The scream torn from Ednund’s throat was like nothing Falise had ever heard. The pain, terror, and horror would ring in her soul forever.

An impossible monster slung its rain-black head back and forth, like a terrier savaging a rat, water slinging silver in the casino lights.

Falise could hear the snapping of bone, the whimpering shrieks going silent as Ednund’s severed legs were flung to the side.

A bolt of lightning overhead flashed as the great beast tossed its head up. Swallowed. The lump that was Ednund engorged the throat, caused the frilling expanse of collar to ripple and swell. The three lightning-lit eyes fixed on Falise. She gaped, frozen, every muscle and nerve paralyzed.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Could only stare at the thing, her body electric in panic.

As the ruin of Ednund’s body pulsed wide down the beast’s throat, it started forward, reaching out with two short, clawed arms.

She tried to draw breath. To scream.

And then her brain turned off.

She felt herself falling . . .

Thought there were the banging sounds of gun shots.

Her last sensation was the pattering of rain.

Hitting her face.

From a long way away.

Chapter 39

  39  

Talina could sense them. She still hadn’t caught their scent, but with the rain, the flashing lightning and rolling thunder, she could close her eyes and almost see through Whitey’s. She didn’t need Demon down in her gut to know they were close. The quetzal kept squirming around down there. Agitated. All the more reason to know she was right.

And on her shoulder, Rocket continued to shift nervously. In her imagination, the little quetzal kept sweeping the darkness in search of danger.

“Yeah, I know,” she whispered as she stared out past the Mine Gate at the inky darkness, rain, and lightning flickers. The gentle shishing sound of the falling rain, the patters as it dripped from her hat and cloak and streamed down the chain link from above, obscured everything but the rumbling thunder.

“Know what?” Cinque asked from behind.

“Don’t mind her,” Wejee told the Suharto. “She’s just talking to her quetzals.”

“Wish someone would explain that to me sometime.” Cinque shifted, boot dragging across the wet gravel.

Talina—search as she might—could see nothing out in the scrubby trees lining the road. Once, back in the Clemenceau days, the Supervisor had ordered all the trees cut down within a quarter mile of the haul road. That was back before people learned just how fast Donovanian vegetation could move. Within a fortnight, the trees were lining the road again, kept back only by the constant traffic of the haulers crushing their roots when they tried to wiggle their way onto the road.