When we caught up with the keepers, we found them, along with a dozen others, battling a large di nosaur that, despite all the Grotesquerie's safety precautions, had escaped its enclosure. I recognized the beast as Titanus, an oversized version of a T. Rex that had been captured in a hidden valley on Earth, and from his less than placid demeanor, it was apparent that his time in captivity hadn't mellowed him. The dinosaur stood on the path, roaring in fury, bleeding legs wrapped in tanglethorn, while Frankensteinian keepers jabbed him with their energy lances. The keepers were tall and their lances long enough to reach Titanus' abdomen and sides, and every time a lance struck the dinosaur's leathery hide, there was a bright discharge of crimson energy accompanied by a sizzling sound. Titanus thrashed and tried to get away from his tormentors, but the tanglethorn lining the path was doing its job, holding him in place while the keepers fought to subdue him.
As impressive as the sight of a dinosaur in full battle fury was, our attention was immediately drawn to a large chunk of meat caught in Titanus' dagger-like teeth – a chunk that looked disturbingly like the upper half of Tavi's body. Like most Darkfolk, lykes can take a lot of damage and survive, but getting bitten in half is a damned serious injury no matter what species you are, and though it was difficult to tell with Titanus shaking his head back and forth and roaring in pain and anger, Tavi appeared to show no signs of life.
"We have to get Tavi out of there!" Devona said. "As long as his brain's intact, there's a chance he'll be able to regenerate the rest of his body. But if Titanus swallows the rest of him…"
Devona didn't complete the thought. She didn't need to. Once Tavi's brain had been dissolved by the digestive juices in the dinosaur's stomach, neither magic nor science would be able to bring him back. We had to rescue Tavi – or what was left of him – but the question was how? We couldn't exactly walk up to Titanus, give him a stern look, and say, "Bad dinosaur! You spit that out now!"
"I think those keepers could make better use of their lances," Devona said, and without waiting for a reply, she dashed toward the closest of the Frankenstein monsters.
"What's she going to do?" Shamika asked.
"Something ridiculously brave and incredibly foolish," I said with admiration. I turned to Varney. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
He gave me a look that said he should be trying to come up with some excuse to act, but then he obviously decided to hell with it. His expression changed, and I watched as Varney the slightly airheaded hippy cameraman once more became a cool, determined man of action. He raced after Devona, and I followed at the best speed I was capable of. Shamika kept pace with me, but I didn't worry about her. Maybe she would summon a few hundred chiranha to show Titanus what it was like to be someone's dinner.
Devona reached a keeper and snatched the energy lance out of his hand. The Frankenstein monster might've towered over my love, but she's a hell of lot stronger than she looks, and she'd had the additional advantage of taking the keeper by surprise. She flipped the lance into a throwing position, aimed, and hurled it at Titanus' open mouth. The metal rod streaked toward the dinosaur, its tip glowing a baleful red, and struck the roof of his mouth with a crackling blast of released energy. Titanus, unsurprisingly, was less than thrilled with this development, and he opened his mouth wide and let out an ear-splitting cry that was half roar, half scream.
The moment the lance struck Titanus, Varney leaped into the air and transformed into a whirling black vortex of shadow that flew toward the dinosaur like a miniature dark tornado. I'd never seen Varney assume his travel form before, and I was impressed as he flew swiftly up to Titanus' mouth, wrapped his shadowy substance around Tavi, pulled him free of the dinosaur's teeth, and carried him back down to us, keeping the lyke aloft by spinning beneath him to create a cushion of air. Once Varney deposited Tavi gently on the ground, the vampire reassumed his normal shape, and Devona and I grabbed hold of Tavi under his arms and together carried him a dozen yards to get him out of further harm's way. Varney and Shamika followed, and we laid him down gently once again and examined him.
It wasn't pretty. The lower half of his body from mid-abdomen down was gone, and bits of viscera dangled from his open body cavity, though there was little blood. His shapeshifter healing ability had already cut off most of the bleeding, and it was struggling to grow new skin to close off the huge gaping wound where his abdomen had been. It was slow going, though. Tavi's injuries were incredibly extensive, even for a lyke, and repairing them was pushing his system to its limits.
Devona placed a pair of fingers against the artery in Tavi's neck. "His pulse is faint and erratic, but at least his heart's still beating."
As if her words had roused him, Tavi's eyes flickered open and a long sigh escaped his lips. He began speaking then, pausing now and then to catch his breath. As he spoke, his wildform slowly gave way to his human guise.
"I… tracked Papa Chatha's scent to the… dinosaur's enclosure, and-" He broke off coughing, and bloody spittle flecked his mouth. "the trail dead-ended there. I… called you, Matt, and as I was talking, somehow… the enclosure's force field deactivated, and… the dinosaur got free. I was… so shocked that I just stood there." He looked down at what remained of his body and gave us a weak smile. "And as you can see, the beast was… rather hungry."
Devona gently touched Tavi's cheek. "Don't try to talk anymore. We need to get you to the Fever House."
Given enough time, Tavi might have been able to regenerate the lower half of his body on his own, but the doctors at the Fever House could speed up that process considerably, and help make him a damn sight more comfortable while he healed.
"Lazlo's still waiting for us outside," I said.
"I'll carry him." Varney stepped forward and bent down to pick up Tavi, but as he did I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't the keepers and Titanus. The tanglethorn held the dinosaur fast and the keepers kept harrying him with their energy lances, and though the dinosaur still roared his fury to the world, his exertions were beginning to lessen as the fight left him. It was only a matter of time before the keepers managed to subdue him and force him back into his enclosure. The movement I saw was much smaller and low to the ground. I had the sense of small black shapes moving silently along the paths around us, though when I turned my head to look at them, I saw nothing.
I knew it wasn't my imagination, though, for Shamika was turning her head back and forth, as if her eyes were tracking something that mine couldn't quite catch, and in a soft, frightened voice she said, "This is bad. This is very bad."
I started to ask her what was wrong, but I was cut off by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie.
Tavi drew in a wheezing breath, and then said, "That's exactly what it sounded like… when the dinosaur got free."
The keepers broke off their battle with Titanus and looked around, startled and – I was more than a little disturbed to see – scared. The keepers had been produced by Victor Baron in his Foundry, and while he endows his creations with free will so they aren't merely the equivalent of organic machines, they do share certain qualities: strength, a strong constitution, and an almost complete lack of fear. So if the keepers were frightened by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie, I knew we were in some truly deep shit.
We felt it first – vibrations beneath our feet as if an earthquake was happening, followed by assorted roars, bellows, growls, and shrieks, a horrifying symphony of rage, malice and bloodlust. All around us gigantic creatures shambled forth from their enclosures, freed from their captivity to once again run rampant and wreak destruction on whatever was unfortunate enough to be in their path. Which in this case was us.