Screams as the coyotes brushed children aside, knocked them down, overturned easels and chairs.
Screams from little throats, screams and little faces filled with terror, eyes pleading.
Isabella bolted, panicked. A coyote was on her in a flash, knocked her to the ground, and stood over her, teeth bared, growling. His slavering muzzle was six inches from her throat.
Mary didn’t scream or cry, she roared. She leaped to her feet bellowing a word she would never have wanted the prees to hear. She beat the coyote’s shoulders with her fists.
“Get off her!” Mary cried. “Get off her, you filthy animal!”
John tried to run to her aid and let loose a strangling cry. A coyote had the back of his hoodie in its jaws and was worrying it, shaking it like a frenzied dog with a chew toy, choking John with each twist.
Manuela stood frozen in a corner, hands over her mouth, rigid with fear.
The coyotes, excited and wild and agitated, yipped and jumped and snapped at everyone around them. A little boy named Jackson yelled at one of the coyotes, “Bad dog, bad dog!”
The animal snapped and made contact, leaving a bloody scrape on Jackson’s ankle.
Jackson wailed in pain and terror.
“Mary,” he cried. “Mary.”
Then an aged, mangy coyote snarled and the animals calmed a little. But the children were all crying and wailing and John was shaking and Manuela was clutching two of the prees to her and trying to look brave.
And then Drake stepped into the room.
“You,” Mary raged. “How dare you scare these children this way!”
Drake snapped his snakelike arm. The tip of it left a red welt across Mary’s cheek.
“Shut up, Mary.”
The whip-crack had silenced some of the children. They stared with appalled amazement as the girl they had come to think of as their guardian touched the wound on her face.
“Caine won’t like this,” Mary warned. “He always said he’d keep the children safe.”
“You’ll be safe,” Drake said. “As long as you keep your mouths shut and do what I say.”
“Get these ani
mals out of here,” Mary said. “It’s almost bedtime.” Bedtime, like that would mean anything to the dogs, or to the monster before her.
This time, the whip snapped and wrapped itself tight around Mary’s throat. She felt blood pounding in her head, tried and failed to draw breath. She dug her fingernails into the scaly flesh of the whip but couldn’t budge it.
“Which part of ‘shut up’ do you have a problem understanding?” Drake yanked her close. “You’re getting all red in the face, Mary.”
She struggled, but it was no use. The living whip was as strong as a python.
“Now, you need to understand something, Mary: These dogs, as far as they’re concerned, all these little kids are just so many hamburgers. They’ll eat them just like they eat rabbits.”
He unwrapped his tentacle from her throat. She sank to the floor, sucking air through a throat that felt as narrow as a straw.
“What do you want?” Mary rasped. “Drake, you have to get these coyotes out of here. You can have me as a hostage. But the children don’t know what’s happening and they are scared.”
Drake laughed cruelly. “Hey, Pack Leader. You guys won’t eat the kids, will you?”
To Mary’s astonishment, the large, mangy coyote spoke. “Pack Leader agreed. No kill. No eat.”
“Until…,” Drake prompted.