“But—”
“Liz, you remember Chewy,” he interrupted, and pointing to the far side of the vehicle. He wasn’t about to tell Liz and Chewy that Brute could bend space and time and get where he wanted without a car.
“Chewy,” she said, spotting him in the shadows of predawn, “thanks for helping out on this job.”
Chewy shrugged, and his beard moved with the motion like a graying groundhog was hanging onto his chest. “Good friends, nice hike in the woods, and I might get to shoot something. And a payday. I’m all in.”
That was a lot of words from Chewy. Eli hid a smile. His girl had bewitched his old friend. Before he could tease Chewy, something white blurred at the edge of the road.
Chewy had a weapon drawn and aimed on the target in the blink of an eye.
“Stand down, Chewy,” Eli said.
Chewy complied, but it was slow and the man swore under his breath about working with the natives never being like this before.
Brute trotted up the driveway, a massive white wolf, shining in the dark. His tongue was doing that thing he did to look innocent, hanging out the side of his mouth.
“Where did he come from?” Liz asked.
That was a question he could answer. “Beats me.” He checked the backyard with low-light and then with IR vision goggles and said, “Clear,” before shouldering his packs on and Liz’s amulet bag to one shoulder. The stone amulets weighed as much as his pack. Too bad she wasn’t an earth witch; her gobag would have been a lot easier to manage.
Liz frowned at him but didn’t argue, and gathered up her overnight personal pack by the straps, her walking stick in the other hand.
“Let’s check out the chicken coop,” Eli said.
Through the predawn light, the team of four moved around back.
Eli knelt and shone a tiny high-beam light inside. The coop had been stick-built and had been constructed out of good material, sturdy six-by-six corner posts set into the ground, two-by-four roof and wall construction set on twelve-inch widths, high quality plywood, cedar-board exterior siding, a metal roof, with black screening and chicken-wire over the front area. He’d seen houses not this well-constructed. In some parts of the world this would have housed a family of four comfortably. He bet Drake never even thought about that reality.
The chicken-wire and screen had been ripped and torn, showing that the creature had incredibly sharp claws, nearly as sharp as grindylow claws. At the longest cut, a good four foot length, the two-by-fours that had once been horizontal supports for the screening were broken. The wood had broken instead of the nails pulling out, as if something heavy had dropped onto them, hard and fast. This thing was huge, or fast, or strong—or all three.
The birds had been removed and the coop had been shoveled out and hosed down. Drake probably had a chicken-coop guy, like a yard-guy handyman type he kept on call. He couldn’t see the man in silk pajamas doing any kind of manual labor himself. Might mess up his manicure.
Eli smelled nothing, but the wolf was having a different reaction. He heard it first, as if his own chest had been hit with a sonic weapon, a deep thrumming.
Brute had stopped six feet out and a growl started at the tip of his tail, reverberating up through his massive chest and out his mouth. It was like standing on top of a generator.
A grindy popped into place on top of his head again and chittered. But this time the cute neon green kitten-like critter didn’t flash its claws or cut the wolf, instead it bopped him on the head with its little fists until the growling stopped. Then it chittered some more, as if to say, “Stop that.”
It jumped to the ground, raced over, and climbed up Eli’s back to his shoulder. Right in his face. Eli went still as stone, not even breathing.
Its claws came out.
Six inches of steel sharp enough to slice through his neck in half a second.
The grindy chittered in his ear, softly, and raised one hand, clicking its claws together. Then it leaned to him, its whiskers brushing his face. It had black eyes and very sharp teeth, all of them visible in the glow from his flashlight. It chittered again and pointed to the left.
“That’s … new,” Liz said, her voice quiet.
“No shit,” Eli murmured.
“That’s the direction the tracks led,” Liz said.
To the grindy, Eli said, “Are you going with us?”
The grindy nodded.
“Is this thing we’re after under your judgment?” Meaning are you going to kill it.
