I would have preferred a bit of witty dialogue first, a Spade and Guttman in the Maltese Fal. That would have been fun, at least. But I ’t say I didn’t see the attaing.

  I think my oppo expected me not to.

  It came at me from the Strands. It ied itself from the Strand where it kept most of itself, right into the grouh me, causing the tremor. The tremor itself was really enough of a telltale for me, so I don’t know what it was thinking, holy. But by the time it opes maw, I’d already shifted the surfay palms and fio bee all gecko grippy. Which is starting to feel like my favorite trick.

  It’s so handy, though.

  Anyway, that gave me time to work on my ransformation. The timing for which was fortuitous and lucky.

  Something was keeping this thing just a touch slower than me, a still almost got me. But, by the time it rallied, I was already growing and rising up out of reach, drawing it out of the ground.

  To give Felicity as much to work with as possible, I made it so that my physical proje was really made from billions and billions of nearly microscopipound eyes. Which also meant I could see everywhere, in the physical sehere was no photon that escaped me and my notice.

  But the digitally remastered Sarcc-y Audrey II motherfucker that was climbing its way out of the ground below us had no eyes itself. It looked like an angry seedpod on a mass of spikey, woody tendrils, all dirt colored and pissed off. And when it opes maw, there was nothing but endless light behind its rows and rows of fine pointy little teeth, like a brightly lit infinity mirror. The light was bright enough to reflect off the side of the building as it tried to climb up after us.

  “Ohere’s enough of it out of that pit, I’m gonna make a mouth way bigger than it is,” I told Felicity inwardly. “And then it’s all urine, Pee-Pee.”

  “What are you – ?” she started to ask, but didn’t bother finishing.

  “I miss our witty ba the checkout ter, I said.”

  “Were we really like that?”

  “No. This is what you get when you don’t set me up with red wine and tampons.”

  “Oh, it was worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m ined to let it eat us, then,” she replied.

  “Uood.”

  People in the building were rushing to the rooms that had windows fag us, but then panig and pushing back up against the far wall and the other people trying to get in through the doors. They were screamiig me with emotions I could no longer feel and absorb. Cars were piling up ireet, and some people were running, while others collected in a wide circumferehat was soon looking ie as I grew. And Cassy kept aiming her pho me. Soon, she wasn’t the only one doing so.

  But I was feeding. Because the monster below me was bstih suticipation and fury it felt like a furnace. And I’d had no idea that ossible. I’d felt nothing quite like it before from an emanant. Nothing quite s and nutritious.

  It just tasted bnd pared to humaion, really. One dimensional.

  About when shade trees he sidewalk were being pushed over by the pnt-thing, and people started bag up from between their cars, I decred, “Now.”

  I’d been growing faster than it. And while it had been rgely growing upward, I’d been growing outward. Still, the space it was in was long and narrow, between the building and the street, so I mostly grew in that dire, as we’d need a mouth that was kind of simir to Croc-face’s. I felt it was fitting to imitate it, if Croc-face was maybe somehow w for this thing.

  I didn’t so much open a mouth in my underside as I maed an already open mouth, teeth first, from my cloud of eyes. It en pletely ft, no tongue, with the depths of a gullet in the middle. Gums as red as a celebrity carpet, teeth a children’s book ivory. And then, when it was plete, I felt Felicity take trol and snap it shut.

  But I then also felt her ge of heart, and her determined and sied duplicity take ahold of her just before pulling those jaws back upward just in time to cmp down on air just in front of Seedy MacSeedpod’s snout.

  And Seedy took that moment to lunge faster than it had been moving before, g onto the o of solid corporeal proje I had, which suddenly wasn’t Felicity’s anymore.

  Felicity let go of me, stopped feeding on my inner reserves, and fled into the eyes of so many people.

  Cassy had the weirdest little thought.

  She thought that what she was seeing was like a kaiju battle if drawn by Mercer Meyer.

  Her mom had collected Mercer Meyer’s books from her own childhood, to make sure to share them with Cassy, and they might have informed some of Cassy’s special is. So, it wasn’t too odd that she’d had that thought. But for the magnitude of what was happening, it sure was a glib observation.

  However, what happened ied her gut into a knot, and she staggered.

  When Synthia snapped her jaws shut, she also paradoxically, unbelievably, pulled them up short, missing the monster below her entirely. Which allowed the pnt creature to snap up and grab a hold of her like a giant squid grappling a whale.

  But just before she could see what happened , there was a sudden and blinding stabbing pain right behind her eyes, and it began w its way into her brain a simultaneously.

  Felicity spilled into the world and the Strands around me as her monster realm presence separated itself from mine.

  And I felt a searing pain iip of what was now my own snout, which was ched in the shell-like jaws and ed by the spiky tendrils of Seedy. There was a lot of agony in that appendage of mine, but that burniion filled me with dread and panic. I was being drawn slowly into the metabolism of another monster, and I now had the experieo know I couldn’t sever that part of myself from me to escape.

  I desperately gripped every bit of spacetime I could occupy, physical and Strandspace, and I pulled. I strained and stretched, then tracted and yanked, jerking, tugging, hauling on the part of myself caught in the grip of Seedy’s jaws.

  But all I did was successfully pull it further out of the ground.

  But I wasn’t so pletely engrossed in escape that I didn’t also see everything else that was happening arou the same, nor did I miss the moment when Cassy stumbled, dropped her phone and clutched her face, screaming.

  She staggered bad fell onto her ass, whipping her covered face to the sky to screech like a dying rabbit.

  And I could see a good majority of Felicity’s Strands pointed right at her.

  “No,” I rumbled with thunder.

  It’s possible the whole city heard me.

  Even if what I was seeing was a rider in Cassy being attacked and fronting and protesting physically as a result of it, I had lost all vestiges of trust I’d had in Felicity, and had no clue how my human friend was experieng it.

  I couldn’t let her be hurt.

  But at the same time, I was being inexorably ed.

  Maybe I couldn’t tear off a pieyself, but perhaps it ossible to let Seedy do it for me. After all, Croc-face had taken only a part of Felicity. Supposedly.

  So, in desperation, I started morphing my snout bato a cloud of tiny eyeballs, which I should have done sooner, and turned my focus on Cassy.

  But all I could think of was that I didn’t have the adaptations o pursue Felicity and stop her. And, that maybe the worst damage was already done.

  Whatever was in Cassy was so small, and Cassy herself sile and human, that Felicity’s attack should be over in seds.

  But Cassy kept writhing and screaming, so, with the rest of my bulk I rushed over to her like a river of bck caviar, trying to ighe growing arm and excruciating white pain in my furthest vulnerable extremity.

  tless hosts of Felicity gasped and shouted and fell even further back. Well, there were maybe, like, fifty people altogether, but I wasn’t ting them. They were tless to me.

  And I surrounded my friend in all seeing darkness, so that I could get a closer look.

  Seedy opes mouth and pulled with its vio get a rger portion of me into its gullet, which worked, and increased the pain, but it was still such a small portion of me. And I found myself ing even further out of the strands to billow out over the civiter of Gresham for better leverage.

  I was maybe c nine blocks worth of area, now, blotting out the sun, and I could see more of the effects I was having oy around me.

  But I was focused on Cassy and Felicity and whatever was happeniween them.

  And as everyone who was not a host to Felicity turned and ran, I watched as Felicity turned more and more of her attention to Cassy, who just would not stop fighting her.

  And if Cassy did have a monster in her, it didn’t cast so much as a shadow in the monster realm, now that I was looking there, too.

  This didn’t make sense. And I couldn’t get between them if I couldn’t jump into Cassy’s psyche like an epialivore or Felicity somehow. I’d never dohat. And it would take me hours, if not days, to figure out how.

  Or, I could eat Felicity.

  I could eat her from the monster realm up, and gain her adaptations while saving what was left of Cassy from her attentions.

  That would also take an adaptation, but a lesser one.

  I had really only discovered one way to eat another monster, if I could bring myself to do it again, and that was to i part of myself inside of them and start to… absorb… them… through. my. surface.

  As I plunged a pseudopod of sciousness into the monster realm to see about pierg Felicity there with a proboscis of sorts, the rest of me turo face Seedy with billions and billions of tiny bck hooded eyes. This looked much like clouds of refleless bess rolling inward toward a tral point where the monster fight was taking pce, toward my rapidly disiing snout and the p that was swallowing it.

  Personal morals ahics are simplified in the face of beien, and of saving a friend from the same fate.

  I knew I would regret myself afterward, but for the moment I wasn’t going to have an afterward. And that I was able to pte doing this at all was a testament to over seven-hundred million years of survival.

  As I slid a long, thin needle into Felicity on one end of myself, I made the other end begin growing stout spikes into the innards of Seedy.

  To be fair, I think Felicity didn’t see me ing because she was so focused on her fight with whatever was inside Cassy. It was grabbing all of her attention fast.

  Seedy just didn’t know what it had bitten into.

  And I began to feed owo teratovores.

  And I thought, Croc-face had better run.

  theInmara