“Van and Soa, then! Go back along the trail. Spread out.”

“In the dark?”

“You questioning me, Gutty?”

“Where the hell’s the LT?”

The ripple and bubble of the swamp flowed into Tool’s finely tuned ears. He let them spread wide like fans, cupping the waters. Listening.

The flash of tiny pike. The skitter of crawdads. The distant womblike slosh and surge of salt water as it blended with cousin waters on the shore, where swampland and surf smashed together and sought ever higher tide lines.

“It’ll head for the ocean,” one of the soldiers said. “We should put another squad up on the north side.”

“No, it will hide here, in the swamps. It’ll stay right here. Safe enough.”

“Maybe the coywolv will get it.”

“Not likely. You saw how it did those panthers when it fought in the ring.”

“There’s a lot more coywolv out here.”

Deep in the waters, something dark and hungry stirred.

Tool startled, then froze.

A monster was easing through the waters, vast and silent, a shadow of death. Tool stifled a growl as it passed, fighting to keep the rhythms of his heart slow, fighting to save precious oxygen. Meters and meters of leathery hide slid past him, a great king of a reptile. The creature was bigger than the largest Komodo dragons of the equator. A massive horror of an alligator, tail and legs moving easy, propelling it through darkening waters with a predatory grace.

It circled, attracted by the frenetic hounds and their foolish splashing.

The first dog sank before it could yelp. The next went under in a snap. Blood filled the water.

The soldiers yelled and gunshots flashed. Automatic weapons. Shotguns. Sparks of fear as the soldiers peppered the water with their bullets.

“Get it! Get it!”

Heavy impact. A sharp pain blossomed in Tool’s shoulder. He flinched at the bad luck but held still. He’d been shot before; this was not the worst. The bullet had smashed into the meat of his body. He could survive the wound.

“It’s not the dog-face! It’s a damn gator!” The soldiers unloaded more angry shots into the water. Whistled back their hounds. “Heel!”

Blood smoked from Tool’s shoulder. He pressed his fist to the wound, trying to staunch the flow. There was enough blood in the water that Tool’s own blood might not be the bait that it would have been, but he smelled of wounded sickness.

The soldiers remained at the edge of the pool, shooting at whatever moved and cursing the alligator. The monster circled in the water, finishing the remains of the hounds, unperturbed by the powerless soldiers above.

Tool watched the alligator, measuring this new variable in the equation of his survival. He felt no brotherhood with this beast. Reptiles, if they were any part of his blood design, were deeply buried in the helixes of his DNA. This creature was nothing other than an enemy.