“I breathed in for a moment, letting his scent of leather and cigarettes and boy calm my ragged breathing.”

“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.”

“Word of advice, kid. This may be the Wild West down here, but you ain't a cowboy. You're not even a boy in a cowboy suit.”

“Considering it was my father's house, I thought it was very much my beeswax, but I wasn't about to argue with a stranger hiding in a kitchen, pelting me with footwear.”

“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.”

“... I'll be back before I have to meet the Headmaster about me going mad and killing people on my birthday, I swear.”

“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.”