Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel

by Brennan, M. L.

  “I’m on your doorstep,” I said. “Come let me in.”

  There was a pause while she wrapped her sleep-foggy mind around that, and her answer was searingly filthy even by her standards, but she padded her way to the door anyway and opened it. She must’ve been sleeping in fox form, because she had wrapped herself in one of the snowflake-patterned flannel sheets from her bed, and was giving me a distinctly unhappy glare that suggested that if I didn’t have a particularly good reason for waking her up in this way, I was quickly going to find myself mauled.

  I walked straight into her living room, hearing the sound of the door shutting behind me, and immediately started talking. “I’m going down and getting the succubi,” I told her, pacing the floor, unable to stand still. “Chivalry and Prudence can go screw themselves, because I’m not letting them spend one more day in limbo. I’m going to hand them the paperwork, bring them up to Connecticut, and find them a hotel or something to stay in while they settle in. My sister might blow a gasket, but once I have them in this territory, Chivalry won’t be willing to go against signed agreements, and Prudence won’t be able to kick them out or kill them. Because the succubi are going to belong here, damn it, and get all the protections that we can give them.” I spun around to look at her. “And I’m here to ask if you’ll go down with me, Suze.”

  She blinked twice at me, her mussed dark hair half covering one eye. “This is going to require some coffee,” she said slowly, and began walking toward the kitchen.

  I stopped her when she would’ve passed me, wrapping one arm around her waist, feeling the soft flannel that draped over her, and the heat and curves of her body. “No, I need your answer,” I said, never taking my eyes away from her face. “Because I’m getting in that car and I’m doing this, with or without you, but—”

  She reached out one hand and smacked my cheek, hard enough that I stopped talking. Then she clicked her tongue and said, “You idiot. Of course I’m coming with you. But it’s an ass-long drive to New Jersey, and I’m going to need some coffee.” I stared at her, and she smiled. “You’re my buddy to the end, Fort, and if you’ve come up with this insane idea, then I’m with you until the wheels come off. But I expect a cup of coffee first.”

  There was nothing I could say in answer to a statement like that, so I leaned down and kissed her, trying to put all my gratitude and respect and love in one gesture that felt both utterly inadequate and at the same time wholly right.

  * * *

  Our first stop was Dunkin’ Donuts, because their coffee was a lot better than anything that Suze was capable of brewing, given that I was fairly certain that new iPhones were produced more regularly than she changed her filters. The next stop was at my mother’s mansion, where at six thirty Suze kept the car idling in the driveway while I slipped inside and made my way into the office. I knew from the bond between us that my brother was upstairs in his suite of rooms, probably snuggled next to Simone, and that Prudence wasn’t present at all—she was almost certainly at home at her town house.

  The succubi file, with all of its requisite paperwork for immigration and tithing, was in the increasingly overstuffed drawer marked PENDING DECISION, and I slid it out in its fat entirety and flipped through it. With Loren Noka’s trademark efficiency, and also what I couldn’t help perceiving as a certain relentless optimism, the elaborately worded documents were already completely ready, awaiting only the signatures of the succubi spokesman and a member of the Scott family. An oversight, of course, and one that I was sure would be immediately corrected when I came home and shoved the document into my siblings’ faces—surely future documents would require all three of our signatures, but here was that shining loophole, and if I was only going to get to exploit it once, then I was going to make it count in people’s lives.

  I made it back out to the driveway without being detected, though I could already hear the sounds of the house starting to come alive, with the staff coming in from their own tucked-away parking area and starting their days of cleaning, or cooking, or data crunching. As I got back into the car, Suze took off the parking brake and moved the clutch to its slipping point, allowing my manual transmission car to ghost down the driveway, the light layer of snow on the gravel muffling the normal sounds.

  “You know, you could turn the car on all the way,” I said. “It’s not going to attract any attention, since they’d probably just think that it was the woman who delivers the newspapers.”

  “I’m in a spy film right now, Fort. Don’t ruin this.”

  An hour later I called Loren Noka from the road and told her that I’d handled all of the ghoul issue, but that I wanted to have today’s meeting canceled, because I had things to handle, and that she could inform my siblings that I’d discuss everything fully with them tomorrow. She paused, and I knew that she’d picked something up in the way that I’d phrased that, but then she calmly assented and assured me that she’d pass the messages on.

  “They’ll probably enjoy a day off anyway,” I said to Suze as I hung up the phone.

  “I sure hope so,” she replied around a mouthful of chocolate munchkins—after all, what was a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts without also getting some pastry—“since after they find out what the hell you’ve been up to for a day and a half, they’ll probably never let you go anywhere on your own again.”

  At just after ten in the morning, the Scirocco pulled into the driveway of the wheat-colored Colonial that the succubi had been staying in. Their repurposed church youth group van was still in the driveway, with a new set of New Jersey plates. Beside it was a new car, a plain Honda Civic with a Nevada license plate.

  “Did another of the succubi end up making it out?” Suze asked as we got out of the car.

  “Saskia didn’t mention it the last time we talked,” I answered, “but I know that she hadn’t given up hope, especially for her brother. Maybe we’ll each have some good news to share.” But I reached my hand reflexively into my pocket to touch the Colt, just to make certain that it was there.

  There was no movement at the windows as we came up the walkway, but as we got closer we both saw at the same time that the front door was ajar. It wasn’t anything that was unexplainable in a house containing that many small children, but the silence in the air suddenly felt much less like the New Jersey suburban dream, and much more threatening. Suze put her finger to her lips and slipped in front of me, glancing inside quickly, then nudging the door all the way open with her shoulder, both of her hands now wrapped around the handle of her longest knife, the one that was nearly a machete.

  We both went in silently.

  What was left of Milo, the adult succubi who had held so tightly to his young son, was halfway down the staircase. His left arm was separate from the rest of his body, resting two steps above a single toddler’s flip-flop. I froze at the sight of the tableau, realizing with a deep, crushing knowledge that I’d acted too late, and they’d paid the price.

  A sound broke the silence—a low mewling, followed by a crunching. I could feel Suze’s hand on my shoulder, urging me back, but I was already moving, and I was no longer even thinking at all, except that whatever had done this was still in the house, and I wasn’t going to let it walk out again.

  A tall man with light brown hair and good looks was in the living room, crouched over a bloody, mangled pile of something that I knew had been a child only by the size of it, and realized was still alive only from that tiny, lost, empty mewl, the last sound possible from a throat that had already screamed itself out when the skinwalker started to feed. Because that was what it was doing—leaning over what had been a child’s stomach, his mouth impossibly wide, pushing back the skin of the dead man that he was wearing so that long black mandibles could emerge, slice flesh off its prey, and pull it back inside.

  I’d aimed the Colt at his head and squeezed off three rounds as soon as I registered what I was looking at, but even that had been to
o slow, as it either sensed my movement or caught sight of me, and it was moving before the bullets could reach it. It moved even faster than Soli, the last skinwalker I’d faced, had moved, so fast that even my vampire eyes had trouble tracking it. The first shot took off a chunk of his cheek and jaw, and he screamed as he ran, a high, painful sound that raked down my brain at a decibel level that I wasn’t even sure I was fully hearing. His victim’s skin tore, but what came out wasn’t blood, it was a foamy white substance, and the puncturing of the skin released a smell that was worse than maggoty garbage in the summer, a putrescence that filled the room.

  My second two shots had missed, but I was already moving, trying to get another shot, when it slammed into my side, throwing me across the room and into a wall, missing the stone fireplace by mere inches, the Colt knocked out of my hands. He would’ve come after me, but then he had Suze to deal with, the long knife in her hands whipping with deadly accuracy and kitsune speed, but each time she slashed out he was already gone, dodging with terrifying ease, and she’d learned from her last fight with a skinwalker to keep her cuts shallow, to never overextend herself.

  I rolled to my feet. The Colt was gone, so I grabbed at the cast-iron fireplace tools that were beside me, tossing aside the brush and the short shovel and rake, coming back with the long, heavy poker. This time, when the skinwalker dodged to avoid Suze’s knife, he found himself bashed with the metal poker that I brought down with all the strength I had onto whatever I could hit, which in this case was his left shoulder. There was an explosion of more of that foamy white fluid, and I could feel the reverberation and sting up my hands and arms from what I’d just connected with—it was if I’d just slammed the poker broadside against a cement wall, but there was no doubt that the skinwalker was affected, because the scream was even louder this time, and there was a sudden ripping sound, like what a wet grocery bag would make as the gallon of milk finally makes its escape, and an explosion of the smell was so extreme that it made me double over, gagging, my eyeballs burning and tears running down my cheeks, the inside of my nostrils and throat feeling like sandpaper was being scrubbed against it, as if this wasn’t just a smell, but mustard gas from World War I.

  Suze, her nose so much sharper than mine, was affected even worse, falling to her knees, barely able to hold on to the handle of her knife as she vomited helplessly. And in front of us the skinwalker shed its stolen mask, shreds of rotting human flesh falling around it as the hardened black carapace of the true skinwalker emerged, shoving its way out of the dead man’s skin to reveal a full height that had its head brushing against the ceiling of the room, an insectoid face with steadily working mandibles and shining refracted black eyes that reflected my own face a hundred times.

  It knew that Suze was the greater threat, because it moved for her first, even faster now that it had fully shed its facade, the inch-long, curving black claws that were serrated like shark’s teeth slicing down with deadly intent. I forced my arm to raise the poker again, but too slowly, because it had already reached Suze, and those claws sliced through skin, searching for vital organs. I slammed the poker down onto the left arm, and as it slid over that glossy hard carapace I was able to twist it, pulling and engaging one arm long enough to get those claws away from Suze and give her just an instant of an opening.

  Between one breath and the next, the woman was gone, leaving a wounded fox that leaped away as the skinwalker hesitated for just an instant, thrown off by sudden air beneath claws that just a second before had been trying to tear flesh from bone. I threw my whole body forward, knocking the skinwalker onto its knees, and screamed when I felt those mandibles rip into my shoulder and chest, grabbing and slicing as if they were knife-tipped fingers searching for the softest, most vulnerable areas, even as its free arm now found its way right to my side, his fist slamming into me hard enough that I could feel my ribs crack. I shoved my left hand up, catching the bottom of its chin and trying to force that mouth away from me—whatever was happening at my side, there was no mistaking that the true danger was his mouth. I could feel the edge of Suze’s knife beneath my knee, but it might as well have been on the moon for all the good that it could do me in that moment.

  I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye as a black fox, her fur wet with blood in a dozen places, jumped with pinpoint accuracy, landing just so on the shoulders of the skinwalker, her delicate clawed feet fighting madly to find purchase in the smooth surface, and the white of her teeth flashed as she brought them down into the skinwalker’s right eye. Its scream filled the room as the surface of the eye was pierced, a yellow viscous fluid exploding outward, and Suze was thrown off the shoulders, but she snapped her jaws tight and swung, her teeth embedded in what was left of the eye. The skinwalker abandoned me completely, desperately bringing its free arm up to try to get Suze off it, and that gave me the opening I needed to drop the poker and dive down for Suze’s knife. I brought it up with all the strength that I had into the main body section of the skinwalker, and I could feel the tip scrape against that carapace until it finally found a seam, a tiny joint between plates, and I shoved Suze’s knife in all the way until its hilt was the only thing emerging.

  The skinwalker fell backward, its limbs spasming uncontrollably, and the black fox rode it all the way down, growling like a creature possessed. Half-hidden beneath the remains of a coffee table, I saw a familiar handle, and I moved without hesitation, grabbing the Colt, straddling the skinwalker, pressing the muzzle of the Colt into its mouth (uncaring about the way that the mandibles sliced my hand), and I squeezed off all the remaining five shots.

  One final shudder ran through the skinwalker after the majority of the back of its head exploded from the inside out, and it went limp, well and truly dead. For one long second I stared at it, still processing what had happened, and then every injury on my body seemed to register itself with my brain in the same instant, and I gave a guttural yell that was practically a scream, then started crawling, because standing up was not even an option at this point, toward the black fox whose jaws were still lodged in the remainder of the skinwalker’s eye.

  “Suze?” I asked hoarsely, reaching out my bleeding hands to touch her, shuddering at how deep the slices on her body were as they bled freely. “Suze?”

  She opened her mouth almost delicately, her pink tongue liberally coated with the yellow ichor from the eyeball, and turned to look at me. Her back arched suddenly, and she made a deep, whole-body hack, like a cat about to expel a hairball, and several chunks of strangely colored eyeball emerged, along with a whole lot of sputum. She focused on me again, still covered with blood, and flipped her tail back and forth as if to say, A-okay.

  * * *

  I dragged us both to the downstairs bathroom, Suze tucked under my arm and clearly grateful for the ride. I was just glad that in this form she weighed less than twenty pounds. There was a fully stocked first aid kit under the sink, and I broke it open and hauled out the three full rolls of gauze. Suze’s slices were so deep that on one of them I could actually see the white of bone, but all she let me do was wrap up her torso with gauze, trying to put enough pressure on things to slow the bleeding, before she gave a small growl and used her nose to nudge one of the rolls in my direction. Then she lay down on the bath mat and watched me through partially lidded eyes.

  My left shoulder and upper chest were a mass of blood, but the flow was already slowing as I fished out a few bags of those heavy gauze pads that were meant to be cut down to size to go over skinned knees or burns, and just slapped them onto the area and secured them with half a roll of medical tape. The mandibles had been sharp and terrible, but fortunately they hadn’t been able to slice too deeply, though the web of tiny, precise cuts hurt even worse than my ribs, which burned with every breath that I took. My right hand was also bleeding from a lot of cuts around my fingers and wrist, and along the back of the palm, from where I’d basically shoved it into the skinwalker’s mouth while I
was shooting him, and I wrapped it as best I could, given the awkwardness of using my left hand.

  I looked over again at Suze, who had clearly taken much more damage than I had. “What do I do, Suze?” I asked. “Should I take you to a vet?”

  She whuffled a little, amused, and shook her head. Then she lifted her face imperiously and gestured at the door.

  “You need me to get something for you?” Shaking.

  “I need to look for something?” Nodding.

  “Something you need?” Shaking.

  I paused, and considered. “Oh,” I realized. In the fight for our lives and making sure that we weren’t going to completely bleed out, I’d almost managed to forget what we’d seen. “I need to check to see if there are any survivors,” I said bleakly, and she nodded.

  There weren’t.

  He must’ve arrived early in the morning, before the succubi had woken up, because it was upstairs, in the bedrooms, where I found most of the bodies. From the looks of it, he’d killed the adults first, taking them out quickly. It was with the children that he’d taken his time, and the sight of those tiny, tormented bodies was something I knew that I’d never be able to forget, however many centuries I lived.

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I simply laid each small body out and then covered it with a sheet. Saskia and Nicholas had both died in the master bedroom, in front of a large walk-in closet. There were tiny footprints in their blood, making me wonder if they’d realized that the skinwalker was in the house, and had tried to hide some of the children. I arranged them beside each other, with the remains of their daughter between them.

  For Miro, I carried him downstairs, ignoring the screaming protest of my cracked ribs and the slices on my torso. By process of elimination, I’d realized that it was his son, Kirby, that the skinwalker had been eating when we came in. He’d been the youngest of the children, and he was the smallest of the corpses. I put him down in the living room, beside what was left of Kirby, and covered both of them with a throw rug from the sofa.