He charges, teeth chomping. I duck and roll, the ice sword slicing across his snout and leaving a deep gash. Blood sprays, hot and bright, but he barrels on unfazed... relentless and mad as hell.
I leap onto the filing cabinet, spring off, flipping backward over his whipping tail, and land in a superhero crouch. In the same breath, I surge forward and drive my sword deep into his hamstring.
His roar shakes the room. He stumbles, jaws snapping at empty air—
And that’s when my office door opens again.
Tammy steps in, holding two Starbucks cups. She freezes.
“Mom?”
“Hi, sweetie. We have a raptor problem.”
Her eyes widen, and she shifts instantly. A blink and an explosion of clothes later, my daughter is gone and standing in her place is a nine foot tall Kodiak brown bear, the biggest of the bears. Her claws gleam. Her roar shakes the windows.
The raptor hesitates, looking from me to her. I suspect Mark, likely a brand-new shifter, still has the mindset of a mortal: that is, a primal fear of bears of any size and shape.
My daughter doesn’t hesitate and barrels into him in full bear form, slamming the raptor into the wall behind my desk with bone-shaking force. The entire three-story building trembles.
What follows is animalistic and brutal: claws, teeth, snarls, and fury. They tumble across the room, rolling in a blur of fur and scales, crashing straight through my daughter’s desk andobliteratingit.
I hold back, letting her work. I’ll jump in if things turn deadly, but for now? She’s holding her own. In fact, she’s winning.
Finally, Mark the raptor shrieks, then kicks Tammy off him with his powerful hind leg. She slams into the wall next to the coffee machine and falls to her side, dazed but conscious. The wall has a bear-sized dent in it.
Mark bolts for the door.
I hurl my sword at him like a spear, but he’s already through the door, completely demolishing it as he goes though, glass exploding out onto the sidewalk. I run over in time to see him run along Lemon Street, his clawed feet pounding the pavement, scattering terrified pedestrians. Soon, he vanishes into an alley.
I don’t follow. Like I said, I know where he lives. Besides, even though she’s presently a ginormous bear, my daughter could have gotten seriously hurt fighting that thing. So, I dash to Tammy’s side as she shifts back to her cute human form while simultaneously summoning her nature dress, which covers her.
“You okay?” I ask, kneeling beside her.
She grins, breathless. “It was strong, Ma.”
I nod. “It was also a dinosaur.”
We laugh at that, even as people poke their heads through what’s left of my shattered door. One by one, I wipe the memory of a fleeing dinosaur from everyone milling nearby, gently nudging them to move along. They do.
For a moment, I consider heading out to the street and scrubbing the minds of anyone who saw the raptor, but there were too many witnesses. Cars, pedestrians. Too much exposure.
So instead, I focus on the one thing I can control: removing myself and my office from tomorrow’s headlines.
I don’t feel the sickness in my gut until I remember the stolen T-Rex bone from last night. I can already imagine thehavoc it could unleash on the city, especially under the control of a lunatic like Mark.
Chapter Twenty
Mark
My clawed feet scrape sparks from the asphalt with every stride. Horns blare. Pedestrians scream. My tail smacks the side mirror off a parked Prius as I tear down the street, primal fury giving way to something sharper... fear.
That fight should’ve been over in seconds. She wasn’t supposed to bethatfast. Wasn’t supposed to vanish into thin air and reappear behind me. Wasn’t supposed to wield a sword made of ice that didn’t melt, didn’t break, and very nearly took off my nose.
I growl, snapping at a hotdog cart blocking my path. The vendor hurls himself sideways, shrieking. The cart flips, ketchup packets burst underfoot.
I leap over a hedge and dart down a narrow alley, trash bins exploding out of my way. I knock over a bicycle and send a stack of plastic crates tumbling. Somewhere behind me, someone shouts, “What the hell was that?!”
But I don’t stop. Not until I reach the far end of the alley and stagger to a halt behind a battered wooden fence. My breathing is ragged, my raptor form trembles. Adrenaline burns away, replaced by searing pain in my back and nose.
