The Everlast Series Boxed Set

by Juliana Haygert

  The wingless demon from before stared at me. It bared and snapped its teeth. With its unnatural force, it let out a feral growl and pushed against the gate, breaking it down.

  “Oh shit,” I muttered, pulling Raisa to run with me.

  A police officer appeared from a corner. He looked above our heads, and his eyes went wide. “Run!” he said as he pointed his gun past us.

  He shot. I winced. Raisa whimpered.

  He emptied the magazine of his gun, and then ran with us, changing the magazine on the move.

  “Just keep going,” he instructed. I intended to follow his order until I saw what was right above us. I pulled Raisa to a stop, and he bumped into us. “What the—?”

  “There.” I pointed up to where a winged demon was crawling through the snapped cables. We would never outrun it and, no matter which direction we went we would find more demons.

  “Fuck.” The cop scanned the area. “In there.” He gestured to the Grey Art Gallery across the street. Three students opened the wooden doors and slipped in. “We can hide in there.”

  The winged demon was in, and it was looking at me. This was the second demon looking straight at me. Wait, this wasn’t some random attack. If … if the demons were here for me, then it meant Imha and Omi knew about me.

  Panic cinched my chest, and my body slacked with that overwhelming realization. The police officer tugged the sleeve of my coat, snapping me out of it. We rushed to the other side of the street, and I didn’t look back while the cop unloaded his gun at whatever moved closer.

  Raisa and I opened the door. The three of us entered the gallery and pulled the door closed. The cop locked it, and then fastened a pair of cuffs around the knobs.

  “I doubt this will hold them for much longer,” he said.

  Raisa turned to me and grasped my arms, her nails digging into my jacket, her eyes wide. “Dear Lord, I can’t believe this is happening. This isn’t happening. Tell me it isn’t happening.”

  I patted her hands. “Hey. Calm down. Breath in and out.”

  The cop shot us an evil eye. “We don’t have time for this.”

  I glared at him before focusing on Raisa again. “I need you to calm down. Take deep breaths.”

  She reluctantly did it. “W-what was that?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied, hoping she wouldn’t notice it. Usually, she caught on to my lies easily, but with the panicky state she was in, I doubted she was paying attention to details. “But you need to calm down a little, okay?”

  She nodded, and I passed my arm over her shoulders steering her to the main room of the gallery.

  We crossed the room on high alert. Around us quivering students hid behind the exhibitions, some climbed up the stairs, and some entered the restricted area probably looking for secluded places to hide. Many pieces of art had fallen or been broke.

  I glanced up to the cop. “I’m Nadine. This is Raisa.”

  “I’m Greg,” he said as we stepped into a second room.

  A large banner indicated an international medieval weapons exhibition had been on display. The weapons lined the glass cases along the walls and over the tables. There were swords, axes, spears, daggers, bows, and many others I didn’t know by name.

  “W-we should take one,” Raisa said, her voice still quavering.

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “Well, better than running empty-handed.” She shrugged, and I had the urge to hug her. I had never seen Raisa this unsure before. “In case they get to us, we can try something.”

  “That might not be a bad idea,” Greg said. He walked up to a center table, where swords of many different lengths were laid. Behind the table a woman hid. “Hey.”

  The woman stood. She held her chin high, making me jealous of her flawless brown skin. Her chocolate eyes stared at us, not one bit afraid. “I should tell you not to rob the swords, but who am I kidding? The weapons are the last thing to worry about now.”

  She was dressed in a gray pencil skirt, a silk white shirt, and black pumps. She looked too elegant to be a student. She turned, showing a name tag pinned to her shirt. It read Keisha Cross, Medieval Weapons Specialist.

  “Why didn’t you run to the basement with the others?” I asked as Raisa approached Keisha. Beside the new girl, Raisa looked like a gnome. I probably did too.

  “I-I don’t know,” Keisha said, pushing her long, black hair back.

  “Okay,” Greg started. “Let’s grab some stuff and get away from here.”

  A huge cracking sound echoed through the walls, followed by loud growls.

  My heart chilled, and I jumped back bumping into Keisha. Oh God, the demons were inside.

  Greg pulled his fist back set to break the glass over the swords, but Keisha was faster. She gently pushed me aside, punched the glass, and grabbed two swords. Her expression was tight, and when she turned her head toward the doorway her eyes flashed—a spark of silver light shone from her irises.

  I rubbed my eyes. What? I must have been more tired than I thought I was.

  Greg handed a dagger to Raisa and me, and he picked an axe for him. The dagger felt heavy and cold in my hand, and I didn’t like holding it.

  With what sounded like sick battle cries, the demons charged into the room, and Keisha stepped toward them.

  I reached for her. “What are you doing?”

  Without answering me, she jerked away from my hand and lunged at the demons.

  Keisha swung one of her swords at the demon in front of her. The hideous creature parried it with its arm as her second sword slashed across its stomach. Another demon turned to her. Teeth gritted, she whirled away from its claw and hacked its thighs with both her swords. A third and a fourth demon lunged at her. She parried the spear of one, dodged the swipe of another, gashed the throat of the one with the spear, and kicked the chest of the other. The demon she killed and the one she kicked fell to the floor as a third demon came at her. She spun out of its reach, then stepped back into it, and shoved her sword into its chest. By then the other demon was back on its feet. She swung her arm wide, slicing its face with the tip of her blade. The demon collapsed to the side, and she sunk her sword in its chest.

  My mouth hung open.

  “Dear Lord,” Raisa whispered.

  Greg’s lips curled up. “That’s hot.”

  Seriously? He was thinking about that while she was fighting for our lives?

  She was fighting. A bunch of demons. By herself. Fighting. Like sword fighting. As if she was a knight in some Arthurian tale.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Keisha stopped, took off her pumps, ripped the side of her pencil skirt up to her thigh, and wiped the hair from her face. She looked fierce and strong, like a warrior, and she probably wasn’t much older than I was.

  Then three more demons came at her, and she killed them with ease.

  She looked through the doorway. “We’re clear. For now.” She rushed to a glass case, broke it with the hilt of one of her swords, and grabbed a bow and a quiver with arrows. “But there are more outside. Many more. It won’t take them long to figure out there are people in here.” She turned to us. “What?”

  Raisa blinked. “Are you serious?”

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  Keisha swung the quiver and the bow across her shoulders. “I don’t know. I just took the swords and did it.”

  “Have you had any training before?” Greg asked.

  Frowning, Keisha took a velvet cloth hidden under one of the tables and cleaned her swords. “No.”

  “That’s odd,” Greg whispered.

  “It sure is, but we don’t have time to wonder about it,” I said, knowing there were odder things in this world than a girl who suddenly could fight without any training. “We need to find a way out of here. Out of the city possibly.”

  “I know,” Keisha said. “There’s a room downstairs in the basement where precious items and artifacts are stored. The room has a corridor that leads to a d
oor into an alley. They bring valuable stuff through there. We could get away that way.”

  “If the alley is clear,” I added.

  “If it’s not, I’ll make it clear,” she said, not an ounce of doubt in her voice.

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Raisa said, clutching her dagger as if she were a warrior too.

  “Lead the way.” Greg walked to the back door.

  “Wait.” Keisha went to another glass shelf. She broke it, picked a leather belt from a hook, fastened it around her waist, and then took a dagger from the wall and slid it into her new belt. Next, she caught a long sword from the wall, placed it inside a scabbard, and hung it on her belt too. “Now I’m ready.”

  I stared at her. She had three swords, a dagger, and a bow and arrows, while I held only one meager dagger in my hand.

  Holy shit.

  Keisha rushed to the back door and led us through a corridor. At the end, there was an employee’s only door. She took her name tag from her shirt and turned it, revealing a card. She slid it in the card reader, and the door popped open.

  Once we were all in, Greg closed the door, making sure it was locked. Keisha looked like she knew where she was going, so when she climbed down two sets of stairs and continued through a long corridor, I didn’t question it. However, I did look through a couple of doors with small glass windows. People cowered inside those rooms, hiding for dear life.

  Keisha stopped in front of a white door with no glass windows. She used her card to open it and stepped aside, letting us enter before her.

  Lights flickered on, probably due to a motion sensor, and I looked around my mouth open. The room was large—not as large as the one at the Metropolitan or the former MoMa, but still large—and filled with paintings, rugs, books, mirrors, statues, other artifacts and rarities, and many boxes.

  “Through here,” Keisha said, taking the lead again. We weaved around the items and boxes, careful not to touch anything.

  We reached the back door, and Keisha turned to us. “This door leads to stairs up, then to another outside door. I’ll go up and check if the alley is clear.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Keisha vanished behind the door.

  Raisa sagged against the wall beside the door and looked at me, a shocked gleam still in her eyes. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  Instinctively, I reached for a strand of my hair, but before I could start twirling it around my finger, I realized what I was doing and lowered my hand. “No,” I said. I hoped she wouldn’t notice the quiver in my voice. “I have no idea.”

  “How about you?” she asked Greg.

  Beside us, Greg ran his eyes over the axe he had gotten from upstairs. It looked heavy and deadly and had a thick hilt and sharp blade.

  “I have seen bats before, but not this many. However, I have never seen the other creatures. I wonder what they are.”

  “How about Keisha?” Raisa asked. “I’m still stunned. Did you see what she could do? I mean, I wasn’t imagining it, was I?”

  “I’m shocked too, but wow,” Greg said. “I’m also impressed.”

  I was impressed and curious. I saw her eyes flashing—or I thought I did—right before she turned into Bruce Lee. That wasn’t a natural thing.

  Raisa grabbed her phone from her purse. “Great, no signal.”

  “What were you going to do?” I asked.

  “Search about this mess online.”

  “Oh.” Greg’s eyes widened. He reached for a walkie-talkie radio on his belt and turned it on.

  “… hundreds of them. Maybe thousands? I don’t know.” The voice coming from the speaker was shaky. “I’ve never seen creatures like these. They destroyed Central Park, Rockefeller Center, and Union Square. NYU is also in bad shape.”

  A new voice spoke. “Brooklyn is on fire.” My stomach revolted. I had seen demons and fire in a vision once before, a vision that came true. Omi, the god of war, had been in that vision. “I would say eighty percent of Brooklyn is on fire.”

  “Same with the Bronx,” another man said. “We have the creatures and fire. Fire coming from the sky.”

  Feeling sick, I leaned against a pile of heavy wooden crates. Fire coming from the sky. Oh, God, Omi really was in New York City.

  “Fire from the sky?” one of them asked.

  “I’m not kidding,” answered the one in the Bronx. “Wait. Dude!" A huge boom came from the walkie-talkie. “Helicopter down! It was like … like the fire was sent directly to it. From above.” He paused. “Holy shit!” A second explosion boomed. “Two other helicopters down.”

  Greg spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Is this happening to any other city in the world?”

  “Not that I know of,” the first man said. “But then, we’re stranded with little communication, under attack, and we have no idea what’s happening.”

  “They entered the building,” one of them said. “I’ve … I’ve gotta run.”

  He probably ran, leaving the radio turned on and his channel open, because we heard the demons advancing on him, growling, breaking everything, and then his screams. His screams fell silent; we could only hear the shuffling of the demons among what sounded like breaking wood, probably furniture.

  The radio stayed muted for a long time.

  Raisa looked at me with tears in her wide eyes. I took her hand and squeezed it.

  “God be with us,” the first man we heard said.

  “It’s not clear,” Keisha said, opening the door. The three of us squealed and jumped. She looked at us as if we had gone nuts. “What?”

  I told her what we learned from the walkie-talkie, which was now silent.

  She frowned. “I didn’t see fire up there, but it may be a matter of time.”

  “So we need to move now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. There are many monsters up there. I can’t take them all alone. We wouldn’t make it ten feet out of the alley.”

  Greg let go of his axe and crossed his arms. “That’s not good.”

  “What do you propose we do?” I asked.

  “I don’t think anyone will find us here for now, so I say we stay here for the next thirty minutes. Then I’ll check outside again. If it’s clear, we go; if it’s not, we stay. Deal?”

  Raisa looked at her. “You’re the samurai here. Whatever you say goes.”

  4

  Thirty minutes passed rather quickly while I walked around the room and browsed the items hidden in here. There was nothing like the Mona Lisa or any valuable Ancient Greek statue, but I liked it anyway. However, my mind wasn’t really on what I was looking at.

  The demons were here. Omi was here.

  Why were they here? I remembered those two demons looking straight at me and shuddered. Omi couldn’t know about me, could he? We had been careful. Brock was dead. Nobody knew who we were.

  Even if they weren’t here because of me, they were here now and could find me if they got too close and sensed my aura. We couldn’t stay here much longer, trapped in a basement. We had to leave the city. The question was, how?

  I eyed Keisha. She sat on the floor, her back against a wall near the door, playing with her sword as if she did that every free minute of her life. When I first laid eyes on her, she looked like an elegant teacher or law student. Determined, yes, but also ladylike and delicate, even with her tall, strong body. Then her eyes flashed—I wasn’t imagining things again, was I?—and she transformed into this brave warrior who didn’t care about losing a pair of expensive pumps or ripping her skirt so she could fight better. It was almost as if she had changed right in front of us.

  Keisha and her mad fighting skills were probably our only way out of here.

  Directly in front of our precious personal ninja, Raisa sat on a wooden box. She rummaged in her bag, but I could see her hands trembling from here. Oh God, how I wished Raisa hadn’t been here. How I wished she were at her parents’ house as they wanted, unharmed.

  I frowned. I didn’t know if the entire country was
under attack. My stomach twisted into dozens of knots. Oh God, no, no. I couldn’t bear to think about what could be happening to my family right now.

  I took a deep breath and pushed those troubling thoughts aside. One problem at a time. First, we get out of town. Second, I send Raisa to her parents. Third, I somehow get to my own parents.

  In the corner, Greg kept messing with the walkie-talkie trying to listen for more details and find out what was going on, if this was a random attack, what the creatures were, and which places were safe. However, the voices and the stories grew gorier by the minute, and it didn’t seem as if anyone would leave New York alive.

  Not even us.

  I shuddered.

  Keisha shot up to her feet. “I’ll be right back,” she said, before slipping behind the door. Not even a minute later she was back. She opened the door wide. “I think we can make it now.”

  Greg pushed away from the wall, Raisa jumped up from the crate, and I made my way back to the door. We picked up our stuff from the floor, and Greg checked his gun.

  “Counting my second cartridge, I should have about twenty-four bullets,” he said.

  “Make them count,” Keisha said. She glanced at the daggers Raisa and I were holding. “Be careful with that.”

  As opposed to what? Not being careful? I was actually trying not to think about how I was holding a weapon capable of killing a person.

  Raisa shook her head. “Are you sure we can’t stay here longer? Maybe we can wait for a couple of hours. Perhaps by then they will have left the city.”

  Keisha took a deep breath. “I don’t think they will leave the city with anyone alive in it. They’ll scour inch by inch, even if it takes weeks.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I don’t. It’s just a hunch. It’s like they are looking for something, and they will keep killing and destroying until they find it.”

  I swallowed. Damn.

  Doing the noble thing crossed my mind. Surrendering myself. But … they were demons. They wouldn’t back out of destroying the city and killing everyone in it just because I had given myself up. And there was my family to consider. If I surrendered, who would take care of them? Who would send them money every week? Who would make sure they were okay?