The Scream

The storm had intensified. The rain was coming down in sheets so thick it was hard to breathe.

By the time Lyra’s beat-up sedan skidded onto Pier 9, Beckett’s team was already there. Several massive wolves—gray and black blurs in the rain—were tearing through the chain-link fence.

But they were too late.

The *Kestrel* was a rusty, hulking trawler, and it was already fifty yards out, churning black water as it turned toward the open ocean.

Beckett stood at the end of the dock, in human form, screaming in frustration. He paced the edge, looking at the water. Wolves couldn't swim fast enough to catch a boat at full throttle.

Lyra stumbled out of her car. Her legs felt like lead. Her throat was raw, tasting of copper.

She ran to Beckett’s side. He looked at her, his eyes wild with despair.

"They're gone," he roared over the wind. "I can't reach them!"

"The engine," Lyra gasped. "If I... if I hit the block..."

Beckett looked at the boat, then at her. He knew what she was suggesting. A targeted sonic lance at that distance required massive energy. It could rupture her vocal cords. It could cause a stroke.

"Do it," Beckett said.

He didn't ask if she could handle it. He didn't hesitate.

Lyra nodded. She stepped to the very edge of the wood piling. The spray of the ocean soaked her instantly.

She focused on the trawler. She could hear the *thrum-thrum-thrum* of the diesel engine. That was her target.

She drew in a breath that filled her lungs to bursting. She summoned every scrap of magic she had left, draining the color from her skin, slowing her heart rate.

She let it out.

It wasn't a sound. It was a physical force. A lance of compressed air and magic that distorted the rain as it traveled.

*CRACK.*

The sound of the impact was like a cannon shot. The rear windows of the trawler’s wheelhouse shattered inward.

The sonic lance punched through the steel hull and hit the engine block.

There was a grinding, metallic shriek that echoed across the harbor. Smoke billowed from the stern. The *Kestrel* shuddered, the wake dying as the engine seized and died.

Lyra collapsed.

She hit the wet asphalt hard. Her vision went black for a second. Her ears were ringing with a high-pitched whine that wouldn't stop.

She felt the vibration of boots running past her.

"Go! Go! Go!" Beckett shouted.

She forced her eyes open. She watched as Beckett leaped from the end of the pier, shifting in mid-air into a massive black wolf, landing on the deck of the drifting boat. His pack followed him.

The screams of the traffickers were short and wet.

Lyra lay in the puddle, rain mixing with the blood on her face, listening to the violence. She closed her eyes and let the darkness take her for a moment.