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“Shit,” Jules murmured. The hairs on the back of my head stood up. I quelled an instinct to run.
“Do random, unidentifiable noises like this happen often?” I whispered to Gary.
Slowly, he shook his head. “It never happens like this.”
It came louder, and closer, if that was possible, rattling the speakers. Still, nothing appeared on the monitors. No visible source in the house was producing the noises. In defiance of the laws of physics, these noises seemed to come from nowhere.
The thudding grew louder again, until the van started vibrating, like now the children were running on our roof. I could feel it in my bones.
“Is it an earthquake?” Jules said. “Maybe it’s not the house at all.”
“Does Colorado get earthquakes?” Gary asked. His voice was taut, anxious.
“Sort of,” I said. “Little tiny ones. You can’t actually feel them.”
“I’ve lived in LA for ten years,” Tina said. “This isn’t an earthquake.”
Something odd occurred to me. “What if it’s just the speakers?”
“What?” Jules said.
“The speakers. Unplug the speakers.”
Jules and Tina were still gawking at me like I’d sprouted a second head, so I lunged over them and pulled at the speaker units mounted above the bank of monitors. Custom jobbies, wires looped into the back of them.
Of course, either way, pulling the wires would stop the noise. Right?
We still didn’t see anything on the monitors, which were bouncing on their shelves now. The noise had changed to a steady pounding, like someone was beating on the van. This wasn’t happening on the house—this was happening right here.
I almost had to shout. “The other option is to go into the house and see if this is going on in there, too,” I said, growing exasperated. I was ready to pile out of the van myself, one way or the other.
When no one said anything, I yanked the wires.
The beating, pounding, thudding noise stopped.
We all held our breaths, waiting for it to start again.
Jules’s shoulders slumped. He grabbed the speaker out of my hand. “Don’t tell me that was an equipment malfunction? Christ.”
In the midst of grumbling, I paused, nostrils flaring. I smelled something. It pinged a memory, but I couldn’t quite catch it. Something recent. Something bad, dangerous—
Sulfur and fire. Brimstone. Attack in the forest. In the back of my brain, Wolf howled.
I bit back a growl and lunged for the door.
“Hey—”
The van tipped over.
Chaos rocked us, objects falling, monitors smashing, bodies tumbling. People shouted, cried out with surprise. I wrapped my arms around my head, over the headset I was still wearing. Then movement stopped. We ended up sprawled on the van’s side, picking ourselves out of the mess of shelving and gear that had been stored there.
I didn’t wait. I could move, I didn’t hurt, except for the panic and anger burning in my gut. I lunged for the back door, shoved it open, and spilled out.
The van was on its side, in the middle of the street. The windshield had smashed, spreading sparkling pebbles of glass across the asphalt. The metal side looked slightly crumpled, as if there’d been a collision. One of the tires was spinning slowly.
Matt and Ben were jumping out of the KNOB van and sprinting toward me. Something in me identified them as friend, so I ignored them. Shoulders tight, hackles stiff, I circled, looking for the enemy, waiting for the thing to attack again.
“Kitty?” Ben caught my body language and looked around with me, searching.
