No.
The word hit me before my breath did.
For half a second, the world stopped in a way I had never known it could. Not slowed. Not blurred. Stopped. Nate hung there in front of me, lifted off the ground by a claw punched clean through his chest, blood spilling down the lion's foreleg in thick, dark sheets, and nothing in me could understand it fast enough.
His body trembled around the claw.
His mouth opened.
Blood poured from it.
"Mark…" he choked, his voice wet and broken and hardly even a voice at all.
Three heads stared at me.
The middle one held him pinned there, enormous golden eyes fixed on me with a calm so terrible it made the whole thing worse. The left head bared its teeth in a slow, ugly grin, scar-split muzzle slick with old blood. The right one watched without blinking, pale eyes cold and flat and almost human in the way they settled on my face.
"Run."
The word tore out of Nate like it hurt to say.
Then the middle head flexed its paw.
I heard something break inside him.
A short, ugly sound escaped his throat, barely more than air forced through blood, and his body jerked once. His eyes widened. His hand twitched toward me, fingers shaking in the air like he was trying to reach for something he could no longer feel.
"Nate—"
The lion moved.
It didn't even look difficult. It just lifted its paw slightly, then flung him aside.
His body hit the broken wall of a nearby house hard enough to crack stone. He slid down it in a smear of blood and collapsed in a heap at the base, limp in a way that told me everything before my mind would let me think it.
No.
No, no, no.
Something broke loose inside my chest.
I don't know if I screamed his name or just thought it so hard it felt like a scream.
The lion stepped forward.
One step. Heavy enough to shake grit loose from the ruined roofs above us.
Then another.
Its paws were too big. Its body was too large. The smell of it hit me in a hot wave, blood, old meat, wet fur, rot, and something burnt underneath it all, like its breath had passed through fire too many times. Each of the three heads moved separately, scanning the road, the bodies, me.
The left head let out a low rumbling growl.
The right head inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring as if it liked the scent of terror.
The middle one kept watching me.
Waiting.
A human being would have rushed. A normal monster would have lunged.
This thing advanced like it knew there was nowhere I could go.
Something cold and savage flooded through me so fast it almost felt clean.
It killed him.
It killed Nate.
My hand was still slick with the blood of the beginner-class monster. The iron pipe lay on the road where I had dropped it, dark and wet and meaningless against something like this.
The lion took another step.
The left head opened its mouth.
Rows of teeth gleamed.
I ran at it.
Not away.
At it.
The world snapped into violent motion all at once. My boots hammered the stone. My breath tore in and out of me. I snatched the pipe off the ground as I passed and gripped it so hard the edges bit into my palm.
The lion's left head let out something almost like a bark, short, sharp, amused.
Then it lunged.
I threw myself low on instinct.
A paw swept over me with enough force to stir the dust from the street and slam air against my back. Claws flashed past where my head had been an instant earlier. I hit the ground on one shoulder, rolled, came up badly, and drove forward anyway, pipe raised in both hands.
I aimed for the nearest throat.
The middle head snapped down.
Its jaws closed around the pipe mid-swing with a clang of teeth against iron. The impact jarred my arms so hard my hands went numb. The lion wrenched its head sideways. My entire body went with it.
I left the ground.
For a split second I was airborne, still gripping the pipe like an idiot, dragged by something so much stronger than me it was almost laughable. Then the pipe ripped free from my hands and I crashed into the stones shoulder-first, pain exploding down my side.
I rolled once and tried to scramble up.
Too slow.
The right head came at me from the side.
Not the body. Not the paw. Just the head, fast as a thrown spear, jaws open wide enough to take half my torso. I twisted blindly. Teeth snapped shut inches from my ribs with a crack like closing gates. Hot breath blasted across my chest. The force of it knocked me sideways and I slammed into a broken cart.
Wood splintered under me.
I barely felt it.
I pushed off the wreckage, half-standing, half-falling, and saw Nate lying crumpled against the wall in the corner of my vision.
Still not moving.
Something hot and wild ripped through me again.
I grabbed a shattered length of wood from the cart and rammed it at the lion's nearest eye.
The left head jerked back just enough that the jagged point scraped across bone instead of plunging in. It left a thin dark line beneath the eye. Nothing more.
Nothing.
The lion actually paused.
All three heads went still for one impossible second.
Then the left one snarled.
The sound hit me like a physical blow.
The body moved with it, faster than anything that large should have been able to move, and one of the front paws came down across my chest.
I saw the claws.
I tried to jump backward.
Too late.
Pain split through me in four burning lines from shoulder to stomach. My body flew backward before my mind caught up. I hit the ground, skidded, and felt warmth spill instantly under my torn shirt.
I sucked in a breath and choked on it.
Everything went white around the edges.
The lion prowled forward again.
It wasn't hurrying.
It didn't need to.
I tried to rise. My arms shook so badly I nearly collapsed immediately. My vision doubled. Blood ran warm over my stomach and side, dripping from me onto the street in quick, heavy drops.
The cuts weren't deep enough.
Not yet.
But they had opened me.
The middle head lowered until its eyes were level with mine. Close enough now that I could see the cracks through one golden iris, the dried blood caked between strands of mane, the slow pulse in the wet flesh of its nose.
It knew.
It knew I was nothing to it.
The left head leaned in next, lips pulling back from yellowed fangs. A string of saliva swung loose and splattered the stones by my hand.
The right head watched.
Always watched.
I pushed myself up anyway.
My legs barely obeyed. I staggered, one hand pressed uselessly to my side, and saw the iron pipe lying just behind the lion's foreleg.
Too far.
The thing's chest expanded.
All three heads lifted slightly.
For one insane heartbeat I thought it was about to pounce again.
Instead the middle head struck.
Just the head. Just the skull slamming forward like a battering ram.
It hit me square in the chest.
I felt my ribs give.
The impact launched me backward into the side of a house so hard the rest of the wall collapsed around me. Stone and timber rained down. Something sharp gouged my leg. My head hit wood or rock or both and for a moment the whole world blinked out.
When it rushed back in, I was on my hands and knees in a shower of dust, coughing blood onto the rubble beneath me.