Tom looked her way and saw that she was still on her recliner. She’d straightened so that she was off the back rest, but she still held her wineglass.

“Anya!” he said. “Get up! It’s—”

She glanced at him. Her eyes and expression were unreadable, but her voice was calm, almost serene.

“No creature on earth will harm you here.”

“Tell that to Oyv!” Jack said, backing away from the onrushing gator, but keeping himself between it and Tom and Anya.

His son’s courage and protective stance amazed Tom. He’d known guys like that in the service—most of them long gone, sadly—but had seen little of it in today’s every-man-for-himself world.

And then, incredibly, the gator halted its charge. One second it was roaring toward them, the next it stopped as if it had run into a wall. It stood on the border of Anya’s emerald sward and the brown grass that typified the rest of Gateways. It closed its jaws and shook its head as if confused. It tried again to cross the line but then quickly retreated.

It turned left and stalked along the margin of green, thrashing its huge tail as it looked for a way in, and that was when Tom saw something dangling from its right flank. He squinted in the failing light and saw that it was an extra leg. But it looked vestigial. It didn’t move and didn’t touch the ground. It simply hung there.

The gator then turned and stalked the other way. Tom saw another vestigial limb on its left flank. But far more puzzling was its inability to cross onto Anya’s lawn. It made no sense.

And then it occurred to him that the situation might be only temporary. If only he had a gun!

“Call the cops!” he cried. “Call security! Get someone here to either drive this thing off or kill it before it kills someone!”

“No need,” Anya said from her recliner. “It will be leaving soon.”

The alligator stopped its stalking and bellowed. It shook its head and whipped its tail back and forth. It seemed confused. It bellowed again, and this time it sounded as if it was in pain. Then it rolled onto its side, and from there onto its back, swinging its head back and forth, thrashing its tail and clawing at the air with its taloned feet.

With another throaty bellow it rolled back onto its feet but didn’t charge. Instead it made a slow turn and began a limping retreat toward the pond. As it moved away Tom noticed a fist-sized bulge in its left flank, just ahead of the vestigial limb. Not so much a bulge as a pulsation.

The gator roared again as the bulge ruptured, spewing blood along the hide, a crimson splash along the gray-green scales. Something moved within that opening, something red and snouted. The hide split further and—