“I’ll keep an eye on you,” she said.
“Okay. Everyone get back from the door,” Sam said, but too quietly for it to register above the panic sounds.
He grabbed Lana’s hand as she swung with a gold brick. “What are you doing?” she cried.
“You saved my life with your power,” Sam said. “My turn.”
Lana and Edilio and Quinn shrank back from the doorway.
Sam closed his eyes. It was easy to find the anger. He was angry at so many things.
But for some reason, when he tried to focus on the outrage of this attack, his mind’s eye did not call up pictures of the coyote leader, or even of Caine. The picture in his mind was of his own mother.
Stupid. Wrong. Unfair of him, even cruel.
But still, when he reached for his anger, it was his mother he saw.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he whispered to that image.
He raised his hands. Fingers splayed wide.
But at that moment the half-burned door burst open.
Flames and smoke were everywhere, a torrent of choking smoke.
And through the inferno leaped a coyote as big as a Great Dane.
That, Sam thought, made it easier.
A flash of green-white light erupted from his upraised hands and the coyote dropped to the floor. An eight-inch hole was burned clear through his body.
A second flash, like a thousand flashbulbs, and the front of the cabin blew apart.
The sudden vacuum swallowed some of the flame, not all, just a pause in the inferno and Sam was moving, dragging Astrid by the arm, Astrid dragging Little Pete in turn. The others shook off their shock and followed.
They advanced through the hole in the cabin and the coyotes surged forward, a mass of dangerous teeth beneath cold, focused eyes.
Sam let go of Astrid, raised his hands and the light exploded again. A dozen coyotes caught fire and fell or writhed or ran screeching into the night like mad sparklers in the retreating gloom.
“Pack Leader,” Lana warned in a voice reduced to a croak by the smoke that swirled around them. She was leaning on Edilio’s arm, the two of them safely out of the cabin but far from safe on the lawn.
The cabin fell with a crash behind them and burned like a bonfire. The orange light revealed a hundred staring, uncomprehending canine faces. Their eyes and teeth shone.
Pack Leader stood out from his pack, facing Sam, bristling, fearless.
Pack Leader barked a command and the entire pack moved as one, a wave of snarling fury.
Sam held his hands high and beams of purest green-white light fired. The first wave of coyotes caught fire instantly. They turned in terror and raced back through their brothers and sisters, setting off complete panic.
The pack turned tail and ran into the night. And Pack Leader was no longer fearless, no longer leading, but following, racing to keep up with his beaten army. Some burned as they ran and set alight dry shrubbery.
Sam lowered his hands to his sides.
Astrid was beside him.
“Dude,” Quinn said in an awestruck voice.
“I don’t think they’ll come back,” Sam said.