The ax bounced and struck against my leg, but my duster prevented it from cutting into me. I picked up the ax—Christ, was it heavy—hauled off, and brought it straight down on the Denarian, as if I’d been splitting cordwood.

The ax crunched home, sinking to the eye somewhere in the Denarian’s thorax. The thing’s convulsions ripped the weapon out of my hands—and the plug from the wall outlet.

The mantis’s head whipped toward me, and it screamed again. It ripped out the ax and came to its feet in the same instant.

“Get clear!” Gard rasped.

I did, diving to the side and going prone.

The wounded woman emptied her assault rifle into the mantis in two or three seconds of howling thunder, shooting from the hip from about three feet away.

Words cannot convey how messy that was. Suffice to say that it would probably cost more to remove the ichor stains than it would to strip and refinish the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

Gard gasped, and the empty rifle slid from her fingers. She shuddered and pressed her hands to her belly.

I moved to her side and picked her up, trying not to strain her stomach. She was heavy. Not like a sumo wrestler or anything, but she was six feet tall in her bare feet and had more than the usual amount of muscle. She felt at least as heavy as Thomas. I grunted with effort, got her settled, and started for the door.

Gard let out a croaking little whimper, and more blood welled from her injury. Faint pangs of sympathetic pain flickered through my own belly. Her eyes had rolled back in her head. It had taken a lot to beat Gard’s apparent pain threshold, but it looked like the visit from the Denarian—and the activity it had forced on her—had done it.

The day just couldn’t have gotten any more disturbing.

Until the splattered mass that had been the Denarian started quivering and moving.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” I shouted.

Where there had been one big bug thing, now there were thousands of little mantislike creatures. They all began bounding toward the center of the room, piling up into two mounds that gradually began to take on the shape of insectoid legs.

The shotgun downstairs roared again, and running footsteps approached.

“Harry!” Thomas shouted. He appeared at the bottom of the stairs, sword in hand, just as I hurried out the door, still toting Gard.

“We had company up here!” I called. I started down the stairs as quickly and carefully as I could.

“I think there are three more of them down here,” Thomas said, making way for me. He took note of Gard. “Holy crap.”

A corpse lay on the floor of the entry hall. It was black and furry and big, and I couldn’t tell much more about it than that. The top four-fifths of its head were gone and presumably accounted for the mess all over the opposite wall. Its guts were spilled out on either side of its body, steaming in the cold air drifting through the shattered front door. Hendricks crouched in the shadowed living room, covering the entryway with his shotgun.