The fight against Bane seemed slower, like it had taken hours, but now everything is happening too fast. Black Tarn stands in the middle of the parking lot, near the diesel pumps, howling as if he can summon every spirit in upstate New York. Scarper, over seven feet tall and furry—still in his nearly human form—keeps trying to drag or carry Clay. And Clay is a nightmare, a tangled mass of moving flesh, black as oil except for occasional white glimpses of bone or teeth. Where is his blood?
You scan the parking lot. Someone will see Black Tarn. In fact, a truck driver is sliding through the snow around her cab now, and if he gets near her, you fear what she will do. She's already passed under a camera pointed at the pumps, and the other two will be there in an instant. A "huge dog" caught on camera is bad enough, but what happens if someone sees Clay?
And what happened to Clay? Can you help him? Should you? As you watch, the now-familiar face of "Uncle" Clay bursts from the black tangle, his expression contorted in a rictus of agony. You finally see blood around his lips.
Maybe eating the horse was a bad idea.
Scarper loves to talk about how clever and cunning he is, but he's just steps away from walking under a camera with a morphing sack of black flesh the size of a pony.
You run over to them and get Scarper's attention.
"What the fuck do you want, puppy?" he yells, but you grab one end of Clay—in the darkness, you feel fur but can't see what you're holding—and pull them both toward a frozen culvert that borders the parking lot. But it's so dark away from the lights that you hesitate for a moment.
"The van's that way, idiot," Scarper yells. "Stop pulling him!" And before you can stop him, Scarper rips the writhing, moving mass from your hands.
"But there's a camera..." you start to say. But then it's too late... and you hear a scream.
You look across the parking lot as Black Tarn, still in his massive wolf form, rips out the trucker's throat. You study the situation and conclude there's nothing you can do: the man is either already dead or will bleed to death in less than a minute.
"Hurry up, idiot!" Scarper yells at you. You head for the van, and Scarper turns and yells, "B.T., come on! We need... shit!"
Scarper stares open-mouthed at the trucker's mutilated corpse. Black Tarn transforms into his homid form over the smoking corpse, then runs—naked and bloodied—through the camera's field of view and jumps into the backseat with Clay.
"Keys," Scarper mutters. You toss him the keys and rush to the passenger seat, barely making it in before the van screeches out of the parking lot.