And he got his horns stuck. Damn it.
Owen tugged his horns free, backed up, and charged again. Still on its side, the beast kicked out. His huge three-toed foot connected with Owen’s chest. The bison flew back twenty feet and crashed into the grass.
Damn, that had to hurt.
The rhino struggled. The dark smoke around it thickened.
“Think it’ll get up?” Keelan said.
“It shouldn’t.” That was a hard fall, and the armor added a lot of weight.
The smoke solidified at the rhino’s side and seemed to be pushing it to its feet.
“It’s getting up,” Keelan reported because I was clearly blind.
“Thank you. I can see that.”
The rhino would get up. And when it did, it would go after Owen or the gate. If we were really unlucky, it would go after Kate.
This wasn’t a natural animal. It wasn’t an animal god—I’d seen enough of them to recognize them on sight—but it wasn’t a normal rhino either. That bone armor sat on it as if it were welded to its hide, and the magic boiling around it was thick enough to cut with claws.
Everyone who had been in the house was already on the wall beside me.
“Elk Hunt One,” I ordered. “Keelan, Da-Eun, and I are the takers, the rest of you are drivers. Spin it around. Any direction except for the gate.”
“Yes, Alpha,” they answered in unison.
I leaped off the wall. By the time I hit the ground, I was in half form and roaring. The wall rained shapeshifters in warrior forms. We sprinted forward in a tight formation, howling and snarling.
The smoke picked the rhino up and set it back on its feet. It shook its head and roared. It was a sound filled with rage and hate.
“You owe me a dollar, my lord!” Keelan snarled on my right.
“I never bet you anything.”
“Being stingy is unbecoming of an alpha!” Da-Eun laughed on my left.
Keelan howled, a long triumphant battle cry, calling for blood.
The rhino started forward and was picking up speed, moving from a walk into a sort of trot. The ground started to shake.
Gods, he was massive. This was going to suck.
The drivers shot in front of the rhino, snarling and snapping.
I veered right, while Keelan and Da-Eun darted left. We circled the rhino. Those plates had to be held in place by something—chains, a harness—and I would find it and break it.
There was no harness. The rhino wasn’t wearing the bone plates. They hadn’t been placed on him. They’d been placed in him, embedded in the creature’s flesh and fused together by the same golden metal we saw on the collars. The hide in the narrow gaps between the plates was inflamed and bleeding. Pus wet the metal and bone. This beast had to be in tremendous pain.
The stench was the worst. It smelled like acid, burned flesh, and blood. And a hint of decay, just setting in. The rhino was dying.
I would kill it. I would make it as fast and as painless as I could. And then I would find the person who did that atrocity to it and kill them slowly.
I circled behind the beast, passing Keelan and Da-Eun running in the opposite direction. They hadn’t found a weakness either.
At the front end of the rhino, the shapeshifters baited the beast, leaping in and out before it could gore them, clawing, snapping, and snarling. The huge beast tried to press forward, but the chaos was too much. It couldn’t ignore the shapeshifters harassing it. Too many bodies, too much noise.
Andre lunged in and bit the rhino on the lip, the only exposed part of its head. For a moment the werewolf hung there like a terrier. That was the last straw.
The rhino rolled his head and flung Andre to the side. Andre landed on his feet. The beast screamed and pounded toward him.
Good. We’d turned him. Now we just had to bring him down.
I closed in on the rhino.
Could I pry a plate off?
The rhino kept going, totally focused on Andre. Trying to run him down.
Keelan and Da-Eun leaped onto its back, scrambling up.
Good plan. The spine was a solid target.
Keelan struck with his claymore, plunging it straight down, but didn’t seem to be doing any serious damage. The bone armor was too thick.
I grabbed the edge of one of the plates along the flanks, dug my feet in, and pulled. I could yank the door off a car. I’d done it before.
The rhino didn’t stop. The plate didn’t come off. Instead, I was dragged off my feet and pulled along. I let it drag me for a couple of seconds, let go, landed on my feet, and ran to keep pace.
A bird swung around the rhino and tried to hammer me with its giant beak. I slapped its head and broke its neck.
“Jynx, thin the flock!”
The bouda peeled off from the pack ahead with an eerie giggle.
On the rhino’s back, Da-Eun planted her feet and pulled at one of the plates along the beast’s back. The weretiger strained, her muscles swelling under her striped hide. She shook with effort, cried out…
The plate didn’t budge. Yeah, I already tried that.
Andre turned left, drawing a wide U. The rhino followed him, never noticing we were now running in the opposite direction. I caught a glimpse of Kate swinging her sword at the female mage.
The rhino thundered past me, and I got a quick peek of its head, the top half of it shielded by a thick bone plate bristling with spikes. The giant horn jutted upward, ready to impale anything in its path.
Armor or no, it still had to turn its head.
I sprinted and chanced a closer look. The rhino’s short neck was protected by segmented bone plates, but they were thinner than the rest. They had to be, or they would be too rigid, limiting the creature’s range of movement. The horn was its greatest weapon. It had to be able to aim it.
The neck. That was the sweet spot.
I had to find a way to pierce those plates and the monster's hide.
I rolled to my feet. We’d made it halfway across the field. The mages and hunters waited for me 250 yards away.
Crap.
The mage with the headband fringe spun her staff and clawed at the air.
I had to get there before she finished whatever she was doing. The effective spear-throwing range was about seventy to eighty yards or so, and if I ran fast enough, I should be able to dodge them.
I ran.
Behind me a deafening lion’s roar filled the air.
Hi, honey.
One of the hunters jogged back and raised his spear.
No way. I was still over 150 yards out.
He took a running start, his legs pumping, left arm thrust in front of him, and hurled the spear at me. It sliced through the air, whistling like a fucking arrow. I dodged left. The spear sank into the ground four inches away from my right leg.
What the hell were those shoulders made of?
The hunters backed up in unison.
I kept moving. 120 yards. At least twenty seconds across clear ground without cover. Too far for a power word, not enough time for anything complicated. I had to run and avoid being hit.
They had seven spears left. I could dodge seven spears.
The first hunter, the one who’d thrown the spear, reached behind a tree, pulled out a bundle of spears, and thrust them into the ground for easy grabbing.
Shit.
Seven more spears screeched through the air. I zigzagged like a rabbit, guessing the direction on pure instinct. Left, right, right, left… The sixth spear plunged into the ground right in front of me. I paused for half a second, and the seventh spear sliced across my side, grazing me in a scalding burn.
They were already reaching for more spears.
I dragged my left arm across my bleeding side, yanked the canteen of vampire blood off my belt, and poured it over my left arm, right over the blood already on it. The vampire blood sparked with the magic of my blood, coating my skin and clothes. I jerked my arm in front of me and whispered the incantation. Shaping it with my will alone wouldn’t be fast enough. The burn of magic expended too quickly scraped the inside of my chest with hot, serrated teeth.