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The closer I get, the more its features reconcile in my sight—into what I can only describe as hell’s best grotesque. The creature is two heads taller than me and as wide as your average bodybuilder, with wrinkled, dry, thin blue skin stretched over its muscles like plastic wrap. Bulging veins distort its limbs, like snakes writhing atop its bones, and every movement underneath the tattered robe it wears could be described as slithering.

  I slide to a stop on the damp grass, point my gun at center mass, and shout, “Hey!”

  The creature lands heavily on its left foot, its clawed foot, stands still for three and a half seconds, and then turns around to face the little Crow half its size. (If that.) A bulky hand drifts toward the hammer at its side, the hammer covered in a fresh sheen of blood.

  My stomach churns, bile rising in my throat, when I get a load of its face. Dear God.

  Its nose is long and hooked and crooked. It has tusks like a boar. Its ears are pointed, elf-like, but shriveled, as if burned by acid. Its hair is dark and coarse, a mop of fraying rope, hanging over its face and neck, blending with a dirty beard. Eyes the size of golf balls, fire burning at their cores, lock onto the boy standing before it, beneath it, and when it grins, its cold breath wafts my way, the scent of death. Old death. Infinite death.

  It’s a demon. It has to be. Somebody summoned a monster from hell.

  It makes a sound deep in its throat, gruff and hoarse. And I recognize, belatedly, standing there, shaking in my boots, that the creature is laughing at me. Because I look terrified. I am terrified. Slack jaw. Wide eyes. Gun trembling in my grip.

  No textbook or lesson or anecdote from an experienced teacher could prepare you to come face to face with something as utterly disgusting and horrifying as the thing I’m facing now. I have never been this scared in my entire life. Not even the night Mac died.

  There will be nightmares later.

  If I live.

  I raise my shaking gun toward the monster’s face and say, in a tone less than convincing, “Drop the hammer, you ugly fuck!” But the beast only laughs harder and pulls the mighty hammer from the belt strap. It points the head of the hammer at my face, and unless I’m imagining things in my stupor of fear, it winks at me. Like this entire scenario, gore and all, is a joke. Like murdering two college kids is the mark of an average day, and not the sign of a tragedy in progress. This thing, it doesn’t care about taking life. Life has no more value to the monster than a penny to the rich.

  A spark of fury zips through my veins, down my arms, into my fingertips. I point my gun at the bulbous gap between the monster’s eyes. And pull the trigger. One. Twice. Three times.

  The bullets hit home. The monster reels back, dark, slimy blood spraying from its face, dribbling down its cheeks, sticking to the hairs of its wiry beard. It stumbles two steps away from me, crushing a row of flowers, and the head of the hammer drops forward, hits the ground with a thump so hard I feel the vibrations under my feet.

  But the monster doesn’t fall, doesn’t even threaten to topple. Instead, it growls, guttural, a sound that wracks my chest, sends chills down my spine. Goose bumps spread across my skin, and sweat forms on my face and neck. The monster’s head swivels around on its fat neck, revealing the extent of the damage: three bullets sticking out of its face, shallow.

  This thing must have a skull as strong as steel.

  With its free hand, the beast reaches up, plucks the bullets from its face, and tosses them to the ground between us. Each round is flat, as if it hit a wall, and the holes in the monster’s face where the bullets struck are barely bleeding. The beast rolls its shoulders back, cracks a toothy, rotten grin, and lifts its hammer once again. The bloody head is now smeared with dirt and grass.

  It says something in a language I don’t recognize. But I know exactly what it means. “My turn.”

  It attacks. Fast.

  One second, the monster is ten feet away. The next, it’s right in front of me. The hammer hovers in the air at an angle that implies the lightest impact will sheer my head off my shoulders. I need to move. Now!

  I dodge the instant before the monster swings, and the massive hammer passes half an inch above my skull. I drop to the ground, roll away, push myself up with all my strength, and empty the rest of the clip in my gun into every visible surface of the monster’s body. Searching for a weak spot. Any weak spot.

  But the result is the same. The bullets won’t penetrate. The beast is built too well.

  It roars. Deafening. So loud it shakes the ground, and I stumble to my knees.

  I toss my gun aside—useless—and aim my left fist at the monster, who’s recovered from its first swing and is now storming toward me. I reroute every ounce of energy into the index finger ring, extend the center knuckle. Then I shout, “Shoot!”

  A massive wall of pure force strikes the creature head on with the power of a tractor-trailer moving twenty-five miles per hour. Which doesn’t sound all that impressive. Until you remember how much a tractor-trailer weighs. The blast sends the beast flying across the clearing, into the far wall, through the far wall of the garden maze. It crashes to the ground, rocking the earth again, and the hammer tears free from its hands, bouncing across the grass. The weapon comes to rest a good fifteen feet from its owner, partially stuck inside an azalea bush.

  For the next minute, organic debris rains down on top of the fallen monster. Its large, contorted form doesn’t move.

  Huh. That went better than I expected.

  My heart hammers in my chest, and I struggle to take in air. I try to pull myself back from the verge of a panic attack, and I almost succeed.

  But then I get a good look at my rings, and my stomach drops out into deep space. Spider-webbed cracks decorate the surface of every single ring on both hands. Somehow, I channeled the energy wrong again, and the force release destabilized the metal, causing it to break.

  I tug the left index ring off and examine it closely. Too many fractures. If I try to use the rings again, they’ll shatter. Damn it!

  Damn everything.

  Including myself, apparently.

  Because in the time it’s taken me to pull the ring off my finger and assess it—five seconds or less—the monster has shaken off my attack and retrieved the hammer.

  The massive blue beast is now racing toward me with the weapon raised. The visage of an oncoming storm.

  Jesus, I didn’t even hear it move! Almost like it has a choice to make noise or not, to shake the world or not. A choice to announce its large, imposing presence. Or to strike in utter silence.

  I try to duck again, bound out of the way, toward the nearest path, and run, run, run. But I don’t get past the point of evading the hit. The beast moves too fast, swings the hammer too swiftly. It comes around in a wide arc, a blur of metal and wood and a blue aura of magic, and catches the side of my left arm in a blow that shocks my body numb from the shoulders down. It throws me off balance so far I careen into the leafy wall head first, smack the hard supports beneath it, chipping teeth and tearing the skin off my cheeks.

  And I fall. Flat on my ass. Dizzy. Disoriented. I can’t see straight, hear anything beyond the ringing in my ears. And I can’t—Oh God—I can’t feel my arm. Folded underneath my body, it won’t respond to my commands, and for an hour in a second, I fear it isn’t there. That it’s lying on the ground somewhere nearby, ripped away and bleeding dry.

  A shadow falls over me.

  The monster. Hammer raised. Smiling so wide that every brown, mushy tooth shows past its peeling lips. It speaks again, incomprehensible. I interpret the words as, “Game over.”

  It swings the hammer at my head.

  I lift my right hand, Build all the energy I can in a fraction of a second, and raise my index knuckle. Then I scream “Shoot!” at the top of my lungs.

  The rings explode. But the spell goes off. It collides with the monster like a battering ram, sends it soaring thirty feet across the lawn, over the flowers, past the wall it struck before, and down a hill, ou
t of sight. I feel it slam into the earth with a mighty quake that jars my injured body, head to toe.

  Once the ground stops shaking, my vision starts to fade from a blur of colorful static to a pit of squirming blackness. My limbs go limp, and what little energy I have left bleeds out of my ruined arm. I fall back against the leafy wall, head lolling to one side. A half-caught breath spills out of my bloodied mouth, a tired sigh. My last thought before my mind unravels into a troubled sleep is:

  That went well. Let’s pick this up again tomorrow.

  Chapter Ten

  There’s an art to waking up after you get knocked unconscious.

  As your mind drags itself toward the real world again, intense pressure blossoms inside your skull, causing you to groan like a walrus frustrated that its lunch ran away. Next, sensation returns to your extremities, and you get the sense, from the pain washing over you, that you probably resemble three-day-old road kill. You try to open your eyes to check how bad the damage is, whether there’s enough plastic surgery on the planet to make you look human again, but your lids are practically glued shut, so you have to force them open with all your might. Which, I imagine, from the other side, resembles the wide-eyed stare of a zombie rising from the grave.

  A stare that scares the bejesus out of the people hovering at your bedside.

  Riker, Ella, and Dr. Navarro, the head infirmary doctor (and magic practitioner), who must have been leaning pretty close to me before I woke up, recoil as if I burst into flames before them. Riker stumbles two steps backward, then rights himself using his cane, while Ella grabs the blue curtain hanging around my bed to keep herself upright. Navarro is the least affected—this probably happens to him a lot, working in the DSI infirmary—and he recovers by leaning back a few degrees before returning to his standard rod-straight posture. His lips are stretched into a thin grimace, and he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose before he says, “Welcome back, Detective Kinsey.”

  I blink a couple times, uncomprehending, and then squint to block the glare of the bright ceiling lights overhead. I’m in a bed at the north end of the infirmary, the designated trauma bay, where agents who suffer injuries that are not quite minor but not quite serious get deposited when they’re dragged in from the field. Ella must have called for backup sometime after I got my ass handed to me by big blue ugly, and that backup transported my unconscious self here so Navarro could give me a much-needed patch job.

  My mattress is tilted at a low angle, so I have to crane my sore neck to examine my battered body. Dressed in one of those backless hospital gowns, covered from the chest down by thin sheets, I can only assume that my torso and legs, which feel liquid, boneless, are reasonably intact. My left arm, the one I was sure got ripped apart by the monster’s hammer, is wrapped up in gauze, secured in a splint, and pinned to my chest with a sling. My fingers, poking out from the sling, bear minor burn marks from when my beggar rings blew up but are otherwise unscathed.

  With a haggard breath, I lift my heavy, shaking right hand and prod at the sling in wonder. How the hell is my arm still attached?

  Navarro, Riker, and Ella exchange glances, and then Navarro steps up to the plate. “Your arm will be fine, Kinsey. You didn’t get the full blow. The hammer skimmed along the top of your arm and caught your radius. You have a hairline fracture, and you lost a bit of skin. But I stitched you up and applied some of my healing ointments. You should be back in business in a couple of days.”

  I swallow to wet my dry throat and attempt to say, “How is it only a hairline fracture? It felt like it was severed.” But my words come out more like a poor attempt at beatboxing, and I sound so absurd to my own ears that I have the urge to bite my tongue off. A hot flush creeps up my neck.

  Navarro scratches at his bushy hair and replies, “Sorry about the speech issue. A side effect of the ointments. It’ll wear off shortly.” He picks up what must be my chart and scribbles something down. “But to answer your garbled question: the hammer was charmed. My best guess is that the charm was designed to incapacitate by amplifying the pain from the injuries it inflicts by a couple orders of magnitude. All the creature needs to do is land one lucky blow, and its adversary will lose the ability to continue the fight, thus making it easy for the creature to…dispatch said enemy.”

  He clicks the button on his pen four times in a row. “Complex magic, for sure, and almost certainly not of this world. My guess is the creature crossed over from the Eververse with the hammer. Must be its signature weapon.”

  Riker and Ella, standing on the other side of my bed, consider this idea for a moment. Riker then turns to face me again, his heavy gaze combing over my beaten form until it knocks against my own eyes. There’s judgment in his expression, thin lips pulled into a frown, but its toneless to my sight. I can’t figure out whether he’s worried about my wellbeing or ready to ream me out for going one-on-one with an enemy not even he would dare fight on his own. Maybe both.

  The captain rubs his chin with the back of his hand and finally speaks. “You’ve been out for about two hours, Kinsey, in case you were wondering. We currently have three teams sweeping the Memorial Garden, but so far, the creature has eluded us. It was gone by the time Ella found you unconscious at the scene of your showdown, off to who knows where, likely to murder again.” He taps his cane on the railing of my bed. “As far as I know, you’re the only one who’s seen the creature up close—and lived—so we’re going to need a description from you. As accurate as possible. All teams working minor cases are being reassigned to find this thing, before it takes another victim. They need to know what to look for.”

  I nibble on my bottom lip for a minute and reply, “It’s blue.” And I’m pleasantly surprised that the words are intelligible.

  Ella cocks her head to the side. “Blue? As in, its skin is blue?”

  Feeling around the bed sheets for the mattress remote, I find it, press the up button, and hold it until I’m sitting at a more comfortable angle. Then I make a writing motion with my right hand. “Paper. Pen. I can draw it.” And boy, will it be accurate, after my far-too-close-and-personal look at big blue ugly, the beast from hell. “Then you can send the picture out to everyone. Easier than a description.”

  Navarro nods. “I’ll go grab some supplies. Be right back.” He rounds the bed and slips through the curtain into the infirmary proper. Before the curtain closes, I catch a glimpse of the room beyond. All the other beds are empty. It appears I’m the only goof-up on today’s roster.

  I reach out for the tray attached to the side of the bed, but I can’t quite grab it, so Riker leans down and lifts it up for me, pushing it my way. While I’m adjusting the angle to transform it into a makeshift easel, I try to ignore the prickling sensation on my face and neck, the effect of my captain and senior teammate staring me down. I realize, in the silence of the infirmary, that they were waiting for Navarro to leave so they could discipline me for what I already know was a boneheaded decision.

  Ella strolls around to the opposite side of my bed, so that she and Riker have me surrounded. She crosses her arms, huffs, and says, “I could have sworn I told you to stay close to me.”

  Riker strikes his cane against the hard tile floor. “And I could have sworn I told you not to get yourself killed. What the hell were you thinking, challenging a creature like that on your own?” He tries to discreetly lean against the nightstand next to my bed, a sign his leg is bothering him again, and I fight down the urge to apologize for worsening his pain for the second time today. “I mean,” he continues, “if you were intent on pursuing it, you should have kept your distance and called reinforcements.”

  “In hindsight, sir, that would have been a much better plan.” I play with the straps on my sling and attempt to form a fist with my left hand. The fingers twitch but refuse to bend. “However, at the time, I…wasn’t thinking strategically. I let my impulses get the better of me.” With my tongue, I probe at my sore mouth and jaw, find three chipped teeth and a fleshy tear in my
cheek where I bit myself. Half of my face must be black and blue, like someone clocked me good. “I take full responsibility for my idiocy, Captain.”

  Ella and Riker look at each other over my head hung low, a silent message passing between them. They both sigh. Then Ella lowers the railing on her side of the bed and sinks onto the thin infirmary mattress. “At least you have enough tact to own up to a stupid decision, which is more than I can say for a lot of rookies. There’s a reason we usually assign them to middling teams and not the elite.”

  She rakes gentle fingers through my dirty, messy bedhead. “I thought you were dead, you know, when I found you lying there. Took a rookie out for his first big case and let him get beaten to death by an Eververse monster—that would have weighed on me for a long time. You have no idea how happy I was when I realized you were still breathing.”

  “I’m sorry.” I grip the sheets so hard I’m sure they almost tear. “I saw the creature, and you were already out of sight, and I thought…It killed that girl under the tree, the same way it killed Jason Franks. I didn’t want another Green Lake student to fall victim to that thing. So I chose to confront it. Because I’m an idiot, obviously.”

  “Don’t apologize for your bravery. That’s not the mistake you made.” Ella bops me on the head with a light fist. “You’re not an idiot, Cal. You’re just rough around the edges. You’ll get worn smooth over time, with experience, I’m sure. You certainly have the potential for it, with what I’ve seen so far. Until then, however, try to avoid solo fights with violent creatures of mysterious origin. Please.”

  “I will. I swear. No more maze fights with big blue ugly and friends.”

  Ella hides a smile by turning her head away from me, and I redirect my attention to Riker, who’s leaning more heavily against the nightstand now, his face cinched tight with building pain. “Sir, I’ll understand if you want to put a penalty on my record for—”

  “For what?” he grunts out between harsh breaths. “You didn’t break any rules, or any laws. You made a rash decision, and you already paid for it.” He slides his hand down the cane and then nudges my sling with the polished wooden grip. “The only things you broke were your beggar rings, again, which means I’m going to have to requisition more.” A sour grimace distorts his face, topped off with deep dimples. “You know we have a limited budget, right?”