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The beast squeals and leaps.

I close my eyes tight and flick the sparker open. A hot ball of white light flares from the silver column, so bright I can see the flash of it through my eyelids. The beast screams, momentarily blinded. Whipping around, I open my eyes, aim the pistol, and fire.

The silver bullet buries itself in the beast’s head. My body is so full of adrenaline I see it all happen in slow motion. The bullet moves like a corkscrew, ripping through its flesh. I squeeze my eyes against the splatter of blood and gore, and the teras’ strange, inhuman keening echoes through the cadaver of Watford itself; a self-made graveyard for the beast to die in.

It thumps to the ground, dead.

I stand panting, staring over the barrel of my smoking gun at the prone, limp thing at my feet.

Three hollow claps are all Thaddeus gives me. They echo out over the snow. I turn to look at him, my vision slightly obscured by the flutter of smoke from the pistol.

Three claps. The bastard.

“Not good enough for you?” I say quietly. Bile rises in the back of my throat.

“For me?” Thaddeus looks affronted. Then he tuts. “It’s not me you have to impress, Cass.”

I resist the urge to turn and stare towards London.

“A teras like this dead before you’ve even set foot in the University — you won’t be riding on my coattails in there. I estimate it’s at least a C tier. That reputation will be good for you.”

I put the gun away and flick my brother a look of quiet disbelief. This is all his idea. I don’t know much about the University. Graduates are forbidden to speak on it. But the admission trials in particular are a well-guarded secret. I prompt him in the hopes he’ll tell me more. “Will it?”

Thaddeus’s expression shifts darker. “People might stare in London, but that’s a hell of a lot easier to manage than getting eaten. And if you stick out as much as we do, and you’ve managed to kill one, that’s the kind of reputation you want to spread.”

I say nothing to that. A layered exhaustion is filling me up. We were not born in London. We only got a spot because of him. Some families have been behind the walls for generations, and they won’t let us forget it.

Instead, I look down at the beast and say, “It’s not the first one I’ve killed.”

Thaddeus shrugs and opens his coat. He unstraps a thick, wide blade from his side and hefts it towards me. “First one whose head you’ll be taking for a trophy.”

But before he can hand the blade over, Thaddeus shudders to a stop. His brows twist together.

“What the fuck?” he whispers.

I follow his gaze. He’s staring at the dead teras, a look of confused fear blooming in his eyes.

“What is it?”

Thaddeus kicks the thing’s head. “Never seen this thing before.”

Up close, I see he’s right. I study teras, because my whole life has been training for the University. I know every anatomical drawing, every genus, every category. Thaddeus is right. There’s not a neat class to drop this one into. It bears the qualities of a horse and a dog, but its talons suggest something else entirely.

“Gryphon class?” I offer weakly.

Thaddeus shoots me a look. “No. But not a cerberus, and not an arion. Not fully, anyway.”

“Chimera?”

“Something like that.”

I frown, a little horrified. I know what it is, but I don’t know what it means. “A hybrid?”

Thaddeus doesn’t answer me. “Get the head,” he says, thrusting the hilt of the blade into my hands.

I know better than to argue. Thaddeus’ brow is twitching. I note the way he sets his jaw. If he gets angry, I’m the only one that will cop it, now that the teras is dead, and I’d rather not have to lie to our mother about how I got a bruise.

Still, I curse to my heart’s content in the quiet of my mind. I shuck the long coat from my body, roll up my sleeves, and greatly regret wearing white. Then I go to my knees to saw off the beast’s head.