The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(56)

The coywolv was staring at her, eyes like lamps. Yellow eyes as predatory as the half-man’s.

Mahlia’s skin prickled. She slowly retreated, looking left and right. Sure enough, she saw other shadows flitting through the ruins.

Fates. Who knew how long they’d been stalking her? If they were revealing themselves, it meant that they’d already set up their kill.

Coywolv were smart like that. Liked to follow and circle and evaluate, and then they came in on you and you were dead. Sun Tzu would have approved, but all Mahlia felt was a sick fear as she realized the beasts had chosen to attack her in an area of ruins that had nothing but weedy little trees no more than the width of her wrist, and few rubble-pile walls. Nothing to climb up on. No place easy to flee.

She hefted her rusty machete. The coywolv before her seemed to understand the challenge. Its lips drew back, showing fangs, and it started to growl. But it wasn’t the one she needed to worry about. Behind her, the wind rushed.

Mahlia spun and swung. The second coywolv twisted aside, easy and nimble. Her blade whistled harmlessly through empty air. The coywolv lunged again, snapping, baring teeth and growling, circling as its partner nipped at her heels.

Mahlia spun again, swinging, warding off the pair. She needed to get to a tree. If she could get up high, they’d trap her for a while, but they weren’t hunting dogs. They’d eventually move on to easier prey after a few hours or a day. But the closest tree that looked climbable was more than a hundred yards away.

Don’t panic. Don’t run. Just get moving.

If she panicked and ran, they’d bring her down just like a small forest deer. They’d rip her legs out and pile on top of her, and she’d never stand up again.

Claws scrabbled on rubble behind her.

Mahlia turned and swung. She hit fur with the flat of her machete. The coywolv snarled, leaped back, then lunged again. Mahlia screamed and charged it, swinging again and this time the blade cut across the coywolv’s mouth.

Turn! TURN!

There would be a third attacking now. They always coordinated. They worked together. She spun, swinging the machete, and slashed it away. It snarled. The first one circled her, nipping in, faking an attack. She feinted at it, trying to run it off, but it bared its teeth and hardly backed off at all.

She spun, swinging, expecting another attack from behind, but the other coywolv were out of reach. She was starting to panic, jumping and turning at imagined sounds.

The coywolv all circled, darting in on her, growling and snapping and then twisting away.

Fates, she needed her back against something. But the weedy trees offered no cover, and now a fourth coywolv joined its brethren. Ears flat back, head low, stalking.

She’d been so busy worrying about soldier boys and villagers she’d forgotten the jungle had hunters of its own, and now she was going to die for it.

Behind her, a whisper of motion. She whipped her machete about and caught the coywolv in midleap. The blade bit deep but the coywolv crashed into her and she went tumbling. The other coywolv leaped for her. Teeth slashed at her face. Another went for her legs, teeth tearing.

Mahlia threw up the stump of her arm. A coywolv bit deep. She screamed. Suddenly, a roaring filled the air. The coywolv was jerked off her and blood rained down. Howling and yelping. A hurricane of movement. The coywolv that had been attacking her legs evaporated into a whirl of fur and showering blood. Mahlia curled into a ball as the roaring increased, shaking the world, louder then war.

Suddenly everything went silent. Mahlia scrambled to her feet. All around, torn and twisted coywolv bodies lay scattered.

Amid the carnage, Tool stood tall. Battered but vital, covered in blood. His machete dripped with gore. Mahlia clutched at her wounded arm, staring at the transformed battleground. All the coywolv were torn apart. One of them lay against a tree, broken and whimpering. One was ripped in half. Another had its head cleaved open.

Tool knelt down over the carcass of the last.

With his machete, he pried into its body, then set the blade aside and punched his fist through the coywolv’s ribcage. A second later, his hand emerged gripping the heart of the beast, and Tool bent his head to feed.

Mahlia felt a chill. As quickly as the place had become a battlefield, now it was nothing but a slaughterhouse. They were all dead. Every single one of them. In seconds, Tool had torn them all apart. The carnage was astounding. Worse than what soldier boys did, and a thousand times as fast. She’d never seen anything like it.

She must have made a sound, for Tool looked up at her, blood dripping from his muzzle. He eyed her wounds. She could see him evaluating her.

Doctor Mahfouz would have rushed to her and clucked and worried after every scratch and bit of blood. Tool simply glanced at her shredded arm, scraped face, and clawed body, and dismissed it all.

“You truly believe you can reenter the city?” he asked.

It took a second for the half-man’s words to sink in, and then Mahlia got it. She wasn’t alone. This warrior monster was with her. Her heart leaped. She wasn’t alone. She wasn’t powerless. She had a chance.

“Can you do it?” the half-man asked again.

Mahlia hesitated, remembering the terrors of her previous escape, the panic, the huddled hiding places, the nights spent in murky drowned buildings, then nodded. “I got out, didn’t I?”

“It will have changed.”

“I can get us back in. My mother, she had places where she hid her antiques, before she sold them. There’s places we can hide. And there’s ways through the buildings, if you can swim.”