“Dean flashed me a smile that promised rule-breaking and breathlessness.”

“Crows don’t take from you,” Dean said. “They give your soul wings.”

“My eye was caught by movement from behind the automaton. Just a flicker, but my heart clenched with surprise and fear, and I tapped Dean on the arm, pointing. “Something’s over there.”He followed my finger, and we both saw the flicker of red on the unbroken gray brick of the foundry walls.“Son of a bitch,” Dean growled, jamming his hand in his pocket and pulling out his switchblade. “Hey!” he bellowed at the moving shadow. “Hey, you!”“Dean …,” I started, thinking that perhaps shouting at the figure wasn’t the best idea.“I see you!” Dean shouted. “No point in hiding.”“Dean, we don’t know what it is,” I whispered, worried that if he made a move, whoever or whatever lurked beyond the automaton would take it badly. Dean shook his head.“Relax, princess. It’s a kid.” He advanced on the shadow. “Aren’t you?”“Up yours, mister!” the shadow shouted back. I pressed a hand over my mouth, both to stifle a laugh and from relief. To find another person in this wasteland was ten times more unexpected than finding a creature like the nightjars and ghouls that populated Lovecraft’s underground.“Say,” Dean drawled, brows drawing together. “I know you, kid.”“I know your mother!” the kid retorted. “And she has some disappointing things to say about you.”

“You can't give up on me. If you give up, then I'm going to break into a million pieces.I'm here. I'll give you everything I've got.”

“Something breaks under my boot, and I know before I look down what I’ll see. Bones. Human skulls, femurs, ribs. The bones of otherthings as well, things that starved once the humans rotted away. Twisted spines, elongated jaws. Teeth.”

“I am alone. Alone except for the sirens, alone except for the burning, empty city on the edge of a rotting, pollutedriver green with algae, host to rubber-skinned, gibbous-eyed things with mouths large enough to swallow me whole andprotruding stomachs ready to digest me.”

“I fear, in my dark hours, that it hungers for me and that it is only a matter of time before it eats its full of my sanity.”