They were everywhere, coating nearly every square inch of floor in the palatial room, all with their heads turned toward the beast expectantly. She had only been partially conscious when they had first accosted her down below, but now, in this much larger area, she truly appreciated how many there were.
At first blush, she guessed that it would take a couple thousand to cover the surface of the room as they did. But upon closer inspection, she realized that her perspective of everything, of the items in the room she had spent hour upon hour staring at, was just slightly off.
The legs of the desk were too short. The ornate bookshelf above which harbored the now smashed tv ended too soon. The gleaming doorknob of the open door looked closer to the floor, rather in the middle of the thick, dark wood.
What the—
And then Corina realized why everything was askew.
There wasn’t just one layer of rats on the floor, but four or five, all stacked on top of one another like an organic Jenga tower.
Corina Lawrence surveyed the room for less than a handful of seconds, and yet time seemed to draw out as if she owed father time a debt and it was punishing her until she paid up. And yet, despite the horrors contained within this room, everything seemed oddly serene, a stalemate of terrifying proportions.
Until, that is, the beast’s yellowy irises flicked to Corina and narrowed.
You need to finish this.
Corina strode forward, forcing fear into the pit of her stomach, raising her guns high as she did.
The demon opened its mouth and addressed her.
She had expected some sort of demon-tongue followed by a hissing voice, but as she stared at those thin, black lips, they slowly seemed to transition into something less reptilian and more human.
Her vision tunneled until the only thing she could see were those lips, that mouth, the tongue and teeth that she slowly began to recognize.
It was her father.
It was Cody Lawrence’s mouth.
In the back of her mind, she knew that this couldn’t be the case—she knew that her father was dead—but that didn’t matter.
She was seeing it. It was her father, and he was speaking to her, in her father’s voice.
“It’s your fault, Corina. All of this is your fault. If you hadn’t broken your leg, your uncles wouldn’t have left the house. And if they stayed… if they stayed, I wouldn’t have frozen on the ice.” Cody’s voice hitched. “I wouldn’t have died, Corina… if you weren’t being silly and hurt your leg, I would still be alive.”
Corina lowered her guns and shook her head.
It’s not true. None of this is true.
“It is true, Corina. It’s your fault—all your fault.”
“No,” she moaned, feeling the muscles in her legs quake.
Someone, or something, grabbed her arm, but she shook free without looking away from her father. She glared at Cody’s big, hazel eyes.
“It wasn’t my fault! We were going to die there! We were all going to freeze to death if we stayed in the house!” Corina nearly shouted. “We were all going to die! Don’t you see? Jared and Oxford left because they had no choice! You left me! You fucking left me, dad! ”
Something squeezed her upper arm again, but this time it was too tight to shake off.
“It’s not real,” a voice whispered in her ear, but Corina barely heard the words. Instead, she continued to focus on her father’s mouth and eyes.
“Corina, I—”
“We were all going to die and you fucking left me!” she shrieked.
“Corina, it’s not real!”
The shout in her ear was so loud that she protectively moved to her right. That, combined with the crunch of several complacent rats beneath her heels, brought reality crashing back. Corina blinked rapidly, and the mouth that was previously her father’s suddenly degenerated.
A forked tongue darted from between the rubbery black lips, and laughter started to resonate in her head.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Corina raised the guns again and stepped forward. With each successive step, she heard the audible crunch of trampled rats.
“You’re not my dad!” she screamed. “Fuck you!”
In some dark recess of her mind she recognized that Coggins was moving beside, saying something that she didn’t want to hear.
She braced herself and then squeezed both triggers at the exact same moment.
The bullets struck within an inch of each other, but they didn’t hit the beast in the face as she had hoped. Instead, her aim was low and a combined 18mm of lead and steel alloy shattered the cracker dangling from its throat, sending a burst of skin and white paste flying across the room.
The beast staggered, but stayed upright.
And it just kept on laughing.
“Fuck you!” Corina repeated as she took another step forward. The shots seemed to have awakened the rats from their stupor and this time they tried to evade her footfalls. Their efforts were futile; there was just no room. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
She fired again.
This time both bullets hit the beast in the chest.
The rats squealed and she felt their warm bodies piling up around her, climbing on top of her feet and legs in a desperate attempt to avoid being crushed.
Corina fired a fifth and sixth time, raising the guns and aiming for the thing’s head.
This time she didn’t hesitate between shots.
She fired until the guns clicked dully and smoke wafted in front of her face, aiming up and down, trying to hit any and every vital organ from the thing’s gnarled penis to its eyes and swollen throat.
When her ears finally stopped ringing, she recognized a horrible moan filling the room. Corina used the barrels of the guns to sweep the smoke away from her face, wondering, hoping, that she had finally killed the thing that had haunted her for more than a half decade.
The beast was laying atop the desk, its feet, which were oddly human, just barely grazing the floor, its arms spread out in an almost Christ-like pose.
She waited for it to move, wishing she had asked Sheriff White for additional rounds.
It didn’t.
It just lay there, its body riddled with dozens of smoldering black bullet holes.
The rats were working themselves into a frenzy, whatever hold—There are bears and deer and wolves running across the lawn, Corina. Look! They right there! Look!—that the beast had had on them finally broken.
And now another energy filled the air; one of excitement, the expectant rapture of a starving man offered a seven-course meal. In their desperation, some of the rats had even resorted to gnawing away at the face of a dead or unconscious biker lying in a puddle of his own blood on the floor.
“Is it over?” she whispered.
She felt Coggins tense beside her.
“I don’t—”
As if to mock her, Oot’-keban suddenly rose from the desk with something that reminded Corina of when she had first been fitted with her artificial leg: robotic ease.
And the thing was laughing again.
As her guns were empty, it was Coggins who raised his, but when he pumped the shotgun, the hollow sound the chamber made was equivalent to a backfire: they were out of bullets.
The beast might have recognized this too, or maybe not. It was impossible to tell; the laughter was continuous, monotonous, breaking only for speech.
“You think you can kill me?” the thing roared. “I can’t be killed! I am the embodiment of evil! I am infinite, I am forever!”
As Corina watched in terror, the black scales started to quiver, and then the thing’s entire body began to shake as if it was starting to seize. These mild tremors quickly degenerated into desperate quakes that sent hunks of human skin scattering. The rats reacted instantly, their yellow buck teeth gnashing down on these discarded fragments like a calf brain in a piranha infested swamp.
Completely unburdened of its human skin, the ebony beast lowered itself onto
all fours, the four clawed hooves—for that was what they were now, hooves—hammering onto the hardwood like cinderblocks. Several dozen rats were reduced to bloody smears.
Then beast raised its head and locked eyes with both Corina and Coggins. A milky membrane flicked over the yellow eyes with a moist thwack, and then retracted.
Corina felt her body go numb.
The forked tongue slowly, almost seductively, unfurled from between those thick black lips.
“You can’t ever—”
But before it could finish, a shot rang out, one that tore its tongue from its mouth and sent black blood spraying across the room.
Chapter 51
Father Carter Duke didn’t understand what he was seeing, or if he was even seeing at all.
It occurred to him in that moment the he might be dead, that he had succumbed to his injuries from the car accident and that this was the hell that he was destined to spend eternity in.
And yet he was compelled to act nonetheless.
Squatting, he teased the gun from the belt of a biker who was passed out and whose face was serving as an hors d'oeuvre for about a half dozen hungry rats.
Carter had never been fond of guns, but he knew how to use one. He lacked the proficiency as Pike, of course, but when things had started going south down in the Sunshine State, Pike had suggested that they get themselves acquainted with different weapons, guns being on the top of that list.
Carter had initially resisted, but when someone had kicked in their door, tied them up, and made of with nearly a hundred thousand dollars, he had changed his mind.
And he surprised not only Pike but himself with how good a shot he was.
Line the little piggy up with the two other piggies, he thought, using names he had given the gun sights long ago. Three little piggies all in a row.
Carter lined the little piggy up with the lizard-thing’s temple. He had seen, and heard, what the girl in the oversized Askergan Sheriff Department shirt and the leg that looked like a prop from The Terminator had done. He had seen the bullets pepper the thing’s scales—fourteen, maybe fifteen shots in total—and while it went down, it didn’t stay down. But Carter couldn’t just give up and leave. He couldn’t leave—leaving would get him arrested by Pekinish PD waiting outside. He had seen the way the Sheriff and some of his deputies looked at him; their eyes laden with derision and mistrust. Would they vouch for him? Would they say that he was on their side?
Mayor? What are you talking about, mayor?
They might be just as happy to get rid of him.
And on the rare chance that he managed to slip away, what then? How long would it be before the cartels came for him the way they had come for Tony?
Carter shook his head.
No, he was going to make a stand. And making a stand meant going down swinging. Or, in this case, firing.
In every person’s life, there is a moment—just one—
Carter ground his teeth.
Oh, fuck off, mom.
He inhaled through his nose, then exhaled in a thin stream through his mouth. As soon as his lungs were emptied, he squeezed the trigger. A split-second before the gun went off, a rat shrieked at his feet, and the little piggy moved a little to his left.
The bullet missed its mark.
Instead of blasting through its temple, it tore into its tongue, a shot that even the greatest marksman in the world might have a hard time replicating.
“Fuck!” he shouted, kicked at the rats at his feet, cursing them as he did.
And yet…
Black substance poured from its mouth, and the beast thrashed violently.
Carter regretted stomping the rodents.
As he watched, the demon reared back on its haunches and howled at the ceiling as more of the foul black liquid dripped from its lips and coated its chin.
“Shoot it again!” Someone shouted, and this time Carter didn’t hesitate. He fired two more shots in rapid succession, again aiming for the thing’s temple and eyes. But the beast was thrashing so erratically that the first shot missed completely, while the second only seemed to bounce off the hard jaw.
This isn’t going to work… the scales are just too hard, like stained diamonds, they are just too damn hard!
The beast bucked, causing the viscous black substance to rain down on the rats like celestial carbon.
Repulsed, the priest watched a thick arc of the substance spray upward and coat—
A thought occurred to him then, and he strode into the room, ignoring the frenzied rats, and aimed his pistol at the metal clamp on the ceiling that the skins were hanging from. He first considered shooting the chain itself, but that was too difficult a shot. The clamp, on the other hand, seemed doable.
He winced at the pain in his side as he straightened his posture and raised his arm.
Three little piggies all in a row…
There was no rat squeal this time and Carter’s aim was true.
A loud clang reverberated throughout the room and the clamp exploded in a shower of metal. The skins immediately began to fall like a stale flag, and Carter took aim at the clamp on the other side, praying that he had at least one more bullet in the chamber.
The girl with the artificial leg and Deputy Coggins were moving now, he saw this in his periphery, but there was no time to look at them, let alone speak. He just prayed that they had clued in to his plan.
Carter pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
Breathing heavily, he glanced down at the handgun and relief washed over him when he realized that it wasn’t empty; a round had just jammed in the chamber. “Get the fucking skin! Wrap it in the fucking skins!” he shouted as he fiddled with the slide stock to free the round.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the beast begin to lower itself on its haunches again, like a Komodo Dragon readying itself to strike.
The round popped free, and Carter somehow managed to catch it as it sprang from the chamber. He had to lunge into the room as he did, landing hard on top of a handful of rats. They squealed and crunched, but he paid them no heed. Working quickly, aware that the beast’s attention was now on him, he put the round back in the chamber and said the nursery rhyme again in his head.
His aim was dead-on, and the second bullet also hit its mark.
The entire tapestry of skins started to flutter from the ceiling high above. Carter wasn’t sure if the thing with the yellow eyes was still recovering from having its tongue blasted from its mouth, or if it was just confused; either way, it simply stood in place on all fours as the skins fell directly on top of its head and body.
When it was completely covered, Deputy Coggins lunged, landing hard on the beast’s back. It bucked, but one of the chains used to hold the skins had twisted around a leg, limiting its movement. The girl with the mechanical leg animated next, hobbling to the deputy’s side. Together they attempted to wrap the thrashing beast in the skins.
Carter went to help, but a sudden pain flared up his side and he dropped to his knees.
“Wrap it up! Use the chains and wrap it up!” he hissed. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he put the barrel of the gun to the ground and used it as a miniature cane to push himself to his feet.
Carter moved to help Deputy Coggins and the girl he now recognized as Corina from when she had visited, and then was subsequently kidnapped from the church.
The girl that he had promised Jared that he would rescue.
A small smile appeared on his lips.
“Grab the other side!” Coggins shouted, and Carter dropped to his knees again, this time of his own volition.
The demon’s skin felt like a wax paper beneath his fingers, but this sensation didn’t linger. He grabbed a corner of the toughened skin—like beef jerky, this one feels like beef jerky—and pulled it tight around the thing’s midsection. Deputy Coggins grabbed the other side, while Corina reached for the chain. She slid it under, and Carter grabbed it with a hand not holding the skin.
The th
ing’s head was still covered, a black puddle starting to seep out from beneath the skins, but one of its hands suddenly broke free.
A single, three-inch silver claw lashed out and sliced the back of Corina’s arm. She screamed out and immediately dropped the chain, grabbing the back of her arm in an attempt to stem the blood that spurted forth. Taking advantage of the chaos, the beast bucked wildly, and managed to free the leg that had been wrapped in one of the chains.
“No!” Coggins yelled. “Don’t let it up! Don’t let it get up!”
Realizing that their opportunity was fading, Carter reached for the chain and threw it to Coggins, who was still struggling to hold his side of the skin down. The man grabbed it with one hand and then slid it beneath the thing’s belly. It struck Carter in the foot and he snatched it, tossing it over the skins again. A claw lashed out, but Carter leaned back at the last second to avoid his leg being skewered.
“Tie it up!” he shouted. “Tie the fucking thing up!”
Carter moved down the body, all the while leaning against the beast to avoid the swiping claws. Coggins threw the chain under, and he grabbed it and threw it over. They repeated this with amazing speed and precision, as if they had practiced for years. Only once did Carter miss, but that was only because he was momentarily distracted.
It has a tail—Jesus fucking Christ it has a tail!
The chain struck him in the shin and he winced. Shocked back to action, he threw it over again, realizing that it was only a few feet long now.
There was a sputter and a growl from beneath the skins, but he disregarded the sound and grabbed the chain a final time.
“Is your side tight?” he hollered at the deputy, while concentrating on tying his own chain by wrapping it beneath itself.
“It’s done! It’s done!” Coggins yelled as he rose to his feet and took a giant step backwards. The rats had worked themselves into a frenzy now, their squealing making it difficult for Carter to even hear himself think. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5) Page 22