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reaching to untie the rope from his collar when the moon broke free from its masking cloud, and she saw the thing hanging from his neck. She flinched back with a stifled scream.
    Her first, startled impression was that it was some sort of immense insect, oval shaped, at least a foot long and half again as wide, with something frighteningly spider-like about it, the sense of multiple legs emerging from its central torso. Then Bo fell again, and a pair of wings spread open from the creature’s back; they gave a single flap to stabilize the beast. The wings were shockingly long, with a leathery appearance; Ally could make out the bones beneath the skin, even in the moonlight. There was fur, too: on the creature’s back and legs—brown or black, Ally couldn’t tell which. And the legs (there were six of them, she saw, with a tug of nausea) were prehensile; each of them ended in a monkey-like hand, all six of which were gripping tightly at Bo’s fur. Its head was the size of a grapefruit, its face buried in the dog’s neck: burrowing, feeding.
    Bo made no effort to rise again. He seemed to sense Ally’s presence, and it was as if her arrival had prompted him to relinquish his fight: she would either free him from his tormentor, or he’d succumb.
    The birds continued to cry out in the barn. The parrot was calling: “Ed . . . ! Ed . . . ! Ed . . . !” Another cloud obscured the moon, and Ally felt her panic ratchet upward—the creature was just a shadow now, a deeper darkness against Bo’s black body, its wings going flap , flap . Ally backed away. One step. Then another. Stan hadbeen digging a hole the day before—a rhododendron beneath the kitchen window had died, poisoned, Ally suspected, by Bo’s urine, and Stan had been working all afternoon to excavate its withered remains. He’d left the job half-finished, intending to resume his digging in the morning: the shovel was still leaning against the side of the house. Ally turned, started for it at a run.
    Behind her, Bo let out a long, warbling cry of pain.
    The shovel was exactly where she’d pictured it, waiting for her. She headed back across the lawn, grasping the tool’s handle in both hands, like a baseball bat. The moon emerged again, just as she arrived at the hitching post. Bo had rolled onto his side; she could see his chest rising and falling, could hear him panting. The creature had folded its wings back into its body. Ally watched it open one of its furry hands, then reach and claim a better grip.
    She swung with all her strength.
    Her fear of the creature, her revulsion, seemed to give her strength. The shovel’s blade landed with a loud thump. Bo yelped, kicked his legs. The creature relinquished its hold on the dog. It fell to the ground, instantly righting itself, and turned to face its attacker. Ally had time to register the thing’s face: round and pale and hairless, with a pair of large eyes and what she at first mistook for a flat, simian nose. But then this orifice opened, revealing a set of startling white teeth—sharp and double-tiered—and she realized the thing had two mouths, this smaller one where a nose would normally reside, a few inches above its much larger companion. Both were stretched wide now. Ally could see rows of teeth, a pair of thick pink tongues. The creature shrieked, enraged. Then it spread its wings and leapt into the air, flying straight at her.
    Ally swung again. This time, it was nothing but reflex, straight from the spine, her animal core taking command; she managed a glancing blow that knocked the creature back onto the ground. It was in the air again so quickly that it seemed as if it had bounced offthe dirt, like a ball. It was still shrieking. Ally swung, connected; the thing thudded against the earth, sprang into the air once more, and this time when Ally swung, she heard the crack of a bone snapping.
    The creature fell to the lawn, scrambling with its legs in the dirt, one wing wildly flapping,