In the split-second flash Astrid saw at least three coyotes, and Cigar mobbed by them, and a fourth just a few feet away, lips back in a snarl, all of it freeze-framed for the duration of the flash.

  The noise was awesome.

  She pushed herself to one knee, aimed at the place where the fourth coyote had been standing, and pulled the trigger again. Nothing! She’d forgotten to jack another round in. She did it, aimed shakily at blank space, and fired again.

  BOOM!

  This time she was expecting the flash and saw that the coyote she’d aimed at was no longer there. Cigar was no longer mobbed by the beasts. His terrible, white marble eyes stared.

  Something had happened to the coyotes. They had exploded.

  The flash wasn’t enough to show more. Just that their insides were where their outsides had been.

  Silence.

  Darkness.

  Cigar panting. Astrid, too.

  The smell of coyote guts and gunpowder.

  It was a while before Astrid could master her voice. Before she could reassemble her shattered thoughts into something like coherence.

  “Is the little boy here?” Astrid asked.

  “Yes,” Cigar said.

Fear, Chapter 31