It is somehow even worse than he could have imagined. One moment, scorching heat ripples over his skin and fur like the blast of a furnace, the next, a firestorm, and Khoriya at its heart. A hand of searing rock clutches at his arm, the scent of charred fur and sizzling flesh, and the inner animal goes mad.

The river is a distant memory.

Snarling in pain and bestial terror, Khoriya is already surging forward, desperate to put an end to the threat. Beneath him, his shadow writhes like a fistful of snakes, tendrils of darkness swelling and growing like engorged leeches while the unbearable fiery heat seems to weaken ever so slightly around him. Fanged jaws close around bared flesh, and at the last possible second he has just enough presence of mind to sink his teeth in deep into the join of neck and shoulder, to rip and tear at heavy muscle rather than bite out Clive's throat in one bloody mouthful.