Just to the north of the White House, facing the building up the length of the South Lawn, sat the seven-acre spread of the Ellipse.
It was a large and open place, an elliptical expanse of thick grass circled by large specimen trees and dotted here and there with commerative statues. At the moment, it was a riot of colour and boisterous energy, as hordes of children, half-hearted attempts at corralling them made by teachers and parents, ran and chased one another and swung from statue arms, with other groups of dozens at a time rolling painted eggs and smearing themselves sticky with chocolate. A large marquee of multihued cloth sat near the centre.
Secret service agents prowled here and there, ill at ease amongst the chaos. Several cabinet members and members of the government put on their best smiles and did their best to interact with members of the public who couldn't give the slightest damn about economics statistics.
The same tumult extended up onto the South Lawn, down which Kuciyela strolled, accompanied by two towering agents and Skirving. Who was the most intimidating wasn't an easily resolved question.
"It doesn't actually hurt to smile, Malcolm," said Kuciyela gently, in a teasing tone to an old friend. "You might like it if you try it."
"Bah. You were the one who ran to be President. You're the one who's obliged to smile, and you've got other people to do additional smiling for you. I'm your Chief of Staff, and I'll be as cantankerous as I please."
"And it pleases you a great deal."
"Oh, for a cane, so I could wave it at these brats and yell at them to get off the lawn."
"Try. For me?"
Skirving's face then could have frozen magma. Then, as if trying to recall movements he'd once read about in a book, he twitched the tips of his lips upwards and bared his teeth awkwardly. Several children ran screaming. Magma would have developed into long-chained proteins, undergone abiogenesis, and evolved to have done likewise.
"Please stop smiling, Malcolm."
"With pleasure." Skirving's face returned relievedly to its customary expression of frosty contempt for everything. "The media's come out in force."
This last comment was addressed in the direction of a knot of reporters, who stood next to the trees to their left as the two men entered the Ellipse. One of the agents muttered the update into an earpiece.
Several cameras were already up and running, with people standing in front of them with microphones and stating the transparently obvious. Equipment and bags lay slumped against the tree trunks, piled in a ramshackle manner.
Underneath one of these piles, which had been there from the beginning of the day, something purred away to itself. The faint buzz of energy came from it, and the air whispered faintly. Unseen wires extended from either side, running along and under the ground in places and carrying a current along a great perimeter.
And through these wires, unseen energies seeped into the air. And past these energies like a veil, an unseen shape stirred.
"It's nice to get days like this," said Kuciyela. "Days where you can put aside concerns and just … enjoy the sun. When you know what you're going to get from the day."
"Hasn't government taught you anything? If something out there can ruin your day, it inevitably will."
"We've got a lid on all the ongoing situations, we're currently in the clear for security compromises, and I have nothing else on my plate except for reading a picture book to kids. Kindly desist with those cynical snorts."
"Must you deny me all my pleasures?"
"Hmm." Kuciyela smiled, then sniffed at the air. He frowned.
"How strange."
"What?" The men were nearing the Ellipse's centre.
"Can you smell honeysuckle?"
"No, I…" Skirving stopped, and smelled the air. "Now that you mention it, yes." He wrinkled his nose. "It's a little overpowering."
"Is it something…" started Kuciyela, and stopped when he noticed others starting to notice the smell. Children were looking around with perplexed expressions and wrinkled noses, as were their teachers and parents and more than a few of the agents. There were few comments, but the air was thickening with tension and puzzlement.
And when Kuciyela moved his hand, there seemed to be almost a charge to the air, a potentiality seeping in, a sense that he struggled to find words for.
He tried to brush it off, and turned to Skirving. "Can you…"
A scream cut him off. A child had fallen to their knees several feet away from him, and waved a wild hand at the air while clasping the other to an ear and screaming "It's not right! It's not right!" Fearful murmurs and chatters of unease were running through the crowd, and those of the press who weren't joining in were looking around, as if lost for direction. One of the cameras was starting to gently emit smoke.
"Sir," said one of the agents behind Kuciyela, retaining enough presence of mind to pretend calmness. "I think we ought to get you…"
Then a sharp peal of unsound tore through his words and the sounds of the Ellipse, a deafening peal of unnatural silence that tore away voices and left a wave of terrified stammers and interjections in its wake. The fear and disquiet in the air was now palpable, and people were already trying to edge out of the Ellipse.
Inasmuch as the source of the sudden burst of silence could be determined, Kuciyela turned to face it.
His face paled, and he stepped backwards.
A rift of light was tearing itself out of strands of suddenly illuminating light in the air, peeling open in a ragged gash that spilled light as cold and terrible as driven snow. Whispers ran through the air in rivers, soft susurrations that seemed to whip around people's feet and push them gently backwards. The rift grew incrementally but with gathering force, broad slashes flowing out from the sides and expanding the light.
In seconds, the rift had grown from a trembling line in the air to something in the rough shape of a rectangle, the edges ragged with tendrils of the encroaching cold light, which shed no luminescence and shrugged off shadows.
It stopped growing suddenly, with a soft chime that diminished the whispers. The rectangle hung in mid-air, ten feet above the ground, directly facing Kuciyela.
Then the front opened as if hinged on one side, a doorway to nothing material, and the whispers redoubled as a shape slid out.
The first thing to slide out was a massive head, long and sharp, still obscured by the cold light of the Sur-real, which shed off it in flakes as it emerged. A thick, sinuous body followed it, weaving gently in long, slow, S-shapes, pushing it through the air with implacable force and control. Kuciyela took another step backwards, but like the countless others there, his mind was too transfixed to push him back. The few screams went unnoticed.
Light fell off it like shed flakes of skin as the full extent of the figure emerged from the door, closing it noiselessly behind them. Piece by piece, the figure emerged, gently gliding to the ground before Kuciyela and coiling, rearing above him to a towering extent.
It easily exceeded fifty feet from tail-tip to snout, and twenty of those feet loomed over the President. The body was serpentine, long and limbless, rippling with powerful muscle and as thick as a car all around. Tight, hard feathers covered the form like scales, gleaming a thousand vibrant shades of crimson, azure, emerald. Rising towards the head, a crest of longer feathers emerged, coming to sharp points. The python-esque head was massive and powerful, the same muscle that ran up the body running up the neck. The mouth sharpened slightly at the tip like the beak of an eagle, two long fangs gently curving down from the upper jaw.
The eyes of the coatl were the most terrible part. They were huge and high-set, gleaming like deep pools of molten gold set with jet at the centre. They swam with detached arrogance, with the self-assured knowledge of power, with pride beyond reckoning. They held the crowd mesmerised, rooting them in place with the alien and awe-inspiring power of the Sur-real.
The coatl scanned the assembly with a detached and lazy contempt, craning its head down slightly to regard Kuciyela, who stood tiny beside it. Some neuron of self-preservation forced his legs to take him another trembling step backwards, but too many of the crowd stood frozen.
A tiny and distant drone, like the steady rapping of a ruler on a desktop, went unnoticed.
The coatl, looking back up at the crowd dragged out the silence, seeming to savour it. Then it spoke, in mellifluous and archaic speech, in a tone that could have been produced by a volcano.
"Is such all that humanity can muster?" The tone coloured with derisive amusement. "Squalling infants, paralysed soldiery, the foolish fettered and ignorant. I profess myself underwhelmed."
Its gaze fell again, to the frozen Kuciyela, the target of the bulk of its power.
"Little creature of flesh and blood," it purred, in a rolling tone that seemed to shake the earth, "Sovereign of a patchwork nation of costermongers and thieves. Thy life has been bartered. Thy person, thy self, thy soul hath been made forfeit."
It rose gently back in the air, the muscles on its neck tensing as it prepared to strike down.
Whatever spell the Sur-real had wrought was dispelled.
Screaming and running followed from those who had recovered enough of their selves, and screaming and standing still from those who had not. Agents began frantically trying to herd out children and adults alike, Kuciyela took a few more steps back, and the agents to either side of him stepped forward, their guns drawn, their faces unreadable past their sunglasses, and Skirving spread his arms to either side and stepped to his left, putting himself between the coatl and a paralysed group of screaming children.
The head blurred down, faster than the eye could see, one gleaming fang slashing through the chest of one of the agents, who pitched to one side, gasping wetly and loosing a piteous, thin, choking scream. The head struck to one side with the force of a battering ram, ploughing into the other agent with the sickening sound of cracking bone and folding him up in the air as he was sent spinning through the air, limp as a rag doll. The attacks moved with a horrific, swift energy, almost casual on the coatl's part.
The distant drone grew in volume, to the steady thwack-thwack of a jackhammer.
The coatl smoothly jabbed forward, the tip of the snout hammering into Kuciyela and knocking him over backwards to the ground. He lay on his back, the breath driven out of him, and struggled to get to his feet as the great head drifted towards him, the eyes dancing with arrogant satisfaction.
"Beg, as it please thee," rumbled the monster, enjoying the pretence at conviviality. "Thou canst do little else."
Its fangs gleamed as the head bowed down, the mouth slowly peeling back from the edges, the tip of a forked tongue as dark as blood flickering at the tip. A low hiss came from the depths of its throat, a hiss undercut with something else …
…Something like rhythmic thunder.
Then another sound rang out, a sharp series of cracks that was quickly followed by one, two, three rounds snapping into the coatl's drawn-back head, the rounds glancing off it to no effect. The creature hissed with shock, and instantly span in the direction of the shots, as did Kuciyela from his position on the ground.
From the treeline to the west rose a black shape, a dark gunship that cut just above the trees, cutting through and sending a few dislodged leaves fluttering to the ground. It was skewed on its horizontal axis, and wobbled slightly in its flight, the engines roaring in protest at the skewed flying pattern. From one side, a figure leaned out, aiming a rifle.
And from the gunship came a familiar voice, magnified a hundred-fold.
"COATL! THIS IS THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL! STAND DOWN OR WE SHALL USE LETHAL FORCE!"
The coatl looked as nonplussed by the apparition of the gunship as anyone else, and Kuciyela took advantage of its distraction to edge backwards, furiously motioning others to back off as well. The coatl twisted with its entire body, its eyes narrowing and boring like blades into the gunship. The skin around its mouth peeled back further, revealing rows of shark-like teeth in addition to the massive fangs. It hissed again, a low, guttural, angry sound. "Who offers challenge?"
"Fire again, Wybie," said Coraline, standing just inside the gunship, her hand tight around the shotgun. Wybie threw off a jaunty salute and aimed down the rifle.
A crash–course can be a magnificent learning tool. Especially when the situation and subject makes it a distressingly literal proposition.
Luckily, Maria had some past experience in helicopter flight, the controls were friendly, and Lady Luck had a soft spot for anything that would normally be doomed to explosive failure.
A (relatively) straight flight south had returned them to the city in just less than an hour, the gunship's engines making good time over the landscape of forests and road lines, over the farmland and power sections. The journey had been a cramped one, with Wybie and Coraline sharing the compartment with unopened boxes and fixtures and coiled lengths of high-density tether-cord.
The plan had been for them to land on the Ellipse (landing the gunship would have had to have been learned as they went, but needs must) and find and remove the Eroder. Explanations could have been made later.
But as just as the White House came in view, the smell of honeysuckle filtered through to the compartment, and Coraline bit down a curse.
"It's already active," she said. "Hells take it, the coatl's already coming through."
"Plan B, then. Which was…?" said Maria distractedly, doing her damndest to split her attention between piloting the gunship and listening to the conversation.
"Violence." Coraline looked out the front window, and saw a sinuous shape of pure light slither out of a point above the wide green lawn, and saw the crowd standing frozen. "There's too many people to risk close-quarters fire . I'm going to have to be careful with this," she said, holding up the shotgun. "If we can get it away from them…"
"On it," said Wybie, realising what she was getting at and jerking at the handle for the side-door. He heaved it open, and air rushed in.
"Keep us in the air," said Coraline to Maria. "Keep us moving. And when it goes for us, peel away from it, but stay within the perimeter of the Ellipse if you can."
"One of these days, I'm going to demand a pay rise, and I'm going to thoroughly deserve it," said Maria, gritting her teeth and steadying the gunship in the air.
Wybie's first shots rang out at the coatl, which turned to face the gunship with the air of a hunter affronted by a distraction and made inquiries as to whom had done such a thing.
"Fire again, Wybie," said Coraline, and Wybie did so. The bullet clashed off the coatl's form in a spray of sparks from the bullet's casing. Coraline jabbed at the button for the loudhailer again.
"ONLY COWARDS ATTACK THE DEFENCELESS! ARE YOU TOO AFRAID TO FACE US, COATL?"
If there was one thing that went hand-in-hand with ambition, it was pride. The coatl's eyes flashed, and it twisted itself from the ground, uncoiling like rope given will.
"The lesser kin speak of such a voice," it mused in a slow murmur. "The Stormcrow, a demon of humanity clad in iron and fire. Let them tremble. I shall not."
"Start climbing," muttered Coraline to Maria, checking the shotgun. "Take us up high. It'll follow us."
Maria stabbed at the controls, keeping one hand on a lever stick as she pulled the gunship sharply upwards. Wybie stepped back briskly from the edge as the gunship began to rise, the angle of its ascent sharpening quickly. The coatl, regarding them, hissed and almost seemed to slither into the air, undulating through the air towards the gunship in swift sidewinding motions, gathering speed as it went.
"The plan's working without a hitch," observed Wybie, leaning out from the open side, the air blowing through his air as he watched the diminishing ground and the accelerating coatl. "Now it's trying to kill us. What now?"
"Now you step back," said Coraline, as she moved to the side with the shotgun. "I'll give it a taste of iron."
Wybie dutifully stepped back as Coraline took his place, trying to keep her footing steady in the hurtling motion of the gunship. They swept through the air, their flight erratic as Maria tried to keep control of the gunship at this speed, in this wild air. Coraline looked back along the gunship, aiming down the shotgun's length at their hunter.
God's sake, they were a distance above the ground by now. The White House looked like a model, the people on the Ellipse like ants, and the coatl…
…the coatl looked like this incredibly fast-moving thing that was rapidly filling the view just behind the gunship, which was where the simile broke down but didn't stop being valid. It was huge, and it was powerful, and its eyes blazed hotter than its gleaming jaws, which were spread open and glistening and aimed right at the tail of the gunship…
It rose sharply in the air, putting extra power into its movement to put it on the same horizontal plane as the gunship, and Coraline leaned far out and craned to get a clear shot. She hammered the trigger, and the ferroshot sprayed white-hot as it rocketed from the shotgun's nozzle and raced towards the coatl. Some of it struck along the side of the creature's neck, scoring blazing lines down it and producing a sound of mixed fury and startled pain from the coatl.
Whatever it had been expecting, it hadn't been expecting iron.
But its eyes continued to blaze, and it continued to pursue the gunship.
"Think'st thou that ferromancery shall scare me away, Stormcrow?" it thundered. "Thou think th…"
Coraline caught it mid-Thou with another round of ferroshot, which the coatl barely anticipated and dodged, rolling away swiftly to the other side behind the gunship.
"Damn it!" spat Coraline, turning away quickly and rushing to the other side of the compartment. "Help me get this side open…"
But before she could finish her own sentence, the entire gunship was caught as if by a sudden storm, and Coraline and Wybie were thrown to the floor as the gunship pitched, a new force clashing against the engines with the scream of tortured metal and clashing gears.
Pulling herself up, Coraline glimpsed the coatl behind the gunship. It had champed down on the tail fin with its massive jaws, and was jerking at it as a wolf with prey. The gunship screeched in protest, and trails of smoke spluttered from the side. From the inside, it was as if the whole world was hurling itself around your head, in a wild storm of motion that allowed for no footing or coherent thought.
"Maria! Get us…!" Wybie started, but, as was the trend, didn't get to finish. The coatl suddenly released the tail, scissoring its fanged grip as it peeled away and sending the tail fin falling free to the ground, sending the gunship into a sudden corkscrew in the air as Maria, still seated, fought to get it back under control.
"Come on, hell take you!" she screamed, pulling furiously at the controls, multiple displays before her hollering and flashing red. "Stabilise!"
Coraline looked around as she tried to pull herself while pushing away dizziness. She shot to one side, Wybie lurching after her, the pair looking upwards out of the side, and they saw the coatl weaving lazy circles in the air above the gunship, hunter's eyes watching them with a steady appraisal. Coraline saw that it was preparing to lunge down and finish the job.
"You take the other side!" she yelled at Wybie, motioning violently with her hand. "Shoot at it when it comes down!"
The coatl swept down just as she spoke, its jaws agape, sparks blazing from its eyes as it plunged towards the faltering gunship. A stream of bullets from the assault rifle flew up at it from one side of the ship, and spreads of blazing ferroshot from the other.
Halting briefly, the coatl hurled itself towards Wybie's side, to the bullets that were nothing more than an irritation. They rebounded off its feathered hide as it swept down and past the gunship, winding into the air beneath the gunship.
Wybie craned over, bracing himself against the door with one hand as he tried to track it. Coraline scanned her own side, and Maria looked behind her to the pair.
"What happened? Where's the …?"
And at the moment, the coatl struck, ramming itself into the bottom of the gunship with mountain-breaking force, crashing into Wybie's side and smashing the gunship askew to an angle just short of vertical. Wybie fell back with a cry of shock, which was abruptly cut off when he slammed into the wall on the other side of the gunship. Maria was nearly hurled out of her seat, and grabbed frantically for the controls, loathing the wrenching sound burbling from the much-abused engine.
Coraline was pitched right out the side.
At first, there was the shock of impact, the moment where the coatl had struck home and knocked away the floor, where she had fallen free from her position and had just barely had time to realise that.
Then there was a brief moment of weightlessness, when there was nothing but empty air and rushing wind on all sides, and the distant ground was just a pleasant image to be considered at leisure.
Then thought, accompanied by its bannermen of vertigo and panic, would come riding in a scant second later, and Coraline flailed and yelled at the top of her lungs as she snatched for a purchase, any purchase, anything that would prevent an inevitable and imminent introduction to the laws that covered unpleasant phrases like 'gravity', 'impact', and 'terminal velocity'.
Her outspread hand hit something, something which, when Coraline flicked her gaze up, identified itself as one of the lengths of tether-cord spilling out from the gunship's open side, one end weighted, the other end affixed to the ship.
Keeping her left hand locked in a deathly grip around the shotgun, the hand clinging to the tether began to twist and tug at it, desperately trying to secure it around the arm so that Coraline wouldn't slip off it as she and it continued falling through empty air.
For a few brief moments, the cord and Coraline were in freefall.
Then the cord snapped taught at its greatest extent, with the whip-crack of tense cord and another, quieter, sharper crack.
Coraline swayed like a pendulum at the end of the cord, her left hand still tightly gripping the shotgun, her right wrapped around by the cord. Something wasn't entirely right about the angle of her arm.
Right, she thought past the numb agony that grew as it insinuated itself down the arm and through her mind, right. Okay. This could be a problem.
Above her, she saw as she tilted her head back, the coatl was circling the gunship in a casual spiral, watching it as the ruptured engines screamed with unsustainable effort. Maria was piloting for her very life, but it wasn't enough.
Angling its body once again, the coatl dove down through the sky, its car-sized head aimed as a battering ram right at the gunship.
Coraline pulled the shotgun up as far as she could, and, gritting her teeth and blinking away the pain, crooked the gun in one bent arm and sought for the trigger with her index finger.
The shot that rang out sent more shot scything through the air, several pellets of pure iron once again ripping across the coatl's side and sending it off-balance with the sudden pain. Hissing with pain, it missed the gunship and quickly pulled itself into a sharp downwards circle, aiming this time for Coraline.
With one huge heave on the swaying tether, and with one great wrench of pain from her broken arm, Coraline managed to swing to one side just as it came at her jaws agape, sending herself swaying to one side in the rush of air of its passage. The lurch of her movement coupled with the aftermath of the shot's recoil sent the shotgun falling from her grasp. With a startled curse, she grabbed futilely for it, and could only watch it fall to the empty ground.
At least they'd gotten time to get the Ellipse evacuated, she thought.
Maria, sitting and sweating at the controls, jabbed at the controls once again while offering up a prayer.
To her surprise and huge gratification, the engines crackled to one last burst of life. As she quickly reasserted control, Maria thought quickly.
Wybie was knocked out in the back, or was at least stunned. Coraline, as best as Maria could discern, was clinging by some miracle to a rope dangling from the gunship. The coatl was rising from where it had struck at Coraline.
For this moment, it was all down to Maria. And she took a gamble.
Seizing the stick, she swung the gunship to one side, aiming it right at the coatl. The coatl, seeing the gunship's headlong charge, answered by doing likewise, its eyes now pools of golden fury-filled fire.
It struck at the gunship as they closed … but Maria banked the gunship at the last possible second, and the spinning rotors atop the body collided square into the coatl's mouth with an otherworldly shriek of pain and the crash of colliding and sparking metal.
If it wasn't pure iron, then it would be hard-pressed to harm a psychephage, but it could certainly still hurt. The coatl corkscrewed away, hissing in agony, its body buckled and battered.
Maria exulted. Briefly.
The noise from the engines changed, from an unhappy gurgle to a full-throated screech of shredding metal. A short blast of heat rushed up from in front of her, singing her hair and eyebrows, and she stared wild-eyed at the controls.
She would be the last to call herself well-versed in controlling gunships of any description. Cars alone were a hassle to drive with her mind, with so many things needing to be learned and held in mind and to not be distracted from.
But Maria was pretty certain, and she would have put money on this, that small flames rushing up from the gaps in your controls was a pretty good indicator that not everything was as it should be in the gunship's engine.
And at that moment as well, the gunship started, quite innocuously, quite slowly at the start, to fall straight down, and gathered speed as it went.
Maria said, in a pointed and resigned and decidedly small-font tone, "Fuck."
Then she turned in her seat, twisting in the seat-harness, shouting "Wybie, prepare to bail! Wybie, are you awake?"
"Why are there fireworks in my skull?" came the unenthusiastic response.
"We're falling! When we get near the ground, jump!"
Wybie craned his head from his prone position, looking out at the rushing and increasingly tilting world.
"Holy hell, we're falling," he said at length.
"You don't say. Jump when we get near enough to the ground." Maria looked across the controls, scanning desperately for anything that looked useful.
Something rose in her vision, and when she looked out the front window, she saw Coraline trailing on a level with the gunship. One of her hands was occupied unwinding lengths of cord from around her other arm. She didn't seem to notice Maria as she worked, and when she looked up, it was only after she'd unwound the last loop of the tether, the cord and her blue hair flapping in the rush of air.
She gave Maria a weary thumbs-up. Then she let go of the cord for good and forced herself into a position akin to a skydiver.
Maria leaned forward, alarmed, and then relaxed slightly when she saw Coraline trying to angle herself towards the marquee at the centre of the Ellipse. From their current distance above the ground, and at her angle and speed, she could probably make it. She'd be able to cushion her fall.
Come to think of it, what was their height above the ground?
There was a Tarzan-esque yell from the back, and Maria turned to see Wybie jumping out the open side.
And then the world, quite suddenly and with no other warning, became a whirlwind of clashing noise and force and explosive pain.
In the trees around the Ellipse, several of the braver media crews with still-functioning cameras still stood, struck mute with shock and awe, accompanied by many of the Secret Service agents who weren't attending to their stricken friends. They watched the impact of the gunship with an appalled silence.
Once the first sounds had become echoes, three figures lay recumbent.
Coraline lay stunned in the remains of the marquee, some short distance from the downed gunship and from her fallen shotgun, her broken arm bent painfully beneath her.
Wybie tried to pull himself up from the ground, one of his ankles twisted, the breath driven out of him by his impact with the ground.
A long shadow grew across the lawn.
And in the smashed gunship, from which smoke trickled into the sky, Maria sat back in the pilot's seat and groaned.
The seat-harness and the seat itself had been designed to accommodate crash-landings of this nature, and Maria was still alive, awake, and relatively unharmed. Admittedly, her entire back from neck to waist was one huge mass of screaming whiplash, and her chest had been bruised by the harness, and the number of smaller scrapes and cuts defied counting, but all in all, those were relatively small things to worry about.
Heck, the one good thing about small worries was that you could fret about them, that you could focus on them because of the absence of bigger worries…
The shadow grew, and hissed, and the grounding coatl reached out delicately with its jaws and ripped away the entire front window of the gunship.
Energy siphoned from elsewhere had healed the scars inflicted by the shotgun and eased the aches of the rotor-inflicted bruising. The coatl was somewhat irked by the persistence and resilience of its opponents in the sky-battle, and it was neither a good winner nor good loser. Its eyes blazed like the heart of the sun as it leaned in closer to Maria, who scrabbled for her pistol.
It drew its head and glistening fangs back, and a sudden voice to one side said "Hey, ugly."
The coatl turned, and saw Wybie standing, swaying slightly, holding the assault rifle. He smiled a grim smile before shoving the rifle into fully-automatic and opening wild fire.
The first shot rebounded off the coatl's face, making it reflexively screw its eyes shut edge back as the dented bullet fell back from its hide. The second and third bullets rebounded as well, and the coatl slowly opened its eyes as Wybie continued his fire.
Brass-jacketed bullets flashed, bouncing to the ground in small dented piles off the coatl's head and side and eyes, each part of it unharmed. It watched Wybie silently, watched the last spit-fire of a tracer round, and watched his face change as the gun chunked empty.
He pulled hopefully at the trigger a few more times, and then looked up to face the coatl with a nervous grin. The coatl tilted its head slightly.
"Yes?" said the coatl. "And what follows?"
"Er…" Wybie held the gun loosely. "Um. I didn't really plan ahead for this one."
The coatl blinked. Part of its simmering fury and endless pride had been replaced by simple bemusement. "Thine entire plan was to engage me with an entirely useless weapon and hope for the best?"
"When you put it like that…" said Wybie, as though the situation was perfectly normal.
The coat gave him a level stare. Then it jabbed forward with its head, ramming straight into Wybie, sending him flying several metres away with several loudly-snapped ribs, rendering him too shocked to scream as he sprawled on the ground.
"Enough," growled the coatl. "I have the field here. I shall have thine sovereign. I shall not let the antics of those barely evolved past imbecility dissuade me. Thou art nothing. NOTHING!"
As it reared its head to strike, one last voice came from behind it. "You do love the sound of your own voice, don't you?"
Startled, it spun, and saw Coraline Jones standing there, facing the coatl side-on, one foot extended and the other behind her at an angle. Her face was set with a grim resolve, her broken arm painfully supporting the raised shotgun.
"It's a problem. You should have worked on it," she said, her voice quiet, unyielding, and cold, as cold as the heart of hell itself.
The coatl struck out unthinkingly, the shotgun thundered, and the world fell apart in a storm of white fire.