by Erin Hayes
Time to die, harlot! a haunting voice echoed in her mind.
“Not before I put down your pets!” Zoey hissed through clenched teeth, knowing that both the hybrid and the psychic holding their leash would hear it that way.
Ezra roared and stood, a picture in his mind flashing his intent before he vanished from sight.
If he’d just gone for the kill shot…
If he hadn’t been so hungry for pain and suffering.
Ezra knew better than to attack from behind—Zoey saw that much—but she hadn’t read his mind enough to know which side he intended to come in from.
She planned for both.
Two throwing knives slipped free from the belt, hovering in her aura at her sides, and the moment she saw a flicker of Ezra reemerging from overdrive to her left she let the blade fly.
Ezra roared as three inches of polished stainless steel vanished into his abdomen. Staggering back, he lost sight of his goal for all but a half-second. It was all Zoey needed to draw a pistol and fire an enchanted round at him. The hybrid dove free of the trajectory before the bullet could find its target—a portion of the floor behind him bursting into flames as the magic erupted upon impact—but he was once again off his feet.
Got it! Isaac called from the hole in the wall that the Jeep had vanished into. But how are you going to—ZOEY!
Isaac forfeited his prize as he jumped between Ezra and his lover, taking the full force of the hybrid’s uppercut that had been aimed for her. Still twisting through the air, Ezra vanished from the spot on the floor that he’d just gained his footing before appearing again in midair beneath Isaac and moving to pull his mid-section down on his raised knee. Before he could connect with him and before either of them reached the floor, however, Zoey’s aura was around Ezra and pulling his limbs in opposite directions.
“YOU WON’T HURT ANYBODY ELSE!” Zoey screamed at him, straining to pull him apart.
Ezra’s strength proved greater than she’d anticipated, though, and roared against the force as he fought against her, straining to keep himself in one piece.
Behind them, Jerrick let out a roar and a moment later the air was filled with therions as he threw Delilah and her packmates off of him. A startled female clipped Zoey’s shoulder, and the distraction offered enough of a hiccup in her focus for Ezra to pull free of her aura and make another move on Isaac…
Only to have Delilah cut through the air like a snarling missile that tackled him to the ground.
This is getting us nowhere! Zoey fought to get a clear sight of both hybrids around the rising masses of therions.
We can only keep them off their feet for so long, Isaac already sounded exhausted—as exhausted as the other therions were beginning to look—and Zoey could already sense that neither Ezra nor Jerrick were nearly as winded.
But Jerrick was missing his left arm and a good chunk of the right side of his face, including that eye.
Delilah and the others had certainly done a number on him, and while it didn’t look like either of the wounds would be fatal the handicap was definitely slowing him down, forcing him to slash at his opponents with only one set of claws while his head whipped back and forth to compensate for his impaired vision.
Focus on the big one! Zoey ordered the others, knowing that she and Isaac could handle Jerrick in his weakened state.
The therions converged like a flock of birds at the call, honing in on the massive hybrid with a force that would have rivaled even the Jeep. In a wave of teeth and claws and muscle, Ezra was off his feet and being carried back, his massive arms raising and dropping in a blind hammering attempt to break the hold on him. A series of grotesque pops and a few pained whimpers told Zoey that his efforts weren’t in vain, and she signaled Isaac to hurry as they honed in on Jerrick, knowing that the others would only last so long.
Isaac charged then, and Jerrick, seeing his attack, started to turn—his image flickering in Zoey’s vision as he started to jump into overdrive—but before he could get out of the path of the attack Isaac dropped into a hard tumble, using his own body to knock the hybrid’s legs out from under him. Once he was in the air, Zoey was on him. Throwing knives whistled through the air, each cycling and spinning around the sprinting auric vampire as she leapt into the air, letting the blades that were circling her fast enough to become a silver blur around her slice and lascerate the hybrid as she drew the katana and swung for his throat.
Delilah crashed in her, yelping and whimpering as the two spiraled out of midair and rolled across the floor.
Jerrick crashed down, heaving and bleeding from dozens of new gashes and punctures that littered his body.
Ezra roared, tearing another of Delilah’s therions in half at the waist before vanishing into overdrive and clearing out the others, who staggered and dropped as their killer reappeared in the middle of their sprawled corpses.
You, the voice in Zoey’s head was not Ezra’s, but the hulking hybrid still aimed an inhuman finger in her direction, meeting the word with a gesture.
“Who are you?” Zoey demanded, realizing that whoever had been holding the hybrid brothers’ leashes had taken over the one able-bodied subject he had left.
The new world order, he boasted. And this is but the first of many—
I’ve already heard enough! Isaac let out a snarl that stretched the length of the thought in Zoey’s head as he scooped up a nearby blowtorch scattered amidst a series of the brothers’ torture equipment along with the fallen “surprise” Zoey had asked him to fetch from the Jeep:
A crudely made shrapnel bomb made from several boxes of nails taped to a propane tank.
It had worked for Zane and Serena in the past, Zoey figured.
But at that moment she was done thinking like everyone else. She was hurting and she was tired, but most of all she was mad. And she wasn’t about to let the brothers die without a bit of remorse for what they’d done. So she started thinking like an auric vampire; started thinking like herself.
“Your weakness is showing,” she declared as she snagged both brothers’ minds and began to rework the memories she’d witnessed in their heads.
They hated everyone and everything. That had been made abundantly clear by how callously they murdered and tortured anybody they saw fit. And in their eyes everyone was fit for that punishment. The only living being in their eyes that wasn’t deserving of that suffering was each other, and so that’s what Zoey showed them.
Every scene that the other had suffered in those four years she showed in the other’s head. Every vile act they’d committed on another being was replayed with the other’s face on their victim’s shoulders; convincing them that they’d been raping and torturing and murdering the only one they’d ever cared about all along.
And they suffered for it.
Ezra and Jerrick clutched at their heads and howled as Isaac sprinted over and around the fallen therions. His clawed hand worked the nozzle of the blow torch, worked the dial and dragged the copper tip across the floor, letting the sparks ignite the gas and birth a flame.
Hope you’re ready for the boom, baby, he called behind him.
Been ready, Zoey admitted.
Ezra saw Isaac coming and started to move to take him out then, only to have every blade that had been swirling around Zoey hone in on him like a murder of silver crows, which darted and swerved around Isaac in order to embed themselves into the hybrid’s chest. Ezra howled, staggering back, and finally fell as Isaac slapped the propane bomb against his chest, turning the gas on and throwing the torch down after it.
Boom, Isaac’s voice was a satisfied growl in Zoey’s head as she encompassed Ezra in an auric bubble, containing the blast and the ricocheting storm of nails that burst out from the explosion.
Zoey watched the blue orb light up like a colored bulb, the flash so bright it forced her to look away.
Anybody else watching, she realized, was privy to the sight of a perfectly spherical explosion contained in a five foot space where the m
assive hybrid had been standing. That was, of course, if they could stand to stare directly at it.
None of the survivors could.
Behind them, Jerrick whimpered at the sight and then fell silent.
Turning away from the sight of the dwindling explosion and the puddle that it had reduced one of the brothers to, she set her sights on the other. Whether he was silent or not, she would get the information she needed from him.
But he was already gone…
Sweet Ending
“NO!” Zoey’s head darted back and forth, her eyes doing only a fraction of the real searching as her mind’s eye scanned the surroundings.
Stepping up behind her, he set a hand—because it was already becoming just that: a human hand—on her shoulder. The calmness in his touch told her that he’d sensed what she already dreaded was true: he wasn’t anywhere nearby. Enough dread had washed over Jerrick in the instant he’d seen his brother killed to know that, whatever it was he would do next with himself, it was certain to be far, far from here. While there wasn’t much left of Delilah’s pack, the job had been completed; Ezra was dead.
Perhaps it wasn’t dropping the entire Blue Moon club on both of the hybrids and Delilah’s entire pack, but, in Zoey’s own way, she’d gotten to make the sort of impressive impact that she’d never believed herself capable of.
There was a pool of pinkish sludge filled with nails growing on the floor to prove that much.
“He’s gone,” Isaac said as soon as he had the vocal cords to say it. “But, for now, let him be gone. We’ll be able to track him another day. In the meantime…”
A blaring horn emanating from the hole in the wall leading outside interrupted his words and, uncertain, the two braced for another fight as they stepped into a blinding light.
Only when they were both in sight did the horn cut out and something even more annoying commenced:
“THAT’S IT, BITCHES, WHO’S READY TO FUCKING DIE!”
Zoey stood, stunned. “No…”
Isaac shivered. “I died. I died… and this is Hell.”
Serena jumped down from the rumbling Winnebago, already holding a pair of automatic rifles in either hand as her aura danced around her in the shape of various weapons: axe, throwing star, club…
And, inexplicably enough, a bow with an auric arrow already knocked into place.
Zoey rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help but smirk.
“POINT ME AT THEM, ZOE! I’M GONNA BURY AN AURIC DILDO UP ONE’S ASS WHILE I SIT ON THE OTHER’S—”
“YAY!” little Gregori was already perched on the roof of the massive motorhome, clapping his small hands as his feet dangled over the edge. “MOMMY’S GONNA FUCK UP SOME BAD GUYS!”
“You bet your ass I am, little man! You bet your… HEY! DID YOU JUST SAY ‘FUCK’? FUCKING SHIT, ZANE! WHAT ARE YOU TEACHING THIS KID? THAT IS A DOLLAR IN THE SWEAR JAR, YOUNG MAN!”
“How are you even here?” Zoey called out, still giggling. I talked to you, like, maybe twenty minutes ago.
Serena stared at her, seeming shocked by the question. “You think I was back at…?” she laughed and shook her head. “Oh, Zoe, no!” she glanced back at the cab of the Winnebago, where the hunched over silhouette of Zane, who seemed to be either passed out at the wheel or already tired of Serena’s rambling. “The missus and I have been on the road since Isaac first called! I told him I was coming out to kick his ass!” She paused long enough to glance over at Isaac, taking in the full sight of his now nude form. “Speaking of which, you might want to hide that dead horse between your knees before I make true on my promise and make with the snip-snip-slap-slap.”
Isaac turned bright red and hurried back into the building to find something to cover himself with.
Zoey pinched the bridge of her nose, still laughing despite everything, and said, “I still don’t understand how you made it here in only a few hours. It took the two of us days!”
Serena rolled her eyes. “It took you two goody-goodies going the speed limit and obeying traffic laws that include, one, staying on the road and, two, not flying around like something out of The Jetsons.” She shrugged, “Okay, that last one was more a law of physics than an actual traffic law, but the kid thought it was cooler than shit, so we rolled with it.” A scolding finger was wagged at her then, “Don’t underestimate me when your happiness is on the line, doll.” Serena set the guns against either hip to stretch and crack her knuckles. “So where’re these assholes that’ve been making my best bud’s life a living hell? Either the bitch-therion and her pack or the hybrid fucks will do, I’m in a particularly blood-thirsty mood, to be honest.”
“Oh,” Zoey shrugged, “they’re dead. The hybrids, I mean. At least the one we were most worried about is. His brother snuck off, but he’ll probably be out of commission for a while to heal. As for Delilah and her pack… well, there’s not much of a pack left, I’m afraid—the hybrids murdered a lot of them—but Delilah and I are friends now.”
Serena stared at her.
“Big baddy’s dead and you and bitch-therion are buddies?” a blonde eyebrow quirked.
Zoey shrugged. “Yea. Why?”
Serena kicked the guns aside and threw an arm over Zoey’s shoulder, beginning to usher her inside. “Girl, you have got some stories for me, don’t’cha? ZANE! GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS AND GET US SOME DRINKS! AND, GREGORI, IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE PLAYING ON THAT ROOF YOU’D BETTER BE DOING HANDSTANDS OR SOMETHING! YOU GO BALLS-TO-THE-WALL CRAZY OR YOU DON’T GO AT ALL! I AIN’T RAISING NO TAME-HEARTED VAMPIRES HERE!”
Zoey allowed herself to be dragged along with her friend, strangely calmed by the familiarity of her special brand of insanity and chaos. Somehow the idea of following her into the Winnebago and letting it all out just seemed right.
She’d been crazy enough that morning.
In fact, it seemed to her that her calm and collective nature were needed. That’s why the world needed people like her, after all.
“Maybe just one drink, Serena,” Zoey warned her. “I mean, I’ve still got work to do. It’s not like we’re done here yet.”
“Ah, come on, Zoe!” Serena moaned, but she could already tell that the advice was being heeded. “You worry too much.”
To be continued in ‘Crimson Shadow #6: Gods & Monsters’ by Nathan Squiers (available now!)
Thanks for reading!
Epilogue
Journey Ahead
~Two Months Later~
A beam of moonlight cut through the trees as a gentle breeze parted their branches and cast the two of them in its glow. She couldn’t look away; couldn't break their stare even as his eyes narrowed. His dark-green aura rippled and then violently flared around his body, and she realized that he wasn't feeling at all like she was.
“Who are you?” he growled.
Recognition and panic burned in Zoey’s mind. She’d been here before—done this all before!—but it wasn’t supposed to be this way!
“Isa-Isaac!” she gasped around his grip, “It’s… it’s me! It’s Zoey! S-stop…”
Malice burned in the therion’s eyes as Isaac sneered up at her, tightening his grip.
“Zoey…” he said the name like it was a bad punchline to an unspoken joke, “Who will save you now that it’s my hands around your neck?”
Something in Zoey refused to break under the force of Isaac’s crushing words. Her heart pumped furiously and her body tensed against his grip.
Uncertainty spread across his features.
“I WILL SAVE MYSELF!” she roared both inside and outside his head, making him drop her and stagger back. “And I’ll still be able to save you and anybody else that needs it!” she declared, “Especially since my Isaac would never hurt me like that!”
The first wave of her aura took the imposter off his feet.
The second drove him into the tree he’d been leaning against.
As the third slammed her opponent into the ground, Zoey looked down to see herself, cowering and whimpering at her f
eet.
“And you,” she knelt down to look at herself—truly look at herself—“are done making me think otherwise!”
“Zoey…”
“Zoe! You were talking in your sleep again!” Isaac’s gentle voice washed over her, drawing her from the grips of sleep.
“Oh,” she swooned a little as her lover’s eyes came into focus over her. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, helping her up. “Sounded like it was a good dream. Anyway, Serena got some new intel on Jerrick and… uh, well, she wanted to say she picked up a bag of Snickers bars, too.”
Zoey rolled her eyes and pulled herself to her feet. “It’s okay,” she reassured him, starting out of their room and into the living area of the Winnebago. “I know how she can be.”
“How I can be, eh?” Serena called back, already sitting at the table. “And how might that be? Awesome? Amazing? Spectacular? How about ‘D: all of the above’?”
Zoey laughed and nodded to Isaac. “It’s okay. I got this. You go get some sleep.”
Isaac looked skeptical for a moment, but, after a reassuring look from both Zoey and Serena, he shrugged and retreated back to their room.
“Good man,” Serena smiled up at Zoey as she moved to take her own seat across from her. “A bit too overprotective, though; trying to save you from girl-time,” she laughed, sliding a miniature candy bar across the table towards her. “The first of many, I assure you.”
Zoey stared down at it for a moment and finally sighed, scooping it up and taking a bite as quickly as she could. She knew that Serena wouldn’t move on with the conversation until she did. “There?” she smirked back at her, hoping some of the chocolate had smeared on her teeth for effect. “Happy?”
“Always,” Serena clarified.
“Isaac said that you’ve got news on Jerrick,” Zoey pressed.