Softly padded, clawed, sharp-beaked and feathered--the prowlers of darkness were on the move.

With the stillness of shadows they were stealing through the moonlit corridors of the wilderness, or hovering gray-winged and ghostly in the ambuscades of the treetops, eager to waylay and kill, hungering for the flesh and blood of creatures weaker than themselves.

Peter knew.

Both heritage and experience warned him.

And he watched the shadows, and sniffed the air, and kept his fangs half bared and ready as he followed the trail of McKay.
He was not stirred by the impulse of adventure alone.