13
A Swan Dive over the Edge
When Brady first died, impaled on rebar at the Fischer House party, I was devastated. We didn’t yet know his death was temporary.
When Griffin sailed over the cliff in Clyde on the way to Raven’s Lagoon, I was equal parts terrified and hopeful. At least then I knew there was a chance he’d come back.
When I had to watch while Magnum’s hired guns shot Layla and Hunt, and then pointed a pistol at my head, I was both furious and horrified. What if one of us didn’t come back? What ifIdidn’t, and that was the last I’d ever see of the people I loved?
When Griffin exploded into charred bits inside Clyde, that especially shook me. The damage to his body was so extensive, the likelihood he’d resurrect was slight despite our history.
Through all that, and through the endless reboots, threats, lies, and deceptions, I’d more or less kept my cool. Sure, I’d puked from the trauma, and I no longer enjoyed pleasant dreams but nightmares I fought to escape.
But now? This time? When Fanny revealed herself to be a literal monster from some … somehell realm, only toeatmysweet,wonderfuldog? The only being I loved on this entire fucking planet that wasn’t immortal… ?
I’d been on the edge before. Now, I took a swan dive over that edge and I was in free fall.
Whatever composure I’d still possessed vanished so suddenly I didn’t even note its passing. One moment I was gaping at the nastiest, most hideous cunt I’d ever had the displeasure of seeing, the next I finallysnapped.
I lost my motherfucking, ever-loving shit.
My scream morphed from a keen of loss to a violent, assaulting battle cry.
Distantly, I registered my friends at my back, calling to me, both aloud and via our secret bond. I didn’t process a single one of their words. I’d plummeted beyond the reach of measured reason. The entirety of my focus homed in on a single mission: Get Bobo out of the monster as fast as possible.
Fanny’s head was still mostly teeth—so many awful teeth, long like fangs, crowded and overlapping each other. Like a macabre circlet, her jaws crowned her head, which continued to point upward as she appeared to relish in the meal she’d just consumed. Her gullet bobbed as if she were swallowing. With how many teeth she had, I worried she might have them on the inside, too, coating her throat. But I didn’t notice any movement that indicated chewing.
Her eyes were closed as she seemed to savor her prey, as she trusted that she was the apex predator here, and we were her and Magnum’s playthings, to do with as they pleased, just as they’d always done.
I launched myself at her, tackling her to the ground.
She uttered a surprised gasp, with a whoosh of foul-smelling breath when I landed on top of her—which meant I also landed atop Bobo. But I couldn’t worry about what damage my weight might be causing him.
He wasinside a monster. I had more immediate problems than my crushing weight.
From her neck down to her hips, her chest was engorged. Beneath the skin suit she apparently wore, maybe she didn’t have an actual rib cage. Again, like a snake, the outline of Bobo’s body pressed against hers, the ridges and bumps of his form deforming hers.
I straddled her hips, and when she shot her arms forward to restrain me, I gripped them—and realized my error. Bobo gave her a massive potbelly—and was in my way.
She bucked her hips to throw me, andfuckwas she strong. She almost managed it, but I held on, snarling as I fought to keep my balance.
Beyond her disgorged torso, I eyed her head. Its teeth gnashed, snapping at the air. She screeched—more foxes being slaughtered.
Without a blade or gun—any handy weapon would do—and unable to damage her chest for Bobo’s sake, my best bet was to break her neck.
I sensed my friends crowding around us by the shadows they cast. I kept my attention on the monster beneath me, on keeping astride it.
Someone delivered a brutal kick to its head. Fanny screeched some more. Then another of my friends joined in, and they kicked her head from both sides. Constant blows rained down. Her cries became a continuous wail pitched to make the ears of mere mortals bleed.
I yanked one of her arms down to the ground and stepped on it, leaning my weight onto it, pinning it in place. I squatted onto my other leg, gripped her other arm with both hands, and slammed it down against my knee. The bone snapped as if it were a branch, tearing through her human-looking flesh to poke through in two jagged pieces. She whined and bucked, arching her laden back upward.
With her pushing her chest upward, the outline of Bobo’s body was prominent.
I clutched the wrist of her broken arm to either side of it and brought it, too, down hard across my knee. The wrist snapped, though no bone poked through this time.
I’d have to try harder with her second arm.
I repeated the process on the other side and did manage to push her bone through her wrist.
