A R T H U R S L A D E
4
ADVANCE READING COPY
shoulder and dip him down for feeding. At that exact micro-
second, a
puff puff pop
came from above. I felt as if I’d been
rabbit punched twice in the back and kicked in the leg.
I turned. Darts stuck out of my right shoulder and my
lower back. Darts! Who used darts in this day and age?
Another quivered in my thigh. The whirring in the sky grew
slightly louder.
I fell forward. Rex opened his arms like a lecherous uncle.
I gathered enough strength to throw myself toward the fence.
I bounced off. My leg collapsed, and I skidded across the
ground. My vision blurred. I pushed myself up, tried to run
and stumbled right into an inhospitable brick wall. I lay on
my back, blinking.
One of those little four-bladed drones was peeking over
the roof of the building. Someone with an iPhone and a night-
vision app was probably lining me up in its crosshairs.
“Hit her again,” Rex commanded. The drone exhaled
another
puff puff pop
. Two darts zipped down, ricocheting off
the pavement. The third one stung my left shoulder.
I shrugged it off and climbed to my feet. “Who. Are. You?”
“I’m a party who’s very interested in your activities.”
He walked slowly toward me, pulling at something inside his
coat.
I’m a party, I’m a party,
echoed inside my head. What was
in those darts?
I lurched ahead and shoved him to the ground, briefly
catching a lemony-antiseptic scent. Then I latched on to the
fence and pulled myself up about three feet. Rex grabbed
my ankle, but I managed a feeble kick and through blind
