by Kit Alloway
She clapped a hand over her shoulder wound and sat up, not as quickly as she wanted to but as fast as she could. As she rose, she grabbed the machete, which was now both bloody and sandy.
Two kangaroos were down already; one was missing most of its head, which Josh could only attribute to Deloise’s mace. A third was pawing at its eyes, and two Taser electrodes were sticking out of its chest. Haley was fighting a fourth, both of his knives lost in its fur. He had his thumbs sunk deep in its eye sockets. Whim was holding the fifth down while Will hacked at its neck with his hatchet.
Deloise and Katia had the last one caught between them, and Deloise’s mace was swinging in circles too fast to see. Katia was holding up her hammer, but she was bleeding from scratches all over her face, and the hand that didn’t hold the hammer hung limply from her shoulder.
Josh turned and took all this in just in time to see the kangaroo she had maimed land in the middle of the chaos. She cursed and began running toward it, but her body was slow to respond. The left side of her shirt was soaked in blood from her shoulder wound.
“Del, behind you!” she shouted, as the kangaroo landed two feet behind Deloise in a spray of dust and blood. Deloise—God, she’s good with that thing, Josh thought—didn’t even start turning around before she was swinging the mace above and behind her head, and the spiked ball took a chunk the size of a hamburger out of the kangaroo’s throat.
The kangaroo Deloise had been helping hold off jumped on Katia immediately.
“Will!” Josh shouted.
Will yanked his hatchet out of the brain of one of the kangaroos and looked around. He had a stripe of wet red blood down his leg, but he didn’t seem to feel it as he launched himself at the kangaroo that had just knocked Katia to the ground.
Josh didn’t have to tell Whim where to go—once the kangaroo he and Will had been fighting was down, he leapt to Haley’s side. Haley was trying to break free of the kangaroo’s hold, squirming like he was in a straightjacket. The kangaroo was holding him eighteen inches off the ground in an embrace that had turned his face the color of a tomato. Josh reached him at the same time Whim did, and she narrowly avoided being blinded by the arc of pepper spray that shot from the bottle in Whim’s hand.
Haley had already gouged the creature’s eyes out, but the pepper spray must still have hurt, because it made a sound like an angry dinosaur and snapped its jaw shut on Haley’s left ear. Haley’s mouth stretched wide over clenched teeth in an awful grimace, but he stayed silent.
Josh grabbed one of the hunting knives from the animal’s side and yanked it out. She stabbed the kangaroo quickly, over and over, the blade only going in halfway. She was less concerned about damaging it than she was in getting it to release Haley, but the pepper spray must have worked, because it dropped Haley and clawed at its own face instead. Haley hit the ground with an ooof, his ear shredded.
Whim grabbed the other hunting knife and followed Josh’s lead, and in the next ten seconds they inflicted more than two dozen cuts to the kangaroo’s sides. Finally Josh’s knife slipped between its ribs, and it reared back as she cut something vital. When she pulled her knife out, a torrent of blood followed it, pouring onto the dirt like the eruption of a spring. The beast collapsed beside Haley.
Deloise was standing over a jerking kangaroo, inflicting deep, bloody craters all over its torso. She had her face screwed up in a way that Josh suspected meant she felt guilty for hurting an animal, but she knew as well as the rest of them that the kangaroos weren’t real, despite their excruciatingly human screams. Josh could tell from the sound of bones being crushed every time Deloise swung that the kangaroo didn’t have much longer to live.
That left the one Katia and Will were fighting. Will had his arms wrapped around its neck from behind and was hanging on as the kangaroo tried to bounce him off. His grip must have been pretty tight, because the kangaroo’s tongue was hanging out like a flattened snake.
For an instant, Josh was distracted by a memory. Will had done the same thing in the first nightmare they’d ever walked together—jumped on the back of a six-foot-tall albino koala puppet. Seeing him do it again made Josh smile fondly.
Until she realized that the kangaroo was also trying to stomp Katia to death. She was rolling back and forth beneath to escape its long, flat feet as it bounced above her. She’d lost her hammer.
Josh didn’t know it if saw her approach or sensed it, but the kangaroo spun like a dancer and swung its thick, meaty tail across the ground. Josh jumped, but the tail caught Whim in the shins and knocked him over as he attempted to retrieve Katia’s hammer.
“Haley!” Josh called, and she tossed him one of his hunting knives. He caught it perfectly, not even slowing his steps as he headed for the last kangaroo. Will had his hatchet back, and Deloise was approaching with her mace.
The four of them surrounded the last kangaroo and closed in like hyenas, and Josh felt a strange rush of pride. These were her people, her team, and they were good at what they did.
They struck like a team, too, a sudden storm of blades and moving metal, so fast that the kangaroo jumped from the ground breathing and landed dead, blood spurting from its wounds due to the force of it hitting the dust, its head nothing but a messy clot of blood.
It landed on Katia, unfortunately, and everyone helped drag it off of her, their hands moving in unison, like they were acting in a puppet show. Katia was winded, but had avoided any major injuries.
The sand around them was clumped with blood, and flies were already circling above the kangaroo corpses. Josh’s team looked worse than worse-for-wear, half of them noticeably injured, all of them bloodstained. Deloise had brain matter smeared across what had been a pretty cute sweater.
“You’re gonna have to teach me how to use that mace,” Josh told her sister, and they were coming together for a high five when creatures burst out of the pouches of the dead kangaroos.
Joeys, Josh thought, watching in slow motion as the little animals sprang into the air, fangs bared. They’re called joeys.
They looked like skinned rabbits—hairless, their pink skins stretched tight and dry over new muscle and thin cheeks. Their eyes weren’t even open yet, but they had the teeth of velociraptors and the claws of wolverines. And their legs must be fully developed, Josh thought distractedly, because that one’s headed right for my face.
The shock wore off in time for her to block with her left arm, but the joey was satisfied with sinking its fangs into her forearm.
Is that the crowd screaming, or is it Will? she wondered, tossing her machete into the air so she could catch it backhanded and stab the joey in the gut. Her blade went in the front and came out the back, barely bloodied. As she dropped to the ground, she thrust her arm beneath her so that she landed with her knees on the joey.
It let go of her arm, and its guts came out its mouth. Josh would have liked to take its head off, but from the corner of her eye she saw Will fall onto his back, a joey scratching at his face. The creatures were vicious, but they were light, and Josh caught it on her machete blade as she swiped, accidentally sending it flying across the arena.
One side of Will’s face was a briar patch of scratches, but Whim’s was worse. He actually had a hole in his cheek, and Josh gagged a little when she saw him stick his tongue through it.
“Oh my God,” he said, holding a joey’s corpse out in front of him. “I’m disfigured!”
Deloise had dispatched the nearest joey before it ever reached her, and she’d taken out Katia’s, as well. It had managed to slice Katia down the face, breaking her eyebrow and almost taking out her eye, but once they wiped the blood away, she could see just fine.
The booing of the crowd subsided as Peregrine rose from his chair. “Citizens of Peregrineum, fear not! A worthy opponent deserves a worthy adversary! Release the peregrine!”
Will had grabbed a roll of bandages out of one of the packs and was wrapping it around a wound on Katia’s hand. At Peregrine’s words, he worked faster.
Josh’s eyes darted between the doors at either end of the arena, but neither opened. Will handed her what was left of the gauze and she bandaged the gouge in her arm, which was bleeding worse than she would have liked. She didn’t know what to do about her shoulder.
“What about me?” Whim asked.
Will shrugged uneasily at the sight of the hole in his friend’s cheek. “You want a Band-Aid?”
Whim poked at the hole with his tongue again. “You got a cork?”
“Folks,” Josh said, “let’s try to concentrate.”
“Katia’s bleeding pretty bad,” Deloise warned. “So are you, Josh.”
Josh looked down and saw a swath of blood down the right side of her shirt, stemming from where the kangaroo had bitten her. Her back hurt near her shoulder blades where the kangaroo had dug its claws into her muscles.
Above them, a hawk screamed.
“Great Jehoshaphat!” Whim cried, craning his head back.
A shadow fell over them, deep and dark enough that Josh felt a chill. She looked up and saw the white and yellow belly of a bird, a 747-sized bird, its stark yellow talons outstretched, each tipped with a black, sicklelike claw.
Peregrine laughed maniacally as the bird circled closer and lower.
“It’s a hawk,” Will said, and Katia corrected him.
“It’s a peregrine falcon.”
Of course it is, Josh thought.
“Falcons eat meat, right?” Whim said.
The bird folded its wings back and began to dive.
“Get down!” Josh cried, and they all dropped to the ground.
The bird dove so fast it made a whistling sound as it fell. The crowd cheered, and Josh had to force her eyes to stay open against the urge to hide. She was only a few feet away from Haley, who was very close to Deloise, who had not lain flat, but curled up in a ball with her hands over the back of her neck, like she would have during an earthquake.
“Del—” Josh began, but she was too late. The bird snatched her sister up with two yellow talons.
“No!” Whim screamed. He had grabbed Deloise’s ankle and held on so hard that for a moment he was airborne.
Then Deloise slipped from the falcon’s grasp, and she and Whim crashed back to earth. Josh was ten feet away, but she heard something crack when Deloise hit the ground.
“Oh,” Deloise said weakly. “Oh, no.”
“Move closer to Del!” Josh shouted. “Link arms and legs!”
They crowded together on the ground around Deloise, trying to remain flat, arms and legs spread like skydivers in formation.
“Del, what hurts?” Josh asked, linking her legs with Haley’s on one side and Will’s on the other.
“I don’t know,” Deloise said weakly. “My hips … maybe my pelvis?”
If Del broke her pelvis, we’re screwed, Josh thought. We’ll never get her out of here.
“Can you move your legs?”
The falcon was diving again, its shadow condensing and darkening.
“Maybe,” Deloise said.
“I’ve got her, Josh,” Whim said. “I’m connecting our pant loops with my belt.”
That’s love, Josh thought, and then she was squeezing her eyes shut as the falcon skimmed right over top of them, so close she could smell the dried blood of some unlucky creature on its claws, a scent like raw meat and mud.
Will pressed his forehead against hers, and Haley was close enough behind her that she could feel his breath on her neck. Deloise’s head brushed the top of Josh’s.
“Don’t let go of me, Whim,” Deloise begged.
“I’m not letting go.”
“I mean it. Don’t let go.”
“Del, if you don’t stop me, I’ll hold on to you for the rest of my life.”
Then they were kissing, and Josh didn’t stop them even though the falcon was screaming toward them again. Katia released a little cry, but when the peregrine began flapping its wings, trying to gain height, its claws were empty.
“Everybody all right?”
“My shirt is torn,” Katia said, “but I’m uninjured.”
Uninjured? Josh thought.
“I’m amazing,” Whim said.
“This is working,” Josh said. “Stick together. Make yourselves as flat as possible and hang on to each other. It doesn’t have the strength to carry all of us. Del, how are your hips?”
“I think they just popped. Whim saved me.”
The falcon came around again, this time releasing a shrill scream as it dove. It managed to pick up Haley and Josh’s entwined legs, but they all tightened their grip, like a sponge contracting, and Josh and Haley were only a foot off the ground when the falcon lost its grasp.
On the next pass, it tore out a clump of Will’s hair. “OWW,” he cried, but he didn’t let go.
The pass after that, it scratched up Whim’s back. Then it managed to pull off one of Katia’s shoes.
“I’m not hurt,” she insisted afterward.
“How long until it gets tired?” Whim asked.
That was an interesting question.
“How long until Peregrine makes it more powerful?” Will asked.
That was an even more interesting question, and one for which Josh didn’t have an answer.
“Can’t he just imagine it more powerful?” Deloise asked, craning her head back so she could see Josh.
“I thought so,” Josh admitted.
The falcon swept past again, screaming as it did so. This time it didn’t even manage to grab a shoe. The crowd was booing and hissing in fury.
“Perhaps Peregrine doesn’t know he can control things with his thoughts,” Katia suggested.
“But he teleported us here deliberately,” Will pointed out.
“Perhaps not,” Katia began, just as the bird screamed past.
Perhaps not? Josh thought. She sounds like—
“Enough!” Peregrine hollered. “Only cowards lie on the ground when they face an enemy!”
“Nobody move,” Josh said.
“No kidding,” Whim added.
But the falcon flew away, beyond the arena to what Josh could only imagine was an enormous nest somewhere in the mountains.
“Get up!” Peregrine shouted, and suddenly they were all standing on two feet. Josh looked at Deloise, but she was dusting herself off and didn’t appear to be in any pain.
“You are unworthy of an honorable death by combat,” Peregrine declared. “I sentence you to death by cruelty.”
Skippy, Josh thought.
She turned at the sound of one of the arena gates opening. A single man walked through, dressed in old-fashioned pants and a button-down shirt. His pants were wrinkled and filthy, his shoes scuffed and stained, a tattered newsboy hat on his head. He looked vaguely familiar, but Josh couldn’t place him.
She searched the man for a visible weapon and found none. He looked like he had a kind of wiry strength, but he wasn’t a muscular man. He appeared quite ordinary.
“Who are you?” she called when he was within range.
He grinned a mean grin. “Who the hell are you?”
“Friendly dude,” Whim muttered.
“How did getting a hole in your cheek make you more talkative?” Will asked him.
“Shut up!” the stranger barked. “Stupid little shits!”
The stranger didn’t so much appear angry as hateful, but it was an amused, happy sort of hate, a hate that obviously felt good to him.
“Line up!” he snapped. “Right now!”
Josh and her friends glanced at each other, perplexed.
“Make us,” Whim said, an almost experimental tone in his voice.
The man got right up in Whim’s face and lifted a threatening fist. “You want a piece of this, you little shit?”
Whim, who stood at least a foot taller than the man, began to laugh. “Sure, dude. Let’s rumble.”
“Whim—” Josh began.
“I will cut you apart!” the man told Whim. “I will smack that smart mouth ri
ght off your face and drown you in a puddle of your own piss!”
That made Whim laugh harder. Josh felt anxious, waiting for the other shoe to drop. This man had to have a trick up his sleeve, some weapon they couldn’t yet identify.
“Say good-bye to your cushy life, you little bastard! Fun time is over! From now on you belong to me!”
“Do you have a stand-up act?” Whim asked.
The man slapped Whim across the face, which prompted Josh to rush forward and grab his arm. He slapped Josh next, so hard it turned her head, and Deloise caught his other arm before he could hit anyone else.
He jerked, but Josh had correctly estimated his strength. It only took one kick to sweep his legs out from under him. “Can I get a zip tie?” Josh asked.
Haley retrieved one from a backpack and together, Josh and Deloise bound the man’s hands and feet. Then they set him on the sand and listened to him rant.
“You want to eat? You want to sleep? You ask me!” The man was shouting, undeterred. “I decide when you piss, I decide when you shit, I decide what you put in your little mouths—”
“Am I missing something?” Whim asked. “Are we supposed to be scared of this guy?”
“I get it,” Will said. “I know what this is!”
“What?” Josh asked.
Will put a hand on her uninjured shoulder. “He’s Peregrine’s father.”
“Jaco?” Deloise asked, before Josh had even registered the statement.
“His father?” Whim repeated. “Why would he send his father to kill us?”
“Because he’s the thing Peregrine is most afraid of, even now,” Will said. “All of this is controlled by Peregrine’s mind, see? He sent the thing he’s most afraid of to kill us.”
“But Jaco’s just a man,” Josh said.
“Not to Peregrine.” Will smiled a satisfied smile. “To Peregrine, he’s Satan.”
Jaco was still shouting at them, and he’d progressed to some of the filthiest language Josh had ever heard. Racial slurs, sexual acts—nothing was off-limits.
“No wonder Peregrine has such a dirty mouth,” Deloise said.
“So should we kill him?” Whim asked, retrieving the hatchet from the sand.
“No,” Josh said. “We don’t kill people for no reason.”
