30
I wasn’t going to make it.
There was no way I would be able to catch Kat before she hit the ground. Leonidas had thrown her up in an arc, her bound body twisting, rising and rising high in the air. High enough to break her when she hit the ground.
Probably to kill her when she hit the ground.
I pushed off, muscles churning, trying to reach her. My feet drove into the ground, moving me forward. I pushed, a scream tearing out of me. She fell, speed increasing as the ground rushed up toward her.
I wasn’t going to make it.
A sharp blow hit me in the shoulder, twisting me around and taking my footing away. I stumbled, the ground hard on my knee, dust billowing up into my face making me blink as I swung my gun around toward whatever had struck me.
Boothe was a silver streak, rabbit legs churning, fur-covered arms outstretched. He leaped low to the ground, diving into Kat’s falling form a split second before she struck the ground. His body wrapped around her, insulating her from the impact. He rolled to a stop, limbs flopping out onto the ground, and lay limp with Kat on his heaving chest. His arm came up holding something. His fingers moved and a wicked-looking blade sprung out. He used it to cut Kat’s hands free.
Someone began to clap behind me.
I spun around on my knee, gun pointed, laser hot, searching for a target. I found a small, unassuming man standing there. He was dressed like the Brotherhood, all-black fatigues. Hair buzzed so close to his scalp I couldn’t tell what color it was; small eyes sunk on either side of a blade-thin nose. He looked like nothing as he clapped sarcastically. The laser dot danced on his face, shimmying around. Beady eyes squinted when it would cross them. I had not seen him before, so I shoved my power out to feel what flavor of lycanthrope he was.
My stomach muscles cramped as I pushed power across the space between us, sweat forming between my shoulder blades and pooling uncomfortably above the press of the katana where it rode. My eyes slit as my power rolled up onto him, washing across him, seeking, looking, tasting. Reaching for some clue as to what I was about to have to deal with.
And came up empty.
Nothing, nada, zilch, zip. The man before me was not a lycanthrope. He was a big metaphysical empty spot reading completely human.
So why was he with Leonidas’s crew, and why did he stand there with no weapons?
I kept my gun trained on him. “What are you? Human?”
He chuckled, slowly shaking his head. “No, I haven’t been human for a long time. The lab coats saw to that.”
“Whatever you are, this is your one shot at a walkaway. I have bigger beasts to catch tonight.”
His chuckle became a guffaw—a belly laugh that shook his entire body. He slapped his knee and wiped tears from his eyes. “Oh, man, you have no idea how wrong you are.”
I had a bad feeling about this. I stood up, stepping into a shooter’s pose, both hands on the Colt to steady my shot. The laser dot quit dancing and centered on his forehead. “What the fuck does that mean?”
The man didn’t answer. His face turned serious, brow creased, lips pushed together in concentration. The skin on his neck began to mottle, spots of red blossoming angry and bright. Thick, oily drops of sweat squeezed out of his brow, breaking and running down cheeks to drip from his jawline. A tic began to pulse under his eye and a tremor ran through him.
His twitched once, then again, and then jerked and seized. Convulsions twisted him into a contorted pose. Ropes of muscle pulled into stark relief and began to pulsate and swell. A growl tore from his throat as his body began to change and grow. Faster than the eye could keep up with, his skin began to split and reknit as bones thickened and lengthened, muscle bunched and swelled and split to make new groups of muscle. Scale began to ripple from his skin, red and angry, interlocking into rows with audible clicks and clacks. His head became a dull square of bony ridge, deep-set eyes spreading around a massive reptilian snout. The bottom jaw unhinged, expanding and shifting into a new formation as teeth sprouted into six-inch daggers. A long red tail swept the dirt behind him as the creature rose to stand on legs the size of tree trunks. Two much smaller forelegs clawed empty space, ridiculous against a wide, red scaled chest. That big square head shook, thick spittle arcing into the air from those giant deadly teeth. A roar split the night, so loud that it made vibrations you could see like heat waves. My mind struggled to believe what I was seeing.
A blood-red Tyrannosaurus rex stood twenty feet away from me.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
31
Thunder rolled out of my hands, the Colts spitting bullets as fast as I could tap the triggers. I didn’t aim, I didn’t have to, my target was damn near thirty feet tall and big as a house. Sixteen .45 caliber bullets shot out and struck the T. rex across light pink belly scales and its left thigh. The bullets bounced off, ricocheting away into the night. The dinosaur roared in annoyance, swinging his big square head toward me. Yellow, baleful eyes glared at me under a ridge of scaly bone.
Like magic, six or seven darts from Father Mulcahy’s gun whipped over my head and struck the thick slab of neck under the jawline. One or two of the darts bounced off harmlessly, but most of them stuck, pumping their anesthetic liquid centers into the creature. He reared up, tiny forelegs flailing, trying in vain to reach the darts. That massive head swung wildly, red skin on the neck flexing and bunching, tossing the darts out. They bounced and rolled down its body to lay on the ground at its feet.
I shoved the Colts into their holsters under my arms. A shrug tossed the bandolier of grenades off my shoulder. It slid down my arm. My fingers clamped down on one of the grenades hanging from the bandolier in my left hand. A swift tug and it was free and heavy in my hand. I saw from the corner of my eye Boothe firing his gun at the dinosaur. It worked about as well as when I did it. Kat was running back to the Comet with the others.
The metal ring made my teeth hurt as they clenched on it. The metal tasted dusty, cheap steel causing my wisdom teeth to ache. A swift yank pulled it free from the grenade with a ping. The paddle under my fingers snapped against my grip as the spring inside was released. Reaching back, I tossed the grenade underhand; it spun toward the T. rex like a deadly, shrapnel-producing softball and bounced off the ground between the two black taloned feet.
Pushing off, I spun and began to run, my feet driving into the ground, trying to get enough distance between me and the blast radius. The sound of the explosion hit me at the same time as the concussive wave that shoved me along. I didn’t lose my footing and I didn’t feel the biting sting of shrapnel. Hopefully it wasn’t just adrenaline masking away the pain. I hit the hood of the Comet in a jumping slide, my body slithering over the warm black paint job and dumping out on the other side. I felt a wet tear as a few of my staples pulled free.
Looking back over the playground, I saw that the T. rex was staggering. Blood ran from its abdomen and legs. It was black against the boiling red scales that covered the devil dinosaur. It stumbled back, crashing into the garage that Leonidas had stood on, caving the wall in, siding peeling back like a banana. The beast roared again, shaking the night. The hole in its belly reknit itself, the edges pulling closed and sealing like plastic melting together. Blood still covered its scales but no longer ran.
Boothe shouted at me, “Do we have a plan for this?”
“Oh yeah, of course, it’s the ‘Find a Way to Kill the Fucking T. rex’ plan.” I pulled Bessie out of her holster while I looked around at our situation.
Boothe, Kat, and the priest were on my left keeping their heads down behind the car. Boothe was still in Were-rabbit form; Father Mulcahy had his back to the dinosaur on the playground, watching out behind us. George, Lucy, and Charlotte crouched to my right. George was still a gorilla, and Charlotte still in her spider-lady form, red eyes watching me unblinking. Ragnar stood a few feet away, silver-shot fur standing down his spine, hackles raised. A low growl rumbled in his chest.
Marcus hugged the doorway of the recreation center looking shell-shocked. I hated him in that minute. All of this came pretty squarely down on his shoulders and there he stood. Worthless.
I tore my eyes away and looked out over the playground. The T. rex was getting to his feet. Slowly, yes, but still rallying to attack. It would take him seconds to get to us from where he was. Three or four T. rex strides and we would be dinosnacks. Nothing stood between us but a few charcoal grills and a few picnic tables. To the right was the playground. Tall, elaborate monkey bars and rope courses built for kids. Arm-thick cables strung between cut-down telephone poles and swing sets made of pipe set in concrete.
An idea began to form in my head.
An insane idea.
I turned to Boothe and Father Mulcahy. “You two go get the kids out of that building and take them to safety.”
Boothe waved his hand, shooing away the idea. “They are already safe and in the Burrows.”
“What the hell are the Burrows?”
“Our neighborhood is over a network of tunnels. Every building, every home connected by underground tunnels that access from the basements. They dump out into the forest as a getaway if needed.”
“How the hell did you manage that?”
He looked at me, red eyes still managing to look condescending even though they weren’t human. “We’re rabbits. We dig. It’s what we do.”
Good to know. I looked at Kat. Her hair was a mess and her face still puffy from crying in pain. She was rubbing her wrists where the zip ties had cut ugly red marks into her skin. There was a bruise blooming along her jawline, going from her ear, under her cheekbone, and curling up just before it got to her lips. She looked okay as I got her attention. Roughed up, but okay. “Where are Tiff, Larson, and Sophia?”
“We got separated when the houses started burning and then I was snatched by Leonidas and that man.” She pointed at the T. rex, which was shakily getting to its feet. The monstrous red lizard was still wobbly but getting steadier with every second. We were running out of time.
“Okay. Boothe, Father Mulcahy, and Ragnar, take Kat to the place where she got split up from the others and find them. Get them into the Burrows and out of here. Leonidas and the rest of his crew are still out there, so be careful and shoot first. I will keep George, Lucy, and Charlotte with me and we will join you underground when we get done here.”
Boothe nodded his head at where Marcus still stood in the doorway. “What about him?”
I wasted a second to glance over at Marcus. He was now sitting and looking around the edge of the door. “Fuck the cowardly lion, he’s on his own. Now go.”
They turned and went, Kat flanked by the Were-rabbit and the priest, the ancient Werewolf trotting in the lead. I breathed a small prayer that they would find the others without a problem. I turned to the ones left with me.
“Lucy, we need you to do your thing.”
She nodded and stepped a few feet away. Her head dropped, eyes closed. She took several deep breaths, gathering her resolve, diaphragm swelling and contracting as thin hands lifted her shirt. Fingers scrabbled inside her belly button, nails digging, looking for a purchase. Her face twisted as she found one and began to pull, her hands moving slowly in opposite directions, stretching the skin apart at her navel like a special effect. A pointed black triangle slid wetly from inside her stomach, pushing its way free. The skin began to waver and roll as the horn became a massive head that belonged to Masego. His beady eyes stared at me from the middle of Lucy’s thin body; she stood above and below him, her body trembling and her face stretched in pain. With a snort and shake of his head, Masego tore Lucy to shreds and stepped into our reality. He was as big as the Comet and just as black, gleaming wetly in the electric lighting and the fire glow from the burning houses.
“You with us?” I asked him. He nodded his head and shook all over, sending strips of jelly-wet flesh plopping to the ground at his feet. I tossed the bandolier of grenades to Charlotte. She deftly snatched them out of the air. “Can you web these up by their pins so they can all be pulled at one time? I need about an eight-foot tether.”
She looked at them with her alien, unblinking stare. She turned back to me, head tilted to the side. “I can.”
“How long do you need?”
“Just a few minutes, five at the most, and some privacy would be nice.”
My mind flashed back to a conversation between me, Charlotte, and Tiff comparing Charlotte’s half form to Spider-Man. There may have been some whiskey involved. Charlotte revealed that the reason she doesn’t swing from webs is because her spinnerets are located where a spider’s are. As she described it, in the backside of her lower abdomen.
She was gonna need some privacy.
“Okay, we’ll keep devil dinosaur busy. Fix it up and then get it to me wherever I am.” I turned to George and Masego as she hurried to the other side of the building. “Let’s go keep him distracted. Be careful and watch what I am doing. I want him over by the play sets when Charlotte gets done.”
“What do you want me to do to help?” George looked at me with brown gorilla eyes.
The T. rex was on his feet and looking our way. I stepped around the car and raised my gun. “You can be King Kong or Donkey Kong, I don’t care which, just keep him busy and move him toward the play sets. If you think of a way to kill him, then even better.” I began to run toward the dinosaur as he began to run toward me. The ground shook under my feet, rattled by the weight of my enemy.
Oh, this was going to completely suck.