The Chimera

Chapter Ten: Teeth

"Rian," he says, and his chilled tone is enough to make his brother look up from his book, concerned. He follows Fallon's gaze into the tree-line, and what he sees there makes him slam the pages shut and hurriedly stand up.

The mouth full of teeth that Fallon had seen is closer now, attached to a body that is clawing its way swiftly out of the cover of foliage and onto the yard that makes up the land behind the Taymons' cottage.

At its quick approach, Rian takes two backwards steps and reaches behind him until Fallon comes. At his brother's approach, Rian pushes his book into his hands and then shoves his shoulders in the direction of the cottage's back door.

"Get Edeline."

Fallon knows not to argue with that voice, dropping his metal gardening shears onto the dirt in his haste to get away.

As soon as he's inside, Rian can hear him holler for their sister to come quickly.

They'll be fine, Rian tells himself, so that he can focus. The creature from the trees, with hands ready to maul, who has never stopped moving in all that time of sending Fallon away, is almost here. Still with his eyes upon it, Rian crouches down to scoop up the fallen shears.

The creature is too fast for him to get a proper grip on the tool before it leaps forward, bringing him down to the ground and knocking the shears into the plants.

Rian sees nothing but cold eyes and then colder teeth in a mouth that opens as if to devour him.

After his fall, it had climbed on top of him, claws on either side of his head, sinking into the late-summer dirt. Its body wriggles in anticipation for its first bite, but Rian sent only his brother inside for a good reason. He has a decent idea of his own strength.

When the monster lunges downward, mouth aiming for the left side of his neck, Rian yanks his body to the right in an attempt to avoid the creature's teeth. While he succeeds in saving his neck, a thin stream of what feels like cold fire slithers through his shoulder as part of its mouth catches on it, penetrating his shirt as if it is nothing more substantial than air.

Before he can let himself fall headfirst into the strange pain, Rian pushes upward with all the strength in his limbs to force the creature off of him and into the thorn-ridden roses on his left.

In the brief respite this offers him, he drives his hand without thought into the plants on his right, where he had seen the shears fall, ignoring every pinprick of pain the thorns wreak on his hand as he does so.

He grabs hold of the tool as the creature orients itself and takes another lunge. Rian, shears held tight this time in his right grip, swings at the monster's face, hitting it across the mouth mid-leap. What has to be the world's most unappealing shooting star occurs as one of the monster's teeth falls out, arcing through the air from the impact.

In response to this loss, the monster emits a strange sound, part whistle and part sigh.

It leaves Rian for a moment to crawl its way through the garden, more small sighing whistles mark whenever it feels pain from a rose thorn. At last, it finds what it seeks, reaching into the dirt to pick up its fallen tooth. Rian watches, dirt-covered, scratched, alternately hot and cold from a foreign pain, and now dumbstruck as the creature shoves the missing tooth right back into its mouth.

Showing off its now once-more-complete set, it grins at Rian. Dead, dead, dead. My death is in these rose bushes, coming for me. He doesn't stand a chance. He can't exactly shove his own missing parts back into his body.

Still, he readies the shears in his hand to deliver another blow as the pale monster once again comes closer. He will do his best to stick the tool through his eye this time, no more blunt blows. Then he'll knock every tooth out so it won't be able to retrieve them all. He'll--