She tossed her blade into her other hand and jabbed at its head. But the more she jabbed in the dark, the more she realized the regular vulnerable spots just weren’t effective. It was like her sword hit some kind of cured leather or bony scale every time. In frustration, she swung at the thing’s legs. It howled and fell. The joints at the knees were weaker than the rest.

“Go for the legs!” Nyx yelled. Beside her, Ahmed and Kage were emptying rounds into one of the beasts, already broken, as it tried to crawl toward them on its good front legs.

Someone was screaming.

Nyx turned.

Isabet, the bloody fucking Ras Tiegan, had an arm down the throat of one of the things. It had clamped down hard, and now her arm was buried to the elbow. She shrieked and gouged at its eyes with her other hand.

Eshe leapt forward, trying to find some purchase with his knife, but these weren’t the sort of animals you wanted to use knives on.

Nyx pulled her scattergun. She walked right up to the thing’s face, and pulled the trigger.

Isabet screamed again. As the animal flopped back, she went with it, arm still locked in its mouth.

But someone was still screaming.

Nyx made a full turn, trying to find out where it was coming from.

“There!” Ahmed said. He bolted past her, drawn by something she couldn’t make out in all the darkness. She followed after him.

They converged on a snarling mass of flesh. Two of the animals were locked in a struggle with Khatijah. Her left hand was already a mangled wreck, and she was missing a vital chunk of her left leg. Nyx watched her bleeding out on the sand while Eskander wailed from her perch on a narrow wedge of rock sticking out from the sand, just large enough for one person to evade the snarling animals.

Nyx and Ahmed unloaded more bullets into the things. The beasts turned their rage just in time for Kage to finish them off from ten paces away. The monstrous bang of her big gun was the best sound Nyx had heard all night.

Khatijah succumbed then, crumpling.

Eskander slithered down from the rock, screaming, still screaming. Sweet fuck, why was she fucking screaming so goddamn much?

“Don’t let her die!” Eskander cried. “Please, please!” She turned a tear-streaked face to Ahmed, and in that moment she appeared much younger than Nyx had first guessed. What was she? Nineteen? Twenty? “Please.”

“She’s bleeding out,” Nyx said. “Call a swarm or something.”

Eskander’s shoulders shook. She grabbed Khatijah and hugged her limp body to her—blood, sand, sweat, and all.

Nyx saw Khatijah’s eyes going glassy. Cool, black fog. She knew that feeling. She had been there before. Something inside Nyx clenched hard. Her gut roiled.

“I’m not that kind of magician,” Ahmed said softly.