The beast moved into a patch of light and my pulse sped up. What I had mistaken for a mane of coarse hair was a mane of tiny brown tentacles. They wriggled and twisted, stretching and coiling, like a nest of three-foot-long, thin earthworms. Scratch the neck from the list of possible targets. Cutting or clawing through the mass of writhing flesh would take too long.
The beast dipped its head again, bracing on powerful legs sheathed in sandy fur. The long claws on its front paws scratched the dust. Its sturdy frame looked built for ramming. If it took a running start, it would smash straight through the wall and not even slow down. I could see no weakness. Why did things like this always happen to me when I didn’t have an assault rifle handy?
The beast raised its head. Large yellow owl eyes peered straight at us.
We’d have to go for the gut and eyes. Those were our only options.
I touched Raphael and pointed to my eyes. He nodded, hunched down, muscles contracting, and leaped. His skin burst in midjump as his body snapped into a new, stronger form. A man had started the leap, but a bouda in warrior form finished it: a seven-foot-tall lethal hybrid of animal and man, armed with deadly claws and wicked teeth set into oversized jaws that could crush a cow’s femur like it was a peanut shell.
I dashed to the side.
Raphael landed on top of the beast and raked its back with his blades. Blood drenched the gashes. The creature bellowed and dropped to the ground, rolling. Raphael leaped off, into the gloom. The beast sprang to his feet and whirled, trying to lunge after him.
I struck from the side, slicing across its forehead with my claws. The creature whipped back, too fast. Teeth grazed my skin. I jumped back and the beast lunged at me, snapping its teeth. I leaped backward again and again, zigzagging as it chased me. Damn, it was fast.
Raphael shot out of the gloom and cut at the beast’s side with his knives.
The beast paid him no mind. The tentacles on its head sparked with deep orange. The orange light pulsed outward and caught my arm. An intense ache seared my shoulder, a cold burn, like someone had skinned my arm open and poured liquid nitrogen over the muscle.
I cried out and raked its snout with my claws, gouging the sensitive flesh.
The beast lunged at me. The glow pulsed and clutched me. Pain exploded in my head. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t make a sound. I just shuddered in the magic’s grip, the agony so intense, it felt like my bones were splintering.
Someone cut my legs off, the walls somersaulted, and I crashed into the dirt.
Behind the beast Raphael turned into a whirlwind of steel, flinging blood into the night.
The beast howled.
I tried to get up, but I still couldn’t move my legs. I could see them right there in the dirt, but they didn’t obey.
Raphael hammered a massive kick into the creature’s ribs.
The abomination spun toward him, its mane sparking.
Raphael ran.
The creature bellowed, an otherworldly, terrible sound. Blood from the cuts I’d caused dripped into its eyes, rendering it half-blind. It raised its snout, inhaled, and charged after Raphael.
I just had to get up. I had to pull myself upright.
Raphael sprinted along the wall, leaping over the piles of refuse. The creature raced after him, devouring the distance between them in huge leaps. The floor shook with each thud of its paws.
I rolled up to my knees, clumsy like a drunk, and forced myself upright.
The creature’s mane turned bright orange.
“Magic!” I yelled.
Raphael glanced over his shoulder.
The orange glow around the beast’s mane coalesced and whipped from the creature in twin bolts of bright lightning. Raphael zigzagged, but it was too late. The left bolt caught his ankle, splintering into a dozen small forks that bit into Raphael’s flesh. It jerked him off the ground.
The world stopped. All I could see was Raphael’s face, twisted by pain. Fear clamped onto me and spurred me into a desperate sprint.
For a second he seemed to float weightlessly, suspended a foot above the ground, and then he crashed down, rolling in the dirt.
Please don’t die. Please, please, don’t die.
There were fifty yards between me and the beast. It felt like I was running for an eternity, stuck in some sort of hell, watching the man I loved die in slow motion.
The beast snorted in vicious glee.
I’ll get there, honey. Hang on another half a second.
The giant jaws opened wide, teeth ready to rend.
I smashed into the beast from the side, thrust my claws under it, and sank them into the creature’s gut. Blood drenched me. Slippery innards slid against my fingers. I grabbed them and yanked.
The beast spun, trying to bite me. I sank my claws into the wound and hung on. The orange lightning bit into me, fire and ice wrapped in pain. The moonlight dimmed.
Raphael loomed on the other side of the beast and clawed it. He was alive. I almost cried from the relief.
The magic stung us again.
Oh my God. It hurt.
The magic wouldn’t kill us. It just hurt.
Hurt.
Raphael and I stared at each other over the beast’s spine through the haze of pain and laughed. Our eerie hyena cackles echoed through the ruin.
It wanted to play the hurting game against two boudas. It had no chance.
We mauled the beast.
It raked us with its hind legs and shocked us with its magic, and we clawed it and clawed it, hanging on and laughing through the pain. I tasted blood in my mouth and clawed even harder, digging into the beast’s stomach, wrenching innards and bone out. We carved and gouged, blacking out and coming to, throwing blood and wet entrails.
The beast shuddered.
We ripped into it. It was the creature or us, do or die.
The beast stumbled, careened to the side, and crashed down.
I looked up, breathing hard. Across from me Raphael stood, covered in gore. His muscular furry chest heaved. Between us the beast lay, the bones of its rib cage bare. We had nearly stripped its carcass. It should’ve died ages ago, but the magic must’ve kept it alive.
I sank to the floor. My body was red with blood, some of it the beast’s, some my own. Long scratches marked my side and right leg from the hip down—gouges from the beast’s claws. The cuts burned. If I were human, I’d have needed hundreds of stitches.
We won. Somehow we had won and both of us had survived. It was some sort of miracle. I was bone tired. The floor looked so nice. Maybe if I just lay down here for a minute and closed my eyes…
“Andrea.”