Free Brothers of Chaos (The Unstoppable Titans Book 1) by Jerry Hart

and then crushed the can in his hand. “Maybe, but not now.”
    Owen thought
about Chris’s last words for a moment. Owen himself had never been in love, but
he figured if he ever did finally meet the girl of his dreams, he’d tell her
immediately how he felt about her. He couldn’t understand why Chris was
refusing to take action. What was he afraid of?
    Chris tossed
the can toward the river. It landed right on the edge of the water. Owen
started climbing down to it.
    “First
you’re contributing to underage drinking, and now you’re littering.” He reached
for the can. “You’re totally going to hell—”
    Something
burst out of the water and snapped at him. Water sprayed him in the face; he
jumped backward. Chris crawled down and grabbed Owen, pulling him back.
    They both
watched in amazement as a small, dark creature began chewing on the beer can.
It had dark brown fur all over its body. Its face was short and squashed, its
legs and arms tiny. Its large yellow eyes glowed in the darkness like little
flashlights. Chris and Owen didn’t know what to do—they couldn’t move.
    The creature
continued to eat the beer can Chris had discarded. Owen could see the creature
appeared to have gills on its neck and reflective scaly skin under its fur,
like a fish. But this was no fish he’d ever seen before; fish didn’t usually
tend to walk on all fours. This must’ve been some kind of mutant, though it
reminded Owen of a Chihuahua, only with large, bulbous eyes on the sides of its
head, like a big-eyed goldfish.
    The
fish-creature finished its can-snack and looked up to Chris and Owen. It tilted
its head to the side as if studying them. It was actually a little cute, if you
looked at it from an angle, which was what Owen was doing. He reached his hand
out slowly. Chris tried to stop him, but it was too late. The creature stepped
forward and licked Owen’s fingers.
    “I think he
likes me,” he said, laughing.
    “What makes
you so sure it’s a he?”
    “Because I
can see his privates from here.”
    Suddenly the
creature bit down on Owen’s hand. He screamed and tried to shake it off, but it
was biting hard. Chris crawled down to him and grabbed the creature, trying to
pry its mouth open enough for Owen to pull his hand free. It let go of him and
snapped at Chris. Owen took this opportunity to kick it back into the water.
And then they crawled back up the slope.
    Owen studied
his hand. It was stinging and bleeding badly.
    “What the
hell was that thing?” Chris asked.
    “It was a
fish, I think. A … dogfish,” Owen responded, groaning at his choice of words. A
“dogfish”? Really?
    “That was
the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen,” Chris added.
    With that,
the fish-creature burst out of the water again and ran up the slope toward
them. Chris and Owen ran into the woods, climbing up the nearest tree. The
dogfish tried furiously to climb the tree as well, but it kept sliding back
down to the ground.
    “Well,
that’s a good thing, I suppose,” Chris snorted. He and Owen were twenty feet
off the ground. The branches of the tree were thick.
    Down below,
the creature crouched as low to the ground as it could manage, as if it were
preparing to leap. And then, it did. It leapt to a quarter of the length of the
tree. Chris and Owen were almost at the very top. The creature leapt again,
clinging to the tree as if its life depended on it. Now it was halfway up.
    “Damn, it’s
a determined little sucker,” said Owen as he and Chris crawled across the
branch and jumped to the closest tree. Chris lost his grip on the branch they
had landed on and nearly fell. Owen grabbed his hand, but he too lost his grip
and they both fell a few feet down the tree. They landed hard on another
branch.
    Owen looked
up and saw the dogfish now on their tree. It was dropping down, branch by branch,
to get to them.
    “Climb
down!” Owen shouted. “It’s coming!”
    Chris felt
for the next branch below him with his feet. He found it