21
When the office door slammed shut and propelled the leucrota backward out of the office, Brandon had been slinking up behind it again, tire-iron raised. Donovan and Violet had been close behind him, with weaponless Lauren nervously trailing last. They all tensed up, thinking the leucrota would notice them now and pounce.
Instead it shook its head, a few drops of blood flying from its nostrils, then snarled with rage and hurled itself against the door.
Seeing his chance, Brandon rushed forward and swung the tire-iron at the back of the monster’s head.
But the leucrota must have heard him or, more likely, noticed the light of his flashlight swiftly brightening behind it and casting its shadow upon the office door, and at the last possible instant it leaped aside. Though it avoided a possibly fatal blow to the back of the head, it wasn’t fast enough to avoid the blow entirely, and the tire-iron struck it hard on the right shoulder, throwing the leucrota off-balance and making it stumble.
Brandon raised the iron to hit it again, while Donovan, knife in hand, raced forward to join him. But the leucrota regained its balance a lot faster than they expected, and before either of them could strike a blow, it pounced at Brandon.
“Fuck!” Brandon cried. He threw himself out of the way and crashed to the floor, nearly losing his grip on the tire-iron in the process. Donovan slashed at the leucrota as it streaked past, but missed its sleek, striped haunch by a good five inches.
Violet had been right behind Brandon, and when he leaped aside, it put her directly in the leucrota’s path. One moment she was looking at the dancing skeleton that Brandon had painted on the back of his black leather jacket, and the next the leucrota’s grinning mouth and huge luminous eyes were hurtling toward her at a zillion miles an hour.
Violet turned her body like a door opening and leaned backward limbo-fashion in a desperate effort to get out of the leucrota’s way. As it whizzed over her, she swung her hatchet at it, though the awkward angle didn’t allow her to put much force behind the swing.
Both girl and monster landed blows, the hatchet slashing a shallow red line down the leucrota’s right side, the leucrota’s right front hoof slamming into Violet’s right breast.
A bolt of pain shot through Violet’s chest and right shoulder, and her right arm went half-numb. She staggered backward, screaming and clutching her tit. The hatchet slipped from her suddenly clumsy fingers and clanged to the concrete.
Thrown off by Violet’s blow, the leucrota landed badly, its left foreleg buckling under it and sending it into a clumsy, twisting slide. It smashed into one of the big gray bins hard enough to make the bin skid two feet across the floor.
Donovan had chased after it the whole way, and now, before it could rally, he tried to stab it in the throat.
But once again the leucrota proved too quick. As the knife swished toward it, it lashed out and snapped its mouth closed on the stainless steel blade. The knife twisted painfully out of Donovan’s grasp and went flipping away into the shadows, the front half of its blade now missing.
Donovan backed away from the leucrota, shaking his now-empty hand, which felt bruised and tingly as if he’d just high-fived The Hulk. The twin plates of the creature’s murderous grin opened up and its tongue flicked out like a whip. The end of the blade flew off the tip of its tongue and rebounded off Donovan’s coat, making him flinch.
He glanced behind him to call for help, then realized there was none to be had: Lauren, like him, was weaponless; Violet was still reeling from her injury; and Brandon was still picking himself up off the floor.
He looked back at the leucrota, and he could tell that it, too, recognized their sorry state of disarray. Its yellow-green eyes shone with terrible glee. Its evil grin seemed to grow wider.
“Oh, hell,” Donovan muttered.
The leucrota charged.
Donovan turned and ran, grabbing Violet’s wrist as he passed her and pulling her after him, their course leading them through the mini-maze of gray bins, then down one of the wide aisles that divided the rows of shelving units. Lauren started to run along with them, too, but in her haste her hip clipped the corner of a bin, and she crashed to the floor on her hands and knees. She was on her feet again a second later, but by then it was too late: The leucrota was bearing down on her, its maw open wide for the kill.
But during that same crucial second Brandon had also regained his feet, and he sprang into the leucrota’s path.
“Run!” he yelled at Lauren.
Lauren did, sprinting away after Donovan and Violet.
Brandon swung his tire-iron at the leucrota’s head. The leucrota ducked the blow and lunged at his belly. He blocked the lunge with his flashlight. Growling, the leucrota caught the flashlight in its mouth and bit down hard, just as it had with Calvin’s bat and Donovan’s knife.
This time the trick didn’t work so well. Unlike the bat and the knife, the flashlight contained two Energizer D batteries, both of which burst between the leucrota’s bony plates, filing its mouth with battery acid. The leucrota howled with pain and outrage.
With the flashlight destroyed, its beam winked out, leaving Brandon literally in the dark. He instinctively took two panicked steps backward, away from the suddenly invisible monster. Then he stopped himself. Now wasn’t the time to run; it was the time to strike, while the leucrota was disoriented.
He took a step forward again, then swung his tire-iron at the spot where he thought the leucrota was standing. The weapon swished through empty air.
The leucrota growled in the darkness, now sounding far more angry than pained.
Brandon swung the tire-iron again, aiming for the spot where he thought the sound had come from.
Swish. Strike two.
The leucrota growled again, louder, angrier. A hoof clopped as it began to move.
Fuck it. Brandon wasn’t going to stick around for the strikeout.
He turned and ran, heading the same way the others had gone. Forty feet ahead of him Lauren was sprinting down the wide aisle, her body backlit by her flashlight whose beam swept back and forth, illuminating the bare gray floor and the ends of the metal shelving units in clear, bright detail. Farther down and to the right a pair of flashlights were receding down one of the narrow aisles that branched off the main aisle, the lights almost obscured behind rows of shelves and the merchandise they bore. Donovan and Violet. Damn, they ran fast.
Brandon heard the clop of hooves behind him and picked up his pace. Lauren must have heard the same thing, because she started running faster, too. After a few seconds, she veered down an aisle on the left and he nearly lost sight of her behind all the junk on the shelves.
Shit. What was she doing? Without a light of his own, Brandon needed to stick close to her. If he got lost in this darkness he’d be monster chow for sure.
He ran faster. When he reached the aisle Lauren had gone down, he was dismayed to find that she was already sixty feet away and booking like mad. Fleet genes must run in the O’Donohue family.
Brandon charged down the aisle after her, while behind him the clatter of hooves rang out louder and louder.