human voices raised in pitch, shouting in concern.
The dog barked louder. Threatening.
“How good are these animals at being actual guard dogs?” Simon whispered.
My hand tightened on the rifle. “What are you saying? Is it sensing us?”
“I don’t know; I can’t read dogs—”
But the human voices rose to a shout, and I didn’t need Simon clawing at my arm to hear their raw panic. Something was going wrong, something scaring them—and I might not be able to read dogs either, but sounds pinpointed location instantly for me, the growling roar breaking free and leaping in our direction—
The noise crescendoed, breaking for our position. One of the dogs.
Charging us.
In a split second it would round into view and attack. No time to think about the consequences: I snapped my eyes shut, raised the Vector, and stepped around the corner.
The snarling burst out and magnified, the position zeroing. I pulled the trigger in one smooth motion while Simon began a rapid mantra behind me, something about fear and self-control. The rifle clapped in my hands, and the snarls that had roared toward us cut off with a thump.
Someone shouted again. The truck engine roared to life just as the cacophony of a thousand more animals clawed into the night.
No. Not a thousand animals. Seventeen. Six in the truck and eight in the barn and three who weren’t anywhere yet, between the truck and the barn, and now loose, loose and leaping to attack us. Wheels skidded on gravel, and my ears couldn’t keep up with the changing variables anymore—it was open my eyes or be devoured alive.
The panic took hold before the colors and shapes even registered in my vision.
I screamed my attack and starbursts went off in front of my eyes—the rifle, I was firing the rifle, and I emptied the magazine in seconds. Someone shouted at me, but someone else was shouting up ahead, and everything was chaos and noise and light.
Monsters. Monsters everywhere.
I shot them and kicked and snarled and brought my elbow back into someone who tried to grab me from behind. A roar filled my senses and something grew bright and huge in my vision, but that wasn’t the threat, the threat was in front of me, the threat was claws and fur and teeth—
“Cas!” someone yelled, and tackled me. I hit the ground, and my mouth filled with dirt and grass. A vehicle thundered by my face close enough for the dust to spit in my eyes, and a human voice screamed.
I raked at the ground, trying to find the rifle, to reload and bring it up again. It clicked and misfired, clogged with dirt. Still prone, I pawed for the handgun I knew I had.
“Cas, Cas, you can do this, think—”
Shaking words, hands on my shoulder. My senses vibrated like an earthquake had hit.
“Cas, that’s it—that’s—” The trembling voice cut off in another scream. My gun came up and dispatched the monster bearing down on us, but this time, I saw it more clearly, its outlines more animal than demon.
Begone, witches! Begone! wailed a voice in my head, the dead woman rearing up out of the recesses as if to devour the chaos. My brain compressed like it was in a vise.
“Cas! Come back to me—come back here. You need to stay with me!”
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitches!
“Cas!”
I struggled back to the night and the tearing pain in my arm and the scents of blood and smoke. I had to do something. Had to get to the people.
No time had passed. I was still half-lying on the hard, sandy ground. The truck was still in range, roaring up the lane. The spiky shape of an automatic weaved from the driver’s window and went off in a wild spray as the truck lurched.
Over our heads. Over our heads.
I had much better aim than that. I raised my pistol.
I didn’t see the man who leapt up in front of me, running, yelling in the wake of the truck. I literally did not see him, as if my brain had edited him out of the picture.
“Cas, no!”
A hand shoved my gun off line the instant I pulled the trigger, taking my shot far astray, into the night.
The truck lurched one more time, and the automatic sprayed again, much lower this time.
I grabbed Simon and rolled us into a hedge. I barely saw the shape of the invisible man jerk like a puppet as the automatic fire caught him, as his invisibility deleted him from the vision of his own side in the very