The main door was wide open. If we made a break for it now…
I didn’t have time to finish the thought. A wisp of shadow zipped past the shelves, and Mark was suddenly airborne. His body crashed right on top of the checkout counter.
“Come on!” He groaningly rolled off the tabletop, collapsing onto the carpet. “Why am I always the one being treated like a human keg-toss?”
“Well, well, well. Look who we have here,” purred the female, standing over us. We scrambled to our feet, and the strange woman immediately bellowed. She staggered back, gripping her stomach. Reese sliced his blade at her again, and she recoiled with a hiss.
Carly and I blindly stumbled backward, only to hit a solid wall of flesh. We whirled around. The shadows made it impossible to see anything distinctive about the towering man, but his glowing yellow eyes were unmistakable. Beefy mitts ensnared both our throats.
“Which one is she?” the man barked, exchanging glances between Carly and me.
Things clanged and crashed behind us. Clearly Reese was keeping his partner busy. Sadly, the two of us couldn’t say we were putting up much of a fight. We kicked and thrashed and clawed at the brute, only to be thrown against the bookshelves beside each of us.
Reese screamed, and I could see him out of the corner of my eye. The woman had him pinned against the wall, digging her clamped fingers into his wounded shoulder. Vibrations rippled up my arm, and I suddenly threw my fists forward. They connected with the man’s chest, and he rocketed backward, hitting the adjacent bookshelf so hard that it toppled over, causing a domino effect across the entire library. I was instantly at the woman’s back, pinning my hand against her throat. In one swift movement, I sent her skidding backward across the carpet.
“Damn, Montgomery,” Mark choked, staggering up to his feet. “Remind me to never piss you off.” Snarling immediately erupted from behind him. We didn’t need to be told twice. Our new acquaintances were shifting. The four of us bolted out the door so fast that we all nearly lost our footing from sheer momentum.
Twenty feet down the corridor, and everything ruptured behind us. I stole a look over my shoulder, seeing the splintered fragments of the library door explode across the hallway as two massive hounds burst out of the entryway. Within seconds, they were right on our heels. Reese whirled around, throwing one of his silver stars. The metal buried right into the animal’s snout. It immediately came to a halt, thrashing its paws up at its face in an attempt to rip it out.
Blackburn tried to throw another one, but the remaining creature bounded right at us. Mark shoved Carly and me aside and swung at the hound, forcing the animal’s face away. It still threw its weight into McDowell, knocking him to the ground. The beast sprang on top of him, baring its hideous canines.
“Run!” he ordered.
Like hell.
Brandishing Reese’s pocketknife, I leapt at the two of them, ready to drive the blade into the hound when it inexplicably whimpered. The blackened fur vanished in an instant. Nothing but the hound’s human form hovered above Mark, and then that petered out too. The petrified young man just lay there, still holding the angelic steel in his hand. He’d stabbed the beast in the heart.
Realization must have finally settled in, because McDowell sprang up from the floor. He violently shook himself out, trying to free the mound of ash that now covered his entire body. The effort did very little, as the filth clung determinedly to his dampened clothes. He abandoned the effort however once he looked down the hall. A similar pile of ash fell to the ground just ahead of Reese. The light caught his blade, revealing an equally bloody foible.
Blackburn nodded to us, but froze in his tracks. “Where’s Carly?”
Mark and I turned on our heels, so certain that we’d find her standing there.
But there was no one.
We all took off down the hallway to the connecting corridor. Our heads twisted from side to side, looking down every direction. She was still nowhere in sight.
“Carly?” I called out as softly as I could. Three hallways later, and I was shaking, my head drowning in all the horrors it could conjure up.
Where was she?
“Testing, testing,” crooned Daniel’s voice over the P.A. system in a sickeningly sweet tone. “Attention, all Mystic Harbor students. Will Katrina Montgomery please report to the gymnasium immediately? Your friend is waiting for you.”
My blood ran cold.
“Say hello to our audience, would you?” he mocked.
“Kat, don’t!” Carly bellowed hysterically from the background.
“How’s about a little swap meet?” Daniel further insisted. “Kitty Kat for Car-Car.”