“Where the hell have you been, Envy?” Kyle said.
I looked at him. “Envy?”
Ascanio chortled.
“Around,” Envy said.
“I want them gone,” Kyle said. “Do your fucking job.”
The vamp hissed. Envy smiled, showing bad teeth.
Ascanio gathered himself. “Can I shift now?”
“No.” I turned, stepping closer to the machete Tony had dropped on the ground and looked at the navigator. “You have a chance to walk away. Take it.”
“Can I kill them?” Envy asked.
“You can do whatever you want,” Kyle told him.
I had to do this fast. Getting into a hand-to-hand brawl with a vampire would end badly. I would’ve preferred to wrestle an enraged mama grizzly. “Walk away. Last chance.”
Envy grinned. “Pray, bitch.”
“Are you affiliated with the People?” I asked.
“Fuck, no.”
“Wrong answer.”
Outside, glass shattered. A scream tore through the quiet, the raw painful scream of a man experiencing sheer terror. Two more followed.
“What the hell now?” Kyle growled.
We piled out of the tent.
The rail car had split open at the top, like a can of bad beans, and creatures poured out, climbing onto its roof. Thick pale-gray hide covered their squat, barrel-chested bodies, supported by six muscled bearlike legs. Hand-paws tipped each limb, and their long dexterous fingers carried short but thick ivory claws. A narrow carapace ran along their backs and when one of the creatures reared, I saw an identical bony shield guarding its stomach and chest. The carapace terminated in a long, segmented tail with a scorpion stinger. They had large round heads with feline jaws and twin rows of tiny eyes, sitting deep in their sockets. The eyes stared to the front, not to the side. That usually meant a predator.
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.
