“What?” I breathed.
“There,” Aisha mouthed, pointing.
I strained to see through the night. Finally I spotted it. A hulking stick-like figure in the distance, standing motionless in the sand. It was only a silhouette in the moonlight, but I could make out two long legs which seemed to curve into feet, and long, thin arms that extended to flat… webbed hands? Its head was perhaps the creepiest thing about it. It was thrice the size it should have been in comparison to the rest of its body, and it was almost perfectly circular. What has a head that round and that big? Something told me it wasn’t a creature I’d recognize from Earth.
It moved suddenly—shockingly fast—and in a very unsettling way. It hopped almost like a kangaroo, only adding to its eerie appearance.
“What is that?” I demanded beneath my breath.
“It’s a hunkri,” Aisha whispered.
“A what?” I hissed.
“A hunkri. Just… shh. Be quiet and it should pass.”
It didn’t look like it was passing. It looked like it was heading straight for our mountain.
“Shouldn’t we move from—?” I whispered.
“Yes,” Aisha breathed, realizing her wishful thinking was just that. “Let’s leave.”
“Oh!” River let out a gasp. “There’s another one!”
She was pointing to our right, where, shockingly close, another one of the creatures slunk against the mountain wall, climbing rapidly toward us. This one I could see more clearly beneath the light of the moon. What the… Its thin, sticklike body was covered in mud-brown scales, and its huge head… most of that was a frilled, pleated skin flap surrounding its bulging-eyed, lizard-like face.
“I thought you said we’d be safe in a cave,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t expect us to come across freaking hunkris!”Aisha shot back. “I didn’t even think they lived in these p—”
“Let’s get out of here!” I bundled River onto my back and we launched into the sky.
A piercing scream emanated from the creatures’ throats in unison, matching eerily in pitch. Then, to my horror, wings I hadn’t even noticed unfolded behind their back. Wings like a bat’s. Without warning, they bolted into the sky after us.
“Vanish us!” I yelled to Aisha, hurrying closer to her.
“Okay!” she screamed.
Aisha vanished… but River and I didn’t.
In the split second before she’d used her vanishing powers, something long, hot and intensely sticky had wound around my leg, holding me back. When I gazed down, it was to see a colossal white-as-snow tongue extending from the mouth of one of the hunkris beneath us. It wrapped like a snake around my leg. I couldn’t even thin myself, or I would drop River. And Aisha had vanished.
River swore as the hunkri jerked us downward with its tongue.
A blade. I need a blade. I fumbled for a belt, but remembered I had none. Everything we’d traveled with, we’d left on the cliff’s edge.
“Ben!”
Oh, thank God. Aisha reappeared. She shrieked as she saw the tongue around my ankle.
“Take River!” I shouted, even as the hunkri closed the distance between us.
“No, Ben, I can try—”
“There’s no time!” I roared. “Take her!”
I practically flung River at Aisha in my panic. The jinni thankfully caught her in the air. Then, overpowered by the hunkri’s strength, I was pulled right down into its rapidly expanding toothless jaws, mouth and neck. Almost like an anaconda, the creature expanded to accommodate my size and the next thing I knew, I’d been sucked right inside, down its slimy throat, and found myself in the chamber of its gut.
Oh. My. God.