The splintered oak gate didn’t groan when the hunter took hold of it. It shivered with the dry, rapid shaking of green wood being fed into a high-speed rotary saw.
Through the watching peephole, Len saw the creature’s face vanish. It stepped close to the outside planks. There was no preliminary running leap, no heavy shoulder charge against the iron drop-bars, and no probing of the lower hinges with an iron pry-bar. The hunter simply raised both hands to chest height and drove its stiffened fingers straight forward into the center of the two-inch white oak boards.
It didn’t sound like a blunt impact. It sounded like two cold-forged iron wedges being driven into heart-oak with a ten-pound steel sledge.
Thunk. Craaack.
The tips of eight pale fingers punched clean through the face of the timber, exploding through the inner grain in long, jagged splinters four inches long. The wood around the entry points didn’t split cleanly. It crushed into yellow plant fiber pulp under the terrifying deep water pressure of the grip. Then, with a slow, lateral flare of its elbows that looked as smooth and easy as an experienced weaver parting warp threads on an upright loom, the creature pulled outward.
