“Don’t shoot!” The American-sounding boy had reached the forest edge. He was dressed like a Nazi, but if he was one, his American accent was shockingly good. Phillip looked between the girl and him, then reached for his sidearm, but it had gotten lost somewhere in the leaves when the girl plowed into him. “Please don’t shoot! We aren’t with them—”

Simone kept her rifle trained on the guy as he came closer, pausing just long enough to fire over his shoulder at one more demon-human corpsey thing. There was another boy with him, dressed in a guard’s uniform—at least, as far as Phillip could tell. It was covered in quite a lot of blood.

“Aren’t with who?” Phillip asked, answering in English. “The Nazis? Or those . . . things?”

“Neither!” The blond white boy, the American-sounding one, stepped closer, though he kept his good hand raised. His right shoulder was crusted with drying blood. “Look, we can explain . . .”

But his explanation was swallowed up in a vicious growl as another monster dropped out of the trees. Its limbs seemed to sprout out of the mouth of a man’s severed head; human arms and legs dotted some of the many appendages as they scraped through the dead leaves. The head swiveled toward Phillip and fixed its bloody eyes on him.

“Jesus Christ.” Phillip took a step backward, but he was afraid to move too quickly. Was that how they hunted? Movement? Maybe he was thinking of lions. Dinosaurs. Carefully, he took another step back as the creature let out a rattling hiss.

Bang. Bang. Simone let loose a barrage into the creature’s torso, shredding the head it had grown from. But all that did was prompt the creature to unfold, new dimensional horrors of body parts, blood vessels, throbbing organs crawling out of the skin it was shedding as it angled itself at Simone.

Blood will be repaid . . . Li-ammmmmm.

“You can only shoot them if they’re using human bodies.” The blond American stepped forward, stretching something between his hands like a shadowy Jacob’s ladder. “These ones are a little sturdier.”

“And how the hell do you know?” Phillip screeched.

With a grunt, the American snapped his palms together, and sparks of violet shot from his hands. The monster squealed, an ear-splitting noise, and stretched tall as though it were being hoisted into the air. Its flailing limbs skittered dangerously close to Phillip’s face, revealing razor-like edges on the insides of its joints. Then the monster snapped free of whatever was holding it—and pounced right at Phillip.

“Motherfucker—”

The razor flashed right in front of his face—

And with another scream, the creature shrank back, curling in on itself before it vanished, like someone had slammed shut an invisible door.