“Undoubtedly,” said Belinda. “Whoever is in there sending out this psychic signature, they’re not happy.”

“Come on,” I said. Let’s do this.”

We fanned out into a line, our guns raised, and advanced on the dark mouth of the cave. The ground all around the opening was churned up, as if something large regularly moved in and out. As we got closer, the smell was nearly overpowering.

Astrid was about to click her torch on, but suddenly the moon came out, shining brightly down on the little clearing at the cave mouth. I turned and glanced to look up at it. That was when I saw the monster.

“Fuck! Belinda! Look out!” I roared.

I was just in time. The hideous creature had stalked us, deadly silent, as we’d approached the cave. Now it reared up behind Belinda, its massive jaws wide for a killing blow. The psycher threw herself away from the monster, and I raised my gun and discharged a ball of Storm Sphere at the creature, narrowly missing its head.

It looked like a cobra, but it was way bigger than any regular snake. The front section of the monster reared up as tall as a person, and the rest of its body, on the ground behind it, was twice that length. Its body was as thick as a tree trunk.

The big wide flap of skin behind its neck was extended, and its beady little yellow eyes glowed hatefully at us with a horrifying dull intelligence.

And it was rotten. Astrid hadn’t been kidding when she’d said there was a reason for calling it putrefied. The whole thing looked like a corpse in an advanced stage of decomposition. There were rents in the skin, through which bloated, wet flesh could be seen glowing with a faint green light.

It stank.

After my initial shout and the blast of my rifle, all three agents sprung into action. The creature was deadly fast, but Astrid leaped in fearlessly and dealt it a blow to the jaw with her clawed hand. Ragged chunks of skin came away from the monster’s hide in the wake of her claws, but the Putrefied Cobra ducked out of the way too quickly for Astrid to get another blow in. Astrid leaped backward as the monster struck at her with its jaws on the rebound, its massive fangs snapping the air just a few feet in front of her face.

Then it was Belinda’s turn. She spun round in the air, wielding her flail, and dealt the monster a blow on the side of the neck. The spiked head of the weapon buried itself in the cobra’s flesh, and Belinda was unable to pull it out. She flung herself backward, landing hard on the ground and grunting as the air was driven out of her. Her head connected with the ground with a sharp crack.