The faint but unmistakable sound of sniffling in the far corner caught Flint's attention. Was someone crying? He looked past the prisoners, who were self-isolated in their little groups, sticking with those most like themselves. Flint's group was easily the most diverse, as it included a literal alien. Flint listened closely, tracking the noise to an isolated figure huddled in the far corner.

  Flint excused himself and hobbled past the others, trying not to disturb them. The cold ground smarted against his bare feet. As he neared, he made out the figure's details. Huddled in the corner was a small girl—maybe nine or ten years old. Flint could never really tell someone's age, especially girls. His mom almost never let him out, so he never spent time with other kids.

  "Hey," Flint whispered, crouching beside her, "you there."

  The girl looked up, wide-eyed. Tear streaks cleared paths on her dirt-stained face.

  "Can you understand me?" Flint asked.

  The girl nodded but eyed him suspiciously.

  Something inside Flint cracked at the sight of her. Ash was no place for a child. She sat alone and isolated; she couldn't run or hide. She was food for any of Ash's predators, man or beast. What if she had been Carly?"

  "What's your name?" Flint asked.

  She didn't say a word but stared back through wide, unblinking eyes. Her wiry shoulders trembled slightly.

  "Are you scared?"

  The girl nodded.

  "Don't be scared," Flint said. "I'll find a way to get you out."

  She squirmed as though to try to make herself smaller.

  Idiot. He obviously wasn't making the situation any better.

  Jason watched Flint from across the cage but didn’t cross over. He probably realized he’d be more intimidating than helpful.

  "Hey," Flint said. "Do you want to meet my pet?"

  After a pause, she nodded cautiously, but her eyes were alert and curious.

  "F'faron," Flint hissed, rousing the bleary-eyed fur ball from his nap. "Come," he motioned.

  F'faron got up, fangs flashing as he yawned with arms stretched over his head and then walked over on his hind legs. The gait was quite human. He dropped next to Flint and curled into a ball again.

  "This is my friend," Flint said. "He's really nice. Do you want to pet him?"

  The girl leaned forward, intrigued despite her fear, and smiled slightly.

  "Don't be shy."

  She stretched out her hand and gently touched the back of his head.

  F'faron snarled at her, baring his teeth, and she cried out as she fell back into her corner.

  Seriously, F'faron? Flint groaned. Leave it to F'faron to terrify the child he was trying to comfort.

  "Oh, don't be scared of him," Flint desperately tried to assure her. “That's just his monster face."

  She shrank even further into her corner, to the point that Flint was afraid she'd disappear completely. "Do you have a monster face?" Flint asked the little girl.

  She shook her head.

  "Really?" Flint asked as though not having a monster face was the most peculiar thing in the world.

  "I have a monster face, " he said. “I use it when I'm scared, and it scares away the bad guys. Do you want to see it?"

  She nodded, wide-eyed.

  Flint scrunched his face and bared his teeth. "Grr," he said, and she laughed at him.

  "Whose monster face is scarier?" Flint asked as he growled again and touched F'faron between the ears, causing an irritated snarl in response.

  She laughed and pointed at F'faron.

  "What?" Flint gasped as if offended, "No! I've been working on my monster face for so long."

  "I want to see your monster face," Flint said. "Can you try?"

  She shook her head frantically.

  "Don't be shy. If you make a scary monster face, you won't have to be scared of anything anymore.”

  She looked at him.

  "Just give it a try."

  She smiled again.

  "I'll bet your monster face isn't as scary as mine."

  She took the bait and, furrowing her brow, barred her teeth.

  "Oh, my," Flint recoiled. "That was scary. But you're missing one thing."

  "What?" she asked, intrigued, her voice little more than a squeak.

  "You need to make some noise with it, like this. Rahhhh," Flint cried, making his monster face dramatically, earning a few scowls from his fellow cellmates. "Bet you can't be that scary."

  "Uh, huh!" She accepted the challenge. "Raaaaaaar!" She held her hands next to her head, her fingers curled.

  "Yikes!" Flint recoiled. "Was that your first monster face?" he asked in disbelief.

  She grinned and nodded.

  "Oh no," he lamented. "I've been practicing for years, and you’re scarier on your first try. It's just not fair."

  "You just need to practice more," she said.

  The amount of sass in her words startled Flint.

  "I guess you're right." he chuckled. "Just remember, when you make your monster face, nothing is scarier than you."

  Jason silently nodded from his position across the cell, a pained if not proud look in his eye.

  Flint was interrupted as he felt something tremor ever so slightly beneath his bare feet.

  Suddenly, Flint was looking at his dad. Arthur's eyes burned with yellow light as he knelt on one knee and held his hand to the ground. Teeth surrounded Arthur, tall, hunched, and imposing. They stood with their teeth barred.

  Abruptly, he was crouching in a dirty cage again, his head reeling. "Jason!" Flint cried.

  "I think I just saw Dad!"

  Arthur strode through the darkness alone, his pistol strapped to his thigh and his belt weighed down by the pair of hand grenades and a heavy knife. His powerful body tensed and rippled in anticipation of a fight. That was new; after putting on the acolyte band, he always seemed more aware of his body; he could feel every nerve and every muscle as though they had a consciousness of their own.

  He walked forward boldly and confidently, his boots landing solidly on Ash's cracked clay. He was more reckless than he had been before. But he could afford to be, with the power of light ice on his side.

  Up ahead, a board sentry turned sharply, drawn by the sounds of his unstealthy approach.

  "Hey!" A voice broke the silence with a southern drawl. "That you, Quinn?"

  Arthur pressed on, ignoring the man's challenge, walking straight at him.

  "Quinn," the man said again, his voice quivering as he raised his rifle.

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  "Not exactly," Arthur said as he kept pressing on. "Just your local—" he let his arm shackle and eyes flare with yellow light, "—acolyte."

  The man's face twisted in horror, and he fumbled for his rifle.

  Arthur reached behind his back, grabbed his hefty knife, secured it horizontally to his belt, and clicked it out of its thermoplastic sheath. The knife gleamed from the aurora runes of his shackle.

  The sentry cried out and leveled his AR-15.

  Arthur knew that rifle; he had cleaned and taken apart AR-15s, M-16s, M-4s, and other comparable platforms countless times; he knew it inside and out. He was also intimately familiar with Russian and Chinese equivalents.

  Arthur threw his hand forward, reached forward with his aurora, and grabbed the firing pin, holding it in place. It took virtually no aurora to hold something so small. Much more efficient than creating an invisible, impenetrable barrier that the other acolytes insisted on doing.

  The man frantically jerked the trigger, but the firing pin refused to strike. "No!" he cried, his eyes wide in horror.

  "Yes," Arthur snarled.

  The guard screamed and swung his rifle at Arthur's head.

  Arthur ducked slightly as he sidestepped, allowing the blunt club to pass inches from his face, which threw the guard off balance and exposed his side.

  Arthur struck. Throwing his arm under the sentry's exposed armpit and around his neck, he pulled him in and plunged his knife into the man's back repeatedly until he went limp.

  Arthur smiled. These weren't trained soldiers; they were trigger-happy thugs. This would be easy.

  He rummaged through the dead man's pockets, taking all of his bullets, a mixed collection of 5.56 and 223. Bullets were the currency of Ash, valued above food itself. After pocketing his prize, Arthur stripped the man of his coat and hat and donned them.

  "Now!" he ordered, entering the minds of his teeth. "Don't make noise, and kill quickly." It would only take one gunshot to raise the alarm.

  He felt the minds of his teeth grow excited. Kill—the one thing they were designed to do, their favorite order, the sole thing they loved.

  Arthur glanced down at the body at his feet. Already, the dirt animated, trickling up the sides of the dead man. It knew when something was dead and was ever ready to swallow. Ash slowly engulfed him, like a swarm of ants, until he was completely covered. Once covered, the dirt became smooth and hardened, encasing him in a personal digestive cocoon.

  Arthur sensed Ash's satisfaction at the morsel through his armband. This section of land would be satisfied for at least a day and a half, but elsewhere, where things weren't dying, it would become ravenous.

  Minutes later, he was joined by all nine of his teeth. They came bearing the bodies and gear of the remaining three guards.

  Arthur gathered their arms, bundled them with all their ammunition, and handed the collection to one of his teeth.

  "Put these in my armory," he instructed. The tooth's frustration at the directive permeated the beast like a radio wave. It wanted to kill, not be a pack animal, but its mind was weak. It had received an order, and so it obeyed.

  Dirt started to engulf the remaining bodies, and Arthur allowed it to do so undisturbed. While it would probably be more efficient to scatter them, the more meat there was in one place, the larger area of ground would be satisfied.

  "Get to your positions and wait for my command," Arthur said.

  He could discern their silent grumbles of protest. They were simple-minded creatures who understood little about the principles of strategy. They wanted to cry out their blood song and rush the walls, but Arthur's command acted as a leash.

  Arthur pulled the hat down over his eyes, shouldered his rifle, and set off towards the camp. Minutes later, the gate appeared in the night. His pulse sped up.

  "Now!"

  Like hounds unloosed, the cry of many teeth split the air. The screech raddled Arthur's teeth in his skull.

  "They're a-comin’, they're a-comin’!" he screamed in his best southern accent as he sprinted towards the entrance. "Open the gate!" The noise quickly brought many sentries to the spiked palisades.

  "It's Bart," someone called.

  "Open the gate!"

  The wail of teeth intensified as they got closer.

  Someone cracked the gate open, and Arthur slid in through the gap.

  The men inside muttered in surprise to the disturbance.

  "How many are there?"

  "Why are they so angry? Weren’t they here just a few days ago?"

  "Where are the others?"

  "All dead." Arthur coughed in the darkness. "Lock the gate, daggum it!"

  The men at arms rushed to the barricade with rifles and shotguns.

  “Flare!” One of them hollered.

  A single bright flare hissed into the outskirts of the camp. The bright red flickering light lit up the offering poles between the camp and the forest.

  The first tooth broke the treeline, and the defenders opened fire.

  Arthur cursed and covered his eyes with his hand to shield the glow that happened when he commanded his teeth. "Pull back, dammit!" he hissed. "Tease them on the edge of the light. Do not expose yourselves."

  The tooth veered back into the forest, hissing in protest.

  Arthur stalked deeper into camp as men rushed past him to join the others at the barricade. Once they stopped coming, he rested his rifle against a woodpile and unclipped his grenades from his belt.

  He grinned at the weight of the weapons. Then, pulling the pins and allowing the spring-loaded spoon levers to flip, he lobbed each of them at the more heavily occupied parts of the embankment. Pulling from his aurora to direct their trajectory, they landed at the feet of distracted men.

  Pulling his rifle, Arthur swung to the other side of the woodpile and waited.

  Two ground-rumbling explosions shook the ground, and men screamed. Arthur peered over the woodpile and counted eight men down. And he still hadn't been detected as an intruder.

  "What was that?" men hissed through curses and confusion.

  Arthur shouldered his rifle and sighted it at the hunter's nest behind the barricade. A perched man fired through a scoped rifle, and the weapon was of a high enough caliber to severely damage Arthur's teeth.

  Arthur aligned his iron sights and squeezed off a shot at the sniper.

  Wood chips sprayed the shooter, who recoiled, and Arthur cursed. A man with a different face shape and shooting posture had calibrated his sights. He nudged the weapon to the right and up to accommodate. The sniper's eyes found Arthur as a 5.56 round put a hole between them.

  The scoped rifle dropped from the nest.

  One other sniper's nest was on the opposite side of the gate, but Arthur couldn't get a clear shot from inside.

  Arthur smiled as he saw the silhouette of a tooth silently stealing up the tree under the second shooter hand over hand.

  Covering his eyes again so no one would see their light, he nudged into the tooth's mind. He had commanded this one to move in silently.

  Arthur's vision tinted yellow as he looked through the tooth's eyes. He heaved himself up slowly and silently with long-clawed arms until reaching the perch's bottom. He glimpsed the rifle sticking out as the marksmen fired shots at the darting shadows in the distance.

  He listened to the man sliding the bolt on his rifle after each round. Bolt action—perfect.

  In the tooth's mind, Arthur waited for the muzzle to spit fire before swinging up and snatching the surprised marksman by the throat as he pulled the bolt.

  In one swift motion, he hurled the man out of his perch. The shooter screamed as he plummeted down. Arthur watched as the man fell onto one of the barricade's spikes, skewering him straight through the back, leaving him suspended in the air, lifeless eyes gaping.

  Both marksmen down.

  Arthur released his hold on the tooth and returned to his own mind. Leaving his rifle, he turned to circle through the camp.

  "All men to the wall!" someone screamed as he ran past Arthur.

  Arthur whipped out his knife, cut the man's throat, and ripped the flare gun off of the man's belt before he hit the ground.

  He turned the flare gun to the biggest shelter, which was topped by dry, feathery leaves, and pulled the trigger. The burning flare streaked from the gun onto the roof, and the leaves instantly caught fire.

  Arthur dropped the gun and turned to find three men gawking at the fire behind him and the body at his feet with horror.

  They raised their guns, and Arthur threw up his hand, pinning his knife to his palm with his thumb. He siphoned aurora to lock each of the firing pins back. He grunted as he tried to focus on all three at once. They frantically jerked the triggers, but nothing happened.

  He pulled his pistol from his holster, and with two shots each, he dropped all three of them.

  He pried a shotgun from one of their hands before the dirt trickling up their bodies got to it and turned to the wall.

  He walked up to the barrier; several men still fired at the teeth on the outside.

  Arthur fired shell after shell into their backs, pumping the next slug into place until it was empty. He dropped it and pulled out his pistol before they even realized they were being attacked from behind. The remaining five all turned on him at once.

  Arthur cried in panic as he tried to lock onto their firing pins.

  They all fired, but nothing happened, and they cursed in confusion.

  Arthur felt his aurora draining much faster. Five points of focus required not only more concentration but also more energy.

  Soft footsteps thudded behind him. He turned to find a woman holding a revolver. Using his aurora, he held the hammer back. He grunted again, praying the men wouldn’t move too much and break his focus.

  Flames bellowed deeper in the camp as the fire carried over to a neighboring structure.

  Another man arrived on the scene carrying a drawn hunting bow.

  Arthur cursed. With the amount of aurora it would take to hold back the poundage of the bow string, he would be out of aurora in no time.

  The man loosed the arrow.

  In last-minute desperation, Arthur siphoned aurora directly into his body. His blood and nerves buzzed with power.

  Time didn't slow down by any stretch, but his movements sped up, and his mind became clear. In fact, his hold on the other six guns became more focused. He shifted back, and the arrow passed inches from his chest.

  He shot the archer three times and stopped pulling aurora into his body.

  Something hissed, and a crossbow bolt punctured his shoulder blade, piercing through his shoulder in front.

  Arthur screamed and dropped to the ground, his hold on the firearms slipping from his control.

  Arthur spun to see a teenage boy, wide-eyed, holding a crossbow.

  Damn, where had he come from?

  Apparently, the others had given up on their guns because no shots followed.

  "Good shot, William!" one of them cried.

  Arthur dropped his pistol and pulled out his knife again. He siphoned aurora from his shackle and let it flow through him into his knife. The knife hummed as glowing symbols etched themselves into the blade, and the edge burned with power. The heat and energy ate away at the steel.

  The remaining people stepped back, dumbfounded.

  "He’s an acolyte!" one of them screamed.

  Arthur swiped at the bolt's broad head, jutting out of his shoulder, and cut the barbed blade clean off, leaving the aluminum projectile glowing red where it was severed.

  Once he severed the flow of aurora, the knife returned to normal, but the edge was worn and chipped.

  The woman turned the revolver on him and pulled the trigger.

  The pistol bucked, and the bullet skimmed his leg.

  Aware that their guns were working, the others turned their arms on him.

  Arthur quickly locked back the firing pins, sweat dripping down his face.

  "William, get him again! I don't think he can jam that crossbow," someone shouted.

  Arthur growled as he fell back to the closed gate. The gang surrounded him—all but William, who was frantically trying to load his crossbow.

  Of course, Arthur could stop a bolt if he had to, but he wasn't as familiar with crossbows, so he couldn't simply jam it.

  "We did it!" one of them cried in disbelief. "We beat an acolyte!"

  Arthur stepped back, his back pressing against the front gate, and he smiled.

  William's eyes grew wide in fear.

  "Is that what you think?” Arthur spat.

  William threw down the crossbow and turned and ran.

  "Willy!" one of them called. "Willy, where you goin’? We won!"

  "He's a smart boy," Arthur said. "Smarter than you."

  He pulled the bolt on the gate and rolled out of the way.

  The gate ruptured inward as snarling and snapping teeth poured into the camp and swarmed the remaining residents.

  Arthur pulled the bolt out through his shoulder. Now, it was time to find his sons.

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