The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,20

care who was around or not around her—as usual. And it was with a pounding headache that Mary went in fast search of the intake supervisor, who was doing double duty as on-site personnel because one of the other social workers was out on maternity leave. After explaining to Rhym everything that had happened, Mary took off at a run, leaving the house and jumping into the Volvo.

The former Brownswick School for Girls was about a ten-minute drive away. She made it in seven, shooting down back roads, dodging around suburban developments, blowing through orange lights and stop signs. The station wagon was not built for that kind of workout, the boxy, heavy weight lurching this way and that, but she didn’t care. And holy crap, it felt like forever before she got to the outer edges of the neglected campus.

Getting out her phone, she eased off the gas and went into her texts.

Reading aloud, she said, “‘Bypass main gates … go around—shit!”

Something shot out into the road, the figure moving rag-doll sloppy and tripping directly in front of her car. Slamming on the brakes, she hit the man—no, it was a slayer: The blood that speckled across the windshield was black as ink, and the thing took off once more, even though one of its legs looked broken.

Heart pounding, she swallowed and punched the gas again, afraid there were others behind it, but even more terrified by whatever was happening with Rhage. Rechecking her cell, she followed the directions around to the back side of the school, to a one-laner that took her into the shaggy mess of a landscape.

Just as she wondered where the hell she was supposed to go from there, the question was answered. Off across a meadow, the beast stood out among the abandoned buildings like something out of a SyFy Channel movie. Tall enough to reach the roofs, big enough to dwarf even a dormitory, mean as a tiger teased with a meal, the thing was in full attack mode.

Tearing off the roof of a shed with its teeth.

She didn’t bother killing the engine.

Mary threw the Volvo in park and leaped out. In the back of her mind, she was aware that the uneven bap-bap-bap in the background was bullets flying, but she wasn’t going to worry about that. What she was panicked about?

Whoever the hell was in that building.

As she ran toward the dragon, she put two fingers in her mouth and blew hard.

The whistle was high-pitched, loud as a scream—and made no impression at all as the shingles of the brick structure got spit out to one side.

The roar that followed was something she knew all too well. The beast was ready for his Happy Meal, and that whole rafter-relocation thing was its way of getting into the container.

Mary tripped over something—oh, God, it was a lesser that was missing an arm—and kept going, blowing another whistle. And a third—

The beast froze, its flanks pumping in and out, purple scales flashing in the darkness as if the thing were lit from within by an electrical source.

The fourth whistle brought its head around.

Slowing her run, Mary cupped her hands to her mouth. “Come here! Come on, boy!”

Like the beast was just the world’s largest dog.

The dragon let out a chuff and then blew through its nostrils, the sound something between a whoopee cushion and a jet engine taking off.

“Come here, you!” she said. “Leave that alone. It’s not yours.”

The beast looked back at what was now just four brick walls and not much else, and a snarl curled its black lip off jagged teeth that would have given a great white dental insecurity. But like a German shepherd called to heel by its trainer, Rhage’s curse turned away from its deconstruction job and bounded over to her.

As the dragon came through the weeds and brambles, its great weight shook the ground so badly, Mary had to put her arms out for balance.

But, impossible though it seemed, the thing was smiling at her, its gruesome face transformed by a joy that she wouldn’t have believed if she hadn’t seen it every time she was around the monster.

Stretching her hands up, she greeted that great, dropped head with soft words of praise, putting her palm on its circular cheek, letting it breathe in her scent and hear her voice. In her peripheral vision, she saw two people break out of the ruined building—make that one person who was able-bodied and running hard, and another who