—Thomas!
He doubled over on the sand, clutching his back. The pain felt as if something alive were breaking his ribs from the inside. Sunny tried to hold him up, but her hands were shaking.
Two figures emerged from nowhere, as if the night itself had spat them out. One was absurdly tall, almost two and a half meters, with shoulders that looked carved from stone. The other, shorter than Sunny, moved with an unnatural lightness. Black robes fluttered though there was no wind. Their hoods hid their faces, but their eyes glowed with a faint red light, like buried embers.
The smaller figure took a step forward. Its voice was a sharp whisper.
—This is the missing piece. Target acquired. Hand her over and we'll leave.
—No —Sunny growled, gripping Thomas's arm even tighter.
The small one moved. Too fast. A black blur. The push was dry, almost casual. Sunny flew three meters backward and hit the sand with a dull thud.
Time stretched for him. Not as a metaphor: as a trap. Thomas saw Sunny fall and in his head there were no complete sentences, only white noise that drowned out everything.
He wanted to run to her, but the giant lifted him by the neck and left him dangling like a rag doll. The helplessness hit him harder than the air he couldn't breathe. Sunny was the only person who had put her body on the line for him without asking for anything in return, even when she called him a nerd and told him the truth with cruel honesty.
"I promised I wouldn't forget her," the thought flashed through him, absurd and out of place, and it filled him with a new rage, older than he was.
The giant lifted Thomas by the neck as if he weighed no more than a backpack. The fingers were cold, hard like metal wrapped in cloth. Thomas kicked in the air, choking.
Then something exploded inside his chest. A violent white heat that raced through his veins like liquid electricity. The mark on his back burned. He twisted with a strength he didn't know he had, delivered a brutal kick to the giant's chest, and broke free.
He landed on his feet. He ran toward Sunny.
The smaller figure was already there. The punch came like a hammer. Thomas felt the crack of his own nose. He flew backward, rolled across the sand, and spat blood. The taste was metallic and hot.
He got up staggering. The world spun. But something inside him refused to give up.
—Who are you? —he gasped—. What do you want from me?
The smaller figure tilted its head. The hood shifted slightly.
—To take you where you belong. You are one of us.
Thomas didn't have time to answer. The giant was already coming. Every step made the sand tremble. It raised a fist the size of a head.
Thomas raised his arms on instinct.
The blow never came.
Dylan Clarck fell from the sky like a projectile. He slammed into the giant with a crash of metal against metal. Both rolled across the beach, kicking up a cloud of sand. Dylan was on his feet in a fraction of a second. His eyes glowed with the same blue as the patches beneath his skin.
The fight truly exploded.
Dylan was a whirlwind. Fists that sounded like steel. Kicks that sliced the air. The giant answered with slow but devastating blows; every time one landed, the sand sank into a crater. The smaller figure moved like a shadow: it appeared, struck, and vanished. One of its elbows caught Dylan in the ribs. A crack was heard.
Thomas didn't stay still. He ran to Sunny, lifted her, and pulled her away from the chaos. But the heat in his chest kept growing. Without thinking, he threw himself at the smaller figure.
His fist connected.
The smaller figure flew backward as if hit by a truck. It crashed against a rock and got up immediately… but for the first time it hesitated. The hood had slipped a little. The skin underneath was pale, almost translucent, with black veins that pulsed.
—Impossible… —it whispered.
In the distance, the army's searchlights were already sweeping the beach. The sirens were getting closer.
—We have to go —the giant growled, grabbing the smaller figure by the arm.
The smaller one looked at Thomas from the darkness. Its red eyes burned with pure hatred.
—We'll come back for you.
They melted into the shadows and disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. All that remained was the wind moving the sand and the metallic echo of the blows still vibrating in the air.
Dylan shook out his jacket, breathing calmly, as if he had just finished a stroll.
The sirens kept sounding.
Thomas crouched beside Sunny. He touched her shoulder and felt the faint movement of her breathing. That held him together for a whole second; then the trembling returned, now like a delayed wave.
He had blood in his mouth and didn't know if it was his. He wiped it with the back of his hand and left a dark smear on his skin. The worst part was realizing that, beneath the fear, there was another feeling: a kind of electric pleasure in his chest, as if something inside him had recognized the fight as its native language.
Dylan adjusted his jacket with calm, and that calm made Thomas want to scream. How could he be so calm? How could the world still have "normal" sirens after someone had just told him "you are one of us"?
Thomas stared at the shadows where the hooded figures had vanished and felt, for the first time, that the real danger wasn't that they might kill him.
It was that they might be right.