I peel away from the truck and run over to my Jeep, still sitting prettily underneath the scrawny trees.
“What are you doing?” Hollett yells at me.
“Doing my own kind of magic trick,” I tell him.
I fish out my keys, unlock the driver’s door, reach in, and pop the rear hatch open. Then I run around to the back, swing the hatch wide and reach inside. Inside I feel the contour of the passenger side trunk wall until I feel a small click under my fingertips. I press the now loose section of plastic, pull out a 12-inch square and set it aside.
“Abracadabra,” I say with a grin. Inside the dark, custom-made locker is my emergency kit, but this one doesn’t have Band-Aids or flares or a jack. Fitted against the wall are half a dozen items secured in thick foam padding. Two guns: a duplicate Springfield and a Smith & Wesson .460 XVR, a beast of a revolver solid enough to double as an anvil, capable of punching a hole the size of a soup bowl through a redwood tree and fracturing the skull of a triceratops if it’s used as a club. Magazines for the Springfield and speed loaders for the .460 in regular, silver and my custom red ammunition.
There’s a similar kit hidden in the driver’s side wall, with more of the basics: salt, chalk, holy water. A lunar pebble. Powdered herbs. And in the spare tire well is a DP-12 shotgun, a double-barrel bullpup model I’ve fallen in love with. Below that is my last contingency kit, the one I hope to never have to use. If I do, everything, and I mean everything, may well be past the tipping point.
I don’t even like to think about that, so I won’t.
I ignore the standard and silver rounds, since I’ve seen how effective they are against the kiovores, and grab the pair of red magazines. I drop the empty one I’ve been carrying in my gun into the trunk and slam one of the fresh ones in, then load red ammo into the .460. I stick the Springfield in its holster and grab the .460 with my right. There’s a holster for that one, too, but I’m not holstering this weapon tonight.
“Guns?” Hollett’s voice is higher than normal, either in panic or disbelief and he’s not the type to panic. “You’re getting more guns? Did it slip your mind that a little while ago bullets did as much damage to that thing as a snap from a wet towel?”
“Only until Farelli shot one in the mouth,” I point out. “Might not have been fatal, but it still felt the shot and these pack a little more of a bite.” It’s only a short distance to the house’s front door, but I’m too beat up to run it again. I get back behind the Raptor’s wheel. “Come on!”
He jumps in and I floor it, aiming the broad face of the truck at the building’s main entrance but stopping just short. The destruction is vast, more than even one kiovore could account for. The front doors, seamless panes of glass bigger than mattresses, are jagged holes of splintered glass in the face of the building. Thick shards of tempered glass lay across the ground like a painful carpet, doubly so due to the sprays of blood dotting the ground amid the snowy glitter. A lot has happened here. Is still happening, judging by the screams.
“How many of them do you figure are in there?” I ask.
“Figure all of them,” he answers.
We leap out of the truck and go through the door together, Hollett and his thorn wand on my left. I’d guess this is where the first attack hit. The room, which I had only seen from the rear when I snuck in earlier this evening, was once palatial in its décor. Now it looks like the set of a Rambo movie after the cameras stop rolling.
Almost all of the light fixtures have been shattered, a lone remaining wall sconce swinging at an odd angle, casting irregular light over the room. The air is full of the smell of blood and smoke, and everywhere is the sound of shouts and screams. The luxurious room has been pulverized, but the destruction seems to follow a straight line. Everything in between the front doors and the enormous double staircase has been run over and through. Including the people.
There are two of them here, a man and a woman, lying on the floor with their upper bodies crumpled on the bottommost steps. They’re both wearing comfortable looking grey and black uniforms: more household help. They both lay at bizarre angles, their bodies twisted into shapes evolution never intended. I think about how the kiovore killed Calvin with a single, brutal blow. I can’t imagine these two rated any more attention.
The scream makes us both jump. It’s sudden and ragged, pulled from somewhere deep in the lungs where breath doesn’t usually go. I can’t tell where it came from.
“Where do we go?” I ask Hollett.
“Clive’s bedroom is up on the third floor. That’s where Celeste will go, if there’s any of her left in there at all.”
I’m not as fast going up the dimly lit stairs as I want to be, but I see the big veins working under Hollett’s smooth dark skin and I see that he’s not at his best, either. I know the satisfaction that gives me is a perverse one, but I’ll take it.
We reach the second floor. Two elegant wings branch off the main stairwell, folding to both sides to allow access to the level. We’re nearly bowled over by a young man with Reese-blond hair, maybe in his mid-twenties, who comes screaming from the right hallway onto the stairs. Half a second behind him comes a kiovore in a white chef’s uniform, running after him like a nightmare with Olympic speed. Blood is already smeared across its round, fanged mouth, and some has trickled out of the now-familiar circular puncture wounds on its throat. It’s eaten already, but not enough to sate it.
As the man stumbles past us, taking the steps three at a time, Hollett reaches past me, his arm flashing past my face. Something small flies from his hand, smacking the kiovore in the chest. It stops fast, reflexively clutching the uninjured spot where the object hit, and I bring up my Springfield and shoot on the fly. I hit just about where Hollett did, only my results are more spectacular.
The red shell explodes like a small grenade. The monster had been only about twenty feet from us so we catch a face full of backblast, heat and kinetic energy shoving us back and sealing our breath in our lungs. Ears ringing, I look through the haze. The kiovore is gone, and there’s a human-ish shaped hole in the wall beyond where it had stood. I look at Hollett.
“Guns,” I say, feeling vindicated. He looks suitably impressed. Then he juts his chin at the hole. I look back to see the kiovore pulling itself out of the wall, slowly and unsteadily, but there’s no doubt it’s not permanently hurt.
“What the hell?” I mutter in awe. In my former profession I had to expand my acceptance of what was considered impossible. It’s part of the territory, but this? This… should actually be impossible. I just hit it with the same weapon that once blew the skin off an angel and it’s only staggered.
I hit it again, the finely tiled great room echoing and amplifying the thunder that follows the explosion. Again it flies backwards, whatever clothing it retained after the first shot evaporating in the heat and raw, elemental force of the blast. Eyes watering and ears stabbing, I go over to the destroyed wall and look inside.
The hole goes all the way through the wall, into a tasteful, wood-paneled sitting room with wide picture windows on the other side. I didn’t know there was anything on the other side of the hallway. If I did I wouldn’t have used the red shell. They’re much too dangerous to use whenever there might be people around, and I have no desire to add to tonight’s geometrically climbing body count for no reason.
The kiovore is laying in the middle of the floor, its blood-hued exoskeleton smoldering, its uniform literally blown away by the force of the explosion. Unbelievably, it starts to move. Sluggish and weak it struggles to its feet. I wait for it to get there, then put a final shot into its breadbasket, sending it flying through a window and out into the night.
Three red shells, and I couldn’t kill it. What in the name of Merlin are we dealing with here?
Hollett must have been yelling at me, but the explosions have deafened me. It’s only when he grabs my arm that I know that he’s there. I wheel on him, ready to let another shell fly before I recognize him. He mouths emp
ty words at me, but I can read his urgency. I follow him back into the hallway and run up to the top floor.
There are three of them here. Well, two and a half. Two of them are pounding fiercely on the sturdy door in the middle of the hallway that I passed earlier tonight, shaking the thick timber with every blow. The third is lying in a seizing heap on the floor at their feet, blood soaking its thick brown hair from a bite wound on the top of its head. That one’s not done transforming yet, but its skin is already hard and blushed and there’s a bloody pile of spat out teeth on the floor by its face, so it’s only a matter of seconds before it rises. That one and the one pounding on the left side of the door are both wearing the black-on-black of the security staff. The other kiovore trying to break through the door has lost most of its clothes along the way, but the long, pale blonde hair is impossible to mistake.
Celeste Reese has come home.
We separate when we get off the stairs. Hollett, who has a better angle than I do, pulls a small length of chain the size of a child’s necklace out of his leather belt pouch and snaps it like a tiny whip at the security twins. When he does it grows fantastically, flashing through the air like a chain-link whip. It moves faster than a striking rattler, wrapping around the leftmost kiovore’s body over and over again, pinning its arms to its body as if it were trussed up in a metal spider web and making it drop its meal unceremoniously to the floor. It turns to us, bloody mouth working. It takes a step, but Hollett hauls hard on his end of the chain and the kiovore sails out over our heads, spinning out and making a fresh hole in the grand front window thirty feet away.
There’s no time to savor the victory. In a blur the second guard, his metamorphosis complete, launches himself at us. Or, to be more accurate, at the only one of us he could see as food. Round mouth twitching, it lunges at Hollett like a velociraptor, claws flailing at his face. He stumbles back, ducking and slipping the undisciplined, frantic attacks, but then the kiovore changes gears and springs on him. It hits Hollett with all its weight, and the impact carries both of them out into dead air over the three-level staircase. Before I can even blink they’re gone, but I can hear their bodies rolling down the heavy wooden steps.
I rush over to the top of the stairs, but before I can reach there what feels like a small car hits me in the middle of the back. My body splays out in midair under the impact, and I can feel the muscles and tendons of my neck and back whipsaw in a burst of white pain. I hit the ground, back arching from the paralyzing blow, and I can barely see the reddish shape looming over me. The kiovore hunches over me, and all I can see is the flow of blond hair as its head lashes down.
The mouth closes over my right shoulder, and I scream as hundreds of needle-like teeth pierce my shirt and skin, stabbing through muscle and grating on bone.
The pain of the bite is blasted away in a sudden, electric surge of full body agony that starts at the soles of my feet and seems to blast out the top of my head. It feels like someone’s channeling a flame thrower through my body, scorching every blood vessel, every hair follicle and every nerve fiber withers and crisps under the tidal wash of torture. I can’t think under the crushing pain, so abrupt and unexpected my entire consciousness is consumed until there’s nothing left but the endless, paralyzing hurt.
Then it’s gone, and I’m looking up at the tastefully painted ceiling through fading vision. The world is blurring in and out of focus, the hard edges swaying as I fight a losing battle to stay conscious. The last thing I see before the darkness covers me is the kiovore that used to be Celeste Reese lying on the floor next to me, its body rigid and twitching in the grip of a violent seizure.
Then the world slips away from me, and I let it.
Nineteen
Harsh light, searing my eyes through the lids like two hypodermics full of fire. I let out a cry that sounds like it was dragged out of my mouth over a throat full of broken glass and feels even worse than that. I try to roll away from the light but I can’t even tell where it’s coming from, and when my body twists it’s like every muscle from my calves to my neck has been beaten with a thorny club and soaked in gasoline.
I lay still for a moment. The light still burns my closed eyes, but the pain is fading the longer I’m conscious. I think I was asleep, only instead of waking up gradually I’ve been catapulted into awareness. I take a moment to collect myself, breathing slowly, using my available senses to take stock. I’m lying flat, on a soft, yielding surface, with my head slightly elevated. Okay, then, that’s a bed. I’m covered by a thick blanket, and the fact that I can feel the material over the length of my body tells me that I’m naked underneath. How awkward that’s going to be will depend on where exactly I am.
My first thought is ‘hospital’, but nobody lies flat in a hospital bed. I’ve spent time in hospitals before, and I know the ambient noise that they generate and I’m getting none of that now. No machines beeping, no wheels clanging, no susurrus of hushed voices, no antiseptic odors. Definitely not a hospital, then. I hack at the frozen lump that is my memory. I remember charging into Reese Manor with Hollett like Butch and Sundance. I remember Hollett being tackled down the stairs by one kiovore, and I remember the thing that used to be Celeste Reese latching onto me with that repulsive lamprey mouth, and then…
I give my eyes another second, then heave at the lids. They reluctantly part, letting in unscreened light. Daylight, it’s the only light that feels like this. My eyes are adjusting quickly, quickly enough to tell me that I’m still wearing my watch and am still able to read it – it’s a little past eight. It was somewhere around eleven o’clock when Celeste bit me. I’ve been out for close to nine hours. If Celeste and Kenta were right about the kiovores being nocturnal then they’d still had half the night to rampage before hiding from the sun, and if they were wrong then they’re still out there right now.
I crane my neck around, looking for more. I’m in a bedroom, small, neutrally painted. Dresser, closet, lots of stained wood. There’s an elaborate dreamcatcher hanging over the bed, gently splintering the morning light…
Oh, hell. I’m in my house.
“Jamie!” I call out, then cough violently as something in my mouth gets stuck on my tongue. I sit up retching and spit the offending object into my hand, its taste unmistakable. It’s a hand-stitched square of cheesecloth about an inch square, its contents lumpy and bulging, a mockery of a tea bag. It’s no ordinary tea bag, but then again it’s not holding any ordinary tea. It’s packed with an Aegis recipe of plant leaves, mosses, fungus and God knows what else. Prepared like a garden variety tea, the brew possesses healing properties that are almost magical, but are completely scientific in basis. I’ve taken a lot of damage over the years, and the Aegis tea has been very, very helpful in fixing me up. It’s a miracle cure, with one caveat: the body builds up a tolerance to the stuff. Last time I used it I’d noticed that my tolerance has already begun to build. Then again, last time I’d been drinking it and not chewing it.
I take a deep breath, feeling my chest expand and loving the sensation. I look over my chest and arms with surprise. I should be covered with bruises in a mountain sunset’s worth of colors, but I look hale and hearty. No cuts, no road rash. Not even an ingrown hair. I move my arms around. There’s a little stiffness, like waking up the morning after a particularly tough workout, but nothing I’d call actual pain. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out my miraculous healing.
It’s been years since the Aegis tea had such a comprehensive result for me. I don’t even feel tired, now that I’m awake. Chewing ginseng roots and chasing them with mainlined caffeine wouldn’t wake me up like this, a pure, clean consciousness unlike any I’ve felt for a long time. I’m healthier than I’ve been in years. None of this bodes well.
“Jamie!” I call out again, slowly swinging my legs over the side of the bed. The static pain in my muscles is fading quickly, so the movement only makes me wince a little bit. I’m about to start yelling at the ass-dragging spirit when the doorknob turns an
d the door flies open, but it’s not Jamie’s chalkboard that floats inside. Instead it’s a hundred and twenty pounds of brunette fury that slams the door open and levels me back onto the bed with a full-throttle flying body press. All I can do is cover up my head while she rains down a barrage of half-slaps on me while she rants and raves.
“You son of a bitch,” she half screams while she slaps the hell out of my forearms. “Of all the stupid halfwit ideas…”
“Lisa,” I say from behind cover, biting my lip to keep from laughing because I know that’ll only fire her up even more. “Will you stop…”
“…can’t believe you’d actually go…”
“…wasn’t what I’d planned…”
“…what was I supposed to do…”
“…how was I supposed to know…”
“…what’s next, chasing magic beans up a giant stalk…”
“Okay, that’s it.” I buck my hips up in what might have been a pleasurable motion in another time, but with enough force to send Lisa’s body roughly forward. I use the momentum to roll her over my shoulders and continue up until we’ve reversed positions, with her beneath me and her legs wrapped around my hips and only the corner of the blanket, which has been pinned between our bodies, is keeping us decent. My body starts to react, quickly and strongly, like it’s been time warped back to junior high school with a vengeance. Damn. The tea’s never done that before.
“Will you please calm down?” I ask her, as much to distract myself as to mollify her.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demands, but softer now. The firestorm has passed, or at least the leading edge of it. “How is it that you end up in these kinds of situations?”
“I used to think it was just dumb luck, but I’m not so sure about that anymore.” I ease myself away from her and quickly but reluctantly get dressed. Junior-high me wants to do just the opposite, and take Lisa with me, but one advantage of actually having reached maturity is the ability to master your genitalia. Moving with determination I pull on old, comfortable jeans, running shoes, faded green long-sleeved pullover. My standard uniform. “Speaking of dumb, where’s that damned ghost? Hey, Jamie, where are you?”
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 17