Mauled by ghouls

The dorm sounded like a medley of pay-per-view wrestling and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Ghouls shrieked. River Shoulders roared. Very, very disoriented students screamed. The walls and floor shook with impact again and again as River Shoulders flung ghouls around like so many softballs. Ghoulish blood spattered the walls and the ceiling, green-brown and putridsmelling, and as strong as he was, River Shoulders wasn’t pitching a shutout. The ghouls’ claws and fangs had sunk into him, covering him in punctures and lacerations, and his scarlet blood mixed with theirs on the various surfaces.

Brief Cases, Bigfoot on Campus, Page 210-211


I’D SEEN GHOULS in all kinds of situations before—but I’d never seen them whipped into submission. Ghouls fought to the grisly, messy end. That was what they did. But River Shoulders had been more than their match. He’d left several of them alive when he could have killed them to the last, and he’d found their breaking point when Irwin had dragged Barrowill in by his hair. Ghouls could take a huge beating, but River Shoulders had given them one like I’d never seen, and when he ordered them to take their master and their dead and never to return, they’d snapped to it.
“Thanks, Connie,” I groaned, as she settled me onto a section of convenient rubble. I was freezing. The frost on my clothes was rapidly melting away, but the chill had settled inward.
The girl looked acutely embarrassed, but that wasn’t in short supply in that dorm. That hallway was empty of other students for the moment, though. We had the place to ourselves, though I judged that the authorities would arrive in some form before long.
Irwin came over with a dust-covered blanket and wrapped it around her. He’d scrounged a ragged towel for himself, though it did more to emphasize his physique than to hide it. The kid was ripped.
“Thank you, Irwin,” she said. He grunted. Physically, he’d bounced back from the nearly lethal feeding like a rubber freaking ball. Maybe River Shoulders’s water-smoothing spell had done something to help that. Mentally, he was slowly refocusing. You could see the gleam coming back into his eyes. Until that happened, he’d listened to Connie. A guy could do worse.
“I …” Connie shook her head. “I remember all of it. But I have no idea what just happened.” She stared at River Shoulders for a moment, her expression more curious than fearful. “You … You stopped something bad from happening, I think.”
“Yeah, he did,” I confirmed.
Connie nodded toward him in a grateful little motion. “Thank you. Who are you?”
“Irwin’s dad,” I said.
Irwin blinked several times. He stared blankly at River Shoulders.
“Hello,” River rumbled. How something that large and that powerful could sit there bleeding from dozens of wounds and somehow look sheepish was beyond me. “I am very sorry we had to meet like that. I had hoped for something quieter. Maybe with music. And good food.”

Brief Cases, Bigfoot on Campus, Page 214-216