by Stacia Kane
The men tensed. Greyson and Nick lifted their weapons, waiting, but they were already passing the bar, leaving the wreckage of it behind them.
More evidence that something was very wrong in Grant Falls awaited them as they rolled past, the low hum of the SUV’s engine bouncing off the blank storefronts. A bloody handprint embellished the holiday display in the window of Tommy’s Toys. More blood smeared across the wall, ending on the pavement as if the bleeder had fallen, but no body lay there.
Megan pulled the blanket more tightly around her. “The hospital is to the right, closer to the center of town.”
They floated down the street, the only warm and moving things in an alien landscape. The blanket didn’t help. Even Greyson’s warm hand on her leg didn’t help. The wrongness, the plain and simple sense that all was not well, soaked into her bones. Even with her shields up she could feel the despair, the misery, the rage.
Especially the rage. She realized that tired as she was her body was still humming, adrenaline making her heart pound and her feet jiggle. Her lips felt raw from where she’d bitten them and stung when a tear rolled down her cheek and touched the shredded skin.
She might be able to draw strength from it. If the Yezer—her Yezer—were causing all of this, it was entirely possible she could, that if she lowered her shields and tried to pull them back she could take all that power and use it.
But doing that would also alert Ktana Leyak to their presence, if she wasn’t already aware of it, and that was a bad idea. Yes, Megan would have to fight her sometime, but she would much rather that sometime not be now. Not now and not here.
“Make a left,” she said softly. Her voice would crack if she tried to speak much more forcefully.
Malleus did, then stopped abruptly. Four cars blocked the road, their windshields gaping holes with jagged edges of glass protruding like broken teeth. Their dashboards already looked frosted with snow. In the dim light from the pale sky she saw bloody footprints leading away, but there was no other sign of people.
“There another way ’round, m’lady?”
“Um…yeah. Go back, we’ll head toward the park. We can circle around it and come up from the other direction.”
Malleus nodded and executed a three-point turn as neatly as a driving instructor, while Megan stared out the window at the wreckage.
They made it as far as the edge of the park. Megan was increasingly aware of her skin prickling, of silent watchers from the buildings they passed. Zombies or demons or simply people, twitching their curtains to the side in their apartments above stores, wondering who was out and about on a night this cold, this close to Christmas, in a town that usually bedded down by ten.
Malleus slammed on the brakes. If his reflexes hadn’t been quite so fast the truck would have plunged headfirst into the gaping hole where the road had once been. The snow fell so thick and fast it was almost impossible to see.
Megan waited in the car with Nick and Greyson while the brothers got out to inspect it. They returned moments later, shaking their heads.
“’S all ice, outside it,” Maleficarum said. “That little hill, there, we can’t drive up it or nuffin’.”
The park itself sat on a rise, not steep but steep enough when frozen. To the left of them sat a row of parked cars, the lead one half-buried in the sinkhole, its rear wheels off the pavement. The SUV could not get through the line, and it could not go up the hill.
Greyson sighed. “I guess we walk.”
Why don’t we just go home was on the tip of Megan’s tongue. She couldn’t think of anything she’d ever wanted to do less than leave the warm interior of the car and go traipsing through the park under the watchful gaze of a town driven half mad by Yezer.
Because they were here. She knew it. Nothing else could account for what was happening. Ktana Leyak was here and so were Megan’s rubendas, and they were having themselves a merry little Christmas indeed.
“Meg.”
“What?” She pulled the blanket more tightly around her, as if trying to save up some extra warmth before they started trekking across the barren park. Not empty, oh no. Things waited in that park that she’d hoped to never see.
Greyson held out his hand. “Come on, bryaela, let’s go get back what’s yours.”
Chapter 25
Malleus took point, while Maleficarum and Spud flanked Greyson and Nick on either side of Megan. Snow stung her bare face and blurred her vision; it trickled down Greyson’s cheeks as water when it melted. They could have been the only people in the world, pioneers heading for the old homestead, but they weren’t. And they weren’t alone.
In all that blinding white she imagined they must stand out like black ants crawling across a wedding cake. It was only a matter of time before someone—or something—found them.
She just hadn’t expected them to come from straight ahead. The shapes moving from the snow looked ordinary, or close to it—just people trying to make their way home by taking a shortcut—until they got close enough to realize that these people weren’t wearing coats, they weren’t bundled up. One woman wore a summery strapless dress that revealed the bones of her left arm showing through holes in her skin. Another woman’s evening gown would have glittered if it hadn’t been dulled with snow. Two men in identical dark suits completed the little group.
Megan didn’t even have a chance to react before they were aflame, falling to the snow, horrible confused sounds escaping their closed mouths. They rolled, leaving dark marks in the dusty white ground where the snow and ice melted from the heat, their arms waving, like insects on their backs. The fire flared higher, blue-white, and the zombies stopped moving entirely. Megan glanced at Nick, who shrugged. “Told you,” he said. “When fire is handy, zombies aren’t—shit!”
Whatever sound the beasts made was lost in the wind, so it seemed to Megan that they flew across the snowy grass, great dark shapes with pinpoints of red where their eyes should be. She froze, her mouth open, unable to move as they drew closer.
Maleficarum sidestepped, giving Nick a clear shot. The gun’s report was muffled by the blanket of white around them, but one of the dogs jerked sideways, a momentary pause before he headed for them again.
Flames burst around them, haloing them as they ran, but again, the hounds barely paused. Megan could see how shaggy they were, how pinkish saliva dripped from their long, sharp fangs even as the fire went out.
Maleficarum leaped, grabbing one of them by the neck and toppling it into the snow. Its yowl of fury pulled an echoing scream from Megan’s throat, a scream that seemed to go on forever. Nick’s sword sliced through the air and down, hitting the back of the second hound with a horrible thunk. The beast fell, snarling, its teeth snapping the air only a foot or so from Megan’s ankles.
Greyson grabbed her and pulled her back from the squirming thing, while Spud picked up the third dog and lifted it above his head, his squat face set in grim concentration. He heaved the dog back toward the road, where it landed with a yelp on the cracked edge of the hole in the pavement.
Maleficarum still shouted, wrestling with the first dog, but as Spud moved to help him an ugly crack sounded, like a twig breaking at the bottom of a well, and the dog subsided. Maleficarum was bloody, his shirt was torn, but he stood up with a broad smile as if he’d just been on a wonderful amusement-park ride.
“Right, ’oo’s next then?”
He and Malleus haw-hawed for a minute over that one, while Megan tried not to scream. This wasn’t fun. This wasn’t a great night out on the town. This was a precursor to her possible death, and she failed to see the chance to hurt some hellbeasts as an upside to that.
They resumed formation and walked on, trudging through the rapidly deepening snow. Over the whistling of the wind gunshots sounded in the distance, but stopped before Megan had a chance to figure out where they were coming from. All the while her skin crawled, prickled with the power around them, itched with the despair that had taken over the town. She could feel people
crying in their houses, could almost hear medicine cabinets opening and bottles of pills and packages of razor blades being removed from shelves.
Red lights, festive in the snow, flashed off the windows of the strip mall nearby as an ambulance passed on a side street at the far side of the square, its siren blaring. It shouldn’t have been reassuring, but it was. Somewhere in this place was sanity, somewhere the normal order of life continued.
They’d almost reached the center of the park, where the benches squatted next to a few halfhearted pieces of playground equipment—a wooden swing set, a dented slide, one of those tents made of bars that Megan could never figure out what children were supposed to do with except sit on—when something whispered off to the right.
They all stopped, turning, but it took a moment for Megan’s snow-blind eyes to catch on to what she was seeing.
They slithered up the great elm tree by the fence and swarmed over the white earth, their bodies like oozing black stains. Snakes. Serpents, sliding toward them, moving with a speed Megan couldn’t fathom. It was so cold, it was too cold for them, too cold…
Greyson grabbed her right hand, Nick her left. She saw flames erupt over the spreading mass of snakes but knew it was futile even as they started to run, heading for the far end of the park as fast as they could manage on the icy ground.
Malleus and Spud veered off to one side. Megan started to follow them but Greyson and Nick yanked her back, keeping her moving forward even as something yowled and screeched to her left. She dared a glance and saw the brothers fighting with something, a beast that reminded her vaguely of the Nepalese mountain demon who’d attacked her in a different park months before. That had been a sunny fall afternoon. This night was as if winter had a personal vendetta against them.
It wasn’t a yaksas, though. She realized it when they reached the far fence and looked back. The snakes were still spreading, moving as inexorably as the tide, getting closer to Malleus and Spud as they struggled with the thing. It was black or green or dark blue, she couldn’t tell, but it was huge, and she screamed when it swung a great fist and sent Spud flying. He landed on the grass and stayed there, motionless.
Megan’s heart stopped. Beside her Greyson jerked, ready to run to Spud, but another scream rent the air. They turned toward it to see a woman leap from one of the windows on the square. For one sick, dizzy moment Megan thought she was flying, the way her body seemed to hang there, before she plunged to the ground and bounced once, twice, before settling in the middle of the road.
Megan’s hands flew to her face, covering her eyes, her mouth. Greyson’s coat muffled her cries, his arms like a vice around her shoulders.
She didn’t understand when he shifted and gripped her neck hard enough to bruise, when he shoved her violently down to the ground at his feet and stepped sideways. The edge of his overcoat brushed against her face as she scraped her palms on the snow. In the same movement Greyson pulled his gun, aimed, fired, fired again. Off to the side Spud still lay silent. Malleus and Maleficarum were winning their battle with whatever beast had injured Spud.
How she was able to smell the alcohol on the men she didn’t know, but she could, just as easily as she could see them heading across the park. She even recognized one or two of them, from Kelly’s Tap the night of the fire at Maldon’s place.
That they recognized Greyson and her was obvious. That they carried a grudge was even more so, if the shotguns in their hands were any indication. With them came something she hadn’t felt in months, the slow malevolence of a person completely overwhelmed by Yezer. If they’d been making themselves visible Megan would have seen dozens of them, she knew.
What the fuck was Roc doing? Everything should have been taken care of by now, he was supposed to be here, trying to sneak some of her rubendas back to her, trying to get her as much power as he could. Instead she was looking at three guns, aimed straight at her, her bodyguards were injured or otherwise occupied, and all that stood between her and death were Greyson and Nick. The odds weren’t bad, but she would have liked better.
One of the men fell. Blood blossomed like a rose high on the right side of his chest, making his plaid shirt bizarrely effeminate, and poured from his mouth in a dark stream to stain the snow beneath him. Greyson’s second shot blew off the top of his head.
Nick twisted his body as she started to rise from the ground, so both of them stood in front of her. That was worse somehow, not being able to see, not knowing if the other men were running or taking aim.
Taking aim, apparently. Nick pivoted again, ducking, and came up with his gun ready. All she could hear were shots, louder than she remembered them from before, and it wasn’t until she thought of being in the car with Greyson while the witches attacked that she remembered she had a gun too.
Her cold, stiff fingers slipped on it, fumbled with it, but she managed to edge herself out enough to take aim. Nick stumbled against her so her first shot went wild, but he righted himself immediately before she squeezed the trigger the second time.
Pain exploded in her left arm, so bright and hard she didn’t know what it was for a moment. She screamed and dropped the gun as she fell, hitting her right shoulder hard against the wrought-iron fence behind her.
One last shot blared through the park, then screams, then silence. Megan tried to say something but her throat didn’t want to work. Nothing wanted to work, not her arms or her legs, or her head. She just wanted to curl up in a ball. It was so cold, if she huddled up she might be warmer.
“M’lady! Mr. Dante!”
Someone lifted her from the ground. She was too tired to help, too cold to care. Her arm felt like it was on fire.
One of the brothers held her, she wasn’t sure which one. She managed to look over his arm and saw Maleficarum holding Spud, moving quickly toward the gate just ahead of the sea of snakes.
When she opened her eyes again they were on the sidewalk opposite the park, standing just outside a high chain-link fence. Behind the fence lurked the hospital, gray and silent like a moldering ghost.
Semiopaque plastic bulged and receded in the empty holes where windows had been, moved by the wind. To Megan it looked horrible, the erratic beats of a dying heart.
Automatically she looked for Greyson, but saw the snakes first. They were still advancing, but more slowly now, as if they just wanted to urge her into the hospital. Like they were waiting for her to go in.
Maleficarum set Spud on the pavement against the fence and grabbed the links in his bare hands. They popped like cheap buttons, opening a jagged hole. Metal scratched her cheek as Malleus carried her through, but she couldn’t be bothered to even lift her hand to the wound. Where were Greyson and Nick? Where the hell was Roc?
The first question, at least, was answered a moment later. The two demons stumbled through the hole, their arms around each other. She couldn’t see them well; even with the white sky above it seemed dark here, on the land she now owned part of. Like all the light was absorbed somehow, all the warmth and joy sucked away by the building looming over them.
She saw them well enough to know something was wrong, though, and when they stepped closer to her she realized what it was. For the second time in a week Greyson had been shot, at least once—in the leg, she thought, from the limp—but as she looked more closely, squinting in an attempt to focus better, she noticed part of his ear seemed to be missing. The bullet must have passed only centimeters from his head. The thought made her knees weak. If she’d been standing she probably would have fallen.
As it was she caught only a glimpse of him before Malleus carried her farther away, stopping on the crumbing steps of the hospital building. Wind swirled and eddied around them, lifting Megan’s hair and snapping the heavy corrugated paper of a torn cement bag to their right. She’d been wrong in thinking the hospital was like a ghost. She was the ghost, intruding on a world that had nothing to do with her, a world she should have left behind ages ago.
Her legs were steady enough beneath her
when Malleus set her down just in front of the empty door frames. Once the doors had been etched glass, with TRUBANK MENTAL HEALTH CENTER printed in block script on each panel. Once the atrium had been painted an institutional pale green and filled with modular furniture and plants to take away the ache of that soulless color, and the light had poured in across terrazzo floors.
Now their feet crunched on litter and broken glass as they picked their way through. It smelled in there, like dead things and mold and rotten food, mixed with the fainter, more lingering fragrance of despair. The misery this building had absorbed! The walls still fairly throbbed with it. She could feel them close around her, like dogs sniffing out which hand held the treat.
But there was no hand to choose. She was the treat, and it wasn’t just the building that waited for her to feed it but something inside. Maybe more than one thing. Ktana Leyak could very well be here already. The entire room seemed to sigh when she walked farther into it.
Off to her right were the remains of the reception desk, broken and jagged. It had been bolted down, which was probably the only reason it hadn’t disappeared completely, along with the other furniture. A few disintegrating boxes littered the floor, along with some animal bones and piles of lint and cardboard that could only be rodent nests. That was another smell in the air, one she hadn’t identified until then. Droppings. She sneezed. Just that small movement sent fresh pain shooting down her arm.
A loud sniffle made her turn around. Maleficarum, shaking his head, wiping his eyes.
“Spud,” she said, ashamed of herself for not having asked already. “Is he—”