Suddenly, in one step, she and Dave were at the end of the alley. They were just THERE… with no explanation. And before Dave could catch his breath or figure out what had just happened, with another step, they were halfway down the next block and had caught up with the other three.

  “Now where?” Charis demanded of him.

  David gasped, looking back. “How did we just…?!”

  “No time! Do you see it?” Scott demanded, his brown eyes lit from within with the thrill of the hunt.

  He didn’t have to answer. Dusty suddenly lit up with white fire and yelled, “THERE!”

  Everyone looked, and they could all see it for a second in the sunlight: a huge almost bald dark blue-gray creature with a single mohawk of wiry gray hair down its spine, like a giant hairless hyena or a boor with massive white fangs hanging down out of its snout and fierce red eyes. It was remarkably fast, flashing through the sunlight into the shadow and vanishing again.

  “It’s a shadow-walker, that’s why we can’t see it.” Charis grabbed Scott by the hand, put her hand on Miradon’s shoulder, and let go a burst of power. “They somehow gave it the power to shadow-walk! That’s an Enshi thing if I ever heard of one. Damn bastards!”

  Charis was burning like a white fire torch and now, impossibly, with each stride the group was covering a hundred feet or more. She focused her power into their movement, giving them all the speed they’d need to catch the monster before it could duck into some dark evil place and be gone. The burning strength of her elogic gift roared through her blood, better than alcohol, better than any drug. Within one minute she was high and laughing out loud, Dave stammering and astonished in the back, stumbling after them at impossible speeds.

  Through the streets of San Francisco they flashed, five whooping, wild, insane looking people streaking past innocent bystanders faster than a speeding motorcycle on the heels of one gigantic wolf-thing. Everyone who saw the spectacle stared, stopped, blinked a few times, then shook their heads and promptly forgot all about it and told themselves, as they’d been trained since childhood, that they ‘hadn’t seen anything.’ People would only believe what they chose to believe.

  Charis felt like she was playing a street-racing video game. They ran along walls, leapt over parked cars, right on the thing’s ugly clawed heels, able to smell its stink. It was a vampyric beast that lived totally on blood; there was a certain smell to such a creature that no healthy animal on earth could abide. Fear clung to it like a cloud, a repulsive sickening aura of its own evil projected outward to paralyze its victims.

  “This is the biggest bloody chupacabra I’ve ever clapped eyes on!” Miradon Ebenezer told them all gleefully, holding his hat onto his head with one hand. His eyes squinted merrily through his amber goggles. “Gotta be a half-breed—this size? The ordinary physical ones don’t grow anywhere near this massive!”

  “What do you think it could be crossed with? A kayshar?” Scott said in disbelief, his red jacket flaring out behind him.

  Miradon gave a quick, barking laugh. “No clue, mate. Probably not—I’m only picking up animal cunning in it, nothing smarter. Mind you, the Enemy’s turned out a few sentients that are thick as two short planks, so you never know.”

  “It’s going up!” Dusty warned, pointing to the top of a four-story building. There was a flash in the sunlight of the giant vampiric dog scrambling up the side of a building and onto the roof.

  “Hold on!” Charis warned, grabbing the hands of her nearest neighbors. Everyone snatched a fistful of her coat, then Dust desperately grabbed David’s shirt a split second before Charis leapt. Or rather, flew.

  The whole group sailed upward as if catapulted, David’s long wailing cry trailing behind them. They vaulted to the roof four stories above as easily as if they were in a movie. And, thanks to Charis’s gift, they all landed like Kung-Fu Movie heroes.

  “Go!” Scott yelled unnecessarily in his excitement, landing at a run.

  When the beast saw that they had followed it, it immediately leapt off of the roof and plunged back down into the long shadows of the alleys and streets below. Without hesitation, all of the Nythians (plus Dave who was being dragged along by the shockingly strong Dusty) jumped right off the edge of the building into thin air. This time, Dave’s scream sounded a lot more feminine in pitch.

  Charis spread out her power like a net under them as they fell, slowing their descent to a slow drift before they touched down and launched once more into sprinting at unnatural speeds.

  The beast knew it couldn’t shake them. Not with a Nythian Astrology Master on its tail. It decided to find a good spot to confront them; over a chain-link fence it went, and down into a construction zone. Behind the fence was a fifty foot deep hole the size of a city block where a contractor was digging a foundation for a new skyscraper.

  “It’s going to try and burrow!” Miradon warned them all. “Digging for freedom—mind the ground!”

  “Stop it!” Charis ordered them, using her gift to lift them all up to fly right over the eight foot fence, then glide down the long fifty foot drop into the pit. As they fell, they saw below their dangling feet that the raw dirt was criss-crossed with giant concrete beams that formed the seismic support for the massive building to come. It made a tricky three dimensional battlefield that the chupacabra would doubtless try to use to its advantage.

  As soon as they landed, the group broke up and a terrified Dave dove for cover behind one of the six foot thick concrete beams and pulled out his pistol. Much good it would do him, but at least the last bullet would be a signal for help.

  “Stay down!” Charis instructed him before herself turning to face their adversary.

  Miradon didn’t even bother to land. On the way down the tall strange man threw off his hat and cloak and literally, before their eyes, transformed into a huge gray griffin about the size of the chupacabra itself.

  With one stroke of his wings he propelled himself right into its back, hooked talons digging into the dark flesh. The griffin yanked the chupacabra out of the hole it had begun to dig with lightning speed, the rest of his momentum tumbling them together into a snarling ball of claws, fangs, feathers, and beak.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Whoa!” Dusty yelled to the rest, “watch out, don’t shoot Ebenezer!”

  “No kidding!” Scott pulled a weapon out of his long coat. It looked like a strange curved dagger for a moment, then with a nasty snick sound the blade fanned out into five wicked curved obsidian blades like a giant ninja star.

  He flung it so that it flew like a self-willed Frisbee through the air toward its target, dodging and weaving around the griffin like a homing missile to strike the chupacabra on the flank. It then boomeranged back to orbit around Scott, spinning like a saw blade. With a throwing gesture of his hand, he sent the hovering object back to try again. This time it burst into red flame as it went, an iron ring on his finger igniting as well. He didn’t seem to be hurt.

  Charis didn’t have time to check on David and make sure he was going to be okay with what he was seeing. It was time to fight, and she wasn’t going to hold back for the sake of the poor civilian.

  The chupacabra broke free from Miradon and lunged straight for her, fangs and drool and red eyes and all. Like a white flash of plasma fire all around her, her drivada flared up and she threw her hands toward it, pantomiming shoving it to the side. The beast was caught instead by an invisible force and violently hurtled into a girder with ground-shaking power.

  She laughed, knowing she’d hurt it.

  “Whew! Get it Char!” Dusty cheered, standing on top of one of the cross-beams to cheer. His gentle talents left him with little more to do than clap, unless he got the opportunity to confuse the beast or dazzle it with lights. When it looked his way, Dusty pointed toward its eyes and it screamed, wincing and drawing back as an unbearably bright flash of light blinded it temporarily.

  Charis punched the air, a furious expression on her face. Her power caught it and its head was slammed into the ground again.

  It looked dazed, but it was still aware enough to scramble onto its feet when the gray griffin attacked and snap at the bird-beast with a mouthful of hideously long yellow teeth. Snarls, spine-chilling screams, yowls, furious sounds that belonged in a bad movie echoed through the city.

  “BE CAREFUL MIR!” Charis shouted at Miradon.

  The four of them danced around the monster for what felt like hours, but was in reality about four minutes. Blood spattered the concrete, huge claw-rifts were left in the dirt and girders from both chupacabra and griffin, and people in the street above paused in confusion when they heard horrible animalistic sounds echoing between the skyscrapers. Most passed it off as a gang of dogs fighting and took no further notice.

  But Charis didn’t notice the passage of time; she was having fun. She was a Movement specialist, an Astrology Major, which meant that when it got too close she could leap from one pylon to another so fast that it seemed to her observer like a teleport. The only danger she faced was that eventually she’d run out of stored odyllic force like a cell phone running out of battery power, and then she’d be helpless.

  Every opportunity she got Charis slid the chupacabra through physical space, hurtling it into the ground at four and five times earth’s gravity. Her method worked the best when the beast tried one of its kangaroo-like jumps, trying to come down on top of them. But it learned fast. It started to avoid her, keeping out of her line of sight. Smart bastard… it knew she could only hurt it if she could see it.

  “Where did it go!” Charis shouted when she lost sight of it among the girders and piles of rubble.

  “Keep the normals off us, Dusty!” Scott shouted.

  “I got it!” Dusty, perched high on a giant girder, had his back to the fight now, watching the encircling plywood fence that kept bystanders from getting into trouble. Every twenty feet the contractors had cut a little peep-hole to allow people to peek inside and satisfy their curiosity, and it was these holes Dusty was in charge of.

  He shut his eyes, focusing on an image of a boring, empty, totally normal basement without any monsters or elogians flying around. That was what the normals wanted to see anyway… it was easy for him to make them see only what they expected. It always was. With this image in mind, he focused on every single peep-hole and the people who were approaching them to peer inside.

  A few pedestrians, curious about the strange noises, did look in… but thanks to Dusty’s illusion they quickly lost interest and walked away again. Nothing to see. Nothing but dirt. He kept chanting it in his spirit: Move along. Nothing to see here.

  The creature was now weakening fast. Huge gouges from the griffin’s claws were torn in its sides and its muzzle was red from its own blood. It crouched in a corner between two huge girders and screamed out all its fury, red eyes glowing in the Veil world.

  It was strong; the strongest Rune monster they’d encountered yet. Which explained how it had escaped the Space Force lockdown. It had simply shadow-walked right out of its cage, and as usual the U.S.F. had no idea how it had gotten away.

  The four Nythian elogians arrayed around it seemed to burn with ghostly white fire, their bodies sheathed in little pyres of light that streaked upward toward the sky, twining and rippling in a mesmerizing, underwater motion. They were using up their stored power fast, ignited like human candles. Which was not a good thing… they only had so much before they had to leave Earth and recharge.

  “Finish it off, Scott!” Charis ordered. “I’m getting low on power!”

  The Artificer gripped his bristling evil Frisbee weapon in one hand, the red flames licking around his fingers harmlessly. He narrowed his eyes, holding up the five-spoked boomerang slowly, channeling massive amounts of odyllic force into it. The fire that streamed from it increased, burning so brightly that no mortal eye could look at it.

  With all his might, Scott launched the Artifact toward the monster. The chupacabra tried to dodge with a loud whimper, but as wounded a it was it wasn’t fast enough.

  The Artifact entered the beast like a bullet and the whole chupacabra suddenly burst into flame. It screamed, rolled, leapt, but Charis wouldn’t let it get out of the corner. She slammed it back down to the earth mercilessly until it at last sagged to the side and curled up with a last wheeze, burning unnaturally quickly into a charred lump, then crumbling to filthy greasy ash. The unholy black metal charms it was filled with tinkled to the ground harmlessly and sizzled there, exposed at last to the cleansing sun. The last of the Enshi’s dark power faded away.

  Then there was an eerie, ringing silence full of all the normal sounds of the city… which sounded ridiculous after something so unnatural had occurred. Cars honking, people yelling to one another as if nothing weird ever happened in San Francisco.

  Dusty sighed and relaxed, swaying on his feet with exhaustion for a second. The ghostly fire around him swiftly faded and went out.

  Scott walked over to the shrinking ash pile, kicking at the detritus with his boot until he uncovered the five-bladed Artifact. He held out his hand and the sooty blade leapt upward into his palm. He blew on it, trying to clear it of ashes. “Does anyone have a napkin or something?”

  “Use your cravat,” Charis said wryly. She had always thought Scott’s unique sense of fashion was a little ridiculous. After all he was a modern boy like her, he didn’t have an excuse like Miradon who hailed from another century.

  Speaking of Miradon, the griffin was wounded and exhausted, but relieved. It climbed behind a girder to transform. Moments later Miradon’s disheveled gray head popped up over the top of the structure. “Scott, mate—be a good lad and chuck me my clothes, would you? I’m not keen on standing about here in nothing but me birthday suit all day. Dusty, lad, you are blocking the view aren’t you?”

  Dusty sighed and rolled his eyes, closing them to hold his hand out toward the peep-holes once more. “Got you covered.”

  Charis sighed, wiping her sweaty hands against her coat. “Whew! Guys, I don’t know about you, but that took it out of me. Anyone feel like a hamburger?”

  Away in the corner, guarded by Mike and Indigo and four other unnamed semi-transparent angels, Dave huddled staring at the greasy pile of what was left of the Monster, his gun held shakily toward it. Slowly the gun lowered and David Tolin stared at the burning ash heap with a pale face and absolutely no expression at all. He’d gone into shock.