With a battle cry more falsetto than intended, I exchanged Cat #6 for Claireblade and cut through the next sac. In seconds I had the gallbladder; seconds later, it was in Jack’s bag. I hacked and scattered and splattered and grabbed: three gallbladders, four, five, six, seven, eight. Specks of guts sprayed against the house and I shouted for Tub to wipe those off, too. From the second-floor window came an agitated, bat-wing flapping—the loose flesh of the Nullhullers being disrupted from whatever they were doing to the baby. I sliced open the ninth sac with a swordsmanship that was darn near admirable. The gallbladder, as if surrendering, hopped right to the top of the gore, and I snatched it.

Chaos erupted. The trollhunters had breached the nursery. Lights turned on and the battle began to rage. I heard the panting of Jack, the growling of ARRRGH!!!, the sanctimonious snorts of Blinky. The Nullhullers made no other sound than the laundry-line snapping of their skin—after all, their throats had been left down with me on the lawn.

Some instinct, the same one with which I had memorized Jack’s fighting techniques, told me that we were losing. There was a lack of finality to Jack’s sword strikes and too many surprised yips coming from ARRRGH!!!. The Nullhullers grew louder as they flapped their skin in unison. But it was the absence of one noise that disturbed me most.

The baby had stopped crying.

I dropped the sack of gallbladders and hurtled toward the back door.

“Are you nuts?” Tub shouted.

I gave Cat #6 a backhand toss, and it impaled itself in the grass at Tub’s feet.

“Use that if any come out,” I yelled.

“What? Paint, Jim! I’m only authorized to scrub paint!”

Even at my speed the darkened rooms of the house gave off a mausoleum chill. The humming refrigerator, the empty easy chairs, and the random pattern of the scattered remote controls all took on deadly significance. These would be artifacts of the dead if I didn’t hurry. I found the stairs, took the steps by threes, and was at the nursery in seconds, bashing through the doorway with Claireblade gripped in both hands.

The walls were painted a sunny yellow with a motif of pink panda bears. This detail I noticed despite the fact that I could see very little wall. Half of the room was matted, black fur: ARRRGH!!!, looking larger for being confined to such limited space. It had not occurred to me that, in the human world, her size could be a disadvantage, but that was the case: the cramped quarters slowed her down as the Nullhullers nipped at her like angry dogs.