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The Wolf scouts returned and perched on the hood and front hedge cutter. At a turn Valentine saw the following truck also had Wolves atop the driver's cab.
"Pass the word: Wait until I shoot," Valentine ordered.
The shadow broke into individual forms as it neared. Valentine searched the flock for the bigger, longer-legged form of a gargoyle. The harpies darted and zigzagged as they flew; it was how their bodies kept aloft. He placed his foresight on one hurrying to get ahead of the trucks.
Its course was a crazy mix of ups and downs, backs and forths. . . . But between the frantic beats of the wings you could sometimes track them on a glide-
BLAM!
Valentine had been so used to firing guns equipped with flash suppressors he'd forgotten the white-yellow photoflash. And he'd forgotten just how hard you had to press into the stock to absorb the shock.
Valentine worked the lever and ejected the little thimble of the shell casing, his shoulder smarting with the old mule kick.
Missed.
The Wolf on the hood had a combat shotgun, a sensible weapon for brush fighting. He tracked one of harpies above and fired.
Valentine heard a high, inhuman scream.
Time to get down with the sickness.
The sickness. The shadow half. The monster.
Valentine had a few names for it, depending on his mood. He'd learned long ago that a part of him rejoiced in the death of his enemies and his own survival. Whether it was a character flaw or some piece of strange heritage passed down from his Bear father didn't matter. The awful exhilaration he felt when he killed, triumphed, made him wonder whether he wasn't even more deserving of destruction for the good of the world, like some rabid dog.
But for now the sickness had its uses.
Valentine, remembering his early years in the Wolves, made an effort to thank those left behind at the landings and hear their accounts.
He shouldered the gun. One was diving right at the truck. Its feet rubbed together and a plastic strip fell-it had armed some kind of grenade. BLAM!
Damn cranky gun.
Maybe he put a bullet through its wing and spoiled the dive. It flapped off to the left and dropped its explosive.
It detonated, orange and loud, in a stand of brush. Valentine wondered what the birds and critters residing in the undergrowth thought.
Don't get weird now, mate. Job at hand.
Valentine heard canvas tearing. The men in the bed of the truck were hacking off the truck-bed cover to better employ their guns.
Valentine aimed again, but a twiggy smack in the back of the head spoiled his shot.
"Four o'clock!"
A line of harpies were coming in, bright plastic grenade tabs fluttering as they pulled the arming pins. They were flapping hard, each bat form describing a crazy knuckleball course.
"There's a good straightaway ahead, sir," yelled the driver.
"Put on some speed," Valentine said.
He fired, and the men in the trucks fired, and when the orange ball of light cleared there was only one harpy left. It dropped the stick grenade on the road and flapped hard to gain altitude, but someone in the second truck brought it down.
Their luck was in. The device didn't go off.
Another line of harpies had gotten around the front.
"Twelve high!" the Wolf hanging off the brush cutter called.
