"Eyes front!" Heart barked.
I spun back to the horde. The stench of ozone hit me, the same one that I smelled in Rynda's house.
"One seventy."
I sighted the beast directly across from me, a big ugly creature. Shooting it in the wrinkled bag that was its body probably wouldn't do much good. The skinny legs would be a much better target. I moved the selector to three-round burst.
"One sixty."
My breathing deepened. I focused on the legs.
"One hundred and fifty meters."
"Fire!" Heart roared.
I squeezed the trigger. The first burst went wide. I sighted and fired again. The beast's left leg crunched and broke. I sighted the second front leg and fired. The creature collapsed.
The second beast took its place. I sighted and squeezed the trigger. Screw the Harcourts, their beasts, and Vincent's threats. I was my mother's daughter and I did not miss.
Bodies piled in front of me. To the right someone lobbed a grenade. The explosion scattered the bodies. Yellow ichor and pale guts flew.
I switched to full auto. I was in the zone now, and it was faster.
The gun clicked.
"Out!" I took two steps back.
Heart stepped into my place, thrusting a fresh magazine at me. I released the empty one and slapped the new one in. A woman ran up to me, snatched the empty magazine out of my hand, and held out a full one. I took it.
"Out!" Heart barked, and took two steps back.
I shoved the full magazine at him and took his spot.
The creatures kept coming, scuttling over the corpses. The two massive .50 cal guns mounted on top of the carriers came to life and spat thunder and death, chewing through the advancing horde.
More beasts poured out of the gates: smaller yellow creatures that looked like skinny cats with wolf heads; bloodred raptor-like things moving fast on two thick legs; a six-legged horror sheathed in glistening thin tentacles that writhed like earthworms, its top half erect as if it were some nightmarish version of a centaur . . . They came and came and came. Time lost all meaning. Only two things mattered-shooting and calling, "Out!"
The space between the carriers and monsters shrank. Barely thirty feet separated us now.
I unloaded the last of my magazine into a tentacled monstrosity. "Out!" I stepped back, ejected the old magazine . . .
I grabbed the new one from the runner, slid it into the weapon . . .
A huge blue cat that looked just like Cornelius' Zeus lunged onto the top of the carrier and charged us. Heart fired, point-blank, his rifle spitting a stream of bullets. The cat snarled and rammed the armored plate. It bent. It shoved its massive paws through the window, trying to rake at Heart with its claws.
I threw myself against the armored plate, thrust the rifle through the window, pointing it almost straight up, and sank a stream of bullets into the cat's throat. Blood splashed on me. The great beast collapsed, the light fading out of its beautiful eyes.
"Out!" Heart and I yelled at the same time.
No runner came. I pulled a spare magazine out of my pocket. Heart did the same.
Creatures piled on top of the carrier, snarling, screeching, clawing, slipping in the blood. We fired point-blank.
A woman screamed on the right.
A tentacle whipped through the window and wrapped around Heart's arm. He jerked a knife out and hacked it in half.
Last magazine. We were overrun.
Magic moved behind me like a tsunami. The armored carrier under me slid. I grabbed on to the armored plate. The two massive vehicles slid to different sides like the two halves of a door opening wide.
I turned. Rogan stood inside one of the most complicated circles I'd ever seen. It glowed white.
The animal horde abandoned the carriers, streamed toward him, and crashed against the boundary of the circle. Rogan had drawn a high-level spell. The amount of magic he'd fed into the circle was so high, its outer boundary no longer existed in our world.
The green tarp covering the cargo of the truck flew aside. Three long metal cylinders lay in the back of the truck, each thirty feet long and twice as wide as a telephone pole. Rogan raised his arms in a classic mage pose, palms up, elbows bent. The cylinders shot straight up and spun in place. Dozens of blades slid out of the metal shafts. The cylinders turned sideways, forming a triangle, two on the bottom, one on top, rolled over each other and cut into the beasts. Severed limbs flew.
The grinder.
The blades swept through the horde, mincing flesh. Blood drenched the pavement, pooling in puddles under the heaps of cut-up bodies. The air smelled like blood and ozone.
Someone retched. I couldn't even vomit. I just stared at it, mute. The slaughter was so bright, so vivid, there was no defense against it.