More importantly, as long as the front door remained shut, she’d never have to look at a vampire ever again. The only thing missing right now was the presence of Herb and Dan, but they knew how to handle themselves out there, better than anyone.
She had her doubts about Dan’s black river theory—hell, she had her doubts about the guy’s sanity—but if it turned out he was correct, and if he succeeded in reaching the vampire ruler that he believed was out there, the next time Conny felt sunlight on her face, it might even all be over.
Andrew Lloyd hovered close by, shuffling a little impatiently.
“The archives are that way,” he said, pointing at a distant tunnel.
Conny nodded, and started to move when her eyes caught a can of sliced peaches in syrup.
She pulled it off the pile and sat, wincing at the pain in her feet.
“It can wait a few minutes,” she said, and she twisted the ring-pull, opening the can with a pop.
Remy’s ears perked up once more.
*
Shahana couldn’t eat.
She’d had walked alone for a while in the gloomy tunnels with her grief roaring in her ears like thunder. In her young life, she had never experienced emotion quite so violent as the despair she felt at being separated from Shaharun.
The two girls were twins—not quite identical in appearance, but identical in virtually every other way. Hana and Runa; two sides of the same coin. Their bond had been almost supernatural, the gift that only those grown together in the same womb seemed to receive. They did more than finish each other’s sentences: Hana could feel her sister’s joy or sadness or pain as if it were her own. The two girls were inseparable.
Until the woman in the British cop’s uniform had separated them.
And left Runa to die.
Violent spasms of emotion had wracked Shahana’s slender body as she drifted through the dark tunnels aimlessly. Until that moment in her life, she hadn’t realised that it was possible for thoughts and feelings to ache like this, to tear and rip at her like serrated blades.
She wanted more than anything to just turn her mind off, to stem the tide of agonising memories that made her want to scream until her lungs burned. If she had a weapon, she thought she would have ended the pain.
But she was too young to carry a firearm.
Shahana and Runa had been new initiates, barely three months at the ranch after being picked up on the streets of Salt Lake City. The plan, when the two girls had fled from their home in Seattle, had been to make it to Las Vegas. Shahana had harboured fuzzy notions of learning to gamble, maybe even getting a job in the casinos when she was old enough. Vegas was the city of fortune, and she and her sister were due a slice of that.
Still, when the clerics from something called the Order had offered the two sisters a home, and they had been hungry and cold enough to accept, it hadn’t seemed like a bad decision. The ranch was devoted to a strange religion, but the people there seemed content. None of them sought to do the things to Hana and Runa that a father should never do.
Now, the ranch was gone.
Runa was gone.
And only pain remained. Blinding, searing, inescapable.
When it felt like she might lose her mind in endless screaming, Shahana had followed the noise of distant voices through the unfamiliar tunnels until she came across a large dining area. She entered, just in time to see the hateful police bitch and her dog leaving the room, and took a seat at one of the long wooden tables.
She couldn’t eat.
But she could listen.
She let the voices of the other initiates and clerics wash over her, allowing the hum of conversation to push her turbulent thoughts aside. She wanted only to be numb.
Company helped.
She sat with her head bowed, staring at her slender fingers, and gradually her mind hushed.
The pain of her loss receded.
She drew in a deep breath.
And her fingers clenched into fists, her jaw dropping.
Runa was still alive. Shahana could feel her out there somewhere. Distant, yet the bond that had held the sisters together since birth wasn’t broken.
Without a glance at the people in the dining area, Shahana scuttled away, following her feelings through a maze of dim tunnels until finally she reached an area that she recognised: the five-way hub just inside the main entrance.
There was nobody around.
Shahana raced up the gently sloping exit tunnel and threw herself at the huge steel door, lifting onto her tiptoes and pulling open the viewing hatch.
She peered through the narrow window.
Outside, day was beginning to turn to dusk. Among the rocks and trees, the shadows were long and deep. Impenetrable.
Shahana squinted.
Someone was moving out there. A small figure, stumbling toward the door as though injured.
The figure stepped out into a shaft of fading sunlight, and Shahana’s breath caught in her throat.
It was Shaharun. Barely able to walk with the gunshot wound in her thigh, and now her T-shirt, too, was stained dark with blood, but she was alive.
“Runa,” Shahana whimpered, and her eyes darted to the control panel next to the door. It had been a four-digit code that the Grand Cleric used, hadn’t it? Like an ATM.
Shahana frowned.
She had watched the door being shut, but hadn’t been paying much attention. Her mind had been filled only with that crippling grief.
She tried to replay the memory in her mind.
8453.
She jabbed at the buttons, and the control panel offered an apologetic beep.
8435.
Beep.
Shahana felt like screaming. She would have to find her way back to the maze; find someone who could open the door and then persuade them that her sister was still alive outside. By the time she managed it, Runa would surely be gone, or dead.
4853.
Ping!
Clunk.
The door unlocked with a sound like a hammer beating on steel and Shahana let out a triumphant gasp. She wrapped her small hands around the handle and heaved, pulling the door with all her might, pressing against the frame with the sole of her boot, putting her entire body weight into it.
The thick steel door opened slowly.
And, at last, Shahana was able to rocket out of the bunker into the cool late-afternoon air.
She clambered down over the rocks next to the waterfall, never taking her eyes off her injured sister, afraid to even blink; certain that, at any moment, Runa would turn out to be a hallucination.
Finally, she threw her arms around her sister.
Not a hallucination.
Real.
Alive.
“Runa,” Shahana cried, unable to do much more than choke out sobs that felt like they were trying to rip her lungs right out of her chest. She felt her sister’s arms wrap around her tightly, pulling her close.
Too tightly.
Pain spiked in Shahana’s back. It felt like Runa was trying to crush her ribcage.
“Runa...what are you...doing?”
Shahana struggled, trying to break free of the vise that her beloved sister’s arms had become.
Runa lowered her head as though moving in for a kiss, and drove her teeth down into the soft meat of Shahana’s throat.
The pain, as Runa’s teeth pierced muscle and tendon, was excruciating, but it was nothing compared to the agony that exploded in Shahana’s mind when her sister’s jaw clenched and she began to pull away slowly, tearing out a chunk of flesh by increments. Pulling and pulling, until finally Shahana’s throat let it go with a sucking, popping sound.
Shahana’s mind howled.
She thrashed, unable to break her sister’s grip.
Watching in horror as her body’s precious red fuel pumped away at an obscene rate, drenching Runa’s impassive face.
Watching Runa chew.
Swallow.
She’s...eating me, Shahana
thought, as Runa eased her terrible jaws forward and began to take another bite.
Shahana’s knees liquefied, and she slumped, held upright only by her sister now.
She watched helplessly as Runa devoured her and, finally, when her beautiful sister had taken a fourth large mouthful, ripping off Shahana’s cheek like a slice of cured ham, the world began to flicker and fade, and Runa released her grip.
Shahana tumbled to the rocky ground, and she saw a shape that she didn’t understand, and which had no business being a part of the real world. It was, she decided numbly, a hallucination. Clearly, when some people were on the brink of death, they didn’t see long tunnels and white lights. They saw monsters.
Shahana saw a monster.
A hideous, angular demon made of spikes and barbs, like a giant insect walking on two legs, clambering up the rocks alongside the waterfall.
Making its way toward the door that she had left open.
Almost as soon as she had glimpsed it, the creature was gone, and Shahana’s last sight before death finally took her was Runa’s blank and bloodied face, hovering right above her own, moving in closer.
Jaws widening to chew out her sister’s eyes.
26
The final few floors had been the worst of all for Jerome, but not because they threw new horrors in his direction.
Because they didn’t.
Following the appearance of the pudgy boy carrying the severed head, Jerome had continued to lead Bravo Team down the sparse service stairwell, and for a while the bizarre attacks on each floor had kept coming like clockwork. A maid on the ninth floor, a businessman in a crumpled suit on the eighth. On seven, it had been a hooker, coming at Jerome with a damn stiletto heel for a weapon. It was a sick joke, a waste of precious ammo. The only purpose it served was to keep them moving, and keep their nerves raw.
And then, with a handful of floors still to descend...nothing.
No more attacks.
Jerome felt the confidence that had leaked out of the other three soldiers beginning to return. They picked up the pace again, they moved with purpose. But the sudden stillness of the Bellagio wrapped invisible fingers around Jerome’s heart and squeezed.
The creature—or creatures—that had been playing a game with them weren’t playing anymore. The fun was over.
We need to get the hell out of this building.
Jerome tried to remember the layout of the Bellagio. He’d had a few minutes to pore over schematics on a tablet computer during the helo ride, but the memories were fracturing, pulled apart by the fear and constant violence.
He could only remember vague details.
The ground floor of the hotel contained the casino itself, of course, but there were also large dining areas, the botanical gardens; a small and highly exclusive shopping mall; the enormous hotel lobby.
The frantic battles on the top floors and subsequent bloody descent had him all turned around. If they were lucky, he thought, the narrow stairwell would lead them into the mall or the gardens: areas that might have more than one exit close by. All he wanted to do now was put the claustrophobia of the hotel behind him. Get out into the open air. Out on the streets, Bravo would be able to move much quicker, and they would be able to identify threats before they appeared out of nowhere, right on top of them.
The gardens, he thought hopefully, as he reached the bottom of the winding stairs at last. The gardens, or the mall.
Come on, be lucky.
He pushed open the door at the foot of the stairs, and almost laughed.
Nobody at the Bellagio was ever lucky.
Rows and rows of slot machines greeted him. It was the gaming floor, where windows were few and far between…
...and bodies were everywhere.
Pieces of bodies, to be more accurate.
Countless numbers of people had been massacred on the gaming floor, their bodies ripped to shreds. This devastation wasn’t the work of human hands; it couldn’t be.
The corpses Jerome saw dotted everywhere hadn’t been stabbed or shot; they hadn’t even been sliced into pieces by axe-wielding bellhops. It looked like a pack of wild dogs had been set loose in the Bellagio, and had chewed their way through everything with a pulse.
Jerome stepped into the huge, dark room cautiously, working his way around an unidentifiable hunk of meat, and heard one of his team fighting back the urge to retch behind him.
Jerome had an urge, too: the urge to break into a sprint, to run screaming from the horror and dive through the first window he saw. He suppressed it, and moved to the nearest bank of slot machines, crouching down behind them.
After a moment of stunned paralysis, the three remaining members of Bravo team joined him.
“Eyes on that door,” Jerome whispered to Baldwin, nodding at the door they had just walked through. Baldwin nodded, rubbing at his injured shoulder, his eyes widening in understanding. They were out in the open now, vulnerable on all sides.
“We’re dealing with some kind of creature,” Jerome breathed. “I saw it, back on the stairs, just for a second. I think there’s more than one.” He lifted a palm, staving off the inevitable questions before the others had a chance to voice them. “I didn’t get a good look at it. I think it’s humanoid, but it was moving like an insect, crawling up the outside of the building.”
He watched as Baker and Watts lifted terrified eyes to the ceiling. Baldwin, commendably, kept his gaze fixed on the stairwell door as ordered, but he was trembling visibly, his weapon shaking violently in his hands.
“Yeah,” Jerome said, grimacing. “Gotta check above us. Check every corner. And watch the windows. They know we are here, but I don’t think they know we are aware of them.” He shrugged. It was barely an advantage at all, but it was all they had.
He tried his radio again, in vain hope of hearing Figueroa’s voice—or anybody’s voice.
“This is Master Sergeant Jerome Mills of the 190th out of Draper, Utah. Do you read me?”
He waited for what felt like a lifetime.
There was no response. Just faint, buzzing static. If there was anybody out there who could hear him broadcasting now, they were unable to respond. Or unwilling. Jerome’s mind flashed back to Jacob Goodman, and the way he had turned on his own so suddenly.
Unwilling, he thought again, and gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to think any more about what that meant.
The team had to move. Every second spent out in the open, wondering if something had followed them down the stairs, felt like a bad gamble.
“Go,” he hissed, waving Baker forward. “Check your corners.”
Baker shot Jerome a why-me-first look, but he set off, moving past the bank of slots and out into the first of the wider gaming areas.
Jerome and Watts followed, with Baldwin bringing up the rear. The four men moved back-to-back in a tight, constantly rotating cluster, scanning for movement in all directions, their weapons raised and ready.
Jerome’s heart pounded as it never had before. Each frantic beat felt like a new tear in his chest, as though his pectoral muscles were slowly being pulled apart.
Stretched on a rack of insanity.
The brutality apparent everywhere was mind-boggling; incomprehensible, and yet Jerome saw strange narrative, too. Far across the slot machines, he saw a huge Wheel of Fortune with a headless body affixed to it. The corpse’s hands pointed at the segment of the wheel marked jackpot.
On one of the craps tables, he saw a pair of bloody eyes where he might have expected to see dice.
His flashlight continually played over horrors that seemed to tell a tale of sadistic humour; dark enjoyment. The massacre was as bizarrely playful as it was abhorrent. Whatever did this, Jerome thought, it enjoyed every last seco—
Click, click.
Bravo Team froze as one at an intersection beneath a golden silk awning.
The noise that echoed through the apparently-still casino was soft, but it rattled like gunfire in Jerome’s ears.
It was the sound of company.
Somewhere out there, among the card tables and roulette wheels and bars, something inhuman was moving.
The four men remained locked in place for what felt like an eternity. It was impossible for Jerome to tell which direction the noise had come from.
“Sarge?” Watts whispered. In his terror, the hardened veteran sounded like a lost little boy.
Jerome waited a moment more, and nodded toward a distant doorway, and a sign marked Lobby.
“Go,” he hissed.
The team moved faster now, panic pouring adrenaline into their muscles. By the time they entered the Bellagio’s vast lobby, they were almost sprinting, all thoughts of caution abandoned.
The lobby was a single, huge room: a polished marble floor beneath an ostentatious ceiling made of brightly-coloured glass flowers; a stained-glass window in the church of chance. To the team’s right, the reception desk was a single, fifty-yard slab of gleaming wood, across which numerous bodies were slumped.
Jerome barely saw them.
He doubted the rest of the team did, either, but not because they were becoming desensitised to the horror lurking in every corner.
Because dead ahead stood the way out of the madness: a series of revolving glass doors that allowed the faint glow of the burning city inside.
At the sight of the exit, Baker charged forward wildly.
He rocketed into one of the revolving doors, slamming his body into the sturdy glass and shoving it forward.
The heavy door began to turn…
…and jarred to an abrupt stop when a dark shape dropped down from the exterior of the hotel, stepping into the opposite side of the moving door and stopping it easily.
Baker screamed as he found himself locked in a transparent, triangular cell, separated from the shape by a single pane of glass.
The shape.
Jerome was still running forward when the thing appeared out of nowhere, and the sudden movement caused him to twist away, losing his footing on the marble-and-blood floor. His backside hit the deck hard, sending a hot current of pain crackling up his spine.
The Adrift Trilogy: The Black River Page 75