I stood and fished it out. I was just about to take a good look when Reyes grabbed my arm again.

“I said get her out or spend the rest of your days drinking your meals through a straw,” he said to Garrett.

Wrenching out of Reyes’s grip, I stuffed the license in my back pocket, then jammed my hands on my h*ps as I turned to him. He could be such a bully. “That is just about enough,” I said. I lifted an index finger and poked his chest. That’d show him.

But just as I was about to continue my tirade, I caught a glimpse of something behind him. Something dark and sleek like a panther, only five times bigger. I couldn’t see the whole thing at once. Its coat appeared and disappeared as the muscles underneath it rolled with movement like very well-controlled smoke. Then I saw a set of amber eyes. They disappeared the second I focused on them, to be replaced with a glimpse of an ear, tall and pointed. Or was it a horn?

It all happened so fast, I’d barely had time to draw a breath when a massive paw materialized and swiped through the air. In the same instant, another being on the other side of Reyes surfaced out of the void of emptiness, smoke winding around it as its monstrous jaws opened wide and sank into Reyes’s shoulder.

Before either of us could react, a third beast clamped down on my calf and jerked my feet out from under me. I hit the concrete hard and it dragged me across the floor. But all I saw was Reyes pushed to his knees as he tried to fight off the beast.

A searing pain shot through me when the Dealer caught my arms and pulled. I thought my leg would come off, but the beast let go and, in a collage of appearing and disappearing sleek black muscles, attacked the Dealer himself. He tried to scramble out of the way, but five slash marks scored his chest, streaming blood in an eerie pattern across his shirt. The last thing I saw before grabbing Zeus from the back of my pants was a glimpse of long white teeth as they opened behind the Dealer’s head.

I heard bones crunch and a final sharp crack that echoed along the walls. The monster had broken the Dealer’s neck. He went limp, crumpling to the floor as I lunged forward and sank the blade blindly into the now invisible hellhound. But the blade did its job. The beast yelped, materialized in its entirety for a split second, then disappeared. I sat stunned for a solid five seconds. It was massive, the size of an elephant, darker than a starless sky, its coat sleek like wet ink.

“Get her out!” Reyes shouted, catapulting me to attention.

Garrett obeyed without hesitation. He wrapped his arms around me protectively and dragged me across the floor kicking and screaming.

“No!” I shouted, grabbing for Reyes. Blood gushed out of the wound at his shoulder faster than I imagined possible, making me dizzy and nauseated with fear.

He fell forward onto his hands, and only then did I see the wounds on his back. The beast’s paw had hit home, slicing Reyes open, shredding him.

I slashed through the air, trying to hit a target that might be lurking there, invisible to us. When we reached the door, I fought harder, but Garrett was not budging. He wanted out of there and he was not about to leave me. Just then I realized Artemis had appeared after all. She barked and growled at what I could only assume was a beast. I couldn’t see it, but apparently she could. I had a target.

“Garrett, wait!” I shouted, but he kept his hold strong, not giving me an inch this time.

Until he did.

His hold broke and I fell forward, my limbs splaying across the floor gracelessly, Zeus wrenched from my hand to slide under the prep table. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Garrett crash against a far wall and tumble to the ground, unconscious.

Fear engulfed me utterly. I forced myself to go calm and concentrate on one thing.

“Quiesce,” I said, slowing time, grinding it to a begrudging halt. And in the brief second between the momentum of time and its opposite, its constant, they materialized. In all that melee, all that carnage, there were only three of them.

They disappeared again, but in that split second I got a good look. I’d never seen anything even remotely similar to these creatures. A cross between a panther and a Doberman, but the size of a small elephant on some serious steroids, they were hulking beasts. Their growls were a mixture of a lion and a gorilla’s, deep and guttural. Volatile and angry. I could still see the sleekness of their muscles as they moved, just barely at first, as though gaining their bearings, as though adjusting to the shift in time. After a couple more seconds, they were able to move fully, their features like silver dust outlining their invisible bodies as they turned on me, all three of them, in perfect unison.

I froze in place, my heart stopping as I tried to see them. As I tried to assess from which direction the deathblow would come. One swipe of their massive paws, one graze of their shimmering teeth, and I would cease to exist.

It killed me that Satan would win. That he’d get his wish. That I would die before having the chance to face him, because I had every intention of doing that very thing once Beep was born safely on earth. But he was essentially killing both of us and guaranteeing his chance of survival for many millennia to come, because according to the prophecy, it wasn’t me who would take him on, but the precious cargo I was now carrying.

As one hellhound drifted toward me, silvery black dust shifting and rolling with each step it took, I dived for the prep table. I barely fit underneath it as I scrambled for cover, pushing and scraping against the filthy floor, but I couldn’t let Satan win. Sadly, I couldn’t reach Zeus from my vantage either, so I went for the wooden spoon I’d seen earlier.