“How could they have moved the truck without making noise?” I asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Kross’s breaths came ragged through her mask. She trudged along beside me, having to take four steps for every three of mine. “I don’t know. They pushed it during the night? Better question is: how are they so close already? How’d they follow us so easy?”

I glanced up at Mari, who was taking her turn on Thunder. We were both thinking the same thing.

“Hounds,” I said. “The Gold Robes have some Monster dogs with them, twisted with magic and very well trained. If they really are working together, they might have regrouped.”

“That’d do it,” Kross said, through what sounded like clenched teeth. The pace was taking its toll. The sniper was older than the rest of us, and I suppose she was infamous for staying in one place.

Mari gave me a psychic nudge of concern, and I sent back an assurance that we were thinking along the same lines.

“Do you want a turn on the horse?” I asked.

She stopped and turned to stare up at me. Sweat beaded on the furrowed brow behind her visor. Weariness and wounded pride warred within her.

We’d been walking non-stop for most of the day, street after overgrown street blurring into one long green smear. We took the most vehicle-unfriendly route we could, or occasionally we’d gain a little distance on the engines pursuing us, or it would cut out for a while as the Sweepers found a way through or around a particularly difficult obstacle, but it was always back soon, always gaining on us.

“You sure the girl won’t mind?” Kross asked. “She’s not been up there long.”

“She won’t mind.”

“How do you know?”

I froze, realizing my mistake, and floundered for a mundane explanation. “Erm. Well, I don’t know obviously. But I’ll ask.”

She raised an eyebrow at me, her mind swirling with suspicion that hadn’t been present before I tried to explain myself.

With the clarity of hindsight, I believe she had just thought I was being dismissive about the girl’s needs and took issue with that, rather than suspecting there was anything more to the situation. My own fluster over such a mild challenge is what really wafted the scent of a secret under the hunter’s nostrils.

“Mari,” I called, turning away from Kross before I could make things worse. “Will you let Kross ride for a while?”

Kross took to riding far quicker than I had, but she still looked nervous in Thunder’s saddle. Her posture remained taut, as if she expected to have to throw herself clear at a moment’s notice.

“What are you looking at?” She snapped, when she caught me staring, my brows tilted in amusement. That elicited a giggle from the other two.

The good cheer only lasted a moment. Even with our slowest member mounted up, the rest of us couldn’t keep going indefinitely. We’d have to rest soon, even with constant drone of the Sweeper’s engines growing ever closer.

Fortunately, I knew a spot nearby that might distract us just long enough to refresh our minds. It was another hour before we reached it, after hunger and fatigue had sucked us dry of energy.

“The fuck is that?” Kross said as we rounded a corner onto a mostly unobstructed street.

“Wow,” Bobby breathed.

Mari’s fettered mind pulsed with surprise.

{Tree,} thought Thunder. {Big tree.}

Before us stood an enormous flower. Petals shaded the buildings beneath, and the if not for the lack of bark its stem could have easily been mistaken for the trunk of a mighty tree.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” I said, glad the detour had had the desired effect, but not glad enough to cancel out my weariness. “Come on. It’s shady underneath, and it smells nice.”

We approached at an easy pace High above us, the veins in the crimson petals pulsed with amber magic. Tiny minds teemed around the flower. A hundred ambling bees buzzed to-and-fro, their contented hum almost loud enough to drown out the ever-present engines behind us. A content frog squatted in the bushes nearby, occasionally picking off those that strayed too close with a lash of its tongue. There were birds too, dark shapes swooping and coming up empty-beaked more often than not. Crows. Purple crows. I recognized one of them in particular.

{Death comes.} The three-eyed crow stared at me from its perch on a windowsill as I passed. I ignored it. So much for distracting myself from my problems.

There was another mind amongst all the fauna, or something a lot like one, spread out so thinly and moving so slowly that it almost wasn’t there, like perspiration against a glass visor.

{Is that the… flower?} Mari asked, and I thought I heard her gasp.

{I think it might be.} I gawked up at the thing in wonder. {Sort-of why I brought us here. I guess technically it’s a Monster of some sort.}

“Fascinating,” Bobby said, stepping up beside me. They withdrew their well-worn notebook and cracked plastic pen from their pocket and began scribbling away with fervor. “Gigantism is a common symptom of magical exposure, but I’ve never seen something of this scale before.”

“It’s bigger than last time,” I said.

Their mind jumped. “You’ve seen this before?”

“Years back, when I first moved down from the north.” I glanced at them and found hungry dark eyes trying to bore into me. “That’s… why I took us this way. Thought you’d all want to see it.”

Bobby swelled with something more than gratitude. Something more personal, more directed at myself. I tried not to peer too closely at their thoughts. “You thought correct. I’m going to need to take a sample of this.”

They ran off to do just that and, behind my mask, I grinned.

Kross was not as impressed. “Seen weirder shit,” she said with a shrug, and picked a dry spot in the grass to plop herself down. “Remember to eat, kids,” she added, opening her pack. “Won’t be able to stay long.”

Her comment punctured the good mood, and the rest of us stilled, Bobby almost mid-stride on their way to the flower stem. They still got their sample but didn’t move with quite the same spring they’d had a moment before.

The bees continued to drone overhead, but underneath their pleasant bumbling were those engines, closer and closer by the second.

“So,” Bobby said slowly, breaking the silence as they walked back over, their scientific fervor forgotten. “How long will it be before we cross into this ‘safe territory?’”

“Two days,” I said. It sounded like a surrender.

Their eyes widened. “When do you think the Sweepers will catch us?”

“Between four and eight hours from now,” Kross said, then lifted her mask just enough to cram a piece of salted dog into her mouth. She spoke as she chewed. “Assuming we keep the same pace and they keep the same pace. Eat and talk please, don’t just stand there.”

She was right, annoyingly, so I unslung my own pack and began rifling through it for something ready-to-eat.

“So, we’re not going to make it?” Bobby asked.

“Doubt there was ever much chance of that.” Kross shrugged. The sniper’s mind was a well-worn sword: chipped and weary, the sharp shine long faded, but it was still a lump of heavy iron, still dangerous.

Bobby pressed a hand against their dome visor. “Then why did we even try?”

“We didn’t know they’d have hounds,” I said, passing some food to Mari. “It was a possibility, but not a guarantee. Though I suspect our trigger-happy friend here was hoping this would happen.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Kross asked. Her croaky voice thick with sarcasm.

“You just want your shot at revenge,” I snapped, glaring at her.

“Of course. And you don’t want to get riddled full of holes by the Sweepers. One is the only way of stopping the other.”

{She’s right,} Mari chimed in, just to me.

“I am aware of that,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Woah, hold on!” Bobby stepped between us, throwing their hands up. “We’re not seriously considering standing and fighting, are we?”

“Not standing and fighting, no,” Kross said. “Shooting and running away was more what I had in mind.” She fixed me with a hard stare. “How about you, Red?”

“Something like that.” I turned back to Bobby. “Sorry, but she’s right. We have to do something to slow them down, or at least stop them from tracking us. I can think of a few ways we might do that without having to face them, but I’m not very confident in any of them.”

They frowned in thought for a moment. “It’s the dogs that are tracking us, right? We could mask our scents.”

I shook my head. I’d been thinking about that during the last stint of our trek. “It’s not a bad idea, but as we aren’t dogs, we won’t know what will and won’t throw their noses off our scent. Besides, I’m not entirely sure it’s just their noses they are tracking us with.”

“Oh.” Bobby winced. “Magic stuff?”

“Magic stuff.”

“So, how do we slow them down then?”

“Killing Metalhead should do the job.” Kross said. “He’s the one that’ll have the deal with the Golds, and with him out of the picture, the rest of them will be a mess.”

I sighed. “He’s covered in metal and has a gun for an arm. How exactly would we kill him?”

“You have a rocket launcher,” she said, gesturing at the Lawbringer strapped to my back.

“Which might not even work,” I said. “It only has one shot, and… look at the thing, it’s ancient.” I quickly turned aside to Bobby. “No offense.”

“None taken. Do you have any history with this Metalhead person, Red?”

“None whatsoever before yesterday.”

“Then I doubt the Lawbringer is meant for him in any case.”

“Eh?” Kross said. “The fuck are you talking about? Look, if you don’t know how to use the thing, give it to me. I’ll make sure that one shot lands exactly where it’s needed.”

I caught myself turning my body so that the weapon was further away from her. “We’re not gambling everything on your aim and century-old explosives.”

“Then what’s your bright idea, o’ wise general?”

I paused to run the plan over in my mind again. I still wasn’t confident about it. “The dogs. We kill the dogs. I don’t know how many the Gold Robes have, but we already killed quite a few of the things. They might not have many left. No dogs: no tracking, and we can lose the Sweepers in the Labyrinth.”

“Seems like just as much as gamble as my plan,” Kross said. “I’m guessing you’re thinking the dogs will be out the front and easy to pick off, but what if they’re holding them back to stop us doing exactly what you’re planning?”

“Well, yes, they could do that. But they’ve never done that before. The dogs always arrive well ahead of their master.”

The skin around her eyes crinkled, and I knew I was being grinned at. “What would happen if I just put a bullet in their master’s head? That’s seems more straightforward to me.”

I had already opened my mouth to object, but a sensible argument wouldn’t come to me. It was such a blunt solution it hadn’t occurred to me: just shoot the problem between the eyes. My stomach turned at the foreign idea, but I couldn’t deny I wanted it to be as easy as she proposed it was. Fear and fatigue will do a lot to erode one’s sense of Good and Bad.

Mari’s reaction was the opposite. She’d understood Kross well enough, and now her mind thrummed with anticipation.

I reached out to her. {Do you think that would work? They seem to be linked in their minds somehow, so perhaps the dogs will scatter without a Gold Robe to follow.}

There was a vibration to her mind. Anticipation, perhaps. {Even if it doesn’t, killing a Gold Robe seems worth the risk.}

So young. And so cavalier with her own safety. I know that is how children are stereotyped, but children who have seen so much death tend to be different. My youthful bravery died the same day as my parents.

{Not if it gets us captured,} I warned. {Do you think it would work? I think it might.}

{Yes,} she responded bluntly.

I cleared my throat, back in the real world. “It… seems like it’s worth trying.”

Kross’s eyes crinkled, and her mind hummed with murderous intent. “That’s that then.”

We both looked to Bobby, whose usually smooth face was creased with worry. “If you two tough outdoorsy types think it’ll work, then I trust you. We can use some of my grenades if things go wrong.”

“Excellent,” Kross said. “Isn’t it lovely when people work together like this?” I sensed a caveat was brewing, and I wasn’t wrong. “If I do this though, I’d like a reward.”

“You’re as dead as the rest of us if you don’t do it,” I said.

She leaned forward, scooping up her rifle to hold it in both hands, and made a show of inspecting it. Her finger wasn’t on the trigger, but it was very close. “Not if I leave. I owe Witchy here a favor, but not you other two.”

“I’m sticking with them, Kross,” Bobby said, without hesitation. “So if you want to pay back that favor, so are you.”

Kross’s body and mind both tensed, and the sickening heat of guilt began to leak from that usually cool exterior. “It was a big favor, that’s true. But I think I’ve mostly paid it off by now. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be back on your island right now, fending off dozens of machine gun wielding low-lifes by yourself. So, no, I’m not staying if I don’t want to.”

“You’re bluffing,” Bobby snapped. “I know you, Kross, you’re not that much of a dickhead.”

And Bobby might have been right. About the bluffing part, at least. As hard as Kross was trying to sound, her mind hadn’t been this agitated since I’d met her. Just the threat of this betrayal weighed heavier on her conscience than murder.

“Sorry to disappoint you, kid,” Kross said, “but I am for sure that much of a dickhead.”

I wondered if I might be able to peer deeper into her mind, perhaps find out the truth of the matter, but dismissed the idea quickly. Given my track record, I might end up accidentally melting Kross’s brain, or my own, or creating some other bizarre unintended effect.

“What’s this reward you want?” I asked.

Kross held out her palm, as if offering me something. “If sniping the Gold Robes works, I want your rocket launcher. That’ all.”

“That’s all?”

“Yep.”

I glanced at Bobby. They gave subtle shake of their head, and I winced an apology back at them.

“Deal,” I announced. “After you do the deed and we’re safe again, you’re welcome to the thing.”

“Of course.” Kross nodded, then sprang to her feet, as fresh as if those minutes sitting had been a full night’s rest. “Let’s get to it then.”

I expected her to ask for some sort of guarantee or collateral, to ensure that I didn’t just refuse later on, but she seemed to trust me. I think perhaps, based on her own twisted criteria for evaluating character, she didn’t rate me highly enough to consider me capable of that kind of betrayal.

“First things first, we need to pick a spot for an ambush.” She swept our surroundings with an appraising look. “This place could work. It’s nice and open, and the flower is the sort of thing people stop to gawk at.” She nodded past the flower, down the long street. “Building at the end there would do good for a nest too.”

It was a good three hundred or so meters away. The street was overgrown and littered with the rusted hulls of ancient vehicles, but it wasn’t so densely obstructed that the truck wouldn’t be able to barrel down it.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“And I guess the plan is to make a break for it as soon as you take your shot?” I asked.

“That’s it, yeah.”

“All right, we’ll have to drag some cars around to block the street a bit, just in case they start charging towards us straight away.”

“Mmmhmm, good idea.”

“And before they get here—we have what? Let’s play it safe and say three and a half hours—I’ll scout out an escape route or two for us. We don’t want to run into a dead end with Sweepers on our trail.”

“Very sensible of you.” There was a smugness to her tone that made it clear she’d thought of all these things herself.

“Do either of you have any string?” Bobby asked. “I can rig a few of my purple grenades up to a trip wire. If they do come straight at us, it should buy us a good amount of time.”

In response I swung my pack off my shoulder and fished out the chord I usually used to rig up my janglers. I handed the small bundle and the satchel of grenades to Bobby. “Just, erm, let us know where it is please.”

“Of course,” they said with a wry grin, and set off down the street. After a few steps they turned back. “Mari, would you like to come with me?”

Mari shook her head and let loose a stream of her not-quite-English. {I’ll stay here, with Thunder, he can help move the cars.}

{Are you sure?} I asked. {You’ll be alone with Kross.}

{I can handle myself. And her if I need too.}

{If she turns on us—}

{Then I’ll kill her.} The threat was half-serious, half-a-joke, all disturbing.

“Erm,” I said slowly. “She’ll stay here. The horse can help drag the cars around.”

“All right then girl, with me.” Kross said. “I’m think we start with that big one. Reckon your boy can get it tipped over sideways?”

I left them to it, heading off down the street with Bobby, and eventually splitting off on my own to scout the area behind the building we’d chosen as the sniper’s nest.

My limbs were filled with an energy they hadn’t possessed before we stopped to rest. It felt good to have a plan with a realistic shot at success. And it had happened so easily. Once we’d agreed on a course of action, and a price, we’d not needed to argue over the details. Everyone had known how best they could help, and they’d wasted no time in volunteering. It was almost enough to make me regret going it alone for so long.

“Told you so,” Mother said, once we were alone amongst the wilderness. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer.

* * *

“They’re here,” Kross said softly. “Just turned the corner now.”

She was crouched at the window, her rifle resting on the sill, the scope to her eye. Her mind… I think revolved is the word. It turned around and around at a steady pace, like a cog in a well-engineered clock. Focused and at rest all at once.

The rest of us were huddled in the shadows out of view. Our minds were a lot less placid. Cold, smoky, fear; electric, buzzing, anticipation; sickly, hot, guilt. It was hard to keep track of which feeling came from whom, our wild minds bleeding together.

“Do you see the Gold Robe?” I asked.

“Not… yet. No one is on foot though. Probably in the truck. They have two bikes, like we guessed.”

I blew out a breath and tried not to think too hard.

The vehicles weren’t moving too fast, their engines more of a growl than a roar, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous of a predator.

“There sure is a lot of them,” Kross muttered. “Has to be almost the entire tribe out there… full war-mode.”

As the engines grew louder, I counted my breaths, and had gotten close to triple digits before Kross spoke again.

“At the flower now. They’re stopping.”

The engines died down to a low hum, then cut out completely.

“Metalhead’s here. The bastard. The rest of them are dismounting. Yes, that’s right kids stare at the pretty flower. Ah! There’s our guy. Weird looking fuckers, aren’t they?”

“They are.” I flooded with relief, but then frowned. “Have you seen any dogs?”

“Nope.”

“That’s odd.”

“I agree. Odd enough that you reckon I should hold off on blowing this freak’s head off?”

The question, and I could feel it was a genuine one, gave me pause. I didn’t know what the absence of the dogs could mean or how it would change things, but something about it felt alarming. I knew what Mari’s opinion would be without having to ask. When I looked to Bobby, they shrugged with a raise of their eyebrows.

“He’s talking to Metalhead now,” Kross said. “Smiling about something. Don’t like that.”

I suppressed a shudder at the memory of Peter’s shard toothed grin. “Take the shot,” I said.

“Please,” Kross said. A blue eye flicked toward me. There was a twinkle to it. Despite my unease, I did let out a single nervous chuckle.

“Take the shot, please,” I said. “If you’d be so kind.”

She blinked, and her eye was back down range. “Fingers in ears, people.”

We all obeyed and, as one, held our breath.

Possibly you’re disappointed that I didn’t witness what happened next, firsthand, and so can’t really describe it to you accurately. If so, I think firstly you need to do some self-reflection on why you wanted a visceral description of a man being shot in the head by a high-caliber rifle so badly. Secondly, I think the noise Kross made with her mouth shortly afterwards is adequately evocative.

Our ears still ringing from the shot, our nostrils still full of gunsmoke, she pursed her lips and then popped them grossly, wetly, and with much relish. “Yep, he’s dead. Time to go.”

She ducked back beneath the sill, crouch-running past us and toward the stairs. “No dawdling now.”

There were shouts in the distance: angry, alarmed. And then the snap of bullets. Bricks on the wall opposite the window burst with explosions of dust. The outside of the building was pelted as if caught in an intense hailstorm, and new shafts of light erupted where hot lead punched through the facade.

I was brought up in a civilized place. I rarely cursed, and still don’t do it eagerly. But I’d spent the last few days around Kross’s potty mouth, and the occasion called for it.

“Fuck,” I screamed, grabbing Mari and shoving her ahead of me. The two of us and Bobby scrabbled after Kross, down the stairs and into the back room of the building we’d made our base. Our bulkier gear was waiting for us here, and we wasted no time in hefting it on.

“How’d they spot you so quickly?” I shouted over the continuous thwack thwack thwack of bullets against the building’s facade, slinging the Lawbringer over my shoulder.

“What?” Kross yelled back. “Oh, they didn’t. Think they’re shooting at every window. If they’d actually spotted me, they’d have cut the building in half.”

The gunfire stopped, and we all froze. It should have been a relief, but it sent a shudder down my spine.

“Sounds like they’ve figured something out,” Bobby whispered.

“Let’s not wait to find out,” I said.

We rushed outside to a space that might have been a garden centuries prior. The houses here had yards that backed onto each other, and over the decades they had grown together into one long corridor of greenery. A maze not unlike the park.

Thunder was waiting for us, his equine mind in a state of some agitation.

“Stay close to me,” I shouted, and headed into underbrush. I’d used my scouting time to cut four different paths through the maze. Any of them would get us away from the Sweepers, and hopefully they’d waste time follow one of the three we didn’t use. After a minute, we were halfway to the other side. The engine stopped and started behind us, drawing closer, but obviously held back by the obstacle course we’d made for it. Frustrated bursts of gunfire pealed through air.

That’s when Thunder came to a sudden halt, locking his feet in place. Mari stopped too, her alarm at the horse’s sudden distress bringing me to a stop as well.

{Wolves,} Thunder thought.

{Not wolves.} I urged him. {Guns. Come on boy.}

The horse stamped his front hooves and snorted, his ears twitching. {Wolves.}

The second time, it sunk in. Mari had already drawn her pistol, and I began fumbling for my machine gun.

“Dogs,” I snapped. “They’re here. They got around us somehow.”

The other two stared at me for a moment, eyes wide and minds racing, then they took in the state of the horse.

Kross raised her rifle, working the bolt to eject her spent round. “Where?”

I focused, or, for a lack of a better word, ‘listened’ carefully to the minds around me. Something was coming. Several somethings. Barely above a whisper, I heard them.

{Master. Prey here. Master.}

{Your master is dead!} I screamed across the mental landscape. {Run away!}

{No. Master. Prey here. Master come. Prey.}

“Fucking where?” Kross snapped.

“I can feel them all around us,” I said, “not far.”

By silent agreement, each of us with a gun picked a different direction to face, unarmed Bobby standing in the center of our circle. The vegetation was dense here, the shadows plentiful. If we spotted a dog, it would be seconds before we’d be fending off their jaws.

“We don’t have time for this,” Kross growled.

{They’ve stopped,} Mari thought. {They’re waiting for us.}

She was right. I hissed out a frustrated breath. The escape routes I’d scouted were the perfect place to lose our pursuers. But it was also the perfect place to be ambushed by monstrous hounds. The beasts had learned from their predecessors’ demise. They didn’t need to charge us head on, just wait for us to give them an opportunity. Or, if we refused to give them that opportunity, all they had to do was lurk nearby and keep us cowering in place until their master arrived.

But their master would never arrive. It was just the dogs we had to deal with, not the mind of a Gold Robe.

An idea struck, and I shared it with Mari. {If we can feel them…}

{We can kill them,} she finished for me.

I hesitated, a little unnerved by her eagerness, but it seemed the only way.

“Keep watch, we’re doing some magic stuff,” I said to the others. To Mari, I thought {One at time, then. This one first.}

“We?” Kross asked, and I realized my mistake, but that could wait.

I reached out to nearest dog in the same way I had Mari the night before, extending a tendril of my consciousness to brush against the out layer of its mind.

Minds can’t growl, but the response felt like one. I cringed back for a moment, but then desperation lent me courage and I surged forward, around the beast, enveloping it, searching for a way in.

Mari gave me that way in. She smashed into the canine mind like a sledgehammer. {DIE!}

The dog did not die, but its consciousness crumpled, and I flooded in.

It whimpered in the real world. I could feel its body shake as if it were my own. It’s fear and panic flooded down the link between us, and I had to fight the urge to rip myself free. Memories came too: of kind Master, and my pack, scratches behind my ear, the taste of human meat as it tore between my jaws, the ecstasy of hot blood bursting into my mouth.

“Focus, remember why you’re here,” Mother said in my ear.

I shook myself free of the dog’s memories, breaching a surface of some sort to find myself back in the present. I could see the bush I was hiding in around me, smell my prey, sense the minds of my pack.

{Help? Danger!} they cried. They knew something was wrong but didn’t know how to save me. Save me from the demon that had taken hold of my body.

{What are you doing? Kill it!} the smaller she-demon screamed. I growled at it.

“Alan, dear, you’re not a dog,” Mother said.

“Oh,” I said, from somewhere outside myself. “Yes. Right.”

I snapped from my stupor and began thrashing around inside the thing’s mind. I didn’t know if it would work, but I swung my consciousness like a wrecking ball at memories, thoughts, feelings. Imagine an angry wasp inside your brain: that was me in that moment.

In the real world, the dog ran, slammed into a tree, picked itself up and hobbled further away, then collapsed, curled up, cowered.

I remembered now. I was here to kill it. I think I could have done it too, if I kept beating its mind from the inside like that, but I hesitated.

It may seem foolish to you. The animal wouldn’t have extended me the same mercy. But I didn’t have it in me to kill something cringing and defenseless, something pleading for its life. I could shoot a snarling dog, even a sleeping one, but kicking a whimpering one to death was another matter.

I retreated to my own mind, the real world bleeding back into focus. I was sweating, my chest was tight, my limbs were heavy. Using my gift had already taken a heavy toll. I might be unconscious by time the dogs had been dealt with.

{What are you doing?} Mari demanded.

{Next one,} I snapped, and reached for the second dog before she could protest.

My tendril of consciousness slammed into a wall. Something dark and impenetrable.

{Hello there,} cooed a new mind. There was no voice to recognize, but the flavor of the connection was bone-chillingly familiar. It tasted like Peter.

I reeled back, searching for the source of the voice. What had hit me was just a projection, like my tendril. The mind itself was further away, far out of my usual reach, just the faintest patch of dark gray in a sea of black. It might have just arrived, it might have been there all along, waiting for us.

“Impossible,” I gasped, in the real world and the mental one.

“What’s happening?” Bobby asked, their voice tight.

A psychic knife stabbed deep into my mind, and I screamed in agony, legs giving way as reality faded to a hazy mess.

{You’ve met my brothers, bested two of them, even. Yet you seem surprised to find a third. Most strange. Very arrogant of you.}

I tried to push the knife out, gripping it, cutting myself upon it as I forced it millimeter by millimeter from my skull. It was easier than when I tried the same against Peter. For a moment, I thought I could fend him off. But then the progress stopped.

He was too strong, and I was exhausted. Attacking the hounds had left me spent.

{Leave him alone!} Mari’s attack wasn’t her usual battering ram of rage, and it wasn’t aimed at the Gold Robe this time, but the connection between us. She barreled through the appendage, shattering it as it were made of brittle ice.

A pulse of psychic pain burst from the Gold Robe. He withdrew, falling back in on himself.

Reality snapped back. I’d was on my knees in dirt. Bobby was trying to drag me to my feet under the armpits.

“Can’t go that way,” I mumbled, conscious of the fact that the Gold Robe could recover any moment.

“The hell you talking about?” Kross snapped.

“We can’t go that way,” I said. “Gold Robe.”

“I blew his head off.”

I stumbled halfway to my feet, climbing up Bobby’s arm. “Another one.”

A dark mental spear roared back across the void, screaming towards me. I braced myself for pain.

It didn’t come. Mari smashed herself into the Monster’s attack, and the electric shockwave of the impact washed over me. She hit the tendril again, raining down blow after blow, keeping him back, but she was tiring fast. My limbs were lead, and I felt as nauseous as if I’d just ran myself to collapse. I couldn’t help.

She hit him again, and the Gold Robe buckled. She was ball of white-hot rage, a sun throwing itself against a black hole, and winning.

{DIE!} A final hammer blow, and the armored surface of the Gold Robe’s projection shattered. It withered like dead vine. But Mari’s fire sputtered out as well.

I had just enough warning to shake myself free from Bobby, lunge, and catch Mari’s small frame before she slammed limply into the ground. Weak as I was, I almost crumpled under her weight.

The Gold Robe was a beacon of pain, and so I could sense him more precisely now. He was somewhere in the trees ahead, fifty meters perhaps, close enough to shoot on open ground, but in that dense foliage he might as well have been miles away.

And the remaining hounds had begun to advance. More of them pouring in from the edges of my perception. Three more, six, ten, too many to count.

“Take her,” I grunted, and thrust the girl at Bobby. “Back the other way. Now.”

“What the hell is happening?” Kross screamed. Her rifle was up at her shoulder. She was searching for an enemy she couldn’t see and, for once, I sensed fear in her.

“Magic,” I said. “Get back. We’re all in range.”

Kross and Bobby shared a terrified glance, but then nodded and began to fall back along the path. Thunder followed, hovering protectively over Mari.

I stayed. Even if I couldn’t see the Gold Robe, I had a vague direction. I raised my gun to the impassable wall of vegetation, not bothering to look down the sights, and fired off a single shot.

Leaves swatted aside and twigs shattered in the bullet’s path. The Gold Robe’s mind flinched: fear rather than more pain. His mind whirled as if it had been wrenched aside.

I fired off another shot, then another, using the Gold Robe’s own reactions to the whizzing bullets as a gage of how close I was getting. He moved again, darting for safety. Hope swelled within me. I had him scared, I had him on the run.

Then, all at once, he disappeared. I hadn’t killed him, I was sure of that, his mind had not exploded in the way Peter’s had when Mari shot him. He was just… gone.

That hope that had been swelling snuffed out, cold dread flooding back. He was invisible now, and presumably gathering his strength to come and finish me off. I needed to get out of range.

I fired off another five shots in the direction I’d last sensed him as I backed up, then turned and ran after the rest of my group.

I caught up to them just as we stumbled back into the garden.

“The hell is going on, Red?” Kross snapped.

My answer was interspersed with gasps for breath. My gift had drained me as badly as a full night without sleep. “Gold Robe— blocking the path— took all of our— strength to fend him off. No more left.”

“She’s a witch too?” Bobby asked.

“Knew it,” Kross said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll explain later. Dogs are already closing, but he’ll be after us soon, and then there’s not much any of can do to fight him back.”

Bobby frowned for a moment, then grunted as they hefted Mari’s limp body into my arms. “I can buy us some time.”

They reached deep into their satchel with both hands and withdrew a pair of canisters the size of spray cans. Skulls and crossbones were daubed across their surfaces in vibrant green paint.

“Get back,” they said, pulling the pin on one grenade. They tossed it to their right of our foiled escape route, then repeated the process on the left.

We didn’t hesitate, retreating back to frame of the house’s back door.

A menacing hiss began to emanate from the canisters, audible despite them being buried in the brush. The minds of the hounds still ran on, tearing towards us with reckless abandon. {Prey! Prey! Kill!} they cried.

Until the two closest to the front of the pack reached Bobby’s canisters.

The twisted agony that burst from their minds was more intense than anything I’d felt before. I had to draw my consciousness back in on myself to prevent the heat of their pain from scalding me.

In the real, they made sounds no dog should ever make. A wheeze, a howl, and whine all pushed through distorted lungs and a collapsing throat. It sent chills down my spine.

One beast collapsed, the other stumbled along just long enough to fall out of the swirling green gas and into the garden before us. Raw patches of its pale skin sizzled and blistered, and veins stood out as rigid as tree roots on the things neck as viscous red liquid gushed from its mouth and eyes.

A hot mixture of guilt, disgust, and pity poured from our group.

My hands were full with Mari, so I was relieved when Kross’ rifle cracked and the dog finally slumped flat, it’s mind silent.

The other hounds had halted, barking at the death force lurking between them and their quarry.

“I… think we should move back a little more,” I said, and wordlessly our group retreated back inside the house. Kross closed the door behind us, as if that would help.

“Fuck,” she said. “Always wanted to see what that stuff did. Almost regret I did.”

“Can we not,” Bobby snapped. And I realized most of the guilt I’d been feeling had been coming from them. “Not right now.”

“Right, ‘course.” Kross’s blue gaze slipped from the witch’s.

For a few moments, the only noise in the small room was our ragged breathing, the distant barking of the dog pack, and the growl of engines from the street. The sweepers would be on us soon.

“How we getting out of this mess? Can’t go that way, can’t go back through the Sweepers. Sideways, then?”

I took a moment to carefully lay Mari down on the floor. Her mind was stirring but incoherent, like someone in a deep sleep. “Too open,” I said. “And the dogs can track us. We need to lose them now.”

“So we’re dead then,” Kross said. Her voice and mind had returned to surprising placidity. “Guess if we go through the Sweepers we can at least take a few of the fuckers with us.”

Bobby was not so calm, but they did an admirable job of trying to hide their terror. “We’re not dead. Stop it. There’s a way out. There must be.”

If I wasn’t so weary from using my gift, perhaps I could have thought of something. But my brain was pumping lead instead of blood. My companions were on their own for solving this particular problem.

“The gas,” Bobby said, lighting up in both worlds. “The purple stuff. When they hit the trip wire, we can slip through the cloud, we can slip right by them. I can even throw a few more grenades to thicken the cloud.”

“And how do we get through without choking to death?” Kross asked.

“We block our mask filters.”

“And just hold our breath?”

Bobby’s voice faltered a little. “Well, there’s a small amount of oxygen inside the masks themselves, but yes, we’ll have to.”

“That’s nuts,” Kross shouted, though she sounded more excited than anything, then she jerked her head down at Mari. “Girls out could though.”

“She’ll use less oxygen like that. Believe me I don’t want to take any risks we don’t have to, but if we’re on the horse, we might make it through in time.”

“The horse needs to breath too,” I pointed out. “I’m not sure he’s smart enough to hold his breath.”

Bobby deflated slightly. “Ah. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“What happens if someone breaths the gas?” Kross asked. “It gums up masks but what does it do to lungs?”

“Minor irritation, the main issue is it wrecks the mask and forces them to drop and scrape at the filter, take it off, or suffocate.”

Kross pursed her lips for a moment, hardening her words before she released them. “Then the horse could go without a mask.”

“And breath magic?” Bobby’s eyes went wide. “For minutes on end?”

“The gold bastards seem to manage.”

There was sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. We didn’t have time discuss endlessly and come up with a plan that didn’t endanger anyone, a plan that did no Bad. And Thunder was an animal, after all. People had to come first.

Mari wouldn’t agree. But she was unconscious.

That was how I justified it at the time. Looking back… I can see why you might think me cowardly or heartless. I’d be inclined to agree with you.

“We’ll ride through the gas,” I said. “Help me get Mari in the saddle.”

When we had her laying across Thunder’s back, I told Bobby to get started on doing… whatever they needed to do to protect our masks from their gas, and moved around to take the horse’s reins, dragging him around to the side alley that would take us out onto the street.

The horse’s mind was as terrified as the rest of us, but one thought came through loud and clear. {Girl. Girl.}

{Yes boy, we’re going to help the girl.} I halted, pulling him to a stop with his reins, and looked into one those huge black eyes that stared out from a round eye piece. {To help the girl I need to take your mask off. Do you understand?}

An excited thrill ran through the horse. Of course it did. He didn’t know why his masters suffocated him in the cage of rubber and glass every day. He wanted to run through the open air, feel the cold wind on his face.

{Good boy.} I hesitated, steeling myself, and took a moment to glance at Mari’s prone form. I like to this as a look of apology, perhaps even asking for permission, in that moment, but more likely… I was just checking that she wasn’t awake to witness my crime.

I reached up and unfastened the straps that held the mask to Thunder’s face. It took some working; they were sturdy things. As it came free, he snorted, shaking his head.

There were stubbly patches where rubber had met horseflesh: shaved for a better seal.

“He’s beautiful.” Bobby caught up. Their voice had a quaver to it. They passed me a roll of electrical tape. “For the masks. Best I could do.”

One of their filters was already sealed, the other had a strip of tape hanging loose. I focused on those filters to avoid their eyes. “Thanks.”

“Will he be able to carry us all?”

“He’ll have to,” I said. “Hopefully not for long.”

The shouts of the Sweepers were audible now and, just at the edge of my perception, the hounds had begun to creep forward again.

{Help girl?} The horse stamped a foot, eager to charge off.

{Yes,} I assured him. {Help girl.}