I hadn’t noticed. The creepy place had me nervous enough that my shields were on as strong as I could make them. I was barely even letting in enough air to breathe. With the heat up that high inside a slaughterhouse, it would explain the smell.
Cassie stopped at the end of the hall in front of a pair of double doors. She was staring at the floor. Do I even want to look? No, not really. But, I looked anyway. On the ground was a shoe. A plain brown loafer. Fresh looking blood was splattered across it and the ground. That can’t be a good sign. Why can’t we ever have a few good signs from time to time? Just one?
The three of us stood in front of the doors staring at the shoe. None of us moved. I supposed they didn’t want to go on either. Cassie finally stepped up and pulled on the doors. They didn’t budge. She tried again then reached behind her and switched out one of her guns for a straight blade.
Is she going to cut a hole through the door or something?
She slid the blade down the edges of the doors, slicing off the hinges with ease. Catching on, I drew my blade like hers and cut off the upper hinges. The doors dropped a half-inch without the hinges to support them. I kept waiting for it to fall, but they never budged any further.
Again we stood there in silence.
Do we really have to do this?
Ren and Cassie double-checked their guns then crouched down aiming at the doors.
I guess we’re doing this. Damn! It’s times like these that I think I’m in the wrong line of work. Maybe I should become an accountant or something where I can work in a place that’s less . . . creepy! I drew both of the Walther pistols from my back, and took a few deep breaths.
“Go ahead Big Sister. I’ll protect you,” Cassie promised in her normal voice. Her face however, was all serious and focused. It was cute, and yet somehow disturbing.
Okay, so they’re waiting on me now. Don’t you just hate suspense?
I reached out with my shields, and tossed the doors down the hall away from us. We were all frozen in our tracks at the sight of the room beyond. It looked like a slaughterhouse, with sides of beef hanging everywhere, but the entire place was covered in the same webbing as the hallway. The entire place looked like some sort of giant, oversized, spider’s den. A new smell washed over us along with the smell of the rotting meat, rotten watermelon and outhouse – the smell of a rotting human corpse.
We stepped inside slowly. Peering around the corners ready for the ambush. The ground was so thickly covered with webbing that it was spongy. That made everything that much more unnerving with each and every step.
Next time I come to a place like this I am bringing a few thousand gallons of napalm, and I’ll just torch building and all! They can just fucking bill me!
Ren stopped next to a side of beef. Then she pointed at it with her gun with a questioning shrug. I moved beside her to take a look. The meat had been gnawed upon by something with large jaws.
“Werewolf?” I silently mouthed the question to her. She just shrugged again.
Cassie was walking away from us. I had to jog to catch up to her. She was following a trail of fresh looking blood spilt across the woven whiteness.
My guess would be that something grabbed the old man and drug him in bleeding. That’s probably his shoe at the doors.
We followed the blood trail further into the building, ending up in what looked like a large chamber that was too poorly lit to see the other side. The blood turned off to the left. I started to follow it, but Cassie was going right.
What the hell is she after now?
I ran after her again. She stopped suddenly. I had to force myself not to run her over. My eyes were scanning the silk covered walls and ceiling. Somewhere in that place was something that was alive, and I didn’t want to meet it without warning.
Truthfully I don’t want to meet it at all, but that isn’t really my choice now is it? I need a vacation. Somewhere nice and quiet, and spiderless. ‘S’pose there’s spiders at the North Pole? Or how ‘bout the Moon? No spiders on the Moon, right? Mars?
Cassie reached down and picked up a long opera glove with the tip of her blade, looking at it with too much curiosity. This place is way too quiet and horrifying, why is she worried about a glove? I started to pull her to her feet.
Then I saw the glove, really saw it.
It wasn’t a glove at all. It was the hollow skin of a human arm. Just like the remains of the girl we’d found with her insides liquefied only nights before after the skin had ripped open and spilled the contents over the alley. I stepped around Cassie to get a better look.
I’d wondered before why we hadn’t been finding any empty skins around the city. It was because they were all right there. The empty glove-like-hand was sticking out of a pile. A pile over fifteen-feet-deep. A pile of decaying human skins.
“Ren, I think we just solved every missing persons case in the entire country,” I whispered.
Something crashed behind us making me jump. We all spun around guns ready. Another crash came from further away. We moved as one towards the direction of the noise. Ren gasped as we turned the corner. Before us was another pile, this one of human bones. They had teeth marks across them. It looked like some animal had picked them clean with its teeth.
Just how damn many people died in here?
A loud slurping noise came from above us to the right.
We turned.
Ren screamed, I screamed, and even the-nothing-scares-her-so-she’ll-protect-me-from-my-nightmares Cassie let out a squeak.
Above us was a monstrosity of epic proportions. It took a few moments for my mind to process it all.
The body was that of a giant spider, eight legs and all, but where the spiders head should have been was the abdomen of a man. Jutting out of the head of the spider was a huge man with four arms. The muscled torso flexed with each slurping sound. In its arms it held the old man that had been fighting with the lock on the doors, up to its head. The old man’s skin was deflating like a balloon with each slurp.
When the skin was sucked against the bones the creature dropped what remained of the old man. We stood there guns pointed at the monster. What should have been the head of a man was another twisted mutation. There weren’t two eyes like there should have been. Instead it had a dozen black pools for eyes spread across its bald head. But that wasn’t as appalling as the mouth. Giant fangs framed the sides of the human-like mouth. The fangs spread wide as the mouth opened. A third fang folded out from the mouth like a long tongue. It hissed at us.
“You interrupted. Blood is never as good as life juices,” it spoke, clicking the fangs together with each syllable.
A giant, talking, half man-half spider, blood sucking killer. That makes my day complete. Someone please get me out of this nightmare!
“W-w-where’s Jacob?” Ren asked with an unsteady waiver in her voice.
“Away.” The monster snapped at us.
So much for conversation. This is obviously our killer. We’d all seen it drink that old man to a bloodless husk. And since there are no laws protecting the right to trial for giant mutant spiders that I know of, I say kill it and question later.
I aimed for center mass and fired. The shots exploded against its chest. It looked down at where I had shot it, or actually had shot at it. There was a splatter of liquid and fragments of metal where the bullets had hit. The explosive vamp and shifter killing ammo never pierced the skin of the beast.
OH SHIT!!!
Howling filled the room a split second before the werewolves leapt out of the pile of human bones at us. I managed to turn and shoot two of them before something slammed into me from behind. My eyes took a few seconds to focus again. Then I saw them below me. Ren and Cassie were fighting with three more werewolves.
Below?
I glanced over my shoulder. The man-spider was holding me in the air with its arms as it crawled higher up the wall. My skin started to crawl again. This is too freaky!
I screamed, twisting in its grasp and
fired at its head. It blinked just before the rounds hit. They exploded against its skin without leaving a mark. The jaws opened. Three fangs spread wide only an instant before the head lunged at my neck. The fangs smashed against my shields. It tried again and again to chew through my shields and into my neck.
I was being shaken like a dog attacking a rag doll as it tried to eat me. During the shaking I dropped my guns. Not that they were helping me anyway. I had to fight to grab the pulse gun. I fired five times into the beast. It continued to try to eat me, shaking the worthless high-tech taser out of my hand as the head thrashed me about. I could only hope that my shields held out.
Why didn’t it fall? Emmy said that four shots brought down an elephant, how many did this thing need?
Cassie screamed a liquid-filled bloody cry. Ren screamed after her like she’d seen the child get hurt. I tried to look for her, but the way the beast had me in the air I couldn’t see my new little sister.
Is she okay? I’ve got to get away from this thing and regroup.
Fumbling through the shaking I finally grabbed my hair-clip. The violent shaking forced me to drop both of the light grenades before I could activate them. Reaching up again, it only took a little pressure to break the glass inside the emergency burner. I was being shaken enough that the liquids mixed on their own creating the ultraviolet light. The chemical flare blazed to life in the darkened room. The creature screamed and threw me away throwing its arms up to cover its eyes.
I landed on the other side of the room on the pile of skins.
GROSS!!!
Forcing myself to keep from emptying my stomach, I drew one of the new revolvers. The damn gun was even heavier than I had originally thought. It took both hands to raise it even with the help of my shields. I could barely hold it steady to aim. The instant I had a clear shot I squeezed the trigger. The kick of the gun knocked me off the pile of skins to the ground.
I saw the flash of light and heard the explosion. It took a second to get my bearings, then I looked for my target. It was still standing there.
I MISSED!?!
The man-spider gaped at me and then at the hole in the side of the building. You could fly an airplane through that hole with room to spare. But, I missed!? I raised the gun to fire again. With a horrific shriek that chilled me to the bone, the creature dove out the hole into the falling snow. Two werewolves followed a second later. I never had a chance to get off a second shot.
Great gun, but how did I miss?
“KIERAN!!!” Ren screamed bloody murder with tears in her voice.
I got up and ran to her side. Cassie was unconscious and covered in pooling blood with bloody little scratches covering every inch of her skin. So much blood. Is she alright? I thought she was a self-healer? Why isn’t she healing? I knelt down and tried to find her pulse. Nothing. She had no pulse and wasn’t breathing.
NO, she can’t die!!! Not my Cassie!
Chapter 18
I prepared to start CPR.
Suddenly she started coughing. I unexpectedly could find a weak pulse.
Did her healing power just bring her back to life?
Fresh blood openly flowed through her sweatshirt soaking the cloth in a warm and sticky pool. Her straight blade was laying beside me. I grabbed it and cut her sweatshirt open.
Wasn’t this shirt from the Tailor? I thought it was supposed to be cut proof. Are the knives that sharp? Wait! The clothes are cut resistant, not cut proof! Not good, I’ll have to remember about that.
Four, one-inch-wide holes deep in her chest were pouring blood onto the ground like a leaky dam. The blood was running too fast to clot. I put my hands over the holes. The blood just seeped through between my fingers.
Focusing on my shields I pressed against her chest again using them like a bandage the same way I did for myself. The shields formed a solid barrier keeping the blood from running. She had to fight to breathe under the pressure, but that was the only way to keep her from bleeding to death.
Ren was screaming into her cell phone, threatening to execute the emergency dispatch operator if he didn’t send Ren the units she wanted.
Cassie was still coughing. Blood rising from her throat to coat her face with each cough.
How bad is she injured? Did the wounds pierce a lung, or her heart? Is that why she’s bleeding so bad?
I kept the pressure on her chest for an eternity, until she started breathing normally. It seemed like hours had passed during the passing minutes. Blood was pooled under my shields, but it seemed to stop flowing freely. I used my free hand to check her pulse. It was steady and stronger than before. Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at me.
“D-d-do . . . don’t cry Big Sister. I heal fast, remember?” Her voice was hoarse and thick through her blood coated throat.
I hadn’t even noticed that I had been crying. Tears were flowing down my shields, and I’d never felt them. I lifted my hands from her. The pooled blood ran off her smooth skin to puddle beneath her. The holes were gone. They simply weren’t there anymore. I touched her chest where the holes were only a few minutes before. It felt like solid flesh underneath without any sign at all of the recent injuries. Even the cuts on her face and arms healed over and disappeared before my eyes.
“I thought I lost you,” I managed to whisper.
Then the tears fully took over. I couldn’t stop them. I just cradled her in my arms and cried. I hadn’t even known Cassie for a week, and she had already became that important in my life.
SWAT busted in followed by the medics Ren had called for. Better late than never? Over half of the people that came into the large room got sick, either from the sights or the smells. The large garbage can in the corner was turned into the public vomitorium. There were no signs of the man-spider or the werewolves around the building.
They got away because of me, again.
* * *
It was almost three in the morning when we returned to the Dark Towers to drop off Ren at her car. Cassie had switched back to her Santa dress, since I’d destroyed her blood soaked sweatshirt. Ren had the police shut down and track all the moving vans since they had all come from the same company. Maybe we can find out where the others ran to through the records of the moving company. As soon as we dropped off Ren, Yuric came out of the Towers waving at us. I pulled over next to him, and rolled down the window. We gave him the short version.
“The creature is an arachnataur, a spider-centaur. They haven’t been around for over a thousand years. I had believed them to be extinct. That is why I never thought of them before. This is most disturbing news,” he said shaking his head in worry.
“Disturbing news? Yuric I shot the thing point blank with your fancy anti-vampire ammo, and it never even flinched. How in the hell do you kill it?”
“Well, they were once rumored to be immortal, until they started disappearing. Then everyone figured that they were dying out. I have never heard of anyone killing a arachnataur. Did you try shooting it with the revolver?”
I blushed with embarrassment at the memory. “Yeah, but I couldn’t hold the gun steady enough. I missed.”
“Oh, I see. Well, my suggestion would be to shoot it inside the mouth. Most creatures have a soft spot on the back of the throat. Or you could try to cut its head off. Your swords may be sharp enough to cut it. I assume that your shields allowed you to face it and remain unharmed. Was anyone else injured?”
“I died again Master Yuric.” Cassie was staring at her hands in her lap as she spoke.
AGAIN!?! What’s with the again crap?!
“Oh my! It is good to see you well Child. Please, both of you be careful. I would not wish to loose either of you.”
Is Yuric worried about me? How disturbingly sweet.
“What about Adams?” I asked to keep from thinking about the vampire’s feelings.
“He has broken many of man’s laws as well as many of ours. The Council is not pleased. As soon as I . . . bleed the rest of the information I need out of him
I will return him to you for trial if you wish. Or I could just dispose of him for you, since he will most definitely die, either way.”
I do not like the way that sounded.
“Hold off on that for now. Keep him alive in case we come up with new questions for him. We may still need him yet. Yuric, why in the hell were Marsala and Tanaka here earlier?”
He gave me that unnerving fanged smile. “One of them, if not both was most likely your traitor. I felt it was best to keep them close until we knew for sure. Tanaka has been very . . . evasive this evening. I would guess that he needs to be watched most carefully. Tell me, did you run into your white werewolf tonight?”
Damn! I hadn’t thought of that.
“No he wasn’t there. He could have been with Jacob though since he wasn’t there either.”
“Possibly. I had Tanaka here all the time you were gone. Strange that with him being guarded that your werewolf failed to appear. Quite a coincidence.”
“My thoughts exactly. Yuric, how many other evil nasty creatures are out there that Jacob could recruit?”
He sighed heavily, “Thousands. Maybe even more if the creatures of old that were supposed to be long dead still exist.”
“How do we stop them?”
“That is a question for which I have few answers. However, I know someone else that might be of help to you. Wait here.”
Yuric made his way through the snow to the all-hours newsstand on the corner. A minute later he returned to us with both hands full.
“Go to the Archives. Ask for directions to Arkon. He is a very old friend of mine, and he is wise in the ways of old. He will know more about our arachnataur. Take these to him but don’t eat them. It is polite to bring a gift when you visit.” Yuric stuck his bony hands in through my window. They were filled with chocolate bars.
The Head Master Vampire of the Region had just bought a dozen chocolate bars for us to take to some old guy? What happened to my old normal life?
Revenge's Web (Kieran Grey Psionic Hunter) Page 16