Seven, eight. Nine, ten.
The beast skidded to a halt and collapsed.
The red lightning splashed near me. Two creatures jumped into the open—one on the car, the other next to it on the ground. I fired twice, emptying the magazine into the creature on the right. It howled, an eerie high-pitched whine that didn’t come from any animal originating on Earth, and charged.
I ejected the magazine, slapped the new one in, all in one fluid motion, then raised my gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullets punched into the beast’s skull, one after the other, hitting the precise spot between its eyes. One, two, three, four . . .
It kept coming.
Five, six . . .
The light faded in its eyes. It was still running, but it was already dead. I swung to its sidekick. It was huge, a full four inches taller than the rest. I sighted and fired. The gun spat thunder. Bullets punched the beast’s face. It didn’t even slow down.
A man screamed and plummeted to the pavement from above, landing in the beast’s path. Rogan had found the enerkinetic.
The beast dodged and sprinted forward. Ten yards.
The two final shots rang out. I’d emptied my Desert Eagle.
Eight yards. It would tear me to pieces.
I ejected my magazine.
Six yards.
I slapped the new magazine into the gun. My last one.
Five. The beast leaped, its fangs bared, the fingers of its massive paws spread, the red claws ready to rend and tear.
The lamppost slammed into the creature from the side, impaling it and driving it into the glass front of the dark building to my left. Glass shattered.
“You’re allowed to ask for help,” Rogan said.
A wave of magic washed over me, a disturbing echo of a huge magical reserve expended all at once. Not good.
Down Rusk, the few cars that had failed to flee slid aside, as if pushed by some massive force. A round dent appeared in the pavement, as big as a manhole cover. Another. A third. Something massive and invisible was walking toward us.
Rogan moved his hand. A chunk of building broke off from the right and sliced through the empty space where the creature would be. It passed through empty air without any resistance and streaked back and forth, up and low, as Rogan tried to smash the invisible giant. How the hell do you fight something that has no body? It could hurt us, but we couldn’t hurt it.
Thud! A pothole.
Thud! Another.
Thud!
The next would land on a blue SUV. A woman cringed inside. Rogan jerked the vehicle out of the way and the invisible foot thundered into the asphalt instead.
I could try to shoot it, but there was no telling where the bullets would land if there was nothing to stop them. We were smack in downtown, with thousands of people around us.
A mere half a block separated us from the transparent giant.
Rogan smashed the chunk of the building into the spot where the giant’s next step would land. The invisible force punched straight through it. A car raced down Miriam Street and fishtailed, trying to avoid the potholes. Rogan waved his hand and the vehicle swerved left, out of the invisible apparition’s way.
“Too many civilians,” he growled. “We can’t do this here.”
I backed away. “It doesn’t want civilians. It wants us.”
We needed open space. What was even around here? Tranquility Park was two blocks away, but it was bordered by a stone wall, with only a few open entrances. However, next to it was Hermann Square, a spot of flat, wide-open ground in the canyon streets of downtown. “Hermann Square.”
Rogan turned. “Come on.”
We turned and sprinted for the Range Rover.
The steps accelerated behind us, pounding the pavement in an urgent staccato. Thud, thud, thud.
I had to run faster, damn it. Faster!
The air burned my lungs. We dashed into the parking lot, and I spun around. Whatever chased us was still invisible, but the building to the left, a wall of black glass, reflected the street. A fractured image flickered in the multitude of glass panes as the invisible giant pounded its way toward us.
I squinted, unable to look away. It was enormous and pallid, shambling forward on two massive legs, dripping rolls of fatty tissue. The legs supported an oblong wrinkled body, hairless, with stubs of forelimbs. It had no neck. Its body just bent forward like a question mark, and at the end of that question mark, a round black mouth gaped, filled with rows and rows of triangular clawlike teeth, like some nightmarish intestinal parasite thirty feet tall.
Oh my God.
“Nevada! Get into the car!”
I jumped into the passenger seat, snapping the seat belt closed. “Go! Go now!”
Rogan tore out of the parking lot. Going down Rusk would bring us toward the monster, not away from it. There was only one direction to go—northeast on Louisiana.
I looked behind us.
“Is it following?”
A section of the building twenty feet up shattered, showering the pavement with black glass. Thud! A dent in the pavement.
“It’s following. Do you have a plan?”
He made a left onto Capitol. Here the traffic still flowed, oblivious to what was happening a block away. Rogan glanced at the building on our right. A row of windows on the third floor exploded. The traffic did its best to scatter.
“It would help if I knew what it was,” he said.
“It looks like a giant maggot.”
“Can you see it?”
“I can see its reflection.”
The creature thudded its way onto Capitol. Where were the cops? There was an army of cops downtown. The Spire and city hall were blocks away.
“Use your phone,” Rogan said, his voice clipped.
I swung back and snapped a shot with my phone. The awful giant tapeworm appeared on the small screen in all its revolting glory. I thrust the phone at Rogan.
“Crom Cruach. It’s a Prime-level summon, and someone is cloaking it.”
“But why couldn’t you hit it?”
“Because it doesn’t have a material body in our world. They didn’t summon the actual creature, only its magical footprint. It’s still within its own arcane realm. What we’re seeing is a magical echo.”
“If it doesn’t have a body, then how is it damaging the street?”
“It’s made of arcane magic. When the magic comes into contact with our reality, it creates damage.”
Rogan expertly cut off another car.
“So can it hurt us?”
“Oh yes.”
“How do we kill it?”
He flashed a grin, sharp and fast, like a sword coming out of a scabbard. “We kill it with water. It’s in our world because a summoner is keeping it here through a magical bond. Water disrupts the bond. If we drench it in water, it will manifest in the flesh or disappear.”
Hermann Square Park had a huge rectangular fountain.
Rogan made a sharp left onto Smith. The entire left side of the street was blocked by construction barriers as the workers bore into the pavement in front of the Department of Public Works. We barely had two lanes to work with, but they were clear. Rogan stepped on the gas. The Range Rover roared, accelerating, the stone wall of Tranquility Park sliding past us.
I reached into my pocket and found a piece of chalk. We’d probably need a circle . . .
Ahead five children waited on the sidewalk, all elementary school students holding hands, a single middle-aged woman with them. The theater district was just down the street. That was all we needed, panicking kids. A hell of a time for a school trip.
The older woman turned her head. Pale brown hair, attractive face with high, pronounced cheekbones, pale pink lipstick, wide eyes under high arches of eyebrows plucked to thread-thin lines, and the look in those eyes . . . The look of deep, intense satisfaction. Kelly Waller. Rogan’s cousin.
The children walked into the street, holding hands, a human barricade that blocked our way.
“Rogan!” I screamed.
We were going too fast. He’d never stop in time.
Rogan threw the wheel to the right. The Range Rover punched through the narrow opening in the Tranquility Park’s wall. I caught a glimpse of a concrete picnic table. The Range Rover smashed into it with a sickening crunch. The airbag punched me in the face. The momentum jerked me forward, the seat belt burning my shoulder. The heavy car flew, airborne for a torturous moment, and plunged down, rolling into the grass. We stopped upright, the air bags hanging limp from the dash. I tasted blood in my mouth.