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the dam of human restraint that was holding back the tide broke. |
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He sprang off the bed like he had been shot out of a catapult, landing in the center of the room and dropping down on all fours. The second he hit the carpet, a creature slithered out from behind the chair, raised up on its tail and hissed. He had been partly right. The creature was reptilianit was definitely reptilian. It had a lizard's wide diapsid skull and a long tapered snout full of teeth that any self-respecting shark would have killed for. It was the thing's lower body that resembled a snake, long and slender, covered with chitinous ambulating scutes that moved it over the carpet with surprising agility. Just to make things more confusing, up front it had a pair of stubby arms sticking out of its chest with three-fingered hands tipped with wicked-looking hooked claws. |
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Cyrus should have been terrified, but he was amazed. "What the fuck are you supposed to be?" |
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The creature flicked its tongue and hissed like a faulty tire valve. |
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His eyes widened. Wow! Nice set of fangs. |
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The thing didn't seem to see Cyrus. It had stopped in the middle of the floor, curled its tail around its body and was rotating its thick neck slowly from side to side as if searching for him. It hissed again, and this time it received an answering hiss from the creature under the bed. |
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The snazardfor that was what Cyrus had unconsciously christened the thinguncoiled and started crawling toward the bed. The instant Cyrus moved to block it, the thing turned on him, baring its fangs and clawing the air in front of Cyrus's face. |
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Instinctively, Cyrus fell into an offensive posture: one leg in front of the other, knees flexed, the remaining strips of his briefs tightly wedged up between the cheeks of his buttocks. He took a gliding step and kicked the thing right square in the snout . . . and got raked across the chest by the creature's claws for his trouble. |
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