In seconds, the tip of its maw was already through, the vehemence of its struggles making it clear that the zairmyangura would not be trapped in the glass for long. Kaitlyn shrieked, and Miller, realizing that something must have gone horribly wrong, yanked the door open and tried to herd them out of the observation room.
“There’s nowhere safe to go!” Rush yelled. If bullets couldn’t hurt it and bullet-proof glass couldn’t hold it, then no amount of running was going to save them. The creature was almost halfway through the window, its progress slowed temporarily while its wings were hampered by the glass. Its maw, already free, snapped at him viciously, it claws scratching at the glass as it worked to pull itself through. In desperation, without even knowing what he was doing, Rush reached out with his whole mind.
“Help!” Rush yelled.
“Tell me what to do!” Miller shouted.
“Not you! Him!” Rush hollered back, as the gryphon cub burst through the portal.
With one powerful stroke of its wings, it braked in midair, locating Rush and surging toward him, but when it identified the threat, it stopped again, hovering for a split second and shimmering angrily as a full set of armor burst forth from its body, settling around it majestically.
It looks just like you, Sketch thought, the gryphon’s armor matching not just the shape and design of the armor Sketch saw on Rush but also its color, blazing forth in angry red and a deep, bronze gold—in the exact same hues Rush wore at the moment, whether he realized it or not.
Completing its transformation, the gryphon charged at the zairmyangura, grabbing it by its hindquarters before it could finish pulling itself through the glass. The beast screamed in pain as the gryphon reached underneath it and sank its beak into its underbelly, but there was little it could do beyond scrabbling at the gryphon ineffectively with its hind legs since the front half of its body was still on the observation room side of the window.
Although bullets had not harmed it at all, the gryphon’s bites opened gaping wounds in the creature’s belly that did not close, each new gash pouring angry red light out of its abdomen. In moments, the gryphon had torn gruesomely through its body, ripping through its midsection until the hideous thing had been severed in two.
With a defiant screech and a final flash of light that was almost too painful to look at, the gargoyle fell silent, the back half of its body falling to the floor in the summoning room and the front half going limp, its head slumping against the window in which its chest was still embedded. The humans all stared in silent amazement as what remained of the zairmyangura shimmered and vanished, leaving nothing behind—all except for Miller, that is, who was still looking around at everyone else, trying to figure out what their sudden stillness meant and what, if anything, he should do about it.
“It’s OK, Miller,” Mackenzie said. “You can stand down now. The good guys won.”
“We did?” Miller asked.
“Yeah we did!” Rush exclaimed, and he and Sketch started whooping and hollering, cheering at the gryphon, which shimmered away its armor, descended casually to the floor, and began preening its feathers as though slaying gargoyles was all in a day’s work, which maybe it was for a gryphon, for all Rush knew.
“Well, thank God,” Miller said, sounding profoundly relieved.
“Indeed,” Ammu agreed.
Without wasting any time, Kaitlyn snatched up the waiting rag.
“If you don’t mind?” Kaitlyn said, addressing Rush and indicating the gryphon with a tilt of her chin.
“Already?” Sketch complained. “But it just got here!”
“As much as I love the little guy,” Mackenzie said gently, “and I do—I mean, I really do—I think we’ve all had about enough of this particular portal.”
Rush looked at Sketch and grinned. “It’s OK, man. I’m here now, yeah? We can call him back any time.”
“Yeah, OK,” Sketch agreed sadly.
Rush closed his eyes for a moment, and the gryphon looked up, bobbed its head at the one-way mirror, and flew back through the portal.
53
Instructor Report
“You’re telling me this report is accurate?”
“I am afraid so, yes. The bullets were entirely ineffectual. It would appear the only way to defeat one of these creatures is in partnership with another being from the same realm. This, by the way, is also what the ancient texts claim, but, of course, modern weaponry has changed dramatically over the intervening millennia. As a man of science, as well as faith, I was unwilling to take that claim at face value.”
“So was I.”
“And yet, here we are, nonetheless.”
“But how the hell did we get here? Using kids? To fight the new terrorism? That was never the plan.”
“You said yourself that every plan becomes eventually—what was the expression, a soup sandwich?”
“Yeah, but there’s soup, Professor, and then there’s soup, if you know what I mean.”
“I am not at all certain that I do, actually.”
“Hell, neither am I. Look, just train them. Work with them. Learn more about what they do and how it all works. It’s the best use of the time we have left. Maybe we can come up with another way to destroy those things.”
“I pray every day that we will do precisely that.”
“So do I, Professor. So do I.”
54
Connections
“Now that you have had a day to rest,” Ammu said, “I would like to speak with you about what we learned yesterday and about where we will go from here.”
“We learned I was right,” Sam commented. “They do eat bullets for breakfast. Fun fact.”
The students sat around Ammu in the exercise room on the blue mat-like flooring as they had on the very first day, but that seemed like a lifetime ago now.
Rush’s legs were stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, his arms extended behind him for support. Sketch sat next to him, to his left, mimicking the older boy’s posture. Mackenzie sat up straight to Rush’s right, her legs crossed neatly in front of her, as was her habit. Sam, on the other hand, had sprawled out next to Sketch on the end, lying on her side with her body propped up on one elbow. Kaitlyn was also lying down, on Mackenzie’s other side, stretched out on her stomach facing Ammu directly, using both hands to prop up her chin and waving her feet from time to time idly through the air, which Daniel, sitting cross-legged to her right on the other end, found downright adorable.
“Sam’s right,” Mackenzie said glumly. “Epic fail.”
“With every experiment, we learn something new,” Ammu pointed out. “It might not be what we had hoped, but still, it is progress.”
“Progress toward the end of the world,” Sam countered. “Helicopter crashes and disappearing planes and burning buildings and the bad guys win. Terrific.”
“We must not make such assumptions,” Ammu protested. “In every great undertaking, there are times when the situation appears difficult—even hopeless. But humanity’s greatest achievements have come about when those who faced adversity refused to be daunted, rising above such appearances and persevering despite all obstacles.”