his mouth. Behind me, I heard a groan and twisted awkwardly to see Thomas sit up, one shoulder hanging at a malformed angle. His clothes had been ripped to shreds, there was a piece of metal protruding from his abdomen, just next to his belly button, and half his face was covered in a sheet of blood a little too pale to belong to a human.
“Thomas!” I shouted. Or tried to shout. The acoustics were odd in this tunnel within which I was suddenly sprawled. “Get up, man!”
He gave me a blank, concussed stare.
The creature’s movements had slowed. I turned to see it beginning to relax, its body shuddering, the drumbeat of its heart steadying, and I got a better look at it than I had before.
It was huge, easily the size of a full-grown bull, and it carried a stench with it that was similar in potency. Or maybe that was because I had just overcooked it. Its body was odd, seemingly able to move on two legs or four with equal efficiency. Its flesh was a spongy blackness, much like the true skin of a Red vampire, and its head was shaped like something mixing the features of a human being, a jaguar, and maybe a crocodile or wild boar. It was pitch-black everywhere, including its eyes, its tongue, and its mouth.
And, despite the punishment I had just dealt out, it was getting up again.
“Thomas!” I shouted. Or wheezed.
The creature shook its head and its dead-black eyes focused on me. It started toward me, pausing briefly to swat my stunned dog out of its path. Mouse landed in a tumble, seemingly struggling to find his balance but unable to do so.
I lifted my blasting rod again as it came on, but I didn’t have enough juice left in me to make the rod do anything but smoke faintly.
And then a stone sailed in from nowhere and struck the creature on the snout.
“Hey!” called Molly’s voice. “Hey, Captain Asphalt! Hey, tar baby! Over here!”
The creature and I turned to see Molly standing maybe twenty yards away, in plain sight. She flung another rock, and it bounced off the creature’s broad chest. Its heartbeat began to accelerate and grow louder again.
“Let’s go, gorgeous!” Molly called. “You and me!” She turned sideways to the thing, rolled her hips, and made an exaggerated motion of swatting herself on the ass. “Come get some!”
The thing tensed and then rushed forward, covering the ground with astonishing speed.
Molly vanished.
The creature smashed into the earth where she’d been standing, with its huge talons balled into furious fists, slamming them eight inches into the earth.
There was a peal of mocking laughter, and another rock bounced off of the thing, this time from the left. Furious, it whirled to rush Molly again—and again, she vanished completely. Once more it struck at empty ground. Once more, Molly got its attention with a rock and a few taunts, only to vanish from sight as it came at her.
Each time, she was a little closer to the creature, unable to match its raw speed. And each time, she led it a little farther away from the three of us. A couple of times, she even shouted, “Toro, toro! Olé!”
“Thomas!” I called. “Get up!”
My brother blinked his eyes several times, each time a little more quickly. Then he swiped a hand at the bloodied side of his face, shook his head violently to get the blood out of his eyes, and looked down at the section of metal bar sticking out of his stomach. He clenched it with his hand, grimaced, and drew it slowly out, revealing a six-inch triangle that must have been a corner brace in the wall he’d gone through. He dropped it on the ground, groaning in pain, and his eyes rolled briefly back into his head.
I saw his other nature coming over him. His skin grew paler, and almost seemed to take on its own glow. His breathing stabilized immediately, and the cut along his hairline where he’d been bleeding began to close. He opened his eyes, and their color had changed from a deep, contented blue to a hungry, metallic silver.
He got up smoothly and glanced at me. “You bleeding?”
“Nah,” I said. “I’m good.”
A few feet away, Mouse got to his feet and shook himself, his tags jingling. Molly had gotten as far as the street again, and there was an enormous crashing sound.
“This time, we do it smart,” Thomas said. He turned to Mouse instead