“Now what are you going to do?” a snide voice called out. “Go for a swim?”

The four of us whirled around.

Blake and his guards stood at the top of the riverbank, swords clutched in their hands. I raised my own stolen sword, ready to defend myself and my friends. But instead of charging down the slope after us, Blake snorted and actually sheathed his weapon.

“You are without a doubt the four stupidest people ever.” He stabbed his finger at the closest warning sign. “Don’t you know that this is a lochness bridge?”

I didn’t say anything, and neither did any of the others.

He laughed and shook his head. “I don’t even have to come down there to kill you. The lochness will do it for me. All I have to do is wait.”

All around him, the guards snickered and sheathed their own swords. Across the bridge, Draconi guards got out of the SUV, spreading out until they had lined the opposite side of the river. All of them sneered down at us as well, just like Blake was doing.

I tensed, but I still didn’t move or say anything, and neither did my friends.

Blake and the guards all focused on the river, expecting the lochness—or at least its long, black tentacles—to shoot up out of the water, grab us, and drag us down, down, down to the bottom of the river, never to be seen or heard from again.

But nothing happened. No tentacles, no sprays of water, nothing.

A minute passed, then two, then three.

And still, nothing happened.

I took deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart and frayed nerves, listening for the faintest splash that would tell me the lochness was about to strike, but I didn’t hear anything. No splashes, no slaps of water, nothing.

Beside me, Devon, Felix, and Deah all kept glancing at the river, with Devon and Deah clutching their swords tightly, ready to lash out with the weapons if the monster did attack us.

And still, nothing happened.

The Draconi guards started muttering and shifting on their feet, wondering what was taking so long. Blake scowled. Apparently, the lochness wasn’t killing us fast enough for his liking.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I’ll just come down there and finish you off myself.”

Blake unsheathed his sword, twirled it around in his hand, and left the street behind. I wondered if he might go over to the bridge to leave some money for the lochness like I had, but he ignored the stone column where I’d left my quarters. I sucked in a breath, my heart lifting with sudden hope.

He hadn’t paid the toll.

Sure enough, Blake had only taken a single step down onto the grassy riverbank when the clink-clink-clink of coins sounded, as the lochness finally accepted my tribute.

“Duck!” I yelled at my friends.

The four of us had barely crouched down on the stone ledge before a long, black tentacle shot up out of the river, spraying water everywhere. The tentacle undulated back and forth over our heads, like a copper crusher about to strike.

And then it did.

The tentacle zipped forward, heading straight for the cluster of men still up on the street. Blake’s eyes widened and he managed to avoid the tentacle, but the guard standing next to him wasn’t so lucky. The tentacle wrapped around the man and hoisted him high in the air before snapping him back and forth, and back and forth, almost as if the lochness was waving a flag, declaring that this was its territory and no one else’s. Then the tentacle tossed the guard aside, as easily as I could throw one of the stars hooked to my belt. The guard slammed into the side of the stone bridge, then plummeted down into the river below.

The guard screamed all the way down, and water spewed up like a geyser as he plunged below the surface of the river. The water bubbled up all around that spot, frothing and foaming like rapids, but the man didn’t reappear, not even for an instant, and I knew that the lochness had him.

The smart thing would have been to retreat, but Blake was too angry and too determined to get us.

“Kill them!” he roared, whipping up his sword and starting down the riverbank.

He hadn’t taken three steps before more tentacles started shooting out of the water, one right after another, this time attacking the Draconi guards on both sides of the river, making them scream, shout, and lash out with their swords.

But the lochness was quicker and much, much stronger than any human, and its tentacles whipped back and forth, easily dodging all of the guards’ frantic, clumsy blows. We were still between the monster and the guards, right in the danger zone. One of the tentacles clipped Devon, spinning him around, and I had to lunge forward and grab him before he toppled backward into the river. The lochness wasn’t attacking us, but we still needed to get out here before the creature accidentally knocked us into the river and drowned us.

Since we couldn’t climb up the riverbank where Blake and the guards were, there was only one other place to go.

“We have to get out of the way!” I yelled. “Get under the bridge! Go! Go! Go!”

Deah and Felix both looked at me like I was crazy and was going to get them killed after all. Maybe I was, but I’d rather be eaten by the lochness than let Blake capture me. So I got to my feet and darted toward the bridge, and the others fell into step behind me.

The ledge ran all the way under the bridge, and the stone curved up, like the inside of a pipe, before becoming part of the bridge itself. The span blocked out all the moon and starlight above, making it almost pitch-black down here. I could still see just fine, but the others couldn’t, and Devon stumbled into me, almost knocking me off the ledge and down into the water. I grabbed his hand and pushed his shoulder up against the curving stone wall.

“Grab Felix, and tell him to get Deah!” I yelled. “Press yourselves up against the side!”

Devon nodded and did as I asked. With one hand, he reached out and touched Felix, so that Felix would know where he was. Then, Devon wrapped his arm around me, shielding me with his body and pulling us both up as close to the wall as he could get. On his other side, Felix did the same thing with Deah.

By this point, it seemed as though the entire river was boiling at our feet, the water frothing and foaming like a science experiment volcano that was about to explode. Wave after wave of water dashed against us, soaking us from head to toe. Despite the day’s heat, the river was cold enough to make me shiver and I had to press my teeth together to keep them from chattering.

Despite the constant cascades of water, I peered over my shoulder, looking back toward the river. The others didn’t have my sight magic, so they didn’t see the pair of enormous eyes that glowed a bright, vivid, sapphire blue out in the center of the water, or how the lochness lashed out again and again at the Draconi guards with its thick, strong tentacles.