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“Is that shit safe?” Toklo asked.

“I always protect spiritually first,” Cora said. “But this isn’t the interesting part.” She poked a finger toward a second, small pile of cards face up in front of us.

I squinted as she spread them apart so we could see each individual one. It was the Devil, the Seven of Swords, the Wheel of Fortune, and a card I was quite familiar with—the Tower.

“What does that mean?” Nicole asked, narrowing her eyes.

Cora pointed to each card in turn as she explained her interpretation. “He’s the devil, trapped in the need for material and physical gratification without thought of the consequences. He’s used to using deception and plans trickery.”

“Great,” Austin said, leaning back on his hands.

Cora continued, unphased. “His luck is about to change because the wheel of fortune always turns, and—”

“Pretty much death and destruction,” I finished for her. “I got that card before our excursion.” I almost said I should have listened, and I’d never wished this on anyone, but the truth was, part of me celebrated that I’d gone, despite the circumstances. It had let me reconnect with Austin.

“But is that death and destruction he brings, or death and destruction for him?” Toklo asked, bending over the cards and reaching out a hand like he wanted to touch them, equally afraid and drawn to them.

Cora furrowed her brow, scooped up the cards, and began shuffling again.

“When will it strike next?” Nicole asked me, grasping my shoulder. Apparently, she needed to hear things from a scientific perspective. At least she trusted me as an expert. But the truth was, I only knew what I’d read and what Ila and Toklo had shared.

I shrugged, feeling ill. “I’d like to think eating an entire human would keep him full for a while. But you should know my research says he’ll grow with each body he consumes.”

Cora grimaced.

“He was already like eight feet tall,” Austin said, standing. “And there weren’t that many people to eat out there.”

We stared at each other for a while, no one willing to comment on that observation.

“How do we get rid of it?” Nicole finally broke the silence.

“We don’t,” Ila said. “We get the fuck out of here and call it a loss. I’m sorry, Miss Bennet, but that’s the truth.”

Nicole rose to her full height, which although wasn’t over five foot four, still made her feel intimidating. “I am not letting a sick, cannibalistic pedophile scare me off my resort. I don’t care if it’s human or something else. If it breaths, I can kill it.”

I believed she could.

Her wristcom beeped. “Nicole! Location!” Jackson shouted through the speaker.

“Museum,” she responded calmly, holding it up to her mouth.

Before she lowered her wrist, the door opened, and a crazed-looking Jackson rushed through, his wide-eyed face splattered with blood.

Nicole hurried to his side. “Babe, are you okay?”

He shook his head as he took her in his arms. “Carter isn’t. We were cleaning up the room and had the AI searching for clues. It located biological matter inside the air ducts. I took Carter and Yang to search the area, and we found a stack of broken bones. They had bite marks all over them.”

The sheer willpower it took not to scream, vomit, or run out the door was incredible.

“The blood?” Nicole asked, searching his eyes as she ran a manicured finger down his cheek.

Jackson looked away. “The creature came out of nowhere. I think it had some sort of cloaking technology. Before I could raise my gun, it had ripped his arm out.”

I fell back into Austin’s waiting embrace and buried my face in his chest. But the comfort he provided didn’t stop me from seeing it all in my mind’s eye.

“Yang and I shot at it, and it yanked off Carter’s other arm before running off with it. Yang is trying to fix Carter up in what’s left of the medcenter. I’ve never seen anything like this, Nikki.”

“Do you think you wounded it?” Nicole asked, her voice smaller than I’d ever heard.

Jackson shook his head. “No. I think I upset it. But as far as I could tell, the lasers had little effect other than an annoyance.”

“Shit,” Nicole said, pulling her own laser pistol and glaring at it like it had disappointed her.

“We need blades,” Toklo said, bending over Cora. We turned to him as he dropped a card from the top of the deck. The Ace of Swords fluttered down and landed at his feet. He pulled another, and the Knight of Swords fell on top of it.

Maybe his shaman bloodline worked with Cora’s cards. Maybe the others would call it a coincidence, but either way it made sense.

“We don’t have swords,” Nicole said as though coming to the same conclusion.

“We have hunting tools though,” Ila said, rushing to open an exhibit filled with old yet wicked-looking weaponry. “They aren’t made of obsidian, but they’ll have to do.”

Silently, she handed out knives, spears, and a large, scary-looking hook to her son. I got something like a dagger, which might be easier to handle but worried me when I thought of how close I’d have to be to those teeth to use it. The creature’s incisors were longer than the blade, and while they were thinner, there were far too many of them.