 Mac was right...
 He listened for a moment longer - his keen ears picking up the direction. Then he hopped on the bike and tore out of the lot, as though the hounds of hell were at his back.

***

 He ran. The wind whistled in his ears, but it couldn't tune out the pounding feet at his back. The running pace that matched his heartbeat. The howls were louder now - practically on top of him, and his eyes wept in terror. Streaming, not crying, with the wind and the salty sweat and the strain of his exertion.
 It was one thing running home and another pounding flat out across the paving. He was beginning to feel the strain. He'd worked all day.
 He couldn't run all night.
 He needed an advantage - any advantage. They'd have him in seconds...
 He dove off the sidewalk, tripped and rolled, then swung onto a flimsy tree branch, and in that second, they lost him.
 It was enough. It told him what he needed to do.
 The park. He needed the trees...
 He dropped, and was toppled off his feet as a heavy body plunged into him, jaw-first. Shark-like teeth gouged into his thigh - slicing muscle and tendon. His blood poured between locked teeth. He could see the glitter in the dark.
 Blood? Glitter? No, that wasn't right...
 He screamed, and pounded on the head that was deadlocked on his leg. Pounding, pounding. Hard bone and eye hollows. He socked and pummelled and poked and pounded till the brain box should have been mush.
 He'd lifted his arm to hit it again, when teeth locked on his raised arm and dragged him back, so his head went crashing against concrete.
 They'd be at his throat next.
 The trees. I need the trees.
 He fought. Fingers in eyes and up nostrils and gouging into ears. Kicking and punching, snarling back, fighting back. He was coated in saliva and blood and hair.
 Then, it got worse. At the point of the bites there came a burning, that traversed his nerve endings in an agonising frenzy of pain, that was nowhere and everywhere at once. He arched his back and howled, as loudly as the beast that was now at his breast.
 It was coming. His ears filled with a roar that came not from without but within. His eyes widened as a growl issued from his lips.
 The hound - the one whose saliva was dripping in his eyes - froze.
 At his core, where the burning of the bites formed an escalating pyre, a shard of ice jagged and seized. Like a seed crystal, its surface grew, layer on layer.
 The frozen mass weighed him down, but as it spread, it must have made him unpalatable. One by one, the hounds spat him out and shook their heads, spraying him with a splattering of saliva and blood. Zander clasped his ripped arm against the gouge in his chest. Rolling onto his stomach, he managed to push himself up and stumble to his feet.
 He looked back - a dozen flaming eyes were watching him hungrily - padded feet moving restlessly.
 They were eager - anxious - desperate, even - to taste him again.
 The tree...
 Zander limped away in a stumbling, tumbling run - trying to put as much distance between them as he could.