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hovered with a sigh. “Skip’s response.”

CHAPTER 11

    Jennifer

    Jennifer and Jonathan banked lower until they could see greater detail in the swarm that worked its way toward the bridge. It moved slowly but purposefully, seething and clicking.
    “They look like drawings,” she observed.
    “I agree. I don’t get it . . .” He dipped down farther, until he was under the bridge’s arch. Jennifer looked around nervously for armed patrols, but no one else was near. No sentries? It was as if Hank assumed he could do what he did and suffer no consequence.
    Well? Have there been?
    She dropped to her father’s altitude. The creatures were on the bridge now. They did not climb the beams of the arch, but rather stayed on the road. There was definitely purpose in their movement.
    “They’re plainly sent to do something. Why send creatures with no thickness?” Jonathan mused. “What could they do? How could they attack or do anything useful if they don’t exist in the same space we exist in?”
    “Maybe it’s temporary,” Jennifer guessed. “If they can’t attack, they can’t be attacked, either. Putting them in two-dimensional space would make for an effective delivery system.”
    “Delivering what? And where?”
    They simultaneously looked at city hall, as the creatures marched under them.
    “Oh, crap,” she finally said. “We’re going to have to save him, aren’t we?”
    “I’m afraid so, ace. And it’s the two of us—no time to get help. One of us disables the guards, the other evacuates the complex.”
    “I’ll disable the guards. You want to save Hank Blacktooth, you do it.”
    “Good luck.”
    “Get bent, Dad. Love you.”
    “Love you, too.”
    It occurred to Jennifer, as she bolted at the tower atop city hall, that those words had an excellent chance of being the last they ever said to each other.
    All because we have to pull their asses out of the fire when they caused the problem in the first place.
    Perhaps that’s not totally fair, she argued with herself as she dipped below one sniper’s shot and flashed to the left to avoid the second. There must be more than beaststalkers working here, just like there are innocents working at the hospital.
    She flipped into human form as she entered the tower, knocked out the two snipers with the mahogany hilts of her crafted daggers, and tossed their guns out the window she had accessed. People who come in to work, want to do a good job, and go home to kiss their kids. Families like the family you thought you had two years ago.
    She barely could make out the shape of her father as he approached the tower. He would be counting on her to clear a path, so she got to work.
    So for all the janitors and secretaries, she continued to convince herself as she slipped down the tower stairs, all the network admins and evidence handlers. A guard positioned on a landing couldn’t process the sight of the teenaged girl coming at him until he was knocked out by a roundhouse kick. We’ll do it for them. We’ll evacuate them first, as it should be. Of course, they need a reason to leave . . .
    Already back in dragon form, she burst out the stairwell door into the main lobby, a room two stories high, where half a dozen police officers stood guard, three up top and three below. Before they could react, their eyes told them the entire building was beginning to shake and melt. Jennifer added touches to the mass illusion, ones she had picked up from practicing the ancient creeper-dragon skill for the last several months: orange monkeys with elephant ears came shinnying down the grooved columns that dominated the domed chamber, and the stench of sulfur peeled off the elaborately painted plaster walls.
    And if Hank Blacktooth manages to get out in all the commotion, she told herself as her invisible father patted her on the back for her fine work and darted off to the mayor’s office, well then . . . no plan is perfect.
    The officers became the best sales force for