“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said.
“What do you want to do?”
He was silent, weighing their options for a moment before admitting, “What choice do we have?”
His foot brushed the lug wrench, and he bent to pick it up. It felt ridiculous in his hand. What good would a lug wrench be if that thing got hold of him? Every nerve was tingling as he moved toward the narrow gap in the frame of windows. He angled his head alongside broken glass and looked down the side of the building. Small stone outcroppings at the far side of the windows kept him from seeing very far. It was going to come down to a matter of faith. That thing was either out there or it wasn’t. He took a deep breath and extended his head through the window, quickly glancing left and right. Nothing. Still no movement. Still no sound other than the rustling of the trees.
“Doesn’t feel right,” he said again, softly.
“Be careful,” Vidonia said.
“I’ll do my best.”
He couldn’t see it, but everything he knew about the gladiator told him that thing was out there, waiting. This was a trap.
He backed away from the window, and the sound of rustling leaves grew suddenly louder. A huge black shadow arced down from the upper branches of the nearest oak, and Silas sprang backward as the shape crashed into the bank of windows.
Glass exploded inward, but the metal frames held. Silas scrambled to his feet as the gladiator roared and thrashed. There was a screech and a loud pop as the window frame broke free from the wall on one side.
Vidonia screamed.
“Come on!” Silas grabbed her hand and jerked her through the open doorway and into the hall.
They ran blindly at top speed, concentrating only on putting distance between them and the gladiator. Silas felt like a mouse in a maze, and the cat was coming. They went left. Then right.
There was a loud crash in the distance, and the sound of breaking glass. The gladiator was inside now. They stopped.
“Which way?”
“That way,” she said, motioning to the left.
Silas set off, running again. He stopped at the next junction.
“Take off your shoes,” he said.
“Why?”
“We’re making too much noise. It’s going to listen for us.” Silas unlaced his single remaining shoe and pushed it against the wall.
“My hands are shaking too much,” she said. Her voice cracked.
“Try to breathe quietly,” he said.
“How the hell do you breathe quietly?”
Silas put his finger against her lips to silence her. She was near tears.
He bent to help her and pulled the lowtops off her heels. A sound reverberated down the hall. A big sound. He slid the shoes against the wall near his, thought better of it, then tossed them down the opposite hall as far as he could throw. The sound came again, closer, like the sound of a big dog running on tile, the tap of claws on tile.
He pulled her to her feet. “C’mon, fast and quiet.” They sprinted on their toes. Silas no longer tried to keep track of their position within the building. He went left and right in a zigzag pattern, trying to lose the sound that rattled occasionally through the halls behind them. Fear pushed him faster. The clack of talons was closing the distance.
Silas’s feet were suddenly on soft carpet as they came to the entrance foyer. He tried the doors. Locked. They ran again, taking the first hall to the left.
Here the darkness was nearly absolute. There were no windows for starlight to seep through. Silas gripped Vidonia’s arm with one hand and held the other out before him as he walked, feeling for obstructions. He had no idea where he was.
The steady clack of talons quieted for a moment, and Silas knew the creature had moved onto the carpet. It was too close now. They’d run out of time.
His fingers brushed against a smooth, hard surface. He ran his hand along the wall until he felt a doorway, and then he pushed through into a lab, catching the doorjamb with the palm of his hand and swinging inside. Vidonia rushed in behind him, and he shut the door quietly.
He moved past the long countertops to the edge of the window. He pulled the curtains wide, and the dimmest wedge of ambient light filtered into the room.
There was no broken scatter of glass on the floor. No lug wrench. But other than that, this room was identical to the room they’d entered through.
He checked if the windows opened. They didn’t. He cursed silently.
His eyes cast about, looking for something to break the glass. The room was stocked with a familiar array of scientific equipment: liter bottles of sulfuric acid, centrifuges, sinks, and microscopes. A large desiccator sat on the counter near a rack of test tubes and volumetric flasks. A bank of computer terminals ran along another countertop.
They had probably stumbled onto the wing on the opposite side of the building from their car, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t going to risk moving back out into the hall to find out. His hand reached for the biggest, heaviest microscope he saw. They’d get their bearings straight once they were outside.
The sound at the door froze him in place.
Breathing.
The knob slowly turned.
He dropped to his knees behind the counter, pushing himself against the cool wooden cabinet. He’d lost track of Vidonia. The door creaked, then swung slowly open and banged against the doorstop. Then was no sound at all. Seconds passed.
“Shilashhhhh.”
He swallowed hard. The chase was over. This became something else now.
Talons clicked across the floor slowly as the gladiator ducked into the room.
Silas looked for Vidonia, but she was nowhere. She’d been closer to the windows and must have dropped behind another counter. Tay rose in Silas’s mind.
“Shilashhhhh.”
The voice was enough to drive a man crazy. It was an animal snarl shaped into human words.
“Hunnnngry, Shilashhh.” The voice rounded the corner just ahead of the massive, dark body. Gray eyes found him in the shadows. Silas knew he should run, should move, should do something, anything, scream, rage, crawl, beg, but he couldn’t make his body work. In his mind, he clearly saw that anything he did quickly left him dead, so he did nothing. Looking up at the smiling maw of teeth, he stared at his future.
“Shilash.”
Silas’s hand tightened around the microscope. The talking had done it. Actually seeing words born from that mouth was too much for him to bear. He could move to silence those words, if not to save his own life. He flung the microscope as hard as he could. The gladiator’s hand moved faster than Silas’s eyes could follow, batting the microscope away with enough force to embed its pieces in the far wall. The creature bared its teeth in a leering smile and took a long step toward him. Silas feverishly plucked another microscope off the counter and hurled it. The gladiator impatiently knocked the assault away with a fist, sending the instrument across the room in chunks.
The gladiator’s eyes changed. The grin became something less human, more predatory. It moved toward him. Silas stumbled back, clutching blindly across the countertop. His hand found the neck of a bottle, and he swung it over his shoulder with all the force of his body. The charging beast swatted at the incoming bottle, shattering it.
The charge stopped dead, and the gladiator screamed.
