“If you want to leave here, it will.” The woman stepped forwards, and at least she moved like a human being. He didn’t see any weapons, but he also wasn’t born yesterday.

“It’s not an option,” he told her. “But I’m sure you want us out of your…lovely forest, so why don’t you show us where the…” Wardrobe was the word his mind supplied, uselessly. “Where the exit is, miss, and we can be out of your hair.”

She made a sound like guttural vomiting, which he interpreted as laughter. “It is not,” she said, “our forest.”

“Chief,” Michael snapped.

But Lucas was already turning, because something big was coming, shouldering between the trees, something as big as the car.

It bellowed, that same gurgling roar he’d heard before. The source of that noise was absurdly small, swaying over his head on a long neck. However, the body was big as a bison’s and almost as hairy, save that the hair was feathery. It had a tail long enough to be lost in the shadows.

Lucas stared up at the dinosaur. The dinosaur regarded the car with instant and motiveless rage and then surged forwards along the edge of the stream.

“Becca, out!” he yelled, and she piled out of the passenger door even as the monster reared up on its hind legs like an elephant at the circus. Its forefeet had one big blunt claw each and it brought them down on the vehicle—hard enough to drive the roof into the steering wheel. The airbag leapt out in a futile attempt to do some good and then exploded with an echoing retort. The dinosaur squealed in fright and took off across the stream, wallowing in the water.

Then he realized Dominic was yelling: Pryor had shucked off his grip in the confusion and was racing between the trees, zigzagging wildly. Dominic was aiming, but a dead Pryor wouldn’t be of any use to them.

He swore, at Pryor, at incapable subordinates, at dinosaurs, and then he was giving chase. He was trusting to the others to be on his heels and hoping the technodruid didn’t fancy the exercise.

Daniel Rove valued his elite workforce, this much Lucas knew. But what Rove really wanted was to probe Pryor’s mind to find out what she knew, and that meant Lucas really, really needed to be where Pryor was when his boss caught up with them.

III

Even as she put the first tree between herself and her pursuers, Lee was aware this wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done. Yes, the not-police had been in the middle of kidnapping her, and they were maybe associated with the thugs that had been stretchered out of that Camden flat. Sticking with them had few attractions, then. On the other hand…