“Luca… Luca, look at me.” Seung held his face. “Breathe.”
“There’s something wrong. The curs. The Anubis can’t hurt them. Its claws just break off.”
“That can’t be right. The only thing that can withstand the Anubis is smoked glass,” Dr. Dante said.
“I saw it.” Luca rubbed his hands on his shirt, trying to erase the sensation.
“I take it the other curs weren’t like that?” Phillips looked at each of them.
Johnathan leaned against the door of the van. “These aren’t just curs. They’re defectives. Or some variation of them.”
“Variation?” Phillips said. “How are these different?”
Johnathan waved a hand. “The ones we saw out there were huge. Like they’d been jacked up on growth hormones and out of proportion. And if they—”
Flesh split under his paws. Scale-like plates peeled away in its grip.
Luca gasped for air. “Armor.” His heart rate jumped. “It’s some sort of armor. It comes off.”
“They’re wearing it?” Dr. Dante said.
Luca shook his head. “It’s attached. Just stuck there. But it’s deep like it’s a part of the skin.”
An ocean of black forms swarmed the ground.
“There’s too many of them.” Luca tried to push Seung back. “Please, we can’t leave him out there.”
“Where did they come from?” Phillips said.
Dust and the scent of blood filled the Anubis’s lungs.
“Luca Suarez.” Phillips stood behind Seung.
Seung bared her teeth at the woman and growled.
Phillips didn’t even look at her. “Where did these things come from?”
Where? Luca knew but there was too much noise.
“Luca.” Phillips didn’t shout but her tone was as good as a punch. “I need to know where they came from.”
Seung said, “What the hell does it matter?”
Phillips’s hard gaze demanded an answer.
Luca said. “There were livestock trailers in the field. They came out of them.”
“Trucks or just the trailers?”
“Trailers.”
She glanced at the armored vehicles. “Does that look big enough to haul one?”
“Yeah, maybe I—”
Gnashing teeth climbed toward Luca.
A hard shake brought Luca back.