by Stacia Kane
“He’s fine!” Nick practically pulled her arm out of its socket as he dragged her up the stairs. “He’s fine, Megan, come on!”
The edge of a step collided painfully with her shin as she tripped over her own feet, but there was no time to stop, no time even to hear her own cry of pain.
The stained walls were nothing but a jumble in front of her. Something fell with a dull clang on the metal railing. A chunk of the stairs above. The building still shook. Another dull explosion rattled through it.
They reached the third floor and started down the hall, their feet shuffling through dead leaves and refuse. Megan’s demon heart gave another leap, bigger than it had been downstairs, and she stopped, almost falling forward.
“Nick? Do you—”
He nodded. “Not here. But closer.”
She turned back toward the stairs, but Maleficarum pulled her away. “Down there, m’lady. We don’t wanna stay in one place, right?”
Nothing came at them from the empty caves of the rooms they passed, but Megan had the sense of things waiting in there, skulking against the dingy shadowed walls, crouching under windowsills. She ran as fast as she could, hooking her finger into Nick’s belt loop and letting him pull her along until he slipped and she crashed down with him.
Her body knew what they’d fallen into before her mind was able to grasp it, to comprehend it. Blood, warm and sticky, spreading in a slow oozing lake across the hall. Her pants and coat were soaked with it, and when her demon heart twitched again she knew it wasn’t just blood, it was Yezer blood, her demons were here and they were being hurt, just like in their home. They should have been safe and they weren’t and that fucking bitch, she was going to get her—
She didn’t think she’d ever felt rage like this before, this bone-deep fury, and it scared her just as much as it elated her, made her feel powerful, more than powerful. Aroused, and that’s when she realized she had hold of Nick’s hand and was taking his energy, sucking it slowly into herself, and if she didn’t stop soon she was going to explode. The sex came from him, but it was the anger that shoved its way into her stomach and flooded her limbs. Jesus, he’s so angry, he’s so fucking hurt and angry—
She dropped his hand as if it had turned into a tarantula and backed away, slipping in the blood and falling against the grimy wall. The lake at her feet still spread; she turned, into the gaping mouth of the doorway and saw, in the faint light through the plastic over the empty window, pieces of her demons. Ears, legs, torsos, roughly stacked like Lincoln Logs against the wall, tumbled across the floor. How many of them, she didn’t know, but they were there, they were everywhere.
Where was Roc? Was he in there, God was he in there, one of those random limbs making the space look like the back room of a slaughterhouse?
She hadn’t realized she’d said it out loud until Malleus took hold of her arms and propelled her away, down the hall, squishing in the blood. “He ain’t there, m’lady, don’t you fret none, he’ll be ’ere soon, you wait an’ see…”
There were no windows in the far stairwell. It was like stepping into a mouth and being swallowed, feeling their way up the steps, moving slowly enough for Megan to start wondering why she hadn’t heard any more explosions in a while, and why Greyson hadn’t yet appeared. Her chest hurt.
The pitted metal railing bit into her hands but she was afraid to let go. Why they’d come armed to the teeth but without so much as a cigarette lighter…but then, they’d assumed they wouldn’t need to make their own fire, hadn’t they? It had never even occurred to her that Greyson might not be at her side every step of the way. Dangerous, that. Her vision blurred and she realized she was sobbing as they walked.
Even over the scuffling of their feet on the steps she heard the sound, a low gurgling rumble, like someone with laryngitis trying to yodel. Something waited for them on the fourth floor, and she thought she knew what it was.
Metal clinked and clanged around her as the men drew their weapons. She still had the gun, tucked dangerously in her pocket. Her palms were so slick it was difficult to get a good grip on it, and it wouldn’t do much good anyway if she was right.
She was. Her father stood waiting when they left the stairwell.
He hadn’t changed since they’d buried him, only two days before—two days, she couldn’t believe how much had happened in two days—but the vague emptiness in his eyes, the way he stood as though balancing on two feet was an effort, were things she’d never seen before.
Nick started forward, his sword raised, but Malleus grabbed him by the arm and muttered something. Megan didn’t hear it. She’d been expecting this, had known from the minute they saw the zombie coming out of the woods at the edge of town, but now the moment was here, really here, and she didn’t know what to do.
She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t move. She just stood there and stared at him, tears running icy tracks down her face. Was there anything left of him in there, and if there was, would he even care?
The thought had barely gone through her mind when he charged. The men leaped forward, trying to catch him, but he shook them off with amazing speed and agility and reached for her, his freezing fingers clutching her throat.
They crashed backward onto the cement floor of the landing. All the breath left her body; her back arched as she tried desperately to inhale, but his fingers tightened around her throat. This was it, he was going to kill her, just like he’d tried to do before, and she couldn’t fight him, she wasn’t strong enough…
She brought her knee up as hard as she could and smashed it into his groin. He might not be able to think and his nerves might be deteriorating, but she was willing to bet even undead men hurt when solid bone was driven into their balls. He howled, a raspy, animal sound, and curled forward. His fingers loosened. She sucked in a huge, glorious breath and actually felt oxygen spread through her entire body.
Too late she realized he was falling sideways, taking her with him to the top of the staircase. Another inch or two and they would tumble back down into the impenetrable blackness.
“Help me!” she screamed, but the words weren’t even out of her mouth when the body was lifted away, when Nick’s hands found hers and he hauled her up so fast she fell forward into him.
The boys were yelling, struggling with the frantic body of her father. Megan remembered well how strong zombies could be, how terrifyingly focused.
Something cracked. She had no idea what it was, but Malleus’s grip loosened for a second, and that second was enough for her father to lunge at her again.
This time she was ready, bracing herself, but at the last second something else happened, something that made her heart—both of her hearts—leap. Roc appeared, and trailing in his wake were four or five of her demons. So few, but enough to get her demon heart moving, to send a jolt of power through her body. It combined with what was left of the energy she’d stolen from Nick in the hall below, and she focused it, focused on it, and put as much of it as she could behind her swinging fist.
Her arm vibrated. All of her knuckles cracked, and she felt two of her fingernails break off at the quick.
Her father—she should start thinking of him as “the zombie,” but she couldn’t, it was her father, it was his body—barely paused, reaching for her again. Nick’s sword came down on his arm, slicing it off, but again, her father didn’t stop.
Megan slipped sideways and lifted the gun, but her fingers were too sore and clumsy to fire it. Malleus and Maleficarum dragged the zombie a few feet away and Nick attacked him again with the sword, its blade black and sticky with rancid fluid.
Her father howled, confusion and pain and anger in what was left of his voice, and Megan couldn’t take it anymore. It probably wouldn’t work, it probably wouldn’t even matter, but there was such a cruel, ironic symmetry to it all as she stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the gun to his head, just above his right eyebrow.
It felt like she should say something, but she couldn’t think of anythin
g to say; she squeezed the trigger and let the gun speak for her.
Its report echoed so loudly in the stairwell and hall she thought it would never stop. Her father’s body slumped forward. The horrible bright light left his eyes, and he became again what he should have been. A corpse. Just a corpse.
The rattles started then, the metal stair railings sounding like a piece of aluminum shaking in the wind. Little snickering sounds, dry scratches and rasps. Her demons were coming, down the stairs from the fifth floor or up from the other floors, alerted to her exact location, and she was crying too hard as she looked at the blurry, messy figure of her father on the ground to care. It wasn’t until Roc touched her hand and spoke to her that she was able to look up.
“…to go, Megan, hurry! Hurry!”
The others stood behind him, terrified. They would die if she didn’t beat Ktana Leyak, if Megan didn’t manage to get the relic before she did. At that moment exhaustion weighed so heavily on Megan’s body that she almost didn’t care if she survived or not. It would be so easy to sit down, to rest, to wait for it all to end.
Greyson still hadn’t appeared…
“Hurry!”
Maleficarum scooped her up from the floor, and they ran down the hall to the other staircase.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I finally managed to get Krantus and Rentoran to join up with me and they brought Varigon and Aberas, and we came straight here,” Roc managed, panting, as they raced past more empty rooms. The next floor up was the fifth; the next floor up was where the showdown would happen. Megan was trying as hard as she could to care. Roc helped with that. So did Maleficarum’s strong arms holding her up. They would want her, need her, if Greyson was dead, she knew they would. She couldn’t die, she had too many fucking responsibilities.
“I think we can get the others,” he continued. “Once they see you’re winning they’ll come back, and when they bring their power back to you—”
“They won’t come back unless I’m winning?”
“Would you really expect them to?”
Right. Stupid question.
They were halfway up the stairs when Megan felt it. Her demon heart leaped, really leaped, and starting dancing in her chest, throbbing.
“I feel it, Megan,” Nick said. “It’s here, it must be in your room.”
They paused at the doorway to the hall. What would it be this time? More zombies? Blood? Hellhounds? Rabid townies with guns and knives?
But only silence greeted them, silence and the sense of something vibrating, waiting. It seemed to sigh when their feet hit the dirty tile floor.
Maleficarum put Megan down. Her legs jiggled for a minute before steadying, and she took Nick’s hand to help her stay that way. If she needed more energy she could have it, especially when Roc clambered up onto her shoulder and the others hovered behind her.
The graffiti on the walls here was worse, more vicious, more plentiful. The entire hospital was a vermin-ridden shambles, but it seemed the particular listless rage of trespassers had been reserved for this floor—or perhaps this floor had attracted the worst of the worst.
She glanced to her left, scanning an absolutely revolting sketch of an eviscerated naked woman, and caught a glimpse of the sky through the window of one of the empty rooms. She’d forgotten it was snowing, forgotten Christmas lights still glowed, forgotten that from this side of the building the town square was visible. It was so beautiful, even with everything she knew, everything that was happening. Her throat closed up and for a moment she just stood there staring.
Then she heard something rustle at the end of the hall and knew Ktana Leyak waited for her in room 526, Ktana Leyak and the last piece of the Accuser that still lived outside Megan’s body.
“Let’s go,” she said, and headed for the door.
Bad as the graffiti was by the elevators, it got worse the farther down the hall she went, hate and pain vomited all over the walls. It was like walking into a museum of misogynistic racism, with some crazy thrown in for spice.
The demon inside her leaped and twitched, a sort of inner Geiger counter, but she didn’t need it. The sense of unease, of wrongness, coming through her shields would have alerted her without it, just as it had that day at the diner.
The door frame of room 526 had been ripped out, leaving a jagged, gaping hole. Megan stopped in front of it, took a deep breath, and walked in.
A streetlight glowed on the corner, not far from the empty window, making this room the brightest she’d been in since entering the hospital what felt like hours ago, months ago. Even with that light it took her a second to see Ktana Leyak, and that second cost her.
Ktana vaulted away from her hiding spot on the ceiling with her arms outstretched, her face curled into a vicious snarl. Too late, Megan ducked, avoiding having her jugular severed by Ktana’s sharp claws but not sparing her left cheek. Her tears ran rivulets down her face and stung in the sharply painful grooves.
Blindly she swung back, using her still-aching right hand. It hurt, oh how it hurt, but she managed to land a solid blow to Ktana’s chin as she swung upward.
Malleus and Maleficarum crowded into the room, shoving Ktana, trying to force her down, but Megan already knew it wouldn’t do any good. Stuffed with power from Megan’s demons and the chaos they’d caused in Grant Falls this night, she was too strong for them. As Nick had said, the boys weren’t psyche demons. They had all the physical strength they needed, but they couldn’t draw power the way she could.
Still they gave Megan a short respite and for that she was grateful. Somewhere in this room that last relic hid, and she needed to find it immediately if Ktana hadn’t already.
Ktana freed herself from the boys and rushed Megan again, this time stopped by Nick, who managed to get in a vicious slash with his sword. Ktana stumbled back, looking up at him with almost comical shock before attacking him, screaming, her arms windmilling while blood pumped slowly from the gaping wound across her chest.
That was Megan’s chance, shitty as it was. She dared to close her eyes for a second, trying to feel the exact location of the relic, but with so many demons and so much violence in the room, she couldn’t seem to identify it. She hadn’t a doubt it was there—and she had some vague sense of why it was there, some half-formed idea that it had stayed here with her, that it was left here the night Harlan Trooper died, waiting for the Accuser to come back and claim it—but where?
The metal bed bolted to the floor looked like a good place to start, even if it did mean making herself completely vulnerable while she looked under it. Why Ktana hadn’t checked there already she didn’t know, or again, maybe she had, but Megan had to try, didn’t she?
She heard Nick’s sword ring against something metal, chunk into plaster. Meaty sounds of fists on skin and cries of pain might have horrified her, but they at least told her that Ktana was still being kept busy.
The rodent droppings and filth under this bed were even worse than the basement, piled high. Something with little claws skittered across her arms, and her scream turned into a sneeze. Here were dead things, foul things, and just before her hand closed over it she knew here was the relic of the Accuser as well.
Hard hands grabbed her ankles and yanked, pulling her out from under the bed like a cruel child pulls the legs off a spider. Ktana’s foot slammed into the back of Megan’s head, driving her face into the hard floor with a terrible crunch and a bolt of white-hot pain. She didn’t need to feel it to know blood was pouring from her nose, that it was broken.
She tried to get up, but the foot forced her back down. This time she turned her head at the last second, managing to avoid having her face smashed into the floor again.
She stayed down. She had only seconds to decide what to do next, maybe not even that long before the fatal blow—if there was to be one—fell. Megan took a chance. She opened the door inside her, as wide as she could, praying she was right.
Power flared through her. Her demons, sated on the town’s mis
ery, had fed Ktana all she needed; she didn’t seem to notice when Megan sent a shivery little feeler down the line connecting her to them and took some of it for herself. Not to mention what Rocturnus and his accomplices had for her. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to flip her over and send Ktana Leyak flying against the gaping window.
Megan struggled to get up. In her hand she clutched something soft and revoltingly warm, something that could have been the body of a mouse if it hadn’t been slick instead of furry. If she hadn’t been so far in the thrall of the demon it would have made her notoriously weak stomach lurch but, as it was, she felt only a terrible, weary resolve. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but she would do it.
Ktana had barely hit the wall when she sprang back again, knocking Megan onto the floor. Megan didn’t bother trying to push or fight. Every fiber of her being was focused on getting her hand to her mouth. How did Ktana Leyak not know what Megan held?
No sooner had the thought entered her brain than Ktana’s focus changed. She let go of Megan’s neck and reached for her hand, making an attempt to grab the relic—go ahead and say it, it’s a heart or a lung or something equally revolting.
It was a miscalculation. Malleus’s boot swung out and clipped Ktana neatly across the face as she moved, snapping it back, and Megan used the opportunity to force herself to bite down on the thing in her hand.
Her first impression was that it tasted almost sweet, not like something foul and rotting for years under a grimy bed in a mental hospital, but that thought, and every other sensation, left her as power swept over her. It washed through her, taking her with it, filling her body with a raging torrent of emotion and fire and strength. She screamed, knowing as she did so that it wasn’t just the Accuser, knowing that when she’d taken the bite her demons had rejoined her and the energy they’d built up over this long winter’s night would have been enough to send her flying to the moon even without the relic.