Free New Title 1 by F. Paul Wilson Page B

Vicks? What's the matter?"
    "The monster! The monster that took me to the boat! It's here! Don't let it get me!"
    "It's okay, it's okay," he said soothingly in her ear. "No one can hurt you when I'm around."
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gia hurrying toward them. He gently peeled Vicky off and transferred her to her mother. Vicky immediately wrapped her arms and legs around Gia.
    Gia’s expression fluctuated between fear and anger. "My God, what happened?"
    "I think she believes she saw a rakosh."
    Gia's eyes widened. "But that's—"
    "Impossible. Right. But maybe she saw something that looks like one."
    "No!" Vicky cried from where her face was buried against her mother's neck. "It's the one that took me! I know it is!"
    "Okay, Vicks." Jack gave her trembling back a gentle rub. "I'll check it out." He nodded to Gia. "Why don't you take her outside."
    "We're on our way. After what I've seen here, I wouldn't be half surprised if she was right."
    Jack watched Gia slip through the crowd, holding her daughter tight against her. When they were out of sight he turned and headed in the direction Vicky had come.
    Wouldn't be half surprised myself, he thought.
    Not that there was a single chance in hell of one of Kusum's rakoshi being alive. They'd all died last summer in the water between Governor's Island and the Battery. He'd seen to that. His incendiary bombs had crisped them in the hold of the ship that housed them. One of them did make it to shore, the one he'd dubbed Scar-lip, but it had swum back out into the burning water and never returned.
    The rakoshi were dead. All of them. The species was extinct.
    Next to a stall containing a woman with a third eye in the center of her forehead that supposedly "Sees ALL!" sat an old circus cart with iron bars on its open side, one of the old cages-on-wheels once used to transport and display lions and tigers and such. The sign above it said "The Amazing Sharkman!" Jack noticed people leaning across the rope border; they'd peer into the cage, then back off with uneasy shrugs.
    This deserved a look.
    Jack pushed to the front and squinted into the dimly lit cage. Something slumped in the left rear corner, head down, chin on chest, immobile. Something huge, a seven-footer at least. Dark-skinned, manlike and yet . . . undeniably alien.
    Jack felt the skin along the back of his neck tighten as ripples of warning shot down his spine. He knew that shape. But that was all it was. A shape. So immobile. It had to be a dummy of some sort, or a guy in a costume. A damn good costume. No wonder Vicky had been terrified.
    But it couldn't be the real thing. Couldn't be . . .
    Jack ducked under the rope and took a few tentative steps closer to the cage, sniffing the air. One of the things he remembered about the rakoshi was their reek, like rotting meat. He caught a trace of it here, but that could have been from spilled garbage. Nothing like the breath-clogging stench he remembered.
    He moved close enough to touch the bars but didn't. The thing was a damn good dummy. He could almost swear it was breathing.
    Jack whistled and said, "Hey you in there!"
    The thing didn't budge, so he rapped on one of the iron bars.
    "Hey—!"
    Suddenly it moved, the eyes snapping open as the head came up, deep yellow eyes that almost seemed to glow in the shadows.
    Imagine the offspring of a tryst between a giant hairless gorilla and a mako shark: cobalt skin, hugely muscled, no neck worth mentioning, no external ears, narrow slits for a nose.
    Spike-like talons, curved for tearing, emerged from the tips of the three thick fingers on each hand as the yellow eyes fixed on Jack. The lower half of its huge shark-like head seemed to split as the jaw opened to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. It uncoiled its legs and slithered across the metal flooring toward the front of the cage.
    Along with the instinctive revulsion, memories surged back: the cargo hold full of their dark shapes and glowing eyes, the unearthly chant,