by Sara Clancy
“Oh, God,” she breathed.
Her hands shook as she clambered back into her seat and reached for the car keys. There was only empty air. She smacked her hand over the ignition and the surrounding area. Nothing.
“Where are the keys?”
Benton’s eyes rolled within his skull and he was struggling to keep his head up. The seat below him creaked and groaned as his whole body began to quake.
“Benton,” she reached across and cupped his face with both hands. “Where did you put the keys?”
Each breath rattled in his chest, wheezing as it worked its way through the muck bubbling up from his throat. She could see how much focus he needed to just look at her. The storm gray of his eyes was lost to the expanse of his irises. His body cracked against the seat. A gargled cry forced the sludge to bubble from his mouth and slide down his jaw in a putrid trail. His face flushed a brutal red. It took all of her strength but she was able to force him forward. The white muck sloshed across the car floor. With a sputter and a spit, he was able to draw in a wheezed breath.
“I don’t know what to do,” she babbled. “Just tell me what to do.”
He didn’t respond. She pushed him back just enough to pat his pockets in search of the keys. The window exploded in. Nicole ducked away, too startled to scream as shards rained down upon her. Shielding her eyes, she looked up to see Victor dragging Benton through the broken window. She lunged forward, her hands scrambling for purchases across Benton’s retreating legs. All of her pleas fell on deaf ears. Suddenly, Victor’s hand clutched her hair, tightening until it tore hunks out from the roots. She clawed at his fingers, digging into the flesh, but it didn’t stop him from smashing her head against the dashboard.
For a brief moment, everything became white. She slumped down against the now empty passenger seat as the world swam and shimmered around her.
“Stay down,” Victor whispered. “She only wants him.”
The car keys struck her temple and toppled onto the seat before her. Then everything went black.
***
The loose earth crumbled under Benton’s hands. Shadows danced off the broken hunks of raw earth above him. Benton blinked. The motion took what remained of his energy and he was unable to open them again. Sounds began to shift within the freezing air. A soft, wailing sob hit his ears and he winced, his stomach rolling over itself. He knew that sound. He had heard it in a dream. When he had presented his claws for Victor to die upon. Unable to move, he could do nothing but lay there and listen, waiting for it to inevitably end.
Chapter 13
Nicole blinked aside her welling tears as she burst into her room. She had pulled into her driveway before her mind had caught up with anything that was happening. Grabbing her stacks of research, she hurled them onto the floor, knelt down, and began to search through it all.
“The answer is here. Just talk it out.” Not quite believing her own words, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You can do this Nic. I believe in you.”
A layer of calm settled over the raging chaos in her stomach. Opening her yes, she hovered her hands over the scattered papers, as if willing the answer into her through osmosis.
“Why take Benton?” She remembered Benton’s written description of a dark room filled with coffins, each one carefully placed like a beloved art exhibit. “It’s a collector.”
She flipped Benton’s binder open to the banshee page and skimmed until she could confirm that she had remembered correctly.
“Banshees are rarely seen. A male one has got to be unique. Something worth collecting. So, we’re going with banshee?” she asked herself. Her spine straightened when it hit her. “It hid. After he screamed, it hid. He was blinded, it could have just come up behind him, but it hid.”
Despite knowing it was flimsy evidence, her gut told her she was right. Benton was a banshee and he, in some way, could hurt it.
“But why not just seduce him like it did Vic?”
She ripped off her jacket and eyed the pale fluid Benton had vomited onto the sleeve. It had already bleached the suede.
“Leanan Sidhe.” She snatched up the sheets. “They take human lovers. Acting as their muses while making them euphoric. But Benton’s not human.”
Nicole barreled to the hall bathroom. Dorothy had given her some at home drug tests for a science experiment last year. There were some left over. Everything in the cupboard ended up on the floor. Nothing. She flung open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet and scooped out its contents. Finally, she found the few remaining slips of test paper and, tossing the jacket into the tub, shoved it into the sludge. It took three minutes to get results and she spent every second of it worried that it wouldn’t work. Surely, it wasn’t built for this. There might be a whole cocktail of things it can’t measure. When the time came, there were a few readings. She read and reread the strip in disbelief.
“Cocaine, ecstasy, and oxycodone? Oh, Victor.” She felt crushed under a new wave of despair and guilt. Tears dripped free and she wiped them away harshly. “So, either Benton’s rejecting the drug or overdosing.”
The thought of him being immune wasn’t comforting. If the Leanan Sidhe can’t drug Benton into compliance, what would it do to break him? She released a startled yelp as a scraping noise crossed the window. Her legs hit the tub as she fell painfully into it. It was the same squeal she had heard in the jeep. The one Benton had attributed to Death personified. The noise came again. This time, it trailed across the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet.
With a flail of limbs, she latched onto the doorframe and hurled herself to her feet. She hesitated in the doorway, heart racing, fear stewing within her until bile rose in her throat.
“Hi,” she croaked out to the empty air. “I’m Nicole. And you’re Death. According to Benton, anyway. I hope that’s not derogatory, I just don’t know what else to call you.”
The silence was both crippling and charged. She glanced around the bathroom.
“Running theory, Benton is a banshee, which I’m guessing bonds you and him in a way. I’m at least hoping it does.”
Only silence met her.
“You were trying to warn him, weren’t you? I didn’t listen and I’m so sorry. Please help me save him.”
Silence.
“Do you know where he is? I know there’s probably rules about interfering, but please, even just a hint?”
A long, shrill screech cut through the room. She staggered back a step as the medicine cabinet door began to move. It inched closed, the sound never ending. Catching the light from the window, it shot the glare into her eyes. Nicole winced and lifted her hand.
It hit her. “A car! The glint I saw behind Vic’s house was a car.”
She barreled back into her room and pulled a map of Fort Wayward from her drawer, one that had been too crumpled to include in the Bertrand’s welcome basket. With a sweep of her arm, she cleared her desk and spread out the map. Victor’s house, and a number of the connecting ones, were made of dirt. They were rarely used and any new tire marks would be easy enough to follow. She traced the thin lines of the map to an array of different properties. According to town history, there had been eight properties built there when the town was first founded a hundred years ago. They had only stood for a year before a wildfire destroyed them all. Believed cursed, the properties were left abandoned.
“It’s hiding in one of the basements.”
She grabbed a new coat from her cupboard and she wondered if her mother had locked her office window, or if anyone had changed the code for the station’s gun closet.
***
Benton’s limbs felt encased in stone. With excruciating effort, he dragged himself across the floor. Colors hit his eyes like flares. Victor’s cries and the sound of tearing flesh blended together in his ears and merged with the memories within his head. It was killing him. Benton couldn’t move. He tried to speak but the viscous muck rose again, choking him like hardening concrete. It took every muscle strai
ning together to force it out. Exhaustion made him slump against the earth. By the time he was able to draw in a deep breath, the sound had stopped. The dust stirred as Victor’s body crumpled.
Tasting the dirt on every breath, Benton closed his eyes. Tears scorched his chilled skin as they rolled from his eyes. In the deafening silence, he heard each drop. Soon, the droplets increased until they were a steady leak. He knew they didn’t all belong to him. They weren’t all tears. The blood slipping from the monster’s hand sounded heavier. Drip by drip, the sound edged closer, until the warm trickling struck his cheek. He flinched with every hit but wasn’t able to move away. The tips of claws nicked his skull as it began to pat him. Every stroke left behind a thick trail of blood and the growing stench of copper.
***
Nicole clutched her hair as she looked at the four options before her. The tracks of Vincent’s truck had disappeared as it crossed the hard stone of the crossroads and she couldn’t find it again. Not knowing what else to do, she had gone to each property in turn. A century of neglect had left the foundations of the settler’s homes lost under thick grass as high as her hip, swallowing them as if they had never been there. Now, purple glitter ink criss-crossed her map and she was back at the crossroads, hoping to spot something she had missed. She racked her brain but was sure that all of the text books only spoke of eight.
A scream devastated the air, rattling the stones of the road with its force. Nicole threw her hands over her ears but it was no protection from the unbroken wail. It was human and other, the different sounds bleeding together even as they layered one over the other. A shrill whine of microphone feedback. A hunting screech of an owl. Rolling like thunder. Roaring like a river. And at the heart of it all, a very human voice, raised in terror, quivered at an astonishing pitch.
Then it stopped. Her ears rung as she stared, shell-shocked and enthralled, in the direction the sound had come from. Nicole was certain that, for the first time in her life, she had just heard the scream of a banshee.
***
The world shifted around him like oil in water. A line of burning candles were placed on a table by the far wall, offering just enough light for him to make out the staircase beyond the coffins. Benton couldn’t fathom how he had produced such a sound. The monster had left in the wake of it but he knew it was nearby. He felt it. Eyes darting around the room, he lurched and lumbered towards the only way out. Beside him, a coffin on his right creaked open, just a fracture of a slither, and Benton bolted forward.
He didn’t see the hand but he felt it. Fingers coiled around his leg, tripping him and sending him crashing into the staircase railing. Riddled by time, the wood shattered under his weight. He kicked wildly at the hand on his ankle as he crumbled onto the floor amongst the fractured pile of kindling. A scream lodged within his throat when he saw it. Death stood at the top of the stairs like solid smoke, watching. His hands scrambled for something to grab onto as the monster dragged him back into the room but found only loose hunks of wood and dirt.
Splinters gouged into his palms as he latched onto one chuck, rolled onto his back, and swung blindly into the shadows behind him. It shattered as it struck something solid and the hand on his ankle released. Benton lurched onto his feet, kicked another chunk of wood into the air, and cracked his makeshift bat into it. Even as his eyes blurred, his arm was solid. The hunk crashed into the side table and toppled the candles. Each one extinguished as it hit the dirt and the room was lost to darkness.
With death above him, Benton threw himself to the side, using the shadows as a shield as he crawled under one of the coffins. They all sat on tables with fine velvet curtains separating them from the rest of the room. In his hiding place, Benton tried to force his mind to work. The raspy scrape of a match-head igniting made his heart stammer. A small patch of light flickered, growing as a candle was lit. Another strike and the glow increased, encroaching around the edges of the velvet. Another, the sound far closer, and he could see the metal bars crossing over the wood above him. The next match burst to life; the sound coming from just beyond the curtain. Shaking uncontrollably, Benton turned his head towards the sound.
The fingers were a vice around his neck before he ever saw the hand. He was wrenched out of his hiding place. His legs slammed into the side of the coffin, making it rock and pop open with a burst of decay. The monster’s face hovered before him as sludge rose back up in his throat, unable to get past the tight grip of its fingers. Benton could only stare into the monster’s mirror-like eyes. It allowed him to watch as he gasped for air, his face discoloring and swelling with his need for oxygen. It looked human, only mangled and mummified. Its lips shriveled over a disjointed jaw. The top of its skull engorged, bulging out as its face sloped in.
His lungs burned and fluttered, aching to be used. The sludge bubbled as it seeped further up his throat, taking the last of his air with it. Black smoke pooled in the corners of his vision. An arctic chill pressed against his spine. Death was behind him. Surrounding him. Blacking out the light.
A sudden light scorched his eyes as it flooded the room. A resounding crack and the hand around his neck released. Benton sagged against the wall, the flood of slop gushing from his mouth as a series of blurs joined together to reveal Nicole edging across the room, a gun held in both hands.
“Where did it go?” she whispered.
Benton heard the question but couldn’t understand the words.
“Benton, do you see it?”
Fear and desperation warred in every syllable. He tried to speak. To turn her away before she saw who was in the open coffin. But it was too late. Her eyes fell upon Victor and she raced to him with a soul-crushing scream. She didn’t see the figure rising up behind her, the arms with no end, the razor tipped talons. He called for her but only vomited. The arms wrapped around her wrenched her back from Victor’s side. She struggled but couldn’t get her hands up, couldn’t position the weapon in her hand. Death drew near. Benton forced the last of the liquid clear of his throat as the monster bared its claws. Death reached for Nicole’s cheek as the claws drove down to her chest.
Benton screamed. The sound hollowed and filled all at once. It filled the small space, growing like a living thing until it couldn’t be contained. Clumps of earth broke free from the ceiling and fell like hail around them. The enormous coffins vibrated as the monster reeled back from Nicole. She didn’t hesitate to whirl around. The barrel of her gun cut through Death, scattering the fumes of its body, and fired.
The gun was fired, but his voice swallowed the sound. One bullet hit the shoulder. The next hit the chest. And still it came forward. Nicole aimed, her feet braced, and the monster’s twisted skull exploded. A wave of blood coated the wall. It beaded against the refined coffins and forged tiny rivers as they ran to the ground. Benton’s scream died and he toppled to his knees. His ears rang but it wasn’t enough to smother Nicole’s ranting. She raged, paced back and forth like a caged lion, the polished handgun still within her grasp.
“Vic was my friend! He was a good person!” She bellowed the words before snapping her hand up and firing another round into the twisted corpse. Benton flinched and pressed his back against the wall. “You had no right!” The remaining last hunks of its skull burst as she fired again. Again. Again. “This is my town! My home!”
She didn’t stop firing until the top pushed back. Still, she fired, clicking the empty gun as if hoping to find one more bullet. With a scream of fury, she raced forward and began to kick savagely at the mangled remains of its skull. The crack of bone gave way to wet squish. Benton found his feet. He wrapped an arm around her waist and tried to pull her back. She fought against him, breaking free more than once to stomp on the remains. A sharp pull sent both of them onto the ground.
“It’s dead!” he yelled over her wild screams. “Stop!”
Nicole trembled within his arms, but stopped fighting him. Instead, she twisted just enough to wrap one arm around him in a tight but uncomfortable hug. S
he sobbed into his neck, each sob breaking him a little more. He held her tight and felt the thick, hard vest hidden under her jacket. The question burned in the back of his mind, hidden under his own helplessness, until she fell silent.
“Are you wearing a bullet-proof vest?”
“Yeah,” she sniffed.
“Where did you get a bullet-proof vest?”
“Mom’s work.” She flopped her hand, the empty gun still tight within her fingers. “I grabbed it when I got the gun.”
“That’s a police weapon? Won’t all those bullets be traceable?”
“We’re going to have to get rid of it,” she said, her eyes never leaving the bloodied remains of the monster before them. “I know a good spot we can bury it.”
“We can’t tell anyone.”
Nicole didn’t reply. Didn’t move.
“My DNA is all over this place, Nicole,” Benton pressed. “I won’t be able to explain that. And we can’t just take Vic and the others with us.”
“They stay here for now. Not forever.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll have to move it, too,” she said, still staring at the twisted remains. “It doesn’t get to stay here with Vic. Or the others.”
While the dim light glistened over the polished wood of the numerous coffins, it was still too dark get an accurate count of their numbers. Benton almost wrenched again at the thought that one of them were still empty, waiting for him. Nicole turned her head to look at the field of beautifully encased corpses but her eyes didn’t seem to focus.