“Exactly. So I need to reach him first...before he shifts, before anyone else dies. And if I can, I’ll take him somewhere no one else can get hurt.”
“Where’s that?”
I give her a look. “Think of the biggest, emptiest place you can imagine.”
Tammy blinks. “The Grand Canyon?”
A slow grin. “Yep. That’ll do.”
“What will you do with him there?”
“No clue. I’ll figure it out when I’m staring into his giant ugly face.”
Tammy gestures at the wrecked office. “I’ll handle cleanup. You go.”
“I’m already gone.”
I summon the single flame... and within it I glimpse his makeshift alchemy lab. Time to step into the lion’s den.
Or the dino’s.
***
The lab assaults my senses the moment I appear.
The air is thick with a metallic tang: iron filings and copper bowls left too long under Bunsen burners. Herbs hanging in bunches overhead, filling the room with hints of sage and rosemary. Beneath it all lurking the sulfuric reek of something recently cooked. It smells like black magic.
I blink into existence beside the same cluttered desk, but the lab is no longer just messy. It’s alive. The room pulses with a deep, hellish red, shadows jumping across walls as braziers roar with unnatural fire. The air tastes metallic and hot, thick with incense and something older: bone dust and blood.
Mark stands at the center of it all, shirtless, shimmering with sweat, muscles trembling from the strain of channeling power he was never meant to wield. He doesn’t see me at first, too consumed by the ritual.
The case lies open beside him like a coffin lid. The massive T-Rex femur rests within, ancient and wrong in a way that prickles my undead skin. Runes carved into the surface glow like molten gold, shifting and crawling as if alive. A ceremonial blade sits beside it, slick with blood... his blood.
His chant stutters when he finally senses me.
He turns slowly, eyes black as death, breath ragged.
“Sam.” He smiles. “You’re too late. It’s done.”
His back arches. Bones snap. Clothing tears. He screams, half agony, half ecstasy, as his body erupts into violent motion, muscles swelling like overinflated balloons. I move in a blur of motion, grabbing his wrist just as his arm doubles in size, and summon the single flame.
The lab disappears. So does California. The air changes. The temperature drops as we appear together on a rocky ledge within the Grand Canyon itself. I let go of him and leap away as he roars into the clear blue sky.
He’s no longer Mark. He’s transforming before my eyes, becoming something ancient and enormous. The canyon trembles beneath the roars... and grows and grows.
I summon the flame again and see within it Talos...
Chapter Twenty-one
Mark’s transformation ishorrificto behold.
Bones twist and stretch beneath his skin. His spine arches, cracking like gunfire, limbs lengthening as muscles knot and bulge. Flesh splits to make way for dense, armored hide. His fingers splay and burst into clawed talons. His reptilian eyes lock onto mine, filled with something smug, ancient, and furious.
His clothes shred into confetti as his frame surges upward, doubling, then tripling in mass. Scales bloom across him in a wave of green-gray, creeping like a fast-spreading infection. His jaw unhinges, lengthening outward while rows of serrated teeth punch through gum and bone.
In seconds, the man is gone.
What remains is thirty feet of primeval rage, a full-grown Tyrannosaurus Rex.
