Greyborn Rising

by Derry Sandy

  The woman violently turned the handle of the blade 180 degrees, a move that twisted Rebecca’s impaled hand and broke it at the wrist. Rebecca shouted in pain and the woman hit her with the scabbard again, in exactly the same spot as before, then push-kicked her in the gut so she fell free of the sword. A once familiar but recently forgotten feeling settled in her chest. It was the feeling of fear. This woman was not going to be satisfied with just killing her, she was going to punish her.

  ***

  Kamara was punishing the woman-creature. This was not how Rohan had taught her to fight. Rohan’s purpose in a fight was always swift dispatch of the adversary. However, the tigress of the Nights of Need roared on her hand. It guided her choice of tactics and would not be satisfied with simply killing the intruder. The woman punched at her and the bladed edge of the sword caught the fist. Kamara yanked the sword’s handle around while the creature’s hand was impaled on the blade then kicked the woman backward, but not before smashing her in the mouth with the hard scabbard yet again. The woman fell backward but braced the impact with her good hand.

  “Is that the best you have, Soon-To-Die?” Kamara spoke in a voice she herself did not recognize. The woman rose from the floor, her cracked teeth and torn lips healing from the wounds of the scabbard’s blows even as Kamara looked on. The wounds from the sword, however, were an entirely different matter. The hand, split in half down the center, and the cut across the woman’s chest bled freely and profusely, yet the woman made no move to flee. Kamara decided that the game had gone on long enough. The next time she came close Kamara would cut her head off.

  ***

  Kamara’s shouting awoke Lisa, and now that she was awake she realized that there was something or someone in the room with her. She faced away from the window and whatever it was cast a cold shadow across her body. The being was just standing there, saying nothing, breathing and smelling very faintly of old death.

  She could feel its eyes staring at her back. She lay on her left side and she slipped her right hand under the pillow to clasp the rubberized grip of the big Desert Eagle pistol Voss had given her. It was not ‘a little person’s gun.’ Voss had warned her that the recoil was like the kick of a mule. But she could not shoot accurately anyway so Voss had given it to her, more for its intimidation potential than in any expectation that she would shoot someone with it.

  It’s heavy as hell, she thought. Maybe I can club him with it. There was a shuffle of clothing as the person advanced toward her. She clicked off the safety, rolled around quickly, and sat up. She held the gun in a two-handed grip and pointed it squarely at the intruder’s chest, finger off the trigger, obeying all Voss’ summarily imparted best practices. The gun was indeed very heavy and it required genuine effort to keep it trained on the target.

  The intruder was a man, lanky and slim. He looked to be in his early thirties. The only thing striking about him was the look in his eyes. It was a look that spoke of intentions that were not benign.

  “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but my boyfriend will be back soon. If you leave before he gets back, maybe he won’t hunt you down and kill you.” It was a lie of course, but as she spoke, the thought of Voss stomping on the man’s wicked face was comforting. She kept the gun pointed at his chest. He stood about eight feet away and even she would find it impossible to miss at this range.

  “We went to your house, Lisa. I loved your collection of lace underwear. You smell so delicious.” The man’s words sent a chill down Lisa’s spine and left a feeling in her stomach as if an oil-soaked rat was scurrying around in her gut. The man took a step forward.

  “If you take another step I promise I will shoot you.” She had never pointed a gun at anyone before, but she had always imagined that a pointed gun would have more of a discouraging effect. The man however seemed rather unimpressed by the weapon. He took another step toward her, and Lisa was forced to keep her promise.

  She squeezed the trigger and the pistol barked. Voss had been right. The recoil sent a shock up her arm and almost sent the barrel into her face. The round punched a smoking hole in the man’s chest through which the daylight from the window behind him became visible. The man however, bled about as much as a cardboard target.

  “That really hurt Lisa.” He took another step, or at least it looked like one step to her. But in that one step he completely closed the distance between them. One of his clammy hands enveloped her throat while his other controlled her gun hand. The man pressed her on to the bed. His eyes were wild and he licked his lips hungrily. His breath smelled like bad salami.

  She was under him now, her free hand frantically sweeping the bed for anything she could use as a weapon. Her fingers closed around a nail file and she promptly drove the blade into the man’s eye. He did not even wince. His response was a vicious backhand across her jaw. She almost blacked out. He hit her again. Then with one motion he tore the front of her blouse open and began unbuckling his belt.

  ***

  Clarence looked in on Nathan through his mind’s eye. Nathan was doing precisely what Clarence knew he would have done. He was atop the Lisa woman, throttling her and preparing to assault her. This was an unacceptable. Clarence readied a massive gift of pain and suffering to send to Nathan via the psychic pipeline. What he intended to deliver would feel like a roiling ball of red-hot barbed wire wrapped around every muscle of the target’s body. Nathan would scream for days.

  Clarence was about to deliver the psychic payload when someone shut down the connection completely, blinding him to the others as if hurricane shutters had closed over his third eye. He became as blind to all the maboya as he was to Fifty-seven. Fifty-seven, the little imp. He was so distracted by the sudden loss of his second sight that he did not hear the roar of the diesel engine coming up the road until it was too late. The large, army style truck loomed in his rearview mirror. He saw it seconds before it slammed into the back of his stolen car in an agonized cacophony of screaming metal. The impact bucked the car forward and caused him to chip a tooth against the steering wheel. He recognized two of the men who alighted, and the big black dog too. They were the men whose car he had crashed into the night before. They were armed and angry.

  Clarence yanked on the door handle but the door had been jammed shut by the impact. He kicked the windshield out, clambered over the hood, leapt to the ground, and sprinted away with a speed that surprised even him. Cutting left he hurdled over the low wooden fence that bordered an expanse of horse-grazing pasture across the road from the house. He was sprinting across the undulating field expecting that at any time he would be cut down by bullets.

  He had gained about a hundred-meter distance when he heard the words: “Get him, Agrippa.” He chanced a glance over his shoulder. The big black dog led a pack of three bigger brindle-coated hounds. As the pack ran, they increased in mass until they quadrupled in size. The black dog however, maintained the lead.

  Clarence’s new body was fast, but the dogs rapidly closed in on him. He put every ounce of his being into his flight. He made it about fifty more meters before something hit him in the back, sending him to the ground. He knew it was the black dog. Its long white fangs snapped at the back of his head with a metallic click.

  He was stronger than the animal. He shook the dog off and was rising to run again when the first of the giant hounds slammed into him with the impact of a speeding minivan. Its mouth closed over his bicep like a vise. Shortly all four of the beasts were upon him, tearing and shaking. Someone whistled and the dogs released him but kept circling, constantly snarling.

  Clarence found that he could not stand, both legs had been broken in the tussle. He craned his neck and looked up. Approaching him were the two men from the car the night before. Their eyes were mercy free. The dreadlocked man scratched the ear of the black dog, praising it for its leadership. That man stood over him, his face like a thundercloud.

  “Where are your friends from last night?”

  Clarence coug
hed. “They are inside, and you better go quickly before it’s too late.”

  The men shared a look then peeled off toward the house. The dreadlocked man called over his shoulder. “Agrippa, if he moves kill him, boy.”

  Agrippa’s snarl was joined by the bass growl of the three goliath dogs. Clarence was going nowhere.

  ***

  The wounded intruder transformed right before Kamara’s eyes. The woman grew pale, the veins in her face grew increasingly visible like blue webbing beneath skin like porcelain. The intruder smiled at Kamara and several damaged teeth fell out. They were rapidly replaced by pointy little black ones.

  Then the woman rushed forward, as she came clumps of hair fell off her head leaving perfectly bald patches. Kamara’s sword moved with the speed of a viper’s strike, piercing the woman’s chest like a knight’s lance through a jousting dummy.

  Her blow missed the heart and the woman pressed forward shoving herself further onto the blade. Too late Kamara realized that she had wanted to be impaled. The mutated woman was now within arm’s length. She threw her arm around the back of Kamara’s neck, drew her close, then bit her in the same spot the jumbie had bitten, tearing out a chunk of red dripping flesh and blood-soaked sleep wear.

  The world swam in Kamara’s eyes and she felt violently nauseous. She twisted the sword and yanked it upward into the woman’s chest cavity, lacerating her heart. The woman fell dragging Kamara down too. The stink of rotting flesh was coming from somewhere, and with horror she realized that it was coming from her wound. Kamara’s vision was blurred. She could not think. The woman’s bite was going to kill her. She managed to get to her knees but could rise no further. She vomited a stream of putrid black bile which also stank like dead flesh.

  Another person approached, a man, pale like the woman had become, his grin displaying a mouthful of black spikes. The second stranger advanced, deliberately savoring her helplessness. Kamara tried to rise but could not.

  “Kamara, get down.” She looked over her shoulder. Jonah’s voice came from inside a black balaclava. He and Imelda stood shoulder-to-shoulder, both armed with assault rifles. Imelda wore tactical gear over her pink nightgown. Kamara allowed herself to fall to the floor. As soon as she was out of the way, gunfire erupted and a horizontal hail of full metal jacket rounds ripped into the man. Both guns had barrel magazines and the fusillade continued for nearly a minute before the clips clicked empty. The man had been dismembered by the bullets. The main part of the corpse lay without a head or arms, the body did not even twitch. Imelda ran to Kamara’s side while Jonah reloaded and emptied another magazine’s worth of bullets into the prostrate torso.

  ***

  Lisa struggled under the man, but he was superhumanly strong and her struggling seemed only to excite him. He tore off her underwear and struck her repeatedly. Then a child’s voice spoke with the authority of an experienced headsman. “Nathan, get off of her.”

  Lisa and Nathan turned towards the source of the voice. A skinny girl in a dingy sundress stood in a corner of the room.

  “Go away Fifty-seven, or whatever your name is. Me and Lisa are busy.”

  “Nathan, get off of her, or I will have you castrate yourself and eat what you tear off.”

  “Piss off you little….” The man’s air cut off with a wheeze. Fat drops of blood welled up in the corners of his eyes and ran down his face. He seemed frozen. The girl walked up to him, then leaned in close and whispered something in his ear. The man rose from the bed, walked over to the corner of the room, and stripped his clothing off.

  “Don’t look at this, Lisa,” the girl said, but Lisa could not tear her eyes away. The man stood in the corner, shaking like a leaf, and muttering to himself.

  “Stop fighting it, Nathan. Do as I instructed,” the newcomer said.

  With that the man speared both hands into his abdomen. Blood poured from around his fingers where they gored his belly and ran down his legs in crimson rivulets. He kept shoving his hands deeper, cursing in the grip of agony, but the little girl’s compulsion was too strong for him to resist. Then he began hauling out long ropes of blue intestine. He lifted them to his mouth and began to dine on his own innards.

  After a minute which seemed like an eternity to Lisa the girl spoke again. “Nathan, tear out your heart and get this over with.”

  The man did as he was told and fell over dead. The still beating heart throbbing in his hand.

  “Sorry you had to see that and sorry that I did not stop him sooner. It is not easy to block out Lucien and all the others at the same time. I could have just killed him, but he needed to be taught a lesson.”

  Lisa trembled, unable to respond. The girl continued. “You are going to have to come with me. Lucien will not stop until he has you and what you stole from him. I will keep you safe.” The girl walked to the dressing table, opened a drawer, and selected a t-shirt and jeans. She brought them over to Lisa. “Put these on, please.”

  Lisa began to recover her faculties, “I…I…I don’t know you, I’m not coming with you. You made him eat his guts. What the hell?”

  The girl extended her hand.

  “You’re a clairvoyant yes, take my hand and know.”

  “I’m not touching you.” Lisa began to protest, but the girl grabbed her by the wrist and the contact generated a vision. The vision was of what Lucien planned for all of them. The vision told her what she needed to know, more than she wanted to know. It left her terrified and cold. She had to go with the little girl. She knew if she stayed it would be bad for them all.

  “Can I at least leave a note?”

  “Be quick about it…please.”

  The ‘please’ sounded to Lisa like an afterthought but she appreciated the attempted courtesy. She scribbled a note quickly, in lipstick on the mirror.

  “Where shall we go?”

  “You know where. The one place he will assume we would not dare go.”

  “The Grey?”

  “Yes.”

  Lisa sighed. “Ok, can I get my dog?”

  “There is no time. I can only hide from Lucien for so long. Take my hand.”

  Lisa took the girl’s hand. “What is your name?”

  “In another life my name was D’mara Lockhart. Now people call me Fifty-seven.”

  The girl produced a small black box from a pocket in her dress. It was about the size of a Rubik’s cube. She set it on the floor and it slowly grew to the size of a mini-fridge.

  “You know the drill, Lisa. This time your body will travel too, not just your spirit.”

  “How do you know about that?” Lisa asked, the girl responded by pointing at the box. Lisa placed her free palm on the box and the girl touched the box with her other hand. Then they were gone.

  ***

  The men stormed into Stone, guns raised. A masked gunman was kneeling next to Kamara, who was flat on her back staring up at the ceiling and looking very pale. A dead maboya lay near her, face down, with three feet of Voss’ sword growing out of its back. The gunman turned out to be Imelda. Jonah stood over another of the creatures. This one had been shot so many times that it was difficult to discern if it had been male or female to begin with.

  Rohan knelt next to Imelda. Kamara had been bitten and while the wound itself was festering and stinking, the putrefaction was not spreading. The Nights of Need was fighting it off, just as his marks had done for him when he had been clawed. She looked like death, though, and she was feverish.

  “You are a swords-woman now? You have something against guns?” Rohan asked as he propped her head into his lap.

  “It spoke to me, Rohan. The sword, it’s alive, I think.”

  “That’s just the poison talking,” Rohan said, Rohan knew Kamara was not prone to flights of fancy, she was logical almost to a fault, but he was not prepared to deal with a talking sword at the moment. “Jonah, Tarik is down by the truck. Get him in here with his healing potions.”

  “Where is Lisa?” Voss asked. “Rohan we have to cle
ar the rest of the house.”

  “She was upstairs, sleeping,” Kamara croaked.

  “Imelda, stay with her please, we have to make a sweep.”

  Rohan and Voss started with Lisa’s room. There was no sign of the woman and the room was rich in reasons to suspect the worst. There was a naked man lying in the corner in a pool of blood, clutching a heart in one hand. His entrails were spread around him as if his stomach had grown dreadlocks.

  One of the accursed black boxes sat in the center of the floor. Torn clothing and underwear were strewn on the bed next to Voss’ Desert Eagle pistol. A single bullet casing also lay on the bed.

  “Look at this,” Rohan said to Voss. He pointed to a note on the mirror, scrawled in plum lipstick, and obviously written in a hurry. He read it out loud.

  I went through the box to the Grey with a girl named D’mara.

  Kill Lucien.

  Feed my dog.

  Love you guys.

  Voss punched the mirror, creating a web of small cracks around his fist. “She went to the Grey, the Grey, Rohan. She didn’t even take the damn gun. And who is this ‘girl.’ Did the girl kill our boy in the corner? Because Lisa certainly didn’t.”

  “There was a girl with this crew last night. Maybe our guy out in the horse pasture can answer that question,” Rohan replied.

  This was the first time Rohan had seen Voss frayed. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Let’s sweep the house, then we will have a sit down with dog-meat-guy and Cassan. We’ll figure this out and get her back.” Rohan knew his words sounded hollow. He had never been to the Grey himself, but he had seen enough lethal creatures from there to know that it was no place for amateurs.

  “Where is Kat?”

  “Good question buddy…good question.” Where was the soucouyant.

  ***

  Rohan and Voss swept from the uppermost floor while Richard and Jonah secured the ground level. The men checked every closet, every crevice and every hairline crack in the paint. Jonah even checked the pool filter. Rohan reviewed the security camera recording. Under the damn door, just like the one in the safe-house. But they had not gone completely liquid. Rohan wondered if their ability to fully liquefy only came when the monstrous transformation was complete.