The beasts scuttled across the sleek surface, sticking to the glass as if they had glue on the pads of the paws. The largest of them was about six feet long and had to push three hundred pounds. The smallest was about the size of a large dog. That meant some of them were babies. Hungry, hungry babies.
The workers backed away, brandishing their tools. Only one exit led out of this glass bowl and it lay on the opposite side, almost directly behind the train car and the creatures.
The horde focused on the people, watching them with the intense attention of hungry predators who were trying to decide if something was food. The larger of the creatures raised its head. Its wide jaws parted, revealing a small forest of crooked fangs. Meat-eater. Of course.
The workers stopped moving.
The largest beast stared at the people below, turning left, right, left…Muscles bunched on his shoulders.
“Back away,” Kyle called out. “Don’t provoke it. Envy, get in there.”
“In a minute,” the navigator said.
The beast leaped, aiming for the center of the crowd. People scattered, splitting into two groups—the eight people closest to us ran toward the tent, while twice as many sprinted away in the opposite direction, toward the glass wall.
The beast chased after the farther, larger group. One of the guards, a large dark-skinned man, charged at it. The beast hooted, like a colossal owl, and snapped its teeth. The guard dodged, swung, and chopped at the beast’s neck. The machete cut bone and gristle like a meat cleaver.
The beast’s head drooped to the side, half severed. The scent of blood hit me, bitter and revolting. My predatory instincts backpedaled—whatever that thing was, it wasn’t good to eat.
The creature staggered and crashed down. Dark blood, thick and rust-brown, spilled onto the glass.
The horde broke out in alarmed hoots.
“Not so tough,” Felipe told Kyle, the relief plain in his voice.
The ground trembled. The walls of the railcar burst. A behemoth spilled out, huge, grotesquely muscled, its forelimbs like tree trunks. I’d once seen a dog as big as a house. This was larger. It was taller than the construction tent. How the hell did it even fit under there?
Kyle swore.
The beast sighted the dead offspring, opened its maw, and bellowed. She looked just like her babies, except for the bone carapace that sheathed most of her upper face as if someone had pulled her skull out and clamped it over her ugly mug. Her four eyes were barely the size of Ping-Pong balls. Trying to shoot them with an arrow would be a pain in the ass.
“Okay,” Envy said. “I’m out.”
Kyle’s eyes bulged. “I paid you, you maggot!”
“Not enough,” Envy said.
The vamp grabbed him, swinging the navigator over its back, and dashed away, leaping over people and dodging beasts. A moment and it vanished into the glass forest.
Kyle’s face turned purple in a fit of sudden rage. He struggled to say something.
Spurned by their parent’s roar, the creatures slunk toward the larger group.
Felipe grabbed my arm. “Help us!”
“Why?” I was done with the civil servant bit. It was no longer my job to save every idiot from the consequences of their own stupidity. They walked into the Glass Menagerie on their own, knowing the risks. Why should I put my life in danger for the people who tried to sic a vamp on me? I owed them nothing. I just had to get the information I needed from Kyle and make sure that Ascanio and I got out of there in one piece.
The beasts circled the larger group. The workers hugged the glass wall. It wouldn’t be long now before one of the creatures got brave enough.
“Please!” Felipe’s eyes were desperate. “My son is down there.”
So what? Everyone was somebody’s husband, wife, somebody’s son, somebody’s Baby Rory…
Aw, shit.
I looked at Felipe’s face and saw Nick there. Their features were nothing alike, but that’s exactly what Nick must’ve looked like when told his wife was dead. Felipe stared at me with wide-open eyes, desperate and terrified, his face sharpened, as if he were about to wince in pain and cry out. Every wrinkle gouged his skin like a scar. All of the rules society imposed on men, all of the obligations to be the brave one, to never panic, to handle themselves with stony dignity, all of them were wiped away, because he was about to lose his son. He was helpless. He begged me for his child’s life and I knew that he would trade places with his boy without a moment’s hesitation.
I couldn’t just stand there and watch him as his son was eaten alive. It was not in me. The person who would walk away from that man wasn’t who I was or wanted to be.
I slipped the scabbard off my arm and handed it to Ascanio. “Arrow!”
He yanked an arrow out and put in my palm. I notched it. “I’ll be shooting fast. Have the next arrow ready.”
I drew the bow.
The bravest beast jumped, aiming for the nearest worker.
The bow string and the arrow sang together in a vicious happy duet. The arrowhead sliced into the creature’s throat. The first beast fell, hissing, trying to swipe at the shaft with its paw. The arrow whined. A blue light sparked at the wound and the beast exploded.
I held my hand out and Ascanio put another arrow into it.
The second beast followed the first. A moment later, the second explosion hurled chunks of flesh and bone into the pack. I didn’t have time to watch. I kept shooting, fast, precise, filling the air with arrows.
The beasts panicked. They dashed to and fro amidst their exploding siblings, biting and clawing at each other. The Mother Beast roared, snapping massive jaws at random, unable to figure out what was killing her babies.
“Run!” I screamed.
The workers dashed toward us, running along the wall. The beasts chased them. The air whistled in a nonstop deadly chorus, as my arrows found targets.
Felipe grabbed a pickaxe out of another man’s hands and ran toward the group. A woman to my left charged in after him, and so did Tony—the guard—and two others.
One of the workers, a small woman, stumbled, fell, and slid down the glass slope. Two beasts fell on her, ripping into the woman with wet, gurgling growls. I sank two arrows into them, but it was too late. The woman screamed, a short guttural cry, cut off in mid-note. Blood drenched the glass. A moment later the arrow detonated and human and beast rained over the glass in a bloody deluge.
The first runner made it to the tent and collapsed behind me. The rest followed. Finally Felipe and the dark-skinned guard made it in, both splattered with gore.
The Mother Beast spun toward us. Finally found the enemy, did you?
“Form a perimeter!” I barked. “Time to fight for your lives! Use whatever you got.”
The workers scrambled to form a line.
The monster ducked her head, and I saw a narrow slit in her carapace, located high between her eyes. Soft pink tissue expanded and contracted, filling the foot-wide slit and then retracting. Hello, target.
The beast swung her head again and bellowed in my direction. The wave of sound hit me like the roar of a tornado. I’d have to take the mother out or none of us would get out alive.
“Can I shift now?” Ascanio asked.
“Yes. Now.”
Ascanio’s skin ruptured. Powerful muscle wound about his skeleton, skin sheathed it, and pale brownish-gray fur sprouted through it. A dark mane grew on his head and dripped down the back of his neck, over his spine. Pale stripes sliced his forelimbs, ending in five-inch claws. His face, like his body, became a meld of human and striped hyena. His eyes flashed with red.
The Mother Beast lifted one colossal front paw and took a step forward. The ground shook.
The bouda opened his mouth and roared back, breaking into bloodcurdling hyena laughter. My hackles rose. There’s my pretty boy.
“Keep her occupied!” I barked. “Make her face this way.”
Ascanio leaped over the workers’ heads and dashed down to
the monster. He swatted a smallish beast out of the way. It yelped and the behemoth swung in his direction.
I drew my bow. Not yet.
Ascanio backhanded another creature.
Not yet. I had time.
The behemoth ducked down, snarling.
Not yet…
The huge teeth snapped at Ascanio. He ducked, escaping by a couple of inches.
I let the arrow go. It sliced through the air, propelled as much by the bowstring as by my will, and sliced straight into the unprotected area of her head. Yes! Nailed it!
The arrow whined and exploded. Blood shot out of the behemoth’s nostrils. She shook her head…and charged Ascanio. He leaped up and left, bounced off the glass, and jumped behind her, slicing the behemoth’s leg with his claws on the way.
Damn it. It didn’t even faze her.
Ascanio and my arrows weren’t doing enough damage. Neither would machetes. We could hack at her all day, and we’d do no good.
The behemoth chased Ascanio. The boy jumped back and forth, dashing like some mad rabbit. He couldn’t keep this up forever.
If only we had something, some weapon, something…
The monster swung her tail, right over the heavy jackhammer laying abandoned on the glass. It was still attached to the tank by the hose that pumped enchanted water into it. The hose was way too short to reach the beast.
I spun to Felipe. “Will it work without the hose?”
It took him a second. “Yes!” He jerked his hand up, fingers spread. “Five minutes.”
I threw down my bow and sprinted to the jackhammer. My paws slipped on the glass, slick with beast blood. I slid, jumped, landed by the jackhammer, and heaved it off the ground. A heavy bastard.
A tree-trunk-sized monster leg loomed in front of me. I leaped and clawed my way up the beast to the top, hauling the jackhammer with me. The freaking thing must’ve weighed three hundred pounds, and I had to drag it one-handed. My right arm felt like it would wrench out of the socket. I pulled myself up, digging into the monster’s hide with my left hand and my hind claws.
The creature moved, chasing Ascanio. Her muscles bulged under me. I clung to her, like a flea, and scrambled up.
I made it over the shoulder and ran toward her head. She roared again and I planted the jackhammer right at the base of her neck, the only spot unprotected by the carapace.
I flipped the jackhammer’s ON switch.
Nothing.
Below people were yelling something. I flicked my ears.
“Chant! Chant it to start!”
Aaaargh. I chanted, praying it would start faster than our cars did.
Ascanio dashed around the work site, buying me time. Below, the smaller monsters attacked the line of workers.
Work, I willed, chanting. Work, you blasted stupid tool.
Work.
Work.
The jackhammer shuddered in my hands. I dug my foot claws into the beast’s back and plunged the jackhammer deep into the behemoth’s flesh. The chisel pounded into the creature’s muscle. Hot blood drenched my feet.
The beast howled in agony, deafening me with the sound of her torture. The jackhammer ate its way down, into her body, and I clung to it, sinking in.
The behemoth shook like a wet dog. I gripped the jackhammer and drove it deeper and deeper. It pulled me in. My arms sank into wet flesh. I took a deep breath and then my nose and my face connected with bloody mush. Pressure ground me. I heard a dull rhythmic sound and realized it was the beast’s heart beating next to me.
Suddenly the full weight of the jackhammer hit my arms. I fell.
The jackhammer hit the ground, dead, and I landed on top of it, its handle conveniently impacting with my rib cage.
Ow. That’s a cracked rib for sure.
Above me the beast stumbled, a red hole in her chest dripping blood and liquefied flesh.
I sprinted away, running for my life.
The creature teetered, blocking out the sun, and crashed down with a deafening thud. The glass floor of the clearing shattered from the impact. Fractures raced from her body up into the translucent glass icebergs. For a fraction of a second nothing moved, and then giant chunks of glass slid from the walls and plummeted down, exploding into razor-sharp shrapnel.
I threw myself behind the enchanted water tank.
All around me glass fell with thunderous blasts, as if I were crouched in the middle of an artillery salvo. Shards slashed at my hide, stinging me like a swarm of bees. I smelled my own blood. The ground shook.
Gradually the bursts slowed. Silence claimed the clearing. I straightened.
Where is the boy?
The tent lay in shambles, crushed beneath a chunk of amber glass the size of an SUV. A man was crying, his leg sliced open. People were slowly rising from hiding. I scanned the survivors. Felipe was hugging a young man. At least his son had survived.
No Ascanio.
Please be alive.
A loud hyena cackle rang through the clearing. I turned. He stood on top of the beast. Blood drenched his fur. His monster-mouth split in a happy, psychotic grin.
I exhaled.
Gradually it sank in. The Mother Beast was dead. I had killed her. The taste of her blood burned in my mouth. Behind her, a deep black hole bore into the ground beneath the remnants of the railroad car. It must’ve been her underground lair. She had raised her brood there, safe and far away from everyone, until Kyle’s crew invaded her den.
Such an awful waste. None of this was necessary. At least one person died, many others were injured, and this great magnificent beast and her brood lost their lives all because Kyle Bell wanted to make a quick buck on the side. He stood by the remnants of the tent now, arms crossed, barking orders.
I marched over to Kyle. He saw me, opened his mouth, and I backhanded him. The blow knocked him to the ground. “This is your fault. You brought these people here. You knew this place was dangerous.” I pulled him upright and spun him toward the dead beast. “Look! People died because of you. Do you understand that? If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have had to murder her. She was just protecting her children.”
“She tried to kill us!”
I backhanded him again. “She tried to kill you because you broke into her house.”
The workers stood around us, their faces grim. Nobody made any move to help their boss.
I looked at them. “Anything you reclaim here is contaminated. Being here is a crime. Taking anything out of this zone is a crime. You need to know this.”
Kyle stayed down, until I grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him up, his face two inches from mine. “I will ask this only once. What was in the vault under the Blue Heron?”
“What vault?”
“You answer her,” Felipe said. “You tell her everything now.”
“I don’t know what the hell this bitch is talking about.”
“If you don’t answer me, I’ll kill you.” I shook him, my bloody claws staining his shirt with the behemoth’s gore. “What was in the vault?”
“I don’t know!” he screamed. “I don’t know anything about any vault! I swear!”
“Did you have something to do with the murders at the Blue Heron site? Answer me!”
His pupils dilated and he was hanging in my hands, completely limp, paralyzed by fear. He wasn’t lying. People in a state of complete panic freeze or run. Mother Nature turns off their mental faculties, so her favorite children don’t think themselves to death. Kyle was too terrified to formulate a lie. He truly had no idea what I was talking about.
I dropped him and looked at his crew. “He’s all yours. You need to clear out. I’m reporting this site to the first cop I see.”
I found my bow and quiver and walked away. Ascanio jumped off the beast and joined me. His voice was a deep growl, shredded by his teeth. “It. Wash. Aweshome.”
“This was a tragedy.” People came before animals. I knew that, but when you turn into an animal, your perspective is a little different.
“Yesh. But aweshome.”
He was a boy. What did he know?
“Sho, we didn’t learrrn anyshing?”
“That’s not true. We established that Kyle Bell had nothing to do with the murders. We can eliminate him from our suspect pool. Are you hungry?”
“Shhtarrrving.”
“Good. Let’s go find something to eat.”
CHAPTER 5
The best thing about Big Papaw’s Cookout was their brine. Big Papaw guarded its secret like it was weaponized plague, but there is very little you could keep from a shapeshifter’s taste buds. That brine had root beer, paprika, garlic, pepper, and salt in it, and after the pork ribs had soaked in it for at least a day, Papaw threw them on the grill with some hickory wood chips. I could smell it a mile off, two if the wind was stronger, and it made me drool.
The restaurant was located in an old abandoned gas station, with smoke grills in the back, outside. I parked the Jeep in the parking lot—my beastkin feet were smaller than Ascanio’s huge warrior-form paws, so I had to drive—and Ascanio and I went inside.
Colleen, Big Papaw’s oldest daughter, manned the counters. She gave me the evil eye and kept one hand under the counter, which I decided not to hold against her. When two furry, blood-soaked creatures walk into your place, anybody would get alarmed.
I dug in my pants and pulled out two twenties. “Hey, Colleen. We need as many ribs as this will buy.”
Colleen raised her eyebrows. “Do I know you?”
“It’s me, Andrea. You can quit stroking the shotgun now. We’re not a threat to anything except your barbeque.”
Colleen blinked. “Andy? I didn’t know you’re a shapeshifter.”
Gunmetal Magic (kate daniels) Page 8