Only twenty yards separated me from the last three creatures. They turned and charged me. I fired twice. The shotgun clicked, empty, the drum spent, one beast unmoving on the ground.
The first beast leaped, claws raised like sickles. I jumped aside and swung the shotgun like a club. The shotgun connected, but the beast was too huge. I might have hit it with a fly swatter for all the good it did me. The creature whirled.
A chunk of metal smashed into its side, sweeping it off its feet. Rogan.
The second beast rammed into me, its claws locking onto my shotgun. I hit the pavement with my back and clamped the shotgun with both hands, trying to keep it between us. Across the street Rogan was running to me.
The dinosaurian jaws gaped open. The monster reared, about to plunge for the kill.
A dark lean body flew above me. Bunny’s teeth flashed and locked onto the creature’s throat. The Doberman swung its body, throwing all of its weight into the bite. The wrinkled flesh of the beast’s neck tore. Bunny landed on the pavement, snarling. I scrambled upright.
The monster shuddered, dazed, shook its head . . . The creature’s skull exploded with red. My ears almost didn’t register the shot.
Mom.
Two more shots cracked, one, two, with barely a pause. The first took the last creature in midleap as it tried to carve Rogan’s chest. The other shot took down someone out of my view.
The night was still.
Rogan stood ten feet away from me, looking like he hadn’t gotten enough blood on his hands. The sudden silence was deafening.
It was over.
“Sixteen people,” Rogan’s right-hand man in charge of the warehouse defense crew reported.
His name was Michael Rivera and he had the athletic build of an MMA lightweight fighter—he could pass for a normal man until he flexed and then you realized that he could break your bones with his bare hands. Rivera was in his mid-thirties, Latino, with medium brown skin, dark hair, and an absurdly jovial, kind smile. When he grinned, his whole face lit up. Since he was smiling at eleven corpses neatly laid out in a row on our street, the smile was alarming.
Rogan watched with a dispassionate face. He’d promised me that if anyone disturbed my rest, they would sleep forever. He’d kept it. A long gash snaked its way across his chest, currently covered by a bandage. The wound had looked shallow, but there was no telling what sort of bacteria and poison rode on that creature’s claws. I’d gotten away with a gash on my thigh and some scrapes on my lower back. The medic that had cleaned and treated our wounds hovered protectively near Rogan, ready to spring into action but trying to stay out of his direct line of sight.
My sisters and cousins stood just outside, huddled together. Arabella covered her mouth with her hand. Catalina’s eyes were huge. She looked completely freaked out. Bernard was solemn enough for a funeral. Leon, for some bizarre reason, seemed excited, like he’d just ridden a roller coaster. My mother leaned in the doorway. Grandma Frida had ducked into the motor pool for something and was taking her time coming back.
Cornelius knelt by the corpses of the beasts, lost in thought. Matilda sat on the side, on some pallets, with Bunny. When I objected to her presence in view of the dead bodies, Cornelius patiently told me that they were dead and couldn’t hurt her and that this was her heritage and she needed to know. She didn’t seem disturbed by it, which in itself was enough to unsettle anyone with a conscience.
“Eleven dead here,” Rivera said. “Two burned up in the ATV Mrs. Afram shot with her tank. We’re gathering the body parts. Two we can’t recover until equipment gets here because Major dropped a truck engine on them and we can’t move it. Then we have seven MCMs.”
“Seven what?” I asked.
“Magically Created Monsters,” my mother said. “It covers all nonhuman combatants of unknown origin.”
“These are not Earth animals,” Cornelius said. “This is something pulled from the astral realm by a summoner.”
Great. Just great.
“Of these eleven, three magic users,” Rivera continued. “The summoner, the fulgurkinetic, and the aerokinetic.”
“Elementalist,” Rogan corrected. “An aerokinetic would’ve made the tornado, but couldn’t twist fire into one.”
Elementalists were rare. They controlled more than one element, usually air in conjunction with water or fire. They almost never reached the rank of Prime, but even at Average level, they were dangerous as hell.
It finally sank in. Someone really had tried to kill my family. They had come in with professional soldiers, military equipment, and heavy-hitter mages. Nausea swelled in me. My stomach tried to clench and empty itself. Now was so not the time.
An armored car rounded the corner behind us. Two of Rogan’s people got out and dragged a man into view, half carrying, half walking him.
“And number sixteen,” Rivera said, his voice precise. “Who tried to flee in the last ATV. We got ourselves a coward. We love cowards.”
“Why?” Leon asked.
“They talk,” Rogan said. His voice sent icy shivers down my spine.
They dropped the man in a heap on the ground. Dark-skinned, bleeding, he was somewhere between thirty and fifty. With all the soot covering his face it was hard to tell.
I glanced at Cornelius.
“Matilda,” he said. “Please go inside.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Catalina said. Her voice squeaked. She picked Matilda up and took off inside at a near run.
“Leon, Arabella, inside,” my mother said.
“But . . .” Leon began.
“Now.”
They went into the warehouse.
The man stared at me, his face twisted with fear.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He pressed his lips together.
“I can compel you to respond,” I said. “I really don’t want to. Please just answer my questions.”
Sweat broke out on his forehead and ran down, leaving a clean track in the soot. I pushed with my magic. Strong will. He looked tough, like he had been through more than one interrogation before and it had just made him harder. He wasn’t posturing and he wasn’t making any promises. He just stayed silent. This one would need a careful interrogation. Antonio had needed a punch; this man required a scalpel.
Rivera glanced at Rogan. Rogan shook his head.
“Chalk?” I asked.
Rogan reached into his pocket and pulled some out.
“Why didn’t you draw any circles when the truck was coming?” I asked.
“Because they would’ve veered off course,” Rogan said. “They had a plan. I wanted them to stick to it.”
Because nobody would expect one man to stop a tanker truck. A Prime in a circle was another matter. I crouched and drew an amplification circle on the ground: small ring around my feet, larger one around that, and three sets of runes in between. Rogan watched with a pained expression. Primes practiced circlework since birth. My circles made his brain hurt.
I straightened and held the chalk out to him. “Thank you.”
I pulled the magic to myself and shot it into the circle. It reverberated back into me as if I had bounced on a magic trampoline. I kept bouncing. One, two, three, each jump stronger than the last. Four. Should be enough.
My magic snapped out and clamped the man in its grip. My voice gained inhuman strength. “Tell me your name.”
Rivera’s eyes went wide. All around us Rogan’s people took a few steps back.
The man froze, gripped tight by my magic.
“Rendani Mulaudzi.”
“What is your profession, Mr. Mulaudzi?”
“Mercenary.”
His breath was coming in shallow puffs. I’d been practicing on my family. My sisters were only too willing to cooperate. It was a game. They tried to keep from telling me the truth and I learned how to do it carefully. This man’s will was strong, but Arabella’s was stronger. Sometimes she passed out rather than break, and before she did, her heart rate sped up and she started to hyperventilate. I’d have to watch him.
“What is the name of the company that hired you for this raid?”
“Scorpion Protection Services.”
“How long have you worked for Scorpion?”