by Wendy Knight
“It’s not as bad as you would think.” Nyx swung her arm vaguely behind her, at the hospital. “The Garce—the Garce and the Pys cleaned it out pretty well.” She winced, swinging around, leading the way. The front doors had been broken and were covered in dried, rust colored blood. Claw marks against the rubber floor were evidence that Garce had come this way, once. Hopefully long ago. Enika stayed close to his side, her ax dragging behind her.
“Look for a supply closet… maybe the nurse’s station?” Nyx lit her wings a little more, so it was like following a colorful Coleman lantern through the dark corridors of the hospital. When she’d said it wasn’t as bad as they’d think, apparently she meant there weren’t torn bodies littering their path. Because there were still massive blood stains, tears in the toppled furniture, and everywhere, evidence of the attack.
She glanced once behind her and her eyes widened. “Take my hands. Close your eyes and follow me.” She held a hand out to each of them. Enika took it immediately, but Cole hesitated. “It’s okay, Cole. I’ll take care of you,” Nyx said softly.
That wasn’t what he was worried about. Of the myriad of emotions he struggled through just to be around her, fear that she would abandon them in the face of an attack wasn’t one of them. He swallowed hard, and when once wasn’t enough, he swallowed again. He was afraid that if he touched her, held her hand, felt her feverish skin…
He would never be able to stop.
“Cole, stop being a baby and grab her hand. We need to get moving,” Enika snapped, eyes still closed tight. Cole grinned nervously, slowly twining his fingers with Nyx’s. The contact was like being shocked, but without the pain. Warmth spread up his arm, racing through his blood. He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes.
The last thing he saw was her face, staring at their joined hands in shock.
She feels what I feel.
She led them silently through the hospital. He could feel her wings brush him every so often, like touching a balloon that had been rubbed on the carpet and then stuck on a wall. Soft, silky, and humming with electricity. She didn’t make a sound, but Enika’s ax, dragging morbidly behind them on the tile, did. It was terrifying and comforting, grating and soothing.
He focused on their hands, because he was scared, and as the oldest and the only man, he shouldn’t have been scared. As a rule, when he and Enika and RayAnna had been on the run, they’d stayed away from huge populations of people — hospitals, college campuses, sports arenas — because that’s where the Garce would hunt. He hadn’t seen so much proof of death and attack before, and the visions haunted him even after his eyes closed. When Nyx stopped and gasped, his eyes flew open in fear.
She was staring ahead. Enika, already armed with her ax, was becoming paler by the second. He followed their gaze, dread building in the pit of his stomach. It had been a waiting room, but here, it hadn’t been the Garce who attacked. There were scorched marks on the walls — missed shots from the Pys. From the mold and the charred section of seats, he would guess one of those shots had lit on fire, and the emergency sprinkler system had put it out. The bodies here were men, drained of their blood, eyes still wide with horror in their decomposing faces.
The men never died first. They lived long enough to watch the Pys stealing their life force. Enika whirled away, dropping her ax to land on her hands and knees, vomiting onto the tile. Nyx sank next to her, holding her hair back, tears snaking silently down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but Cole could hear her. “I didn’t think it would be so bad.”
Enika sat back on her haunches, her hand over her mouth, her face gray and covered in a sheen of sweat. “Let’s just find the stuff and get out of here.”
Nyx nodded, pulling Enika to her feet. “No matter what, do not open your eyes. Understand me?” Nyx asked sternly, grabbing Cole’s hand in her shaking one.
She tugged them away from the waiting room and shoved through the doors into the emergency room corridor. He could feel her fear and could only imagine what she was seeing. It should be me leading them. She shouldn’t have to endure this alone.
Squeezing her hand, he forced his eyes open. He thought she would pull her hand away, but she only clutched his tighter. She needed him.
It was just as bad back here. It looked like the Pys had ripped women right out of their hospital beds, leaving horrific reminders behind. Men’s bodies lay scattered in every direction. It was a sight Cole would never get out of his mind.
“There.” Nyx sounded strangled, frightened, disgusted. She raised her trembling hand, still clutched in Cole’s, and pointed to a metal rolling cart. The key was still in the lock; blood covered the lanyard it hung from. “Syringes are in med carts, right?”
Like a moving fence, they moved as one to the cart. Nyx reluctantly released his hand and let Enika go, as well, so she could turn in circles around them, head raised like she was testing the air. “Hurry, hurry,” Enika murmured, bouncing on her toes, eyes still scrunched tight.
Cole jerked open the drawers. If he found anything that looked like medicine or medical supplies, he dumped it in Enika’s bag. If he found syringes and needles, he dumped them in his own bag, until the cart was empty. “Done. Let’s get out of here.”
Nyx nodded, coming back to his side and gripping his hand. Enika held on to his other arm with a slick, trembling hand. The other still clutched her precious ax.
“I think I remember the pharmacy at the other end of the hospital. If I take you guys back out to the car, you can start for home and I’ll—”
“No,” Enika and Cole said simultaneously. “We go together.” Enika heaved the ax over her shoulder and started toward the door.
“Hey.” Nyx hid a small, sad smile. “The pharmacy is the other way.”
They went out a different way than they came in so they didn’t have to pass the waiting room again. Nyx’s eyes were bright and fast in the darkness, searching out the shadows, watching for threats. “Nyx?” Enika whispered. It seemed to shatter the stillness and bring the shadows raining down on them. “I’m scared. Are you scared?”
Nyx peered around Cole, checking to make sure Enika’s eyes were still closed. “No.” Her gaze flicked up to meet Cole’s, and he could see the fear there, but it hid behind the fierceness.
“Oh good.”
She dimmed her wings, and he could feel her hands getting hotter — somehow, the fire she used to make her wings glow pulled heat from the rest of her. When she didn’t use it, she got hotter and hotter.
Like the Pys.
Cole wasn’t aware when they started jogging. Sometime after their collective subconscious realized they were being stalked, but before their conscious minds did realize it. It was Nyx who finally released him, shoving him forward and making him pull Enika with him. “The pharmacy is through there. I’ll hold them off. Get everything you can carry!”
“I’m not leaving you!” Cole yelled, because the Garce were howling, excited, blood-curdling howls that turned his heart to ice. It was hard to be heard over the howls.
There were many of them.
“Cole!” she bellowed, whirling away from him. Her wings flashed as she stretched them — protecting Enika. Protecting him. “Can you kill these things? No. Can I kill these things?” She glared at him over her shoulder. “Yes. Now go.”
She raised her hands, tilting her head back, pulling the heat from the air around her. Enika shattered the glass door of the pharmacy and jumped inside, hurdling the counter and disappearing on the other side. Cole followed her, emptying the shelves that were surprisingly untouched. Most people hadn’t survived long enough to raid anything, and the ones who did survive were smarter than to come to a hospital where Garce would undoubtedly make themselves at home.
He felt the fire before he had sense to turn to watch her. The whole air buzzed with it and the Garce screamed and howled. Cole turned just in time to see two leap at Nyx at once, jaws wide and dripping acid.
He yelled, Enika screamed. Every
thing moved in slow motion — he watched his sister dive back over the counter, ax in hand, running to the door. He jerked his AR15 off his shoulder and started shooting, trying to distract the aliens, but he only made them angrier. His bullets moved too slow and were lost in the shadows. The red eyes didn’t even dim.
Another one exploded out of the darkness, leaping onto Nyx’s back. She screamed, but it was a scream of fury, not fear. Her hands, still raised, released the tight fists and fire exploded from her — from her hands, from her eyes, from her chest.
And then her wings.
Her wings.
They burst into flames.
The Garce on her back shrieked and tried to scramble backward, but she jerked around, somehow forming the burning blood into a blade that she staked through its head. Her other hand grabbed a Garce by the throat, and it jerked and spasmed as her blood, still burning, flowed from her hand to its body. She dropped it with disgust, and it lay still, smoldering on the burnt tiles. The third Garce, and two more who had come out of the abandoned halls, yelped and screeched and tried to run away.
Nyx went after them.
Cole remembered screaming her name. He remembered grabbing Enika when his sister tried to follow. Vaguely, he remembered telling her they had a job to do and gathering everything they could carry while Enika sobbed.
He made her run with him, through the corridors to the hospital. They could hear the Garce, yelping and screeching and howling. His entire body seemed to be on auto-pilot, with one thought running over and over through his mind. Save Enika. Save Enika. Save Enika.
It wasn’t until he’d shoved her into the driver’s seat and fastened her seat belt that she realized what was happening. “No, Cole.” She sobbed and clung to him and screamed — almost as loud as the Garce. “No, Cole. Please. Please don’t go. Don’t do this.”
“Take care of RayAnna if I don’t come back.” He slammed the door and hit lock, like it mattered because Enika had the keys.
“Please!” she sobbed, banging on the window. “Please, Cole!”
“I love you, little sister.”
He turned and ran back into the hospital.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HE RE-LOADED HIS GUN, CARRYING IT close to his chest as he ran up the stairs to the second floor, following the scorch marks and the black ichor of alien blood. Every ten or fifteen steps, he passed a smoking, twitching Garce body — or what was left of it — the red eyes wide and unblinking. It never occurred to him that Enika wouldn’t listen, that she would come back after them — not until he passed the windows looking out on the parking lot from two stories up, and Keven’s 4-Runner still sat there. The lights were on, but Enika was not inside.
He swore, turning to go back, when a Garce screamed and lunged from the floor above. Its red eyes were wild and hungry, and even when Cole emptied an entire round into its mouth, it didn’t slow down. The ax came out of nowhere, flying end over end to sink into the alien’s skull. It howled, turning sharply, and went to leap after his sister. Cole jumped on top of it, wrapping his gun around its neck, trying to pull it back or rein it in or something — he wasn’t even sure he knew what he was trying to do, except stop it.
Enika stumbled backward, her heel catching on the stair, and then she tumbled head over feet to lay bleeding and absolutely still on the landing below.
He was hit by something, something not shadowy, something hot and blindingly fast. He flew through the air, hitting the window he’d been looking out of seconds before, and rolled onto his side. Nyx shoved her hand, blinding in its brightness, wrapped in writhing masses of flaming blood, into the Garce’s chest. It exploded with a shriek. Cole ducked his head as sizzling Garce pieces blew around him, breaking the window, burning his skin.
He squirmed out from under the smoldering alien bits and scrambled down the stairs, half-falling most of the way, to land on his knees next to Enika. Her eyes opened, but couldn’t seem to focus as she strained to sit up. “Shhh, baby sister. Lay still.”
“My ax…” she gasped, putting her hand to her head.
Nyx landed next to them, covered in blood and very, very angry. “I told you to go!”
“We went. We came back.” Cole glared at her until she rolled her eyes.
“There’s a—a colony or a pack or whatever they’re called, living here. We’ve gotta go. We’ll come back with Keven and burn this place to the ground.”
The howls started above them, and then the sound of claws clicking on the stairs. “Hold on to her!” Nyx cried, and, spinning toward the window, she dove.
“Nyx!” Cole screamed as she shot out of the glass, leaving long streaks of blood behind. She fell before her wings caught her, and then she surged back up, teetering dangerously in the air.
“Come on!” She held out her hands, and Cole scooped his sister up, snagging her ax as he passed the Garce, and handed her through to Nyx. Immediately, Nyx dropped out of sight and Cole started for the stairs, to the exit, to freedom. To life.
But the Garce had found the shadows that would bring them to him. They were starving and desperate and he was alive, his blood rushing through his veins. They snarled and snapped at each other, sometimes a single creature with two heads, sometimes two Garce fighting for food. Cole jerked the pistol out of its holster and fired off two shots before he was jerked through the hole in the window.
The fresh air slapped him in the face as the Garce leaped — and didn’t make it. They splattered on the asphalt below, where Enika crab-walked away from them as fast as she could. Nyx dropped him next to her, and between the two of them, they carried Enika to the car. “Drive!” Nyx yelled, slamming Enika’s door.
This time, he didn’t argue. He slammed his foot on the pedal and roared out of the parking lot, weaving through dead traffic like he drove for Nascar. Enika moaned in the back, but was coherent enough to tell him he was a horrible driver at least twice.
“I’m not sure how, baby sister, but we survived. We survived.”
Next to his window, Nyx flew with them. She met his eyes through the glass, blinking as her wings obstructed his face, still there when they lifted again.
He would have died to save her. He would rather have died trying to save her than live without her. It was clear who owned his heart.
KEVEN EYED THEM AS they stumbled into his office. Enika was standing on her own, but it was clear she had one heck of a headache. Cole was cut and bruised and beautiful and exhausted.
Nyx still buzzed from the energy. She was still warm from it, from the attacks, from the fire. She felt… different. More powerful. More alive.
And maybe… a little drunk?
“So… Nyx learned a new trick,” Enika said by way of greeting. She still held the ice pack against her skull as she and Cole dropped the bags of meds on his desk.
Keven raised an eyebrow. “I can’t wait to hear this,” he said blandly.
“Her wings light on fire.”
Keven’s other eyebrow joined the first. Nyx giggled.
All three of them turned to stare at her and she tried unsuccessfully to rearrange her face into something more solemn.
“Also, she may have lost her mind.”
“How did that happen?” Keven leaned forward, studying her wings like they might hold the answer.
“I got really, really mad.” Nyx giggled again.
Maybe she had lost her mind.
“Did she hit her head?”
Cole and Enika both shrugged.
“Nyx? You in there somewhere?”
“Yes. Sorry. I don’t know what happened. There were all these Garce and I thought I was going to die, but I knew if I died, Cole and Enika would die, and I couldn’t let that happen. So… I didn’t,” she said in a rush, and then sucked in lungfuls of air. That she didn’t need, but old habits die hard.
“And then she went all ninja alien girl on them and killed, like, six of them.” Enika grinned, exhausted.
Nyx counted in her head. “Ten. I killed ten.
”
She’d never killed more than three in one night. Even then, it had depleted most of her blood so she couldn’t fight any longer. Right now, however, she felt like she could take on a whole pack of Garce and live to tell about it.
Keven just gaped at her. “You sure you didn’t hit your head?”
She probed through the thick black and blue waves. “Nope.”
“The sun is rising. RayAnna has been clinging to Blair and Justin since you left. Get some sleep.” He motioned toward the window with his chin.
Nyx turned, saw the pale streaks over the mountains, and her heart sank. “I don’t wanna.”
“Come on, baby. Let’s get you to bed.” Cole slid his arm around her shoulders, under her wings where no one dared touch, and steered her out of the office. Seemingly, he hadn’t realized he’d called her baby.
But she had.
“Cole,” she whispered loudly. Somehow, she couldn’t make her voice quiet like it should be. “I love you. You know I do. But you can’t call me baby.”
Cole’s arm tensed around her.
“It’s like she’s drunk,” Enika said loudly, too loudly, from behind them. Her voice rattled around in Nyx’s skull, banging against her brain. “Can her own blood make her drunk?”
“I’m not drunk.” Nyx giggled. The room was starting to spin, so she closed her eyes tight. “I didn’t drink any alcohol. Alcohol is required—” she held up one finger, “—to make one drunk.”
She could hear the in-floor door opening, but she couldn’t make her eyes open to check.
“If you’ll help me get her to her room, I can take care of her and you can go find RayAnna,” Enika said. The cool air of the tunnels chilled her skin, and she jerked away from Cole. Immediately, her body missed his warmth and she curled against his side.
“I don’t want to be cold!” she yelled. “And I don’t want you to find RayAnna. I want you to stay with me!” The sober, rational, always-does-what’s-right part of her was begging her mouth to shut up. But her mouth didn’t listen. Instead, she pouted, even puffing out her lip.