He was starting to reach for the acorn when a nightmare thing the size of a pinball machine slammed onto the hood of the Prius.
The car rocked. The steering wheel sucker punched Green in the face, cracking the bridge of his nose. Phantom lights exploded into his vision with the impact. He struggled for breath as tears blurred the world.
The car swayed with the weight of the animal as it swung its muzzle toward the windshield and the cowering man within.
Metal groaned.
Green let out a choked cry as he fought for air and thought. He tasted blood. Something was on the hood, but he couldn’t make sense of it. There was black, oil-smooth motion and a flash of pale rigidity like weathered concrete.
He clutched his nose with one hand and reached to turn on the headlights with the other.
The sudden flood of light dazzled Green, but the creature on the hood didn’t react at all.
It was lupine and liquid, like a thick-limbed timber wolf with soft, undulating edges that gleamed wet. It had waves of moving flesh, black and midnight blue in constant, senseless motion. Its inky musculature traveled with viscous grace, but there was never enough of it to fully hide the creature’s skeleton.
Here, a glimpse of bleached skull. There, a rib. Two vertebrae. The sharp blade of a scapula. The orchid-white curve of a pelvis.
Green froze, terror pinning him to his seat.
He couldn’t scream.
The creature tilted its broad head and the inky flesh retreated fully, leaving a skull with living eyes peering into the dark car. It was a wolf’s skull, but too big. A monster from a comic book. Thoughts of wolves died as Green noticed the S-curved horn rising from the canid snout, a weapon of sharp bone.
He locked eyes with the thing. A mental pit opened and he was falling deep beneath the earth. Around him the air pulsed with perfect, shared understanding. He was locked in hateful connection to the intelligence behind the bone-rimmed eyes. There was nowhere to run, not even within his own thoughts.
Yes, I see you cowering there,the eyes said.No, glass is neither a mystery nor an obstacle to me. We both know this.
He wanted to look away. He couldn’t.
But my business is not with you. Unless…
The monster was still, a ten-ton boulder balanced on a pinnacle, a thing of terrible potential energy, a snarling chain saw poised above something soft and breathing.
Leaning in with deliberate slowness, it pressed its horned muzzle through the windshield. The surface whined and shattered. The tempered safety glass divided into a topographical map of cracks and fell away in blunt cuboid chunks. The huge predator’s head didn’t slow as it moved toward Green.
Black flesh flowed over the skull until an oil slick that was half grizzly and half dire wolf filled his vision.
His arms shot forward, trying to push away from that terrible head. He fought for inches, straining against the steering wheel, trying to force his seat backward. The car horn screamed a sustained note, breaking the unnatural silence left in the thing’s wake.
The flesh of the wolf’s skull receded again, flowing away like a tide. The digital display lights gave the skull a green undersea glow. Teeth longer than his fingers, teeth that should only exist in a museum display of megafauna hunting megafauna, hung inches from his eyes.
The wolf sniffed deeply. Again and again. Closer and closer, a tide of stygian muscle ebbing and flowing over the skull. The sharp edge of its nasal cavity caught on Green’s chin and opened a gash. Blood ran down his throat, soaking his shirt collar.
He was there in the dark water with Dylan, but the hungry thing was no longer hypothetical. It wasn’t mercifully “out there.”
It was here. It was right here.
All the while, he could still feel that alien understanding speaking directly into his mind. He could hear the thing’s thoughts as words, but the words made no sense.
No, you’re not a clay-walker. Not changed by the Knothole Man or riddle kissed. Not one of the motherless. Not one of the Duke’s people or one of the twilight movers breaking your own laws. But not a man.
A tongue as hard and dark as wet asphalt touched Green’s chin,tasting his blood. The creature’s breath smelled so strongly of pine it made Green’s eyes water.
Frustrating. Unwise to leave it alive? Unwise to simply eat it? No time for this.
Green couldn’t answer.
He couldn’t think.
