Free Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) by Jonathan R. Stanley

in my gut like that unsettling tremble and surge of saliva right before you lean over to purge.  But I don’t vomit.  Instead I gasp.  Leaning into myself, clutching my chest, Sabetha grabs a hold of my arm.
    “Again?” she hisses.
    I manage a nod.
    “Bull. Move ,” she orders, slinging the duffle bag over her shoulder and pulling the strap tight across her chest like a seatbelt.  With an iron clamp on my bicep she starts down the track.  I limp on, then get my wind back and soon we’re nearing a station platform’s light.
    There’s a rumbling behind us, and then a growl.  As Betha and I jump down and sprint across the tracks, I hear Bullworth skid to a halt, undoubtedly wanting to engage the unknown rather than flee from it.  The vacant platform is just another hundred paces away and my senses are redoubling every foot closer we get to the lights and away from the unnatural darkness.  As we both leap the last twenty-nine feet up and onto the platform in a single stride, a deep thunder trembles behind us.
    Normally it would be foolish to turn and identify the cause of a noise before getting to safety, but Bullworth is still in the darkness.  And though the idea of him being in grave danger is hard to imagine, Sabetha and I have survived this long by always keeping an open mind.  Still, I can only sense a spitting distance into the gloom while standing on the platform.  Waiting too long is just asking for it.  A second later I grab Betha and head for the stairs.
    A step into my movement, Bullworth comes soaring out of the darkness, crashing across the platform and through one of the cement divider walls.  I try to picture what could have done such a thing to a two-thousand pound werewolf, but then get the answer to my question as I stop at the foot of the stairs to the street.
    The largest tunnel dweller I have ever seen is snarling at us from just outside the light and in the next instant the creature is airborne and flying towards us.  To my side there is a great roar as an enraged Bullworth explodes from a pile of cement and I am caught in the middle of it all like a deer in headlights.  Sabetha has her hand on my collar and pulls me back into the cover of the stairway wall.  In the split second that our attacker is illuminated, my abilities instinctively kick-in and slow everything down. 
    It’s a mostly black and cancerous looking blob of flesh about the size of a large SUV, but with stubby, muscular frog legs.  The rest of it is almost unidentifiable.  A single red-orange eye, the diameter of a trash can, looks at me from roughly the side of a face, though none of the other important parts of a face are present.  As the creature leaps past us, smashing a chunk out of the stairway wall, I can see that its arms, while ape-like with big humanish hands, are not parallel with the rest of its body.  Instead, the shoulders seem to be perpendicular to the hips: one arm on its chest, the other on its back.
    And then it’s gone, past my field of view as it soars over the platform.  Sabetha has pulled us to the top of the stairs.  Seeing me still dazed, she grabs my pistol from its holster and steps in front of the next car to near us.
    “Get out,” she says leveling the barrel at the driver; it’s his only chance to cooperate. Three seconds later he is still frozen in fear.  She fires and then pulls the dead man from his vehicle.  With a heave, she tosses me into the passenger seat.  I sit upright just in time to see the creature leap from underground through the stairway, its massive body smashing the sides of the subway entrance with an explosive, ground-quaking boom . 
    It sails over the small sedan, taking Sabetha with it in a blur and showering everything in debris and pulverized cement.  Tracking it through the air, I sense Sabetha squirm free and land a good distance away.  The dweller hits a building front with a crash of windows and bricks and pushes off, rebounding at the car.  I