Ritual Magic

and see what was happening, so she did—just as Santos leaped onto the Ford with them. “What the—you’re supposed to be helping Joe and Steve!”
    “I’m supposed to protect you!” He grabbed her arm. “Come on—keep moving!”
    She tried and failed to pull her arm away. Several cars back, two wolves harried the dworg. José stood at the trunk of the tankmobile with Casey, but he looked up and saw Santos and his lips moved in what might have been a curse. He gestured at Casey, who Changed. Cullen had switched back to man form and was dragging a bloody and unconscious wolf—God, she hoped he was unconscious—away from the action. One of the harrying wolves darted in suddenly and clamped his jaws on one of the dworg’s too-many legs, but that muscular tail smashed into him, sending him flying. He landed crumpled and still.
    “You son of a bitch,” Lily said to Santos, her voice low with fury. “You will follow orders. Get back there.
Now
.”
    He grabbed her and dumped her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and jumped down off the car, which drove his shoulder into her gut. Her air whoofed out and she gulped in a breath. She needed to get her Glock turned around so she could clobber him with the butt and—
    Metal crunched loudly.
    This time it was accompanied by the crash of glass breaking, and she couldn’t fucking see what was happening from her upside-down perch over the shoulder of the idiot who thought he was fucking
rescuing
her.
    Suddenly magic blazed all over her skin, a blast of fur-and-pine prickles. And there was no shoulder in her stomach. There was no anything beneath her but air.
    She didn’t land well, but somehow did manage to keep her head from connecting with the pavement. Instead her left hand did. Pain shot up her arm from that impact, but training had her rolling away, rolling and pulling herself into a low crouch, her weapon still clutched in her right hand.
    A huge dun-colored wolf stood on Santos’s clothing, hackles raised and growling at the dworg that had fallen out of the sky onto an ancient Pinto—the one just across the center lane from where Cynna still stood on the government Ford. Right fucking next to Lily. This close, she got a good look at the face—rubbery skin, too-loose lips stretched in a grin that showed a row of shark teeth. This close, she could smell it—eau de rotten meat and vomit. And gasoline—?
    Two more dworg fell out of the sky. A goddamn pair of dworg, who landed one behind the other on the pavement between her and the other lupi—and immediately turned to face her.
    She was so screwed.
    * * *
    S EVEN floors above the ground at St. Margaret’s Hospital—one floor above pediatrics—two monstrosities clung to the brick like enormous caterpillars. One pounded the wall with its rearmost legs while the other clawed at the hole the first had started, widening it.
    The hole was about a foot wide. Not monster-size. Yet.
    * * *
    T HIRTEEN miles outside the city, a monster fell from the sky. Toby froze in a thrill of terror so absolute he didn’t recognize it as fear. He scarcely noticed the woman-sized girl beside him screaming. All he could think was,
That can’t be, it can’t be
 . . . He’d heard the stories about monsters like this one, but they were about the past. Way, way back in the past.
    When glass shattered on the second floor and an orange-and-black streak leaped through the window to the ground—when his dad came racing around the side of the house four-footed, going flat-out fast—when a second monster landed beside the first, and a third—he knew that whether it could be or not, it
was.
    Dworg.
    Run. Hide. Evade. Find a weapon. Fight.
    Those were the priorities for what to do if he was attacked and there was no adult with him:
Run
if you can get to a safer place.
Hide
if you can’t run. If you can’t run or hide,
evade
. Only then look for a weapon, because for kids,
fight
was the last resort.
    Toby bent and grabbed the tarp covering the trench and yanked it back. “Come on!” But Julia didn’t unfreeze, so he grabbed her leg and yanked, making her stumble, which got her attention. “Down here! Hurry!”
    He jumped down into the darkness, scampering aside immediately so Julia wouldn’t land on top of him, and then thought he should have pushed her in first because for a second it didn’t look like she was going to follow—but she did. She landed on her hands and knees, panting in fear. “They—another