The sun has set by the time I reach the coordinates. They lead to a small clearing with minimal rocks and grass, and I find the rangers have already removed the body. I flick my flashlight on and sweep it around the clearing. The blue light lands on prints of boots likely from the rangers but also large footprints. I crouch down over one of them. The elongation of the toes and the way they sharpen into a point are indication of long nails. These tracks belong to a yeti.

They lead off into the trees.

I reach into my pouch, wrapping my fingers around the vial of Pribane. Heaven knows what I would do if they were werewolf tracks. While some cryptists hunt werewolves, vampires, witches, faeries or even more obscure beasts, I specialize in yeti. I could stand a chance against other creatures; I have iron dust for the fae, seed for the vampires, and other defense mechanisms, but it wouldn't be a fair fight.

My flashlight lands on a puddle of blood. I put out a hand to steady myself as I examine it. The dirt is damp underneath my palm. I flip my hand over and shine my light on it. Red reflects back up at me.

Swallowing, I stand and wipe my hand on my pants, streaking them with blood. My own blood boils. Whatever yeti did this, I want my bullet to be the one that tears through it, ending its miserable existence. But I didn't catch it in the act, meaning as of now, it can only get a tranquilizer dart.

Everything I'm doing right now is disobeying Marcus's orders. He has every right to fire me. But if I'm not doing what I'm at the Institute to do, what's the point in working for him?

I set off again, this time following the footprints, tranquilizer darts ready in my gun. Bugs nip at my exposed neck. I swat them away. After the car wreck, I started watching ScoobyDoo religiously and then reading every story of ancient mythology I could fine; I never pictured myself here, stalking a sasquatch through the woods. I guess I didn't think I'd be killing them either. But after seeing firsthand what they do to us, to humans, I've known I had to stop them.

The tracks veer off to the right, and I have to push aside a branch to continue following them.

At first it was hard. Killing them. Knowing that part of them was human. But they kill us. Brutally. Isn't a bullet from me humane in comparison?

A deep growl carries through the leaves. I stiffen, trying to determine from which direction the sound came. A moment later I flick off my flashlight and slip into the brush, letting bushes and fallen branches conceal me.

Looking out through the leaves is like looking through the lens of a camera and having the focus shift back and forth. I blink and the leaves are sharp even in the night air. The next blink brings the outside world into focus.

Across from me, leaves and branches rustle. I shift my gun across my chest, one of my legs propped under me, one bent in front.

A yeti steps out of the brush, his feet crunching twigs that are scattered across the terrain. I hold in my breath even as my heart rate picks up. The yeti turns its head side to side as if searching for something. Some tiny part of me feels bad for disobeying Marcus—he only wanted to protect his friends, but if he just knew why I was out here, knew about the dead hiker, he'd understand why I had to come. Why I put myself in this situation. He'd have to.

Fur covers the sasquatch's body and hangs off it like a mane would, except it's long everywhere and not only on its neck. The hair on the top of its head arches upward as it covers its elongated skull. It's too dark to know what color its fur is.

Sweat clings to the back of my neck where the hair that didn't make it in my ponytail gathers. Is this the same yeti that killed Kel? The one that killed the hiker tonight?

The yeti lunges, and I brace, tilting my gun, ready for the shot. But it turns, disappearing into the brush. A feral roar rings out, and snarls are unleashed into the night.

A yeti flies out from the brush, landing on its back. It's not the same one; I can just make out that the fur on its torso is lighter than the rest of its body. The other yeti didn't have that trait.

Thatyeti tears out through the brush, landing on top of the second yeti. Seeing both of them, I can tell the second yeti is smaller. The first yeti bites and growls and slashes its claws at the smaller one who tries fighting back, but it unleashes more cries than growls.

Something wet hits my face. I don't dare move, but I don't have to see it to know its blood.

The clouds shift, and the new moon shines down on the yeti, illuminating the spit, the blood, the matted fur. This is a fight to the death, one which the smaller sasquatch has no hope of winning. Its shrieks are like painful slashes against my eardrums.

The larger sasquatch raises its arm before swiping it down, its claws glinting, across the neck of its opponent. It happens too quickly for the other yeti to cry out.

It's dead.

Heaving, the living sasquatch rises to its feet, bracing its arms against its knees. An action that looks so human but that's in juxtaposition to what I've just witnessed.

The fur cascades off of the yeti, piling to the ground around it. In the fur's wake is a man. A man I've woken up to for three years.

Marcus, my lips form his name, but no sound escapes them.

This isn't—no.

He's been with me when I've shot and killed sasquatches as they attacked a hiker. He's been with me when I've seen the hikers' destroyed bodies. He never tried to stop me from firing. He'd always help me bring in the sasquatch body. He let me do all of that to his own kind?

He wouldn't. Couldn't.

Look what he just did to his own kind.

Marcus stares down at the yeti he killed, his face forlorn, and every part of me wants to run out and comfort him because damn it I love him.

He goes out of focus and not because of the leaves. I blink, tears falling on my cheeks.

The gun weighs down my hands. I almost shot him. With a tranquilizer but what if it had been a bullet? What if I sent it through his heart? What—

I have to lock him up.

Marcus tilts his head back, the neck on his skin pale in the moonlight. He's stark naked.

If I can get Marcus locked up, I'll do it, so I never have to find him fallen across his victim with the blood from a gunshot wound I gave him pouring into the mud. Even if it means betraying him. Even if it means ripping out my heart, because I'll tear out my heart a thousand times before I allow myself to be the reason his stops.

But how do I get him locked up? The cryptists won't believe me. They'd have to see him as yeti.

Marcus rolls his shoulders back and collapses on his knees before the sasquatch he slaughtered.

I see them—the cryptists—in my head. Their bodies twisted, distorted . . . destroyed, their blood pooling around my feet.

I swallow hard, and the image goes away. It's sometime past ten. We're meeting at midnight. If I could just convince a few of the hunters to help me, that would be enough to protect the group.

Marcus lays his hand on the fallen yeti's leg. It's as if he can't believe what he's done.

I'll expose him with the Pribane. It won't be enough to fully shift him, but enough that they all will see.

A sob threatens to bubble out of me. I gulp it down. All the dreams, all the plans we had for our future, I have to let them go. If I go to him in private, tell him I know . . . if I step out right now, reveal myself to him, I'll have to give up my job as a hunter, as a protector because I can't take the risk of being the one who one day puts him down. No, Marcus has to be locked up so that he does not hurt anyone and no one hurts him.

Marcus rises before slinking into the brush, still in human form.

I sit there in silence for at least five minutes. I hardly dare to breathe even though I feel as if I'm going to hyperventilate.

Once I judge enough time has passed, I pull out my phone and dial Yuri, one of the vampire hunters. Even though his experience does not lay with yeti, I trust him and his cousin Xerxes more than most of the cryptists.

"There's no way you're going to believe me, but I need your help."