back, causing Sarah to scream and throw something. I didn’t see what it was, but Ranbir obviously did.
“No! Get away! Get away now!”
But Jason couldn’t get away, and then I understood everything the mage had been saying, all at once. Because the creature was suddenly enveloped in a mass of blue smoke: a standard knock-out potion, very similar to what I’d hit Jason with. It should have been safe, and it should have dropped both man and beast.
But this was the magical Twilight Zone, and nothing was safe here.
Instead of dropping the creature, it fed it, and when these things were fed, they got bigger. Ranbir yelled something I didn’t hear, because I didn’t need to. The creature that had started life as some kind of origami crane and been maybe six feet long from tip to tail, was now double that and growing.
And while it had been able to hurt its prey before, now it could do worse.
Sarah screamed as the massive bird flapped its greatly expanded wings, sending trash spiraling and my remaining hair whipping, as it prepared to escape—and take Jason along with it.
There was a burst of gunfire, but as I’d already discovered, that didn’t work on these things. Tomas leapt for it, but three more of the flock targeted him, and the remainder were dive bombing the rest of us. One slamming into the already weakened top of the minivan and burst through to the inside, which trapped it and also pissed it off. It started thrashing, the minivan started rocking, throwing out broken glass and metal all over the street.
I retreated under an awning, while Louis-Cesare grabbed two of the creatures, one under each arm. He broke their necks, only to have five more jump him in what looked like a feeding frenzy. He roared in outrage, but I knew him; he’d be all right.
Jason was another story.
I saw Ranbir grab Sarah and jerk her physically off the road, and into a shop. I saw Ev open up with a machine gun in each hand and rattle enough sheer brute force off of one creature’s hide to send it screeching away. I saw Tomas get up from savaging his three, bloody and furious, and promptly get piled on by four more. Ranbir had been right: they were targeting the vamps, as they were the strongest magically among us.
And for that same reason, nobody was targeting me.
I ran through the hail of glass by the minibus and back into my arsenal, grabbing the only thing I could think of that might work. When I emerged, it was almost too late, as the now giant bird was taking off, headed this way and dragging Jason kicking and screaming into the air along with it. Ev caught hold of the boy, but all that resulted in was him getting dragged down the road, while Jason screamed at the added weight.
I put on a burst of speed, jumped out in front of them and lit a flare.
It wasn’t magical and it wasn’t a weapon. But it glowed a bright crimson in the murky air, shedding a red and orange banner of sparks behind me. And that was enough.
All along the street, the birds looked up, the light glinting redly in their eyes. And then they took off after me. Not one of them; all of them, because magic in Hong Kong was bright and colorful and moved a lot.
And I was suddenly the tastiest looking thing in sight.
“What the hell are you doing?” Louis-Cesare demanded, running up beside me.
“I saw this in Jurassic Park.”
“Your strategy is based on a movie?”
“You have a better idea?”
He picked up a concrete shard left over from the battle and lobbed it at one of the birds— which caught it in a foot-long beak and bit it in two.
“No. But what happens now?”
“This,” I said, and threw the flare down an alley. The flock, which had almost caught up with us, followed it, all except for the huge one. It tried, not seeming to realize that it was bigger now, and slammed into the bricks on both sides. Which was when the shit hit the fan.
Louis-Cesare and Tomas jumped it, ripping off the great wings in a sound like tearing metal. Ev opened up on the ones at the end of the alley, giving them both barrels past the thrashing body of the big bird, and then pulling out the rocket launcher. That didn’t help much except to blow up the building at