The ATP2 serum fueled the draw of energy, and the Anubis gorged on the power it offered, rebuilding itself until it dwarfed the blue wolves and met the size of most of the largest defective.
Anticipation vibrated in sharp tones.
Nox roared.
The three blue Fenrir dove for the front line of defectives, and Nox went airborne. He collided with the side of the Goliath, finding handholds where the armor overlapped and his claws couldn’t cut.
The Goliath spun in a circle and snapped at the air but lacked the reach to pull Nox from its back. Smaller defects clamored up its body, worker bees to protect its queen.
Since most had scaled heads, Nox kicked them loose before they could reach him, and they hit the ground only to be decimated underfoot by the Goliath in its futile attempts to get to Nox.
Nox tested the plating, looking for gaps large enough to reach the muscle.
There were none.
But the creature wasn’t a stone pillar. It could run. Even moving slow meant the limbs needed to bend and that required flexibility.
A vice clamped onto Nox’s hock. He turned just in time to avoid a second defective scaling the Goliath from the other side. The one locked onto Nox’s leg slung its head, dislocating his knee. When Nox went for its throat, hitting thick plating stretched mid-chest to the tip of its chin. Nox kicked, smashing the armored defectives against the backplates of the Goliath.
Cracks fractured the neck plating of the smaller creatures.
He did it again, and the plating shattered, exposing muscle and tendons. Nox drove his claws into the fissures and yanked, peeling away the armor. The flesh stitched, but the plating didn’t regenerate.
All the better. Nox dug into the exposed area, severing the neck. He kept the knobby head and let the body fall into the crowd of defectives.
The Anubis’s long prehensile toes made it easy to grip the detached head and smash it against the armor protecting the back of the Goliath’s neck. The impact sent a deep boom across the field, drowning out the snarls and snap of teeth.
Tell the Fenrir.
Nox continued to hammer the Goliath again and again. A nearly invisible web of cracks crawled across plating.
He’d seen the pattern once before in the bunker in Canada when the Anubis broke through the smoked glass.
Another strike and Nox’s make-shift hammer shattered. He tossed it aside and dug at the damaged plating at the base of the Goliath’s skull. The cracks were too shallow for him to get a grip. But again, what little he’d done to the thicker protective scales didn’t regenerate.
The Goliath bucked and spun in a circle, knocking Nox off balance. He slid along the animal’s shoulder where there were no ridges to grab hold and dropped off the side.
Snapping jaws reached from the ground. Nox grabbed the front leg of the Goliath, wedging his claws in the gaps between the defective’s elbow and shoulder plating.
Behind the Anubis, the blue Fenrir shredded the broken bodies of defectives. Wounds covered their sides, and the smallest of them limped.
They were running low on reserves. If he didn’t end this soon, they would die.
An oversized defective shoved through the crowd, rising on its hind legs, lowering its muzzle to its chest, and rammed Nox with the knobby crown above its eyes.
His ribs flattened, and blood sprayed from his mouth. He fought to breathe.
Static burned through his body. His lungs refilled, the ichor rebuilt his bones, and the pain was gone before it could begin.
The second giant defective backed up and lunged again. Nox swung under the Goliath’s chest, using his grip on its leg to hold himself up.
Another hard smack crushed his right front paw, where he’d hooked his talon over the gap at the elbow. He slid, and the smaller curs leapt.
His rear claws snagged the edge of another armored plate.
Nox’s paw realigned, and the claws reformed. The defective lunged again only to be slapped to the ground by the Goliath, crushing its armor.
The horde abandoned the blues, turned inward, descending on the injured cur. Larger animals slapped aside smaller ones, snapping with enough force to remove limbs.