and somersaulted through open air down to the main deck.
A pair of wings pushed their way through the new, elongated opening, unfurling suddenly to a span of at least fifteen feet, as dark and solid as the hull of the ship itself. Then the creature dropped from the front of the wheelhouse, revealing two legs shaped like those of a giant human but covered in the same glittering, obsidian feathers that plated its enormous wings. On its way down the thing buoyed itself with several awkward wing- pumps, then it landed feet-first atop the grain hatches.
Ben glimpsed the creature’s foreshortened arms, crossed against the chest as if it wasn’t quite sure how to use them, enormous talons latticing each other. Five curving nails on each claw? Could it be possible? The same number as fingers on a human hand. Then the giant creature raced down the length of the ship, wings spread to keep the disproportionate body upright as it ran.
Nikki had seen it too, and she was getting to her feet, slowly, using both hands to brush her hair back from her forehead, as if she thought the creature might be a trick played by her bangs.
He was visited again by the same two words that had coursed through his brain when he’d seen those awful photos.
“Come on,” she said.
When he didn’t move right away, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him to his feet, then she turned and kicked out the remaining glass in the bullet-pierced door, all the while holding his hand as if he were a child who might try to flee.
31
Marshall had been so sure the creature was going to drop him in the river, he started kicking the second he hit the water, determined to keep himself floating above the treacherous currents that flowed just beneath the surface. But now his feet brushed sand and when he broke the surface, he heard screaming emergency alarms all around him, along with the wet, thwacking sounds of debris slamming against concrete.
He was inside the aquarium. The damn thing had flown right into the soaring Amazon Jungle exhibit and dropped him into one of the open-air fish tanks. The glass wall had been cracked in a dozen places, and water was spewing out onto the debris-strewn walkway so fast the level inside the tank was dropping. Marshall threw his arms over the steel rim in an intact portion of the glass wall and managed to swing one leg over the side, then the other. When he dropped to the walkway, he sensed a great movement high above him. A shifting of something massive and not quite steady. It was up there, somewhere, perched atop the giant thatched tree house that hung high above the exhibit; a dark shadow, wings folded against its newly formed back.
Silent, watching.
There was a sharp, high-pitched crash from high above. Marshall thought it might be the creature, until he saw the thing’s shadow jerk in startled response. A quadrant of steel framing and shattered glass had pulled free of the shattered ceiling, sending daggers plunging into the jungle foliage a few feet away. He heard a soft pop nearby, another tank giving way. But the creature was still up there, the creature that had been Anthem Landry just moments before. It was still Anthem. It had been made from him. He’d watched it happen. What would happen if he—
Something seemed to explode in the air right in front of him, and his first thought was that the creature had descended on him, and he was preparing to hook the damn thing when there was an explosion of white-hot pain in the center of his skull, piercing and flowing. Feathers slapped his face and there was a blast of wild, rank stench. A bird. A real bird, normal size, and it had just taken a bite out of his face. There was another explosion in the air a few feet away; this one right behind him. Feathers slapped his neck. And another. He was still spinning. They were attacking silently, one after the other. Three were as many as he could count from the blasts of their wings. He focused on their blasts, tried to hook them, but he couldn’t. It was like scraping his hands against a steel door. Because they were already hooked.
Another one landed a searing, direct hit, tearing a chunk of flesh from his eyelid. He screamed despite himself, felt his knees slam to the concrete.
He was wiping the blood from his eyes, blinking furiously, telling himself they hadn’t pierced his eyeball, that he would be in agony if they had, and that when he was able to see again, he’d see them littering the walkway around him, their skulls exploded like all the animals who were subjected to a power like his own.
“Nikki Delongpre?” he growled.
But once he said her name aloud, realization hit. Three birds at once. There’d been three birds at once, and unless she was infinitely more powerful than him, there was no way she could have hooked more than one animal at a time. He’d tried countless times and failed. She wasn’t alone.
He was still wiping the blood from his eyes when he felt sudden movement around his legs, then in between them, the brush of cold, tensile skin. His vision cleared just enough for him to see the giant snake coiling itself around his knees. The exhibit’s star attraction, freed from its tank and coiling around his waist now. He managed to lift one arm above his head, but the other was pinned underneath the sudden constriction, and immediately his lung cried out in protest as he felt the squeeze. The son of a bitch was ten feet long uncoiled, so thick he probably wouldn’t have been able to fit both hands around its body.
And now its expressionless eye was level with his, its giant head sliding over his chest, and when he went to scream, there wasn’t enough breath left in his lungs to give voice to its terror. He had one free arm, but when he went to claw the thing’s eye out, the mouth opened and swallowed his hand. And the knowledge that it was human intention—
Then the snake’s head exploded, and its suddenly lifeless body lost its coil, sliding down him gradually. He pulled his hand free of the mass of gore that had once been its head and used it to push himself out of the snake’s ghostly coil. The last few movements needed to free himself made him look like a bride stepping out of a wedding gown she’d let puddle on the floor.
Another sharp crack from high above, but nothing animal about it. Another rain of glass from the shattered ceiling. Only there was a disturbance in the high mound of jungle foliage a few feet away in advance of the impact. A startled movement that was all too human. The fresh rain of glass was about to expose someone’s hiding place.
Ben Broyard somersaulted to the walkway in front of him, head slamming to the pavement just as the giant wet leaves that had concealed him were torn to pieces. His body went limp and Marshall was wondering if the little fucker had been knocked out cold when suddenly, for the first time, his own world was wiped away from him as if by a giant hand.
• • •
Someone was calling his name. His head was spinning and everything he heard sounded like it was coming to him through a thin tube. But he could hear his name, laced with another word he couldn’t make out. A woman’s voice. Screaming . . .
His eyes popped open. Marshall Ferriot stood over him, wide-eyed, blood streaming from the bites across his forehead and the bridge of his nose, his expression as vacant as Marissa’s had been earlier that day when she’d almost torn his head off. Nikki’s voice was blending with the squealing emergency alarms. They’d spread out the second they hit the jungle exhibit, both of them trying to get different vantage points on Marshall, as far away from him as possible.
But now he’d been exposed and . . . she’d hooked him! That’s why she was screaming. When he’d fallen right in front of Marshall, she had no choice but to hook the guy, and that was the other word she was screaming:
