With a curse, he ran e’er faster, reaching down into the muscles of his legs, calling for more and more speed.

It was a race the beast was due to win—a victory that was inevitable when a five-foot stride tried to outrun a set of legs that could cover twenty-five in a single bound. With every second, that pounding grew louder and closer until hot blasts of breath hit Assail’s back, flushing him in spite of the cold.

Fear struck to his core.

But there was no time to try to harness the panic that flooded his mind. A great roar blasted at him, the force of the sound so great that it spurred him forth, providing a gust of foul-smelling air that ushered him along. Shit, his only chance was—

The bite came after the great roar, those jaws snapping so close to the nape of Assail’s neck that he cringed down even though it slowed his gait. Too late to save himself, though. Airborne. He went airborne, plucked from the ground in mid-stride—except why wasn’t there more pain?

Surely if the beast had gotten him by the shoulders or the torso, he would have been racked with—no, wait, it had him by the jacket. The thing had him by the leather jacket, not the flesh, a band of constriction cutting across his pecs and lifting him by the armpits, his legs flopping, his gun firing as he made fists of his hands. Below him, the landscape tilted like it was on a seesaw, the bolting lessers, the fighting Brothers, the overgrown bushes and trees flipping around him as he was shaken all about.

The fucking thing was going to toss him up and gullet him. This back-and-forth nonsense was just tenderizing a meal.

Goddamn him, he was the vampire equivalent of a chicken wing.

No time. He let his gun go and went for the zipper at his throat. The shaking motion made his tiny target fast as a mouse, slick as a marble, all needle-in-a-haystack for his trembling hands and slippery, sweaty fingertips.

The beast’s very hold did more for him.

With those teeth locked in the back of the jacket, the leather couldn’t hold his weight, and he broke free, falling from the jaws, the hard ground rushing to greet him. Tucking into a roll so that he didn’t break anything, he landed in a heap nonetheless.

Directly on his shoulder.

The crack was something that registered throughout his body and rendered him as useless as a babe unattended, all breath lost, his sight blurring. But there was no time if he wanted to live. Wrenching around, he—

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop—BOOM!

His cousins came out of the night, running as if they were being chased when in fact they were not. Ehric had two autoloaders up and discharging . . . and Evale had an elephant gun on his shoulder.

That was the BOOM!

Indeed, the weapon was, in fact, an actual elephant gun, an enormous firearm that had been left over from the time of the Raj in India. Evale, the aggressive bastard, had long ago seemed to have bonded with the thing in an unnatural, “my precious” kind of way.

Thank the Fates for unhealthy preoccupations.

Those forty-millimeter bullets did nothing to slow the beast down, pinging off the purple scales as if they were peas cast upon a motor vehicle. But the elephant gun’s payload of lead caused a howl of pain and a recoil.

It was Assail’s only opportunity for escape.

Closing his eyes, he focused, focused, focused—

No dematerializing. Too much adrenaline on top of too much cocaine with too much pain from his shoulder as a chaser.

And the beast went right back on the attack, refocusing on Assail and giving him the dragon equivalent of a fuck-you in the form of an enormous roar—

The massive shotgun went off a second time, catching the thing in the chest.

“Run!” Ehric bellowed as he reloaded his forties, clips kicking out of the butts of his little guns. “Get up!”

Assail used his good arm to shove himself off the ground, and his legs reengaged with admirable aplomb. Holding his injured limb to his chest, he hauled as hard as he could, the remnants of his jacket flapping, his stomach rolling, his heart pounding.

BOOM!

Anywhere, anywhere—he had to get anywhere the fuck out of range—and fast. Too bad his body wasn’t listening. Even as his brain was screaming for speed, all he could do was lurch like a zombie—

Someone caught him from behind, hipping him up off the ground on a snatch-and-drag that quickly turned into an over-the-shoulder fireman carry. As he slammed into place head-down, he vomited from the agony, starbursts lighting his eyes up as his stomach emptied itself with violence. The good news was that he hadn’t eaten for twelve to fifteen hours at that point, so he didn’t cream up his cousin’s pant leg too badly.

He wanted to help the effort. He wanted to hang on himself. He wanted . . .

Bushes lashed him in the face, and he squinted to protect his eyes. Blood began to flow and it filled his nose. His shoulder got more and more painful. Pressure in his head grew unbearable, making him think of over-inflated tires, bags with too many things in them, water balloons that popped and spilled their contents everywhere.

Thank God for his cousins. They never deserted him.

One must remember to reward them in some manner.

The outbuilding seemed to canter toward them as opposed to the other way around, and from Assail’s upside-down vantage point, the thing appeared to be hanging from the earth instead of planted upon it. Brick. Even with the jostling and the darkness and the alternating strides, he could tell the shack was brick.

One could only hope for a sturdy construction.

His cousin broke down the door, and the air inside was musty and damp.

Without warning, Assail was dumped like the trash he was, and he landed on a dusty floor with a bounce that made him retch again. The door slammed shut, and then all he heard was his cousin’s heavy breathing. And his own.

And the muffled sounds of the battle.

There was an abrupt flare of orange light.

Through the haze of his pain, Assail frowned—and then recoiled. The face illuminated as a hand-rolled cigarette was lit was not that of either of his cousins.

“How badly are you hurt?” the Black Dagger Brother Vishous asked as he exhaled a most delicious smoke.

“’Twas you?”

“Do I look like Santa Claus?”

“An unlikely savior you are.” Assail grimaced and wiped his mouth upon his jacket sleeve. “And I apologize for your pants.”

V looked down at himself. “You got something against black leather?”

“I vomited down the back of them—”

“Shit!”

“Well, one can get them cleaned—”

“No, asshole, it’s coming for us.” V nodded to a cloudy window. “Damn it.”

Indeed, off in the distance, the thundering pounding of the dragon’s gait sounded once again, a storm gathering and heading in their direction.

Assail flailed around on the floor, looking for somewhere to hide. A closet. A bathroom. A cellar. Nothing. The interior was empty except for two floor-to-ceiling supports and a decade’s worth of rafter decay. Thank the Virgin Scribe that it appeared to be a stout brick and more likely to withstand—

The roof lifted and splintered on a oner, debris raining down, asphalt shingles slapping on the floor as if the shed were heralding its own demise with a round of applause. Fresh night air cleared away the musty smell, but it was hardly a relief given what had precipitated the access.

The beast was not a vegetarian, stipulated. But it also wasn’t worried about its fiber intake: the thing spit that old wooden roof out to the side, arched down, and opened up its jaws, releasing a sonic boom of a roar.

There was nowhere to run. The creature was standing over the building, poised to strike at what had become its lunchbox. Nowhere to take cover. No suitable defense to bring to bear.

“Go,” Assail said to the Brother as those great reptilian eyes narrowed and the muzzle blew an exhale as hot and fetid as a Dumpster in summer. “Give me your weapon. I’ll distract it.”