"What time is it?"
"Seven twelve."
"Judging starts at eight. We have forty-eight minutes to prep the front beds, stake the climbing roses, and..."
The ground shakes.
Not a tremor. Not a truck passing. A rhythmic, concussive impact that rattles the windows in their frames and sends the tipped terrarium rolling off the dresser to shatter on the floor. The walls vibrate. The cactus lamp topples. Outside, a car alarm begins to wail.
Flynn goes still.
Another impact. Closer. Heavier. The bedroom mirror cracks from corner to corner.
We hit the front door at the same time. Flynn shoves it open with one hand, shirtless, barefoot, cargo shorts unbuttoned, and we stumble onto the porch into pale morning light.
The garden archway is gone. Flattened into splinters and twisted wire. The shared flower beds, the rare blooms, the trenches we dug with our own hands, all of it churned into raw brown earth under a foot made of stone and clay and ancient, ugly magic.
The earth-golem stands thirty feet tall in our combined lot. Its body is packed soil and river rock, its arms aregnarled root systems thick as sewer pipes, and its head is a featureless boulder with Valerius's HOA crest carved deep into the forehead. It raises one massive foot and brings it down on Flynn's rebuilt rose bed.
The impact cracks the sidewalk.
Across the street, Valerius leans against his luxury car with a porcelain coffee cup in one manicured hand, watching.
CHAPTER 16
FLYNN
The golem's foot lifts from the crater where my roses should be.
Forty-seven days of cultivation. Fourteen pounds of magical loam. Three near-death experiences in a ravine. Gone. Pulverized under a construct that is all wet gravel and Elven spite.
The warband roar climbs my throat, rattles my tusks, and rips loose across the quiet suburban morning like a chainsaw through tissue paper.
The golem turns its boulder head toward me.
Good.
"Flynn!" Junia grabs my arm. Her fingers are small and fierce and covered in the remnants of last night. "The garage. Now."
She's already running. Barefoot, still wearing my flannel shirt and nothing else, tearing across the shattered sidewalk toward my garage. The door is still jammed from the storm damage, stuck at that six-inch gap I forced open days ago. She drops flat and rolls under it like she's done this a hundred times.
The golem takes a step toward my porch. The porch I built with hand-planed cedar and copper nails and seventeen coats of weather sealant.
No.
I sprint to the garage door and rip it upward. The metal screams. The track bends. The door accordions and I hurl the crumpled panel sideways onto the driveway, and Junia is already inside, pulling heavy chains off the wall rack where I keep them coiled by gauge and load rating.
"Tow chains." She throws me the three-quarter-inch links. Twenty feet of case-hardened steel, rated for twelve thousand pounds. "What else?"
"Sledge. Top shelf. Red handle."
She scrambles up the shelving unit like a feral cat, potting soil shaking loose from her curls. The twelve-pound sledgehammer drops into my free hand. Familiar weight. Proper balance. I bought it to set fence posts. Never imagined I'd use it on a magical siege engine in my front yard at seven fifteen in the morning.
The golem punches through my mailbox. The heavy cedar post snaps like a matchstick and the brass box goes spinning into the street.
That mailbox was regulation height. Regulation distance from the curb. I measured twice.
I come off the porch at a dead run. The chain whips behind me, links singing through the air, and I launch the weighted end at the golem's left ankle. Steel wraps stone three times. I dig my heels into the lawn, what's left of it, and pull.
