by SM Reine
“What?”
“Don’t talk about death with them,” she said.
He caught Dana’s eye. She grinned at him and briefly lifted the hem of her shirt while her body was turned away from her mother. The girl was carrying a pistol tucked in the waistband of her jeans, small enough that even her tiny, delicate hand could fit around it.
She let the hem drop and made herself stop grinning. McIntyre ruffled her hair.
Dana would be fine.
The line inched forward. He craned around to see if the military was letting anyone through the fences.
No dice.
The attempted evacuees were muttering, getting restless, looking angry. Things were going to get ugly. McIntyre could tell.
“Idiots,” Leticia muttered again.
Infernal energy crawled down McIntyre’s spine. He turned to look for the source, but he didn’t see anything. Usually didn’t, though. Nobody ever saw the worst things coming.
The alleys behind him were awful dark, though. The lights that the military had set up along the roads couldn’t penetrate it.
Seemed like he and his family had played bait long enough.
Leticia caught where he was looking. “Are we through?”
McIntyre kept watching those shadows. The feeling of infernal power crawling down his spine only confirmed what he’d told his kid—that death usually came from the streets.
“Yeah. We’re through.” He dropped a kiss on his wife’s lips, kissed the top of little Deb’s head, ruffled Dana’s hair again.
“Guess we’re giving up on the evacuation,” Leticia said a little too loudly. In fact, they’d never been planning to evacuate. McIntyre had just wanted to make it easy for their family to be located.
“I’ll look for another way out,” he said. “You head on back to the camp.”
Before she left, Leticia grabbed and kissed him again, longer this time, until Deb started trying to kick him in the chest.
Then they left. The line moved forward to fill in the space that they’d occupied.
McIntyre watched his wife and children walk away from him, hand resting on his sidearm. He got a lot of weird looks for carrying a pair of handguns the first few weeks they lived in France. Like he was a criminal, a madman.
He’d stopped getting so many weird looks once the demons started spreading through Europe after the Breaking. And nobody looked twice at him now.
Nobody noticed when he followed his family from a few blocks back—nobody but the darkness.
All the noise of people and life faded when he got just a few hundred yards into the fog. Leticia and the kids had receded to tiny shadows in the distance, little glimpses of motion against all the shuttered buildings. The French, they sure loved their shutters. Did a pretty good job keeping refugees from breaking into the houses, but couldn’t hold anything scary out.
A shadow flashed across the street between McIntyre and his family.
He drew one of his guns. Eased the safety off.
The shadow grew and kept growing until it was the size and shape of a woman. A woman creeping up on Leticia.
Just another block…
McIntyre strayed to the right, moving along the brick wall. Aside from the curve of hips, the shadow-woman didn’t look much like a woman at all—not with the way she bled into the night.
But that was because she wasn’t really a woman, or even a normal demon. She was a Fate. Clotho. A nightmare infused with Elise’s weird fucking blood.
She was close to his family. Too close.
Few more steps. Come on.
Leticia stopped in front of a house. Deb had finally squirmed out of her arms.
McIntyre’s heart stopped when he saw his baby girl whirl around and come racing toward him. “Daddy!” Her tiny voice echoed.
The shadow-woman was in the way. She swooped in on Deb, lifting her arms, darkness billowing around her like a cloak.
That demon crossed a line of wire placed across the street.
“Tish!” McIntyre roared.
His wife reached inside the doorway of the house. He couldn’t see what she was doing, but knew that she was going for the lever. And he knew that she had flipped it when the lights came on.
Spotlights blazed to life around the street, blazing down on Clotho as her hands swiped inches from Deb’s face.
Clotho arched and screamed. She was a horrible thing to see in the light. Her face looked like a grinning mask attached underneath a choppy haircut, the edges of her lips drawn toward her ears in a permanent, skull-like leer. Even when she screamed, she was smiling.
She rushed toward the edge of the light.
But McIntyre had a lever of his own on this side of the circle, tucked in the edge of a window frame. Not the best wiring, but he’d had to do it himself with about twenty minutes of warning. When it electrified the wire around the circle, he felt pretty good.
Clotho slammed into the wire. Her scream turned shrill.
Dana swooped in and dragged her sister away. McIntyre didn’t breathe until both of them were out of the cage of light. Away from the demon.
Leticia grabbed both her daughters and ran. This time, they really ran—not trying to lure the Fate to attack, but trying to escape. They were smart enough to know to stay out of McIntyre’s way when it came time to slay the demons.
He paced the outer edge of the circle until they were gone from his sight. No breaks in the wiring. He’d done better than he thought.
“You were right,” McIntyre said, raising his voice so that he could be heard over the Fate’s screaming. “Good guess.”
“It wasn’t a guess.”
Elise melted into view at the edge of the lights, safely outside their sphere of influence. McIntyre took a quick look at her. Bandaged arm, but no other sign of injury. The skin exposed by her ripped clothing was unharmed. Actually, she looked pretty decent, considering.
“You’re surviving,” he grunted.
She gave him a similarly appraising look. “You too.” She backhanded him in the gut. “Being a refugee’s been good for you. You’re not such a fat-ass now.”
“Never been a fat-ass. Just strong. Not enough protein here.” He jerked his chin at the Fate. “Took you long enough to get here.”
“I had to shuttle my mother between dimensions. It’s more time consuming than you’d think these days. It’s hard to find the right ways in and out.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he said. “How’d you know Clotho would be coming for me?”
“God’s pissed at me. Trying to kill everyone I love so that I don’t have any retreat. So, normal Thursday. You remember how it is.”
McIntyre was tempted to pick on her for saying that she loved him. Elise had never been so much of a goddamn girl before, getting all mushy and shit like that. “God again? Thought you already got that fuckhole.”
“Different God,” Elise said.
McIntyre just grunted again. Gods, demons, whatever. All of them were giant swinging dicks.
Clotho thrashed in pain, bony limbs twitching wildly. It was pretty satisfying to see.
“I’ve got something that can kill these now,” Elise said, jerking her thumb at the Fate. “At least, I think that they can kill them. I’d have brought one if I’d had enough time.”
He stepped behind a trashcan that had been left on the street and hauled out a car battery and cables. “New sword?” McIntyre asked.
“Werewolves,” she said. “If you can hold on to her for about fifteen minutes, I’ll bring a few back to finish the job.”
McIntyre touched the two clamps on the end of the cables together. Electricity sparked between them.
“I don’t think I need any werewolves to deal with this one.”
Clotho turned her grin on them.
Elise went rigid, staring at the demon as though she saw something new that she hadn’t noticed before.
“What?” McIntyre asked.
After a moment’s hesitation, Elise said, “She
’s talking to me.”
But her lips weren’t moving. The Fate was silent as her body began falling apart under the power of the lights and electricity, skin flaking away like ash.
“What’s she saying?” McIntyre asked.
“She says…” Elise suddenly paled. “McIntyre, stay here. Don’t let her go.”
She vanished.
Clotho turned her gaze on McIntyre. The voice squeezed through his skull, as if she were pushing silver pins into his forehead and using the tips to inject her thoughts on top of his.
Elise knows that there is more than one Fate. She runs to save your family, but it is too late.
His spine stiffened. “Tish.”
McIntyre could see it now: his children skewered by a demon’s claws, his wife bleeding out on the ground. The image was so clear that it was almost like he was looking at it. The kids in the gutter. Leticia draped over a bench.
He shook it off. That was just nightmare thrall. He’d felt it a hundred times before, and he’d probably feel it a hundred times again.
She was getting into his head. Apparently, she wasn’t in enough pain.
He turned up the electricity. It arced between the wires and the demon, thrashing around her in a storm of sparks that he sure fucking hoped would turn off that thrall bullshit.
Another shadow flared at the corner of his vision. He turned to see a second Fate at the end of the street—just like Clotho had said.
That one was gone in an instant.
Clotho’s mental chuckle rolled through McIntyre.
The blood of children is the sweetest.
He jacked up the power again to make sure that it would hold the demon. She screamed, she seized, and he went running down the street after his kids—after the Fate that wanted to kill them.
Maybe it was thrall. Maybe it wasn’t.
He had to make sure.
McIntyre couldn’t feel his wife. She was too weak a witch to bind as his aspis, so he couldn’t track her down like most kopides could track down their partners. But he could track down Elise. He felt her power by the train station, and he followed her there, running as fast as his legs could carry him.
For the first time, he was glad to have lost all that weight—made him a hell of a lot faster.
Darkness chased him on the way to the station. Flashes of that other Fate. She was right on top of him.
He reached the station first.
It was an open structure next to the high-speed line, just some benches encased in a glass shelter. That station had been shut down for months and thoroughly vandalized in the meantime; it was covered in so much spray paint that the windows weren’t windows anymore. But the track itself was clean, the overhead wires electrified. The military had been using them to transport supplies.
That was a good place for his wife to have run. The overhead wire had about twenty five thousand volts of electricity shooting through it—more than enough to kill a demon.
Leticia was sitting on the bench. Dana and Deb sat on either side of her, cowering under her arms.
And a demon loomed in front of them.
McIntyre stopped. He aimed. He fired.
His bullets smacked right into the demon’s back.
He knew that popping off a few shots wouldn’t kill it, but a distraction was all he wanted. Just enough time to figure out another plan—some way to get the demon with that electrified overhead wire. Anything to draw the Fate off of his girls.
But when she turned around, it wasn’t a Fate glaring at him. It was Elise.
Shit. Good thing she was immune to bullets.
“McIntyre, I’m going to—” She cut off, jaw dropping open. “Lucas, no!” She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking over his shoulder, drawing her sword, filling the night with her mass.
McIntyre felt like he was moving too slowly. The darkness held him with slimy hands, fixing him where he stood.
Clotho had escaped the rim of lights.
It wasn’t going to take a second Fate to kill his family.
She billowed in the fog, expanding just as quickly as Elise had, the mask of her face leering at him as she stretched out her hands. Everything was slow—too slow. McIntyre lifted his arms too slowly. He squeezed the trigger too slowly. Even the bullets seemed to crawl toward her, and they vanished into her mass with soft little puffs of black smoke.
The fear smashed into him. Forced him to his knees. He couldn’t breathe through it, couldn’t see the village surrounding them.
All he saw was his daughters screaming as their flesh was peeled away.
He couldn’t stop screaming. His finger kept moving on the trigger even though the magazine was empty.
And then Clotho flashed away, taking some of that fear with her. Judging by the sounds, she wasn’t gone—she had only redirected her attention to Leticia and the girls.
He struggled to his feet. Without the fear occupying his every thought, he had plenty of room for guilt. Self-hatred. Shame.
Clotho had played him—a fucking nightmare, a type of demon he’d fought hundreds of times before—and he’d fallen right into her trap.
“Elise!” he shouted, eyes wide and staring into the darkness.
He couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t tell if the night was so black because of the Fate or Elise herself. He couldn’t even tell which way his family was waiting.
A small body slammed into his. McIntyre caught her.
Dana.
He could only barely see her in the overwhelming gloom of the fog. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, the gun in her hands, the marker on her arms smeared by sweat. She’d been drawing tattoos on herself just like Daddy’s when Elise had contacted them to say that they were likely to be attacked.
“They’re dead,” she said. “Daddy, they’re not moving, and I think they’re dead.”
The fear was growing again, sinking claws into his heart. The Fate was still there.
“Run, baby,” he said, pushing her away from him.
“But Mom—”
“Run!”
Dana ran. The girl was fast. She’d always been fast. She might be all right, might be able to find the edge of the darkness.
McIntyre dived into the fog in the direction that she had come from, plowing blindly across the train tracks, clawing onto the platform.
He blundered through the darkness, trying to find his way back to the train shelter. He seemed to have lost it. Everything was getting darker, and he couldn’t breathe.
Clotho was closing in on him again.
Elise’s voice seemed to travel through water, distorted and muffled. “McIntyre!” A sword flipped through the air toward him. Elise had thrown her obsidian falchion to him. He caught the hilt gingerly, and its infernal stone felt cold in his hand. “The cable!”
He looked up. Twenty-five thousand volts, right over his head.
McIntyre hurled the sword.
If it had been any other blade, he wasn’t sure it would have done shit to the braided steel cabling. But the obsidian falchion sliced right through it.
Sparks erupted, showering around him as the cable fell between McIntyre and Clotho.
He leaped out of the way, scrambling onto the platform again.
There was no screaming—the cable hadn’t struck the demon. But he felt like he could breathe. The fear had lifted again. The wall of electricity had given him respite from nightmare thrall.
He tried to get to his feet but his hand slipped in blood.
Clotho’s black fog had partially dispersed along with her fear. He could just make out Tish’s blank face staring at the roof of the shelter. His younger daughter, Deb, was splayed over her chest.
Neither was moving.
It’s just thrall. It’s just thrall.
But when he dropped beside them and felt their cooling blood slicking his hands, he knew that it wasn’t thrall. It was too tangible. Too real.
This was real. His worst nightmare come to life.
Leticia’s
lips were covered in blood—lips he’d kissed a hundred million times. Lips that had scorned him for swearing around the kids and ordered him to put change in the Bad Words jar. Lips that had kissed their daughters’ scraped knees and said “I do” at a drive-through wedding chapel in Vegas.
He couldn’t see Deb’s face. He was grateful for that. It was bad enough to see the sucking wound on her back that showed where the Fate had ripped out her heart.
His daughter. His little baby.
McIntyre felt Clotho coming up on him, the rising tide of her thrall cresting over him.
There was no feeling left in him to evoke. He wasn’t afraid anymore.
He leaped into the train trench, lit by the brilliant sparks of dancing electricity. The cable leaped like a serpent.
On the other side, Clotho reared. She was partially corporeal, drenched in blood, hearts clutched in her slippery fingers. One of the hearts was so tiny.
McIntyre had never hated before. Not like this. He was a kopis—dealing with demons was just what he did. Most of them needed to die. Nothing personal.
This was personal.
She darted easily over the cable without touching it, undeterred by the flashing electricity.
He drew a pair of knives from his boots. Both steel from tip to tip. Almost like cleavers, as nightmares often carried. Seemed like the appropriate way to end this.
McIntyre lunged for Clotho and buried one of the knives in her body. It didn’t hurt her at all, of course. She just laughed.
Then pain struck him in the heart. His real, physical heart, not the heart that felt like it was breaking at the sight of his dead family. He thought that he could feel the fingers squirming past his ribs.
He was pretty sure when he felt it ripped out through his gut.
McIntyre was kind of grateful for that.
But he wasn’t grateful for long.
As he dropped, vision darkening, he kept one of the stainless steel knives buried in her gut. He even dragged it down a few inches and she didn’t seem to care. Didn’t seem to realize what he was doing.
He jammed the second knife in the braided steel wire.
Electricity leaped from one knife to the other, electrocuting McIntyre instantly—and Clotho with him.
Twenty-five thousand volts.