He tries closing his eyes against what he knows is coming, but somehow he cannot manage to do even that. He cannot help himself—he must look. He must see what it is that has hunted him for so long. He must see what it is that his parents have warned him about. He must know the identity of his hunter.

He can feel it looming over him. He can feel it reaching for him. He opens his eyes and looks around wildly, but there is nothing there. He is more terrified than ever. Sometimes, he cries. Sometimes, he screams. Nothing helps. There is never anything there. And then his hunter falls on him like a massive black weight, still invisible, still unknown, and he is crushed.

AS THE KLEE LUMBERED TOWARD HIM, Hawk’s childhood nightmares returned in a flood of dark images. Because he no longer knew how much of his childhood was real and how much the creation of the King of the Silver River, he could not be certain if his memories were real. But they felt real, which was enough to give them the substance of reality. Enough, too, to remind him of a truth he had always known, a truth so terrible and so inexorable that he had lived in dread of it his entire life. If the dreams crossed over from sleeping into waking, his life was over. He had only an instant to remember all this, come face-to-face with the something he had thought he had left behind—only a moment to come to terms with what it meant. He was backing away, trying to think of what to do, how to escape. The creature was almost on top of him, moving more quickly than should have been possible given its size.

Its massive arms reached for him.

Hawk reacted instinctively. He thrust his prod at it in a futile effort to slow its advance. He jammed the weapon into its spongy chest, amid hair, scales, and debris, and gave it a full charge. But the creature never even flinched. It simply snatched the prod from his hands and tossed it aside. Hawk had nothing left with which to defend himself save one of the viper-pricks. He had no faith in a tiny needle, no matter how venomous. He knew instinctively that the creature’s mottled, debriscoated body would resist such a weapon, might even prevent it from penetrating. He backed away some more. The creature was still coming, but its advance was unhurried. Its gimlet eyes were fixed on Hawk, studying him, and something reflected in those eyes revealed what it was thinking. That the boy was trapped. That he could not escape. That it could do whatever it wanted with him.

It was toying with him. It was enjoying this.