The creature teetered, blocking out the sun, and crashed down with a deafening thud. The glass floor of the clearing shattered from the impact. Fractures raced from her body up into the translucent glass icebergs. For a fraction of a second nothing moved, and then giant chunks of glass slid from the walls and plummeted down, exploding into razor-sharp shrapnel.
I threw myself behind the enchanted water tank.
All around me glass fell with thunderous blasts, as if I were crouched in the middle of an artillery salvo. Shards slashed at my hide, stinging me like a swarm of bees. I smelled my own blood. The ground shook.
Gradually the bursts slowed. Silence claimed the clearing. I straightened.
Where is the boy?
The tent lay in shambles, crushed beneath a chunk of amber glass the size of an SUV. A man was crying, his leg sliced open. People were slowly rising from hiding. I scanned the survivors. Felipe was hugging a young man. At least his son had survived.
No Ascanio.
Please be alive.
A loud hyena cackle rang through the clearing. I turned. He stood on top of the beast. Blood drenched his fur. His monster-mouth split in a happy, psychotic grin.
I exhaled.
Gradually it sank in. The Mother Beast was dead. I had killed her. The taste of her blood burned in my mouth. Behind her, a deep black hole bore into the ground beneath the remnants of the railroad car. It must’ve been her underground lair. She had raised her brood there, safe and far away from everyone, until Kyle’s crew invaded her den.
Such an awful waste. None of this was necessary. At least one person died, many others were injured, and this great magnificent beast and her brood lost their lives all because Kyle Bell wanted to make a quick buck on the side. He stood by the remnants of the tent now, arms crossed, barking orders.
I marched over to Kyle. He saw me, opened his mouth, and I backhanded him. The blow knocked him to the ground. “This is your fault. You brought these people here. You knew this place was dangerous.” I pulled him upright and spun him toward the dead beast. “Look! People died because of you. Do you understand that? If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have had to murder her. She was just protecting her children.”
“She tried to kill us!”
I backhanded him again. “She tried to kill you because you broke into her house.”
The workers stood around us, their faces grim. Nobody made any move to help their boss.
I looked at them. “Anything you reclaim here is contaminated. Being here is a crime. Taking anything out of this zone is a crime. You need to know this.”
Kyle stayed down, until I grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him up, his face two inches from mine. “I will ask this only once. What was in the vault under the Blue Heron?”
“What vault?”
“You answer her,” Felipe said. “You tell her everything now.”
“I don’t know what the hell this bitch is talking about.”
“If you don’t answer me, I’ll kill you.” I shook him, my bloody claws staining his shirt with the behemoth’s gore. “What was in the vault?”
“I don’t know!” he screamed. “I don’t know anything about any vault! I swear!”
“Did you have something to do with the murders at the Blue Heron site? Answer me!”
His pupils dilated and he was hanging in my hands, completely limp, paralyzed by fear. He wasn’t lying. People in a state of complete panic freeze or run. Mother Nature turns off their mental faculties, so her favorite children don’t think themselves to death. Kyle was too terrified to formulate a lie. He truly had no idea what I was talking about.
I dropped him and looked at his crew. “He’s all yours. You need to clear out. I’m reporting this site to the first cop I see.”
I found my bow and quiver and walked away. Ascanio jumped off the beast and joined me. His voice was a deep growl, shredded by his teeth. “It. Wash. Aweshome.”
“This was a tragedy.” People came before animals. I knew that, but when you turn into an animal, your perspective is a little different.
“Yesh. But aweshome.”
He was a boy. What did he know?
“Sho, we didn’t learrrn anyshing?”
“That’s not true. We established that Kyle Bell had nothing to do with the murders. We can eliminate him from our suspect pool. Are you hungry?”
“Shhtarrrving.”
“Good. Let’s go find something to eat.”