by Gary Jonas
“He said, ‘If we catch you here again trying to steal what belongs to New Mother, we will hurt you in ways you can’t imagine. Or maybe you can. Now get out of here, outcast.’ Then he threw me into a shadow just as Marcus shouted, ‘Let the Good Work begin!’”
Lee crossed her arms. “Well, Marcus called another meeting in the ballroom. He said the future of all Kin was under attack by a few misguided family members who need to be stopped. He said it was more important now than ever to listen to New Mother and make sacrifices.”
“Same old story, Lee,” Jiggs said.
“No, listen! He named you specifically. He said you had given in to the taste and now you need to be put down before you go on a rampage. He said you’re crazy with it and that you’ll kill any living thing that crosses your path, including our children. He said you’d already threatened their safety today, both directly and by bringing in Kelly Chan.”
Jiggs’ mouth dropped open. “I didn’t! That’s not… They have no idea what’s going on.”
“They don’t care, Jiggs. New Mother herself showed up this time. She said she was guarding our children when you and Kelly came to attack them.”
“That’s not true!”
“I know. But she’s got the others convinced that it is.”
Jiggs covered his face with his hands. “She’s lying.”
Lee touched Jiggs’ arm. “The ones who know don’t care. Anyone who has turned over their kids and put their trust in New Mother gets to eat fresh, and so do their children.”
“Maybe too fresh,” Jiggs said. He looked at me for confirmation and that’s when I knew he’d seen it too, back in the training gym.
Lee covered her mouth as his words sunk in. “Do you really think she’s given the children the taste?”
“I know she has,” I said. It was time to face the one thing I didn’t want to acknowledge when I first saw the Sekutar 3.0.
At least half of them sported brand-new no-kill buttons under their chins, including Floor Licker. Buttons installed by Liz’s favorite employee, Amanda West.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lee looked sick when we told her about the no-kill buttons.
“Jiggs, Bliss isn’t safe here anymore, and you know it,” she said. “I’ve got my boy tucked away in a safe place and there’s plenty of room for all of us. Let’s get there, sit this one out and let Kelly do her job.”
No wonder Lee was so impatient. She’d taken a huge personal risk to make sure the rest of her family was safe, too.
Jiggs shook his head. “No way am I moving them right now if they’re searching for me.”
Lee looked desperate. “They’ll figure out where you are if they don’t know already, and then we’ll be trapped! They’re probably on their way now and they have wizards who can blow right through the door. Please. Kess is my big sister. She sacrificed her own food, kept me fed growing up, so that I wouldn’t get the taste. I have to do what I can to protect her daughter, your daughter.” A tear slid down Lee’s cheek. “I love my family.”
“I know, Lee, I know.” Jiggs hugged his sister-in-law. His eyes met mine over her shoulder. They were full of grim desperation.
“Lee’s right, Jiggs. We need to leave and get you all to safety, especially Bliss.” But it wasn’t Bliss I was thinking about right then. It was Cho. I had partially failed her. I didn’t want the same thing to happen again. I had to protect Bliss and her entire family.
“I could kill anyone who came this way, but that might include your kids, now that they’re warriors.” And now that I knew the truth that the Sekutar ghouls were as much victims of DGI as I’d been, I didn’t want to kill any of them unless absolutely necessary. The parents who had willingly turned them over, well, they were another story. I tried not to think about the way my parents had sold me to DGI. Some parents do the best job they can, and some don’t.
But Jessica and Amanda were still my first priorities. I hoped I wouldn’t need to kill any Sekutar ghouls to save them, but friends come before strangers.
Jiggs let go of Lee. “You’re right. We should leave and head for safer ground.” He offered me his hand as he opened the wall back into his home. “Kelly, will you please help me keep my daughter safe? I promise I’ll do what I can to help Jessica.”
I nodded as I took his hand. “We’ve got to make sure Bliss can trick-or-treat next Halloween. I’m betting she’ll still want to.”
Jiggs gave me a no-holds-barred smile. “You know what? I don’t hate you anymore.”
I smiled back. “Ditto.”
We passed through the wall to find Kess trying to settle Bliss back down to bed. Lee hugged her sister and convinced Kess of the new plan, while Jiggs gathered a few essential belongings. Bliss helped her dad until he sent her over to help me polish my katana. She had a different stuffed animal, a lion cub from that Disney movie, which she cradled on her lap while she watched me work.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Bliss asked, glancing back at her mom.
“Sure, Kiddo, what is it?”
Bliss looked over her shoulder again, making sure her parents weren’t close enough to hear. “I’m a lot hungrier than they think I am. And I know what happens.”
Oh, no.
I leaned in close. Before meeting Cho, I’d had no idea how to talk to kids. I was still no expert, especially when it came to gray-skinned girls who are secretly terrified out of their minds, so I didn’t talk to Bliss like she was a kid. I talked to her like she was a person instead.
“Okay, fair enough, Bliss.” I was tempted to tell her my own secret – that I wasn’t as badass right then as they thought. I was exhausted, and my head still throbbed from the last pass through the magically-locked shadow. Normally, the fights with the ghouls, with the Sekutar, and with Brand, would have just left me a bit winded for a few minutes. Instead, I felt wiped out like I did after Mile High Stadium. I was losing my endurance. The kill switch was doing its thing even now.
But I looked Bliss in the eyes and knew I couldn’t admit my growing weakness.
“Tell you what. We’re both going to have to be stronger than they know. You’re already doing it. Think you can keep doing it?”
Bliss nodded. She looked so serious. More serious than a kid holding a stuffed animal had a right to be. Some kids have to grow up faster than others.
Kess smiled over at us, and her smile was serious, too. I wondered how hungry she was, how much willpower it took to go without a button, just to show her daughter it could be done. With those stubborn genes, I had no doubt Bliss would be all right. If we could get her to safety.
“Ready?” Jiggs leaned down and kissed the top of his daughter’s head. She held up the lion cub and he kissed that, too. He winked at me. “None for you. I’m a happily married man.”
“It’s my lucky day.”
“Let’s roll.” Kess and Lee joined us and we all went through the wall. It didn’t hurt this time – Jiggs had deactivated the warding spell. No point to it anymore. From there, Lee took the lead and we moved quickly from light to shadow, light to shadow, light to shadow. I was back to being disoriented as we flickered through solid rock and metal and gods know what else. We could have been anywhere under Denver, going in any direction. I had no idea.
“Are we there yet?” Bliss asked, perfectly reflecting my own sentiment.
“Still a little ways,” Lee said. A fine layer of sweat glazed her skin as she looked around. The concrete tunnel we’d stopped in looked like it was still in use. A glowing service light jutted out from the wall. “I’m going to make it harder to follow us.”
Lee took a playing card and a clothespin out of her pocket and affixed them to a bar on the caged light, angling the card so that it cast a new shadow against the opposite wall.
“Hopefully, they’ll take that shadow instead of the right one,” she said.
The playing card happened to be the Queen of Hearts, like Jessica’s tattoo. I took that as a good sign.
After w
hat felt like an hour but was probably more like fifteen minutes, Lee paused in a low-ceilinged service tunnel, whitewashed concrete going off in two directions and eventually curving. An empty tilt truck waste hauler sat against a wall. More caged lights lined the tunnel, spaced every few feet. We were definitely under a newer area of the city.
Lee’s voice trembled. “The next part’s going to be a little tricky. We’ll have to go aboveground here. It’s not far after that. Ned’s missed you, Bliss. You guys can play together.” Lee gave her niece a sad smile.
The shadow we needed darkened the ceiling. Jiggs wheeled the waste cart to the middle of the tunnel and tipped it over so we could reach the shadow. The tunnel was low, so it was just a matter of standing up straight, and you were halfway through. Lee went first, followed by Kess and Bliss. I kicked the cart over as Jiggs pulled me through, and then we were outside under a night sky. We stood on top of a domed hill untouched by the surrounding snow. A white path spiraled down from the top to join another wider path at the base. It looked like a fairy mound, except that it was flanked by streets.
I-25 ran behind and several yards below us, sending up a dull roar as the oblivious pre-dawn traffic rushed through the Tech Center.
Stupid, stupid me, not seeing what was right in front of my eyes earlier. The playing card hadn’t been a coincidence. It was a sign marking where we’d passed, alerting our enemies.
The skyscraper housing DGI’s headquarters loomed over us, across the other street. We’d actually crawled right out of its shadow, cast by the moon setting in the west.
The shadow suddenly disappeared as magical ambient light flooded the area, taking out all the shadows and cutting off our immediate escape routes. At least twenty Sekutar warriors of the ghoul variety ringed the hill. None of them had kill-buttons and they all looked hungry.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A woman stood behind enemy lines, chanting. She was responsible for casting the ambient light and the subsequent banging I felt in my brain. That made her target number one.
Kess picked up Bliss and held her tight. “Jiggs?”
“Don’t worry, Baby. I’ve got this.” He looked sideways at me and mumbled, “We’ve got this, right?”
“Of course.” I gave my katana a whirl. “But we’re going to have to kill the attackers.”
Jiggs nodded, and the look in his eyes told me he understood.
“How could you do this to us?” Kess asked her sister.
Lee’s face contorted in misery. “They have Ned. They have my son. I can’t let him get the taste. They promised me they’d keep Bliss fed, if we turn her over to them and surrender.” Lee held her arms out. “It’s what’s best for all of us.”
“She’s right!” The cheerful voice came from all around us, emanating from the light itself. The wizard casting the spell used it to conduct her voice. Every magically projected word ground into my brain like railroad spikes. “All you have to do is stop turning the other ghouls against us and hand your daughter over. We’ll take good care of her.”
I had no clue who this bitch was, but I wasn’t in any mood to listen to her pontificate. My head pounded, but I spotted her down the hill. She was too far away, so I couldn’t race over there without abandoning my new friends.
“We can feed her, raise her, make her strong. In return, she has a guaranteed job when she grows up.” the wizard said. She wiggled her fingers in an unmagical and annoying way at me.
“Kelly Chan, hi! Big fan here. Listen, there’s a new opening for a security systems trainer.”
I grabbed a handful of shuriken and sent them flying at her. “Shut up,” I said.
“And you’ve got all the right—”
The throwing stars plunged into her chest, neck, and eyes. One of them embedded itself into her brain and she fell over dead before she hit the ground.
Kess set Bliss on the ground and spun on her sister. “You. Traitorous. Bitch.”
Kess kicked Lee’s teeth down her throat Lee staggered back and sat down in the grass.
“That’s my baby,” Jiggs whispered.
Then his eyes flashed bright orange. Six-inch black claws slid over his fingernails. He kicked off his shoes and claws grew in over his toenails. Kess followed suit. They bared their fangs – a double set, top and bottom, enough to put a vampire to shame – and snarled like a couple of honey badgers.
Nine Sekutar ghouls stormed up the hill from different points.
Lee sobbed on the grass, holding her mouth.
Jiggs and Kess put Bliss between them at the crest of the hill. The little girl curled up into a defensive ball. Jiggs yanked off his tie and wrapped the ends around his hands, pulling the material taut and ready for action.
Three Sekutar ghouls rushed forward, swords drawn.
“Stop! Come back home with us,” Kess said as the ghouls circled around them, cautious. “Nobody else has to get hurt.”
The Sekutar ghouls looked at each other and snickered. “Let’s eat them up, yum.”
Jiggs darted forward, using the tie to catch one of their swords. He pulled the blade down, and while the blade cut through the material, he was inside the ghoul’s defenses before the tie parted. He smashed an elbow into the ghoul’s face.
Without the wizard driving magical spikes into my head, I could focus. I rushed over to engage with the closest warrior to me. He was fast and strong, and parried every swing of my sword, except the one that counted. His head bounced down the white stone path, leaving a spotted trail of blood like footprints.
I spun to see how Jiggs and Kess were doing. Not bad.
Jiggs clawed opened a warrior’s bowels which spilled out like a can of worms, but his left arm bled from a slice to the deltoid. Kess went straight for another ghoul’s face and ripped out his eye. She slit his throat and let him drop. I knew it had to tear out her heart. These were children of the Kin, but at the end of the day, it was kill or be killed.
More Sekutar ghouls rushed us. A group of wizards chanted in the distance, and the light glowed brighter with their spells. My head throbbed from the magic.
I cut through two more warriors, but then one of them stabbed me from behind. It hurt. I turned and the warrior cut me again across the stomach before I ran him through. I dropped to one knee and held the injury closed. It wasn’t healing.
Kess cried out behind me. I turned.
“Baby, don’t do it!” Jiggs said.
Kess opened her mouth wide as she grabbed another ghoul.
“Think of Bliss!”
But she sank her fangs into the Sekutar’s throat. Blood splashed everywhere as Kess chewed all the way through, vertebrae crunching between her teeth. The dead ghoul couldn’t scream, but Jiggs could. Howling like a beast in pain, he grabbed the back of Kess’s head to pull her away. She lifted her blood-soaked face and snarled at her husband. Her eyes glowed like windows into Hell’s orange light.
The worst part was seeing the struggle on Jiggs’ face between saving his wife and joining her in the feast. He kept saying, “No, Baby, no no no,” even as drool glazed his lips and poured from the corners of his mouth. A shiny droplet gathered and fell from the bump under his chin.
Kess looked up at Jiggs with nothing but hunger in her eyes. A sound caught her attention. Bliss sobbed a few feet away. Kess turned and looked hungrily at the shivering girl.
“Kess, stop!” I shouted.
Jiggs snapped out of his hunger trance and positioned himself between his wife and daughter.
“She’s our baby girl, Kess. Remember our Bliss.”
Lee crawled on her belly like the snake she was, past fallen Sekutar and up to her niece.
I started toward her, but a new wave of pain slammed into my head. Most of the Sekutar ghouls lay dead, but when I glanced behind me, I saw three wizards focusing their energies directly on me. They pushed their hands forward and my head felt like it was going to explode. Blood gushed from my stomach injury and my feet slipped in the crimson staining the grass. I
hit the ground hard and couldn’t focus.
A ghoul jumped on me and bit into my shoulder, ripping out a chunk of flesh. I still had my sword, so I drove the blade under the ghoul’s chin where the no-kill button should have been, and pushed it up through his skull. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp, bits of my flesh and blood dripping from his mouth. He toppled sideways and I let go of the sword. I couldn’t move my left arm.
Lee made it to Bliss and grabbed her niece.
“I have her!” Lee shouted to the wizards. “Don’t kill me! Don’t hurt my son!”
Bliss struggled in her aunt’s arms.
Jiggs spun. “Oh no!”
“Mommy?” Bliss whimpered.
Kess turned, and met her daughter’s eyes. Her lips curled back from her fangs.
Bliss took one look at her mother, then at the bloody chaos swirling around her. She looked back at Lee.
Then Bliss sank her teeth into her aunt’s arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Lee screamed as Bliss tore a chunk out of her forearm. The sleeve of her cream-colored suit coat darkened to red below the elbow. She let go of Bliss and clutched her arm.
Jiggs dropped to his knees.
Kess stared at her daughter for a moment as the realization sank in. The orange in her eyes faded and her fangs retracted. As she returned to herself, Kess clutched at her abdomen and groaned. Then she ran to her daughter.
“Bliss, stop!” Kess’s voice was ragged and desperate. Broken.
I tore my gaze away. My head pounded, and my stomach burned. Five wizards stood in the distance with forty more Sekutar ghouls. Brand stood with the wizards. He wore a ridiculous black leather duster like something out of a heavy metal western. Now who was in the goofy get-up?
A shadow fell across the ground before the wizards, and three people stepped through. Marcus, Liz, and Amanda.
“I think that’s enough,” Liz said. She stood a foot taller than Amanda now, and I wondered what that meant.