assault of raindrops, which beat a tinny rhythm on the iron caps over the torches. Leo detected their unease in their twitchy movements, the way their rifles jerked from side to side, and the way their heads snapped toward even the slightest sound or movement.
There were no torches on the rear or to either side of the stone structure, where the forest grew right up against it. While the nearly impregnable blackness back there worried Leo, he knew there was no way anything could get through the walls without breaking through several tons of fitted rocks.
If Colton was right, and that whatever was out there hunted exclusively under the cover of darkness, then all they had to do now was survive the night. With their firepower and their defensible position, he saw it as a foregone conclusion. They weren't savages with bows and arrows after all.
A peal of thunder grumbled down from the peak.
Webber swung to his right, toward where Leo caught movement from the corner of his eye. His heart leapt into his throat as shadows raced around the side of the building.
Leo braced himself for the sound of gunfire and the resultant chaos.
'Don't shoot!' one of the shadows shouted. It thrust its hands into the air, one of which held a video camera. The whole scene was incongruous. It was Sam's voice, but Jay's video camera.
Sam stepped into the light and had to cup her free hand over her brow against the glare. Merritt was right behind her. A moment later, Sorenson burst from the forest and headed straight toward his armed companions.
'They're dead,' Sam called. Her already pale features were whitewashed by the bright flames.
'Who?' Leo asked.
Merritt and Sam hurried up the overgrown staircase between the stages and stopped when they reached him. Both of them were panting as though they'd sprinted a great distance.
'Dahlia and Jay,' Merritt said.
'Are you sure?'
'We discovered what was left of them in the jungle outside the fortress,' Sam said.
'They'd been torn apart like the others,' Merritt said. 'We found Jay's camera. And it was still recording.'
'Let me see it,' Colton said. In all of the commotion, Leo hadn't noticed Colton walk right up behind him. Galen eased across the threshold from inside the stone domicile and stood warily at Colton's hip.
Sam held out the recorder. Colton snatched it from her and performed a cursory topical inspection before snapping out the side view screen. He tilted the camera to the light so he could clearly see the buttons and brought the small monitor to life. The screen was cracked and the image warped. Colton pressed the rewind button and twin horizontal lines of static shivered in the center. For several moments, there was no movement at all, then the blackness appeared to shake before eventually brightening to footage of the outer fortifications with dim haloes of light surrounding the evenly spaced stone columns.
None of them spoke as Colton allowed the footage to play at regular speed.
Leo held his breath.
The recorded rain sounded like someone clapping in the distance.
'You are far too generous,' Dahlia's warped voice said from Colton's palm.
The image shifted to a large shrub. Flies swarmed in the halogen light, framed by the undersides of the dripping leaves. The camera struggled to focus, and then zoomed in on twin orbs that appeared as clear as stars through a mist. The pale blue spheres shifted ever so slightly, and there was a glimmer of white below them, but the screen was too cracked to discern exactly what they were viewing.
'It's another one of those weird butterflies,' Jay's garbled voice said. 'They must not be---'
The video shivered and Jay's words were swallowed by static.
'What did he say?' Leo asked, but by then the answer was irrelevant.
The footage resumed. Golden rings flashed behind the bluish spheres. Eyeshine. Leo recognized it immediately.
Tattered vegetation exploded toward the camera. Rows of savage teeth knifed past. The camera fell to the ground with a clatter, speeding past a blur of leaves. Or were they feathers? The image settled to a sideways view of the clearing. The top glowed with torchlight, while the bottom was filled with shrubbery. A portion of the left side of the screen was eclipsed by water. Beyond lay a field of mud.
Screams erupted from the small speaker, so loud and close to the microphone that they sounded like feedback.
A cluster of branches slapped to the ground, followed by the upper half of Dahlia's body. A skein of blood covered her face, her mouth frozen in a scream. A dark blur yanked her out of the camera's view. A wash of fluid splashed down where she'd been a second prior. The screams intensified with sheer terror before being cut short.
The steady clamor of the rain droned from the speaker.
The image remained still for several eternal moments while they watched with baited breath.
'Jesus Christ,' Galen said from where he peered over Colton's shoulder.
A dark gray object appeared from the bottom of the screen with a splash of filthy water and blocked the majority of the screen. It looked like a hazy tree trunk at first, but when the lens finally rationalized the focus, it showed that the gray post had tightly knit scales. A sharp arch curled upward in front of it, then stabbed the ground several times like a scorpion's tail.
Shadows raced behind it, drawing the auto-focus in and out. Branches rustled and the audio came to life with crunching and tearing noises.
A heartbeat later, the gray object pried itself out of the muck, revealing several long digits capped with sharp nails, dripping with mud. The hooked object rose with them, attached to a stunted toe that held it elevated above the others.
'It's a claw,' Galen whispered.
Several minutes passed in stunned silence before Sorenson's voice emerged from the feed and he lifted the camera from the mire.
'Oh my God,' Sam said. 'They hadn't been dead for more than a few minutes when we arrived.'
'Those monsters were probably still there,' Merritt said. 'We could have walked within inches of them.'
'They aren't monsters,' Galen said, his voice softened by reverence and fear. 'They're avians. Raptors specifically. Did you see that foot? It looked just like a condor's, only the claw on the first digit was much larger. And did you notice the extent of its arch? It could have passed for a meat hook.'
Leo gasped. The Medical Examiner's voice echoed inside his head from what felt like another lifetime.
Tears flooded from his eyes and a hideous mewling sound rose from his chest.
'It doesn't matter what it is,' Colton snapped. 'Right now, all of you need to get inside where we can effectively protect you. There's nothing out there that we can't kill. Especially some sort of bird.'
'I didn't say bird,' Galen whispered. 'I said raptor.'
III
Tasker crouched on a broad branch a dozen feet up in the canopy, leaning his shoulder against the trunk. The leaves were so thick all around him that there was no way anyone could see him from below, especially now that he had rolled in mud. Saved from the brunt of the storm by the dense vegetative shield above him, it wouldn't wash away until the very last minute. By then it would be too late for his prey. Beards of moss shrouded him and vines snaked through and around the surrounding branches. He studied the ground in shades of green through the night vision goggles. He had positioned himself in such a way that if he craned his head just right, he could see the
