Dressed in the tattered remnants of its suit, the demon-spawn crawled towards them. It leaped, crossing the gap between the trailer and the truck as easily as she jumped across cracks in the sidewalk when she was a little girl.

“Down, Sarah," Rachel said. Seconds later, a taloned fist crashed through the back window, spraying them all with shards of glass. Yasna yelped with pain as a piece glanced off the back of her hand, drawing blood. Josh wheeled in his seat, firing his gun through the window. She thought she saw Kincaid hit, but if he was, he shrugged off the wounds with contemptuous ease.

His clawed hands reached through the window, groping for Jeremy. He hunched forward in his seat, his hands frozen to the wheel like a sea-captain Lashed to the mast. "You want me?" he screamed, his voice taut with terror.

“Come and get me, you fucking bastard! I'm right here! Come on!"

Through the screams and howling wind and the din of the attack, Yasna thought she could hear the grotesque chuckle of the beast. It withdrew from the back window. One hand gripped the frame of the cab of the truck, ready to swing around and rip open the driver's-side door.

As it pivoted, Jeremy's lips moved in an unvoiced prayer. He pressed the pedal to the floor, and the truck leaped forward as if it had been stung. Shouting incoherently, he jerked the wheel to the Left, bringing the truck speeding past the concrete abutments which held up the Ross

Avenue overpass.

Splat!

Even superhuman strength was no match for physics. The track brushed by the abutment doing nearly seventy miles an hour. Taken utterly by surprise, Kincaid had time for no more than a hoarse shout of fear before the pillar peeled him off the truck like a fingernail flicking away an orange seed. Yasna looked in the side mirror, but could see little more than a flailing, tumbling pile of bloody rags receding in the distance.

“Well,” Jeremy said, his voice satisfied.

“That's the end of that.”

“Ummm...no, Jeremy. It isn't," Rachel's weak voice replied from behind them. As Yasna turned, she struggled back into her seat from her place on the floor. Her daughter, whom she had protected with her own body, followed. Shards of glass glittered in her dark hair Like spangled diamonds.

“What? Are you kidding me? Nothing human could survive that."

“No. Nothing human could."

It took only a second for the import of her words to strike home. "Oh."

Chastened, Jeremy turned away, slowing down so he could take the exit to the expressway.

“So, Dad," came Sarah's weak voice from behind them. "Did you get the optional insurance when you rented the trailer?”

They pulled into the driveway of the house forty-five minutes later.

Josh exited the truck, brushing glass shards away from his suit jacket, and gaped at the trailer. It Looked Like someone had gone after it with a butcher knife the size of a lamppost. Shredded metal hung off of it in strips and huge holes were punched in the sides.

Alex! Maria! Althea!

He rushed to the back and pulled up the door, afraid of what he might see inside. His son knelt at Althea's side, looked up briefly, then back at the bed.

“Hey, Pop," he said carelessly.

“Help me and Maria get her out of here, huh?"

“Interesting ride home?" he asked, trying to match his son's nonchalant attitude.

Alex shrugged. "I've had worse."