01_-_The_Alchemyst

There was movement in the air behind it, and a second creature, even
bigger than the first, dropped from the night skies. It folded its wings and
stood upright as it turned its hideous head toward the car.
“Maybe they’re vegetarians,” Josh suggested. Leaning over the driver’s
seat, he rummaged in the back of the car, looking for something he could use
as a weapon.
“Not with those teeth,” his sister said grimly. “I think they’re
pterosaurs,” she said, remembering the huge suspended skeleton she had seen
in the Texas Natural Science Center.
“Like pterodactyls?” Josh asked, turning back. He had found a small fire
extinguisher.
“Pterosaurs are older,” Sophie said.
A third pterosaur dropped from the night sky, and like three hunched old
men, the creatures began to advance on the car.
“We should have stayed in the tree,” Sophie muttered. They’d been
warned, hadn’t they? Stay in your rooms, don’t leave…and after everything
they’d seen so far, they should have guessed that Hekate’s Shadowrealm at
night was a dangerous and deadly place. Now they were facing something out
of the Cretaceous period.
Josh opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. He pulled the
retaining pin out of the fire extinguisher, arming it. He wasn’t sure what
would happen if he fired off a blast of the gas at them.
The three creatures split up. One approached from the front of the car;
the remaining two moved toward the driver and passenger windows.
“Wish we knew some magic now,” Sophie said fervently. She could feel
her heart tripping in her chest and was aware that her tongue seemed far too
large for her mouth. She felt breathless and light-headed.
The largest pterosaur leaned across the hood of the car, resting its huge
wings on the scarred metal to support itself. Its long, snakelike head darted
forward to peer into the body of the car, and it slowly looked from Sophie to