Apocalypse: Every Woman I Invest In Makes Me Stronger

”Aria. Keep it restrained.” Ethan didn’t look away from the broken frame. ”Don’t get close.”

She pulled in a breath that shook on the way out. Blood from her forearm had already reached her wrist. ”Got it.”

Both palms went to the floor. She didn’t throw the plants at the body this time. Roots punched up through the tile under the dome, white where the stone split, and spread. They twisted into each other. In a few seconds a green net hung under the beast, thick as rope, leaves still twitching like they didn’t know they’d been asked to hold something that size. The Hornscale Beast looked down. The narrow eyes thinned.

Then the tail went still, and Ethan already knew.

The flesh at the base split. Those dark holes opened again, wet and neat, like something had drilled them on purpose.

He got the shield up. ”Here it comes.”

Bone spikes rained. He planted himself in front of Aria and took them on the alloy. The first hit rang so hard his teeth clicked. The second walked the shield sideways. The third nearly tore it out of his hand. He dug a boot into a crack in the tile and held.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Behind him Aria fought the net, teeth bared, the cut on her arm opening wider every time she pulled. ”Ethan!”

”I’m fine!”

He wasn’t. The arm was going numb from the elbow down, and the dents were deep enough to catch a thumb. If the next spike came through, it was going into her chest, not the shield. One use of Matter Restructuring left. He looked at the floor because the floor was the only weapon he still had that wasn’t his sword.

Broken glass everywhere. Thousands of pieces. Moon in every edge.

He focused. The shards lifted. One. Then a handful. Then hundreds, hanging around him, turning slow, catching the emergency lights. His eyes hardened. ”Let’s see how you like this.”

He shoved his hand forward. The glass went up in a sheet. Hundreds of needles tore the dark and took the beast in the face before it could get the head around. One punched the corner of an eye. Another cut the lid and stuck. The head jerked so hard a horn scraped the steel frame and threw sparks.

The roar that came out shook dust off what was left of the ceiling. It wasn’t curious anymore. The amusement was gone. It was angry, and angry things stopped measuring.

The body dropped. The green net tore under the weight, vines snapping like wet cable, sap and black scale hitting the tile together. The jaws opened wide enough to take him at the shoulders and came straight down.

”Now!”

He threw the shield. It spun once and went into the mouth. The beast bit. Crack. Alloy bent between the fangs. For one second the jaws were forced open and the throat was bare, pale and wet behind the teeth.

That was the second. He raised his hand. Spatial Cut. White light cut the dark and took the exposed neck.

The edge tore scale. Black blood erupted and slapped the stone. Where it landed, the floor smoked and hissed, a bitter smell like hot metal and rot. Corrosive. The creature recoiled, horns scraping the frame, and Ethan stared at the wound because he needed it to stay open.

Then he felt the pressure change. The Space Seal cracked. Not a door. A hairline fracture in the skin around the Museum, thin as the gold lines he’d cut earlier and already trying to knit. His chest loosened anyway. It’s working.

Too small. He reached for the Anchor in the shelter and hit the same wall, only softer. He still couldn’t lock it. He needed more. A lot more.

The Hornscale Beast screamed. The whole body twisted. The Museum shook hard enough that a painting Ethan hadn’t noticed fell and burst its frame. What was left of the dome came down in a sheet. Glass rang off his shoulder. The beast crashed through the hall and hit the floor so hard the stone split under its chest. The tail swept blind.

Crash.

Cases exploded. A row of paintings tore off the wall and cartwheeled. A sculpture went to pieces and skittered past Elena’s boots.

”Move!” He grabbed Aria by the coat and hauled her back. She stumbled, caught herself, and kept the bloodied arm against her ribs. Elena came with them, fire still crawling her fingers, the shoulder of her coat sliced where the spear had kissed her. She was breathing too fast and trying not to show it.

The creature rose out of the wreck. Black blood ran the neck in a sheet.

Then the wound closed. Slow at first, the edges crawling toward each other. Then faster. Fresh tissue pushed over torn scale. The bleeding stopped. The cut Ethan had paid for with the last clean opening of those jaws was gone.

Aria stared. ”It’s healing.”

His face went dark. Worse, the crack in the seal was shrinking while he watched, the pressure thickening again, knitting itself like skin. We don’t have time. He tightened on the sword and set his weight to go in anyway, because standing there and watching the door close was worse.

The roar outside came again. Closer. The buzzing thickened until it stopped being a sound and became weather. He stopped. Eyes narrow. He knew that roar. Tiger King. And under it, wings. Hundreds of them.

He looked up through the shattered frame. Dark shapes crossed the moon. Mutant bats. A black cloud gathering over the Museum, bodies blotting the light in strips, the same white-tufted kind that had tracked him through the alleys. They hadn’t lost him. They’d just taken the long way.

Elena’s face paled. ”We’re surrounded.”

The Tiger King’s roar landed nearer, and the glass still left in the upper windows shivered. The Hornscale Beast went still. Its head turned toward the broken frame. For the first time since it had come through the dome, it wasn’t looking at them.

Ethan made the call before the two things on the roof decided the hall was interesting again. ”We’re leaving.”

Aria looked at him. Blood on her wrist. Net gone. ”How?”

”Survival Space.” He reached for both of them. Elena’s hand was cold from her own fire. Aria’s was slick. ”Now.”

They didn’t argue. The ability took. A flash, and the hall, the smoking stone, the black blood, were gone.

Inside the Space the air was clean and wrong. Gold light from the false morning. The pond. Lana’s voice somewhere behind a stack of cans, asking Elena’s name and not getting an answer yet. Ethan locked his senses on the boundary and watched, because the door they’d used was not a door he trusted.

The Hornscale Beast stood in the ruined hall and lifted its head to the broken dome. On the roof, the Tiger King had arrived. Massive. Amber eyes staring down through the shattered glass. Lips peeled. Fangs out. A low growl rolled through the building and into the Space like a hand on the wall. Above it, the bats circled until the moon was a rumor. The night was a moving sea of wings, and every now and then one dipped low enough that Ethan heard the clap of it against the frame.

The Hornscale Beast raised its head. The Tiger King stared back. For several seconds neither moved. The bats kept circling, unwilling to pick a side yet. Ethan could feel the stand-off in his teeth.

Then the Hornscale Beast turned. Its eyes swept the wrecked hall, slow, past the dead cases, past the place the three of them had been standing.

Ethan’s face changed.

It was looking at him. Not at the tile where he’d vanished. At him. Inside the Survival Space. The narrow pupils didn’t search. They sat on the spot where he was, as if the boundary was glass and he was the thing on the other side of it.

His blood went cold. It can sense me.

The corners of the mouth curled. Fangs. Blood. That same deliberate look from the dome, only worse, because there was no street between them now. A chill walked his spine. If it could see in, the Space was a room, not a fortress.

The Tiger King roared. Deafening, even through the boundary. A paw slammed what was left of the dome.

Boom.

The building shook. The Survival Space trembled under Ethan’s boots. Water in the pond slapped the stones. Somewhere behind him Lana made a small frightened sound, and Elena, just arriving at the edge of his senses, went still.

He stared at the scene beyond the boundary. Two monsters. One Museum. Hundreds of bats filling the sky. A seal that had almost opened and was closing again. No teleport. No Anchor. No clean way out, and a thing on the roof that had just found the room he was hiding in.

His hand closed on the sword until the grip bit.

The situation had just gotten worse.