“I don’t know,” Leon said.
“The hawk is scared,” Cornelius said.
The surface of the river was still and shining slightly, reflecting the sunlight like a tarnished dime.
The distance in Cornelius’ eyes grew deeper. “Something’s coming,” he whispered.
We had no reason to hang around and wait for it. “Let’s go.”
I turned right and sped up toward our vehicles. Leon and Cornelius followed.
Ahead the shorter of the MII agents was almost to the lot. The woman trailed him, while the taller agent brought up the rear.
A green body burst through the weeds. Eight feet long and four feet tall, it scrambled forward on two big muscular legs, dragging a long scaly tail fringed with bright carmine fins. Another fin—this one bloodred and crested with foot-long spikes—thrust from its spine. Its head could have belonged to an aquatic dinosaur or a prehistoric crocodile—huge pincher-like jaws that opened like giant scissors studded with conical fangs designed to grab and hold struggling prey while the beast pulled them under. Two pairs of small eyes, sunken deep into its skull, glowed with violet.
This didn’t look like anything our planet had birthed. It was either some magic experiment gone haywire or a summon from the arcane realm.
We would need bigger guns.
The beast rushed across the grass. The taller MII agent was directly in its path.
“Run!” Leon and I screamed at the same time.
The man whipped around. For a frantic half second he froze, then jerked his gun up, and fired at the creature. Bullets bit into the beast and glanced off its thick scales.
The two other MII agents pivoted to the beast and opened fire. I sprinted to Rhino and the combat shotgun inside it. Leon dashed after me, trying to get a better angle on the creature. Cornelius followed.
Augustine’s people emptied their magazines into the beast. It plowed through them, knocking them aside. Purple blood stained its sides, but the wounds barely bled, as if the bullets had merely chipped its scales.
The beast’s gaze locked on me. It ignored the agents and hauled itself toward me, two massive paws gouging the turf with red claws.
Leon fired a two-bullet burst from each gun. Four bloody holes gaped where the creature’s beady eyes used to be. It roared, stumbled, and crashed to the ground.
I halted. Cornelius ran past me to the lot.
The female MII agent rose slowly. Her tall friend stared at a bright red gash in his bare thigh. His left pant leg hung in bloody shreds around his ankle. He shifted his weight. Blood poured from the wound and I saw a glimpse of bone inside. The agent gaped at it, wide-eyed, clearly in shock.
“Holy shit,” the shorter MII agent muttered and snapped a new magazine into his HK45.
At the edge of the parking lot, Cornelius spun around and waved his arms toward the river. “Don’t stop! There’s more! More are coming!”
Green beasts poured through the weeds, a mass of scaled bodies, finned tails, and fanged jaws, and in its center, buried under the creatures, a dense knot of magic pulsated like an invisible beacon. The knot’s magic splayed out, touched me, and broke around my power, like a wave against a breaker. A sea of violet eyes focused on me.
The pack turned toward me and charged.
Whatever was emanating magic in the center of the pack was also controlling them. If I had a second, I could’ve fought it with my magic, but the cluster of bodies was too thick, and the beasts came too fast.
I turned and sprinted toward Rhino. The thing’s magic followed me, pinging from my mind like radar. I didn’t need to look back to know the entire pack chased me.
Ahead Cornelius jerked a car remote from his pocket. The lights of his BMW hybrid flashed. The hatchback rose and a massive blue beast tore out, a tiger on steroids, with glossy indigo fur splattered with black and pale blue rosettes.
Zeus landed, roared, flashing fangs the size of steak knives, and bounded across the parking lot. The fringe of tentacles around his neck snapped open, individual tendrils writhing. We passed each other, him sprinting at the creatures and me running in the opposite direction to Rhino.
Gunfire popped behind me like firecrackers going off—Leon, thinning the pack. He’d run out of bullets before they ran out of bodies.
I jumped into Rhino, mashed the brake, and pushed the ignition switch. The engine roared. Cornelius flung the passenger door open and landed in the seat. I stepped on it. Rhino’s custom engine kicked into gear. We shot forward and jumped the curb onto the grass.
In front of us the lawn churned with bodies. A trail of scaled corpses stretched to the left, piling up at the curb of Allen Parkway. Across the street, Leon methodically sank bullets into the creatures in short bursts, using traffic as cover. Zeus snarled next to him. A corpse of a scaled beast lay nearby and Zeus raked it with his claws to underscore his point.
On our right the female agent and the leader had put their arms under the injured man’s shoulders and staggered toward the parking lot. He hung limp, dragging his bleeding leg behind him. The leading beasts on the left snapped their jaws only feet behind them.
No people would be mauled by these things today if I could help it.
I steered right, cutting the creatures off from the MII agents at a sharp angle. The enormously heavy bulk of Rhino smashed into the closest creature with a wet crunch. The armored vehicle careened as we rolled over a body. We burst through the edge of the pack into the clear. I put my foot down on the accelerator, tearing down the lawn. Behind me the pack thinned out as the creatures got in each other’s way trying to turn to follow us. For a moment, the cluster of bodies dispersed. Something spun in their center, something metal, round, and glowing. The strange magic knot.
“You see it?”
“I see it.” Cornelius pulled the tactical shotgun from the floorboards and pumped it.
“Can you reach their minds?”
“No. They’re too preoccupied.”
Asking him what that meant now would distract him. I made a hard left, clipping what was once the back of the pack, knocking the stragglers out of the way.
“Ready,” Cornelius said, his voice calm.
I hit the button to lower the front windows and cut straight through the pack, mowing a diagonal line to the left. The churning rolling thing spun on our right, drawing tight circles on the grass. Cornelius stuck the barrel of the shotgun out the window and fired at the metal object.
BOOM.
My ears rang.
BOOM.
“One more time,” Cornelius said, as if asking for another cup of tea.
We flashed by the pack, smashed head-on into a beast, and I veered right and jumped the curb back into the parking lot. In front of us, the MII vehicle, a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, peeled out onto Allen Parkway with a squeal of tires. The stench of burning rubber blew into the cabin.
“You’re welcome,” Cornelius called after them and reloaded.
I made a hard right onto the parkway. The pack of beasts streaked by on our right.
BOOM.
BOOM.
“Didn’t get it,” Cornelius said. “The slugs bounced off the metal. There’s something alive inside that spinning shell.”
“Animal?”
“Not exactly.”
If it was alive, we could kill it.
We could drive around until the pack tired enough to slow down, grab Leon and Zeus, and drive off, but then these things would rampage through Houston. There was a group of kids playing baseball just a quarter of a mile down the road. We had passed them and the adults who were watching them on our way in to retrieve Rosebud.