Thankfully these things are fleshy and mostly-living, so when they're shot, they react the way one would expect something to react upon being shot -- mostly a lot of screaming and bleeding.

But they are only mostly-living; what would kill something else only slows them down. The two uninjured ones immediately turn on Will, and they're fast, faster than they should be with how twisted their limbs look. But they shy away from the flaming one, which can't see where it's going and keeps bumping into the brick walls around it; it's blocking their way out of the alley.

The fourth one released him when it was shot and now lurches forward, bleeding profusely from its back and faster than it can heal itself. Its mouth is uncomfortably close to his face right now. When Wolfgang braces his hands against it to shove it away from him, its teeth catch on his wrist, leaving a long superficial scratch. Blood wells to the surface of his skin --

-- "Do you want to do something?" Shani asks abruptly. It's a full moon and they're alone in the woods somewhere she's never been, ostensibly camping but Uri's already said he's not going to sleep in the woods because that's really gross, so mostly they're just eating candy and trying to scare each other, feeling awfully grown-up because they have their own campfire and everything.

Uri would do anything, go anywhere for Shani. He's nine and she's one of his very few real friends. "Okay."

She grins, pleased. "We're going to do an oath," she says, "and become blood brothers."

"But you're not a boy."

"Shut up, that's not the point." She settles at their fire and he wanders after her, sitting on the opposite end as she directs him. She brought one of her mom's antique real silver knives, which they've been using to cut fruit with, although she had this in mind the whole time.

"What are we oath-ing?" he asks, and she has to pause to consider it.

"To be friends forever." He smiles because he likes this idea a lot. But when she starts chanting and waving her hands over the fire as if conjuring something, he starts giggling, a combination of excessive sugar and the utter silliness of this entire thing.

"No, listen, stop laughing." Uri does not stop giggling. "If you aren't going to take this serious --" she threatens.

"No, I am! I am!" He schools his expression into proper somberness, but she gives him a look anyway before proceeding. She read this in a book recently, although she's paraphrasing the actual words and doesn't actually know who Hecate is, but it sounds cool. When she's done, she holds her hand out over their fire and uses her knife to cut a line into the center of her palm. Uri stops giggling and stares at it with intense concentration like she's never seen before.

"Let me see your hand," she says, and when he holds it out over the fire she drags the edge of the blade over his palm in one quick movement --

-- and his mind snaps into sharp focus. The body jerks hard and then squeals when its skin starts bubbling more and more, and then it bursts like an overfilled water balloon, splattering everything around it with foul-smelling blood and rotten flesh. He stands there in shock for a minute.

On the plus side, it put out the flaming one, which lies on the ground twitching helplessly.