Refuge

by Karen Lynch

  “You two take the one on the left. I’ll deal with this one,” Jordan shouted, already moving forward to meet one of the advancing demons, her blade dripping blood from her first kill.

  Without a weapon, I was helpless to do anything but watch as Mark and Olivia followed Jordan. The demons struck first, and the air was filled with gurgling hissing sounds and grunts as my companions fought them off. Olivia’s whip sailed through the air and wrapped around one of the thrashing bodies while Mark tried to get around it to come at it from behind. Beside them, Jordan was finding her demon a lot harder to kill than the first one. It dodged her blade and struck back with a speed I would not have expected from its thick body, missing her by inches.

  Behind me, one of the huddled boys made a mewling sound, and I turned to look back at them just as a demon flew at me from above. I twisted to one side, feeling it brush against my arm as it went by. I stumbled and regained my footing, but not fast enough to jump out of the way as the demon came at me again. A scream ripped from my lips as sharp pain seared through my right calf and I stared in horror at the sucker-like mouth clamped onto my leg. I kicked and pulled frantically at the demon, but its mouth was attached like a leach. The demon convulsed and swallowed and fiery tendrils of pain shot up my leg.

  Oh God, it’s sucking my blood! It’s sucking my blood!

  Metal flashed and the thing latched onto my leg jerked and went slack. I reached past the knife protruding from the demon’s head to pry its mouth from my calf. It hurt like hell when the dozens of sharp teeth ripped from my flesh, and I was afraid to look at the damage to my leg.

  Mark shouted at me, and I looked down to find him and Olivia locked in a struggle with their lamprey demon. “Sara, the knife!” he yelled.

  I reached down and yanked the knife from the dead demon then limped down the stairs to the others. Jordan looked like she was getting the upper hand in her fight and the demon in front of her bled from several long gashes. Olivia and Mark were barely holding onto theirs while keeping its mouth from latching onto one of them. Olivia had a cut on her cheek and her right arm hung limp and bloody by her side. If not for the whip around the demon’s neck, the thing would have broken free of them. Instead of using his knife on the creature, Mark had thrown it to save me.

  “Watch out.” Ignoring Mark’s reaching hand, I grabbed the knife in both hands and slammed it into the head of the demon. It took three blows to bring the demon down, and Mark and Olivia sagged against each other when it finally hit the floor.

  Mark panted, looking around fearfully. “Did we get them all?”

  “I think so. I don’t see any – ” I broke off when noises in the dark theater alerted us to the presence of at least two more demons.

  “Where the fuck are they coming from?” He shouted, grabbing the knife and moving between me and the approaching demons. “A little help here, Jordan.”

  “Let me take care of this bastard first.” Jordan brought her sword down in a graceful arc and sliced cleanly through the neck of the demon. She gave a triumphant smile and kicked the dead demon for good measure before turning to meet the new threat. “How many?”

  “At least two, it’s hard to tell in here,” Mark called to her.

  I scanned the dark theater. “What should we do?”

  Jordan replied without looking back. “We’ve got this. You get the hell out of here.”

  “Are you nuts? I’m not leaving you guys in here with those things.”

  “Sara, you and Olivia are bleeding and neither of you can fight. The last thing I need right now is to be worried about keeping your asses safe.”

  I looked at Olivia’s pained expression, then down at the dead demon on the stairs. Smoke curled from it where the silver tip of the whip touched its sickly gray skin.

  “Here they come!” Mark yelled. “Oh Jesus, there are three of them!”

  I pushed Olivia aside and grabbed the handle of the whip, yanking hard to unroll it from the dead demon’s body and sending the creature thumping down the stairs. Whip in hand, I spun around as Jordan and Mark were attacked. Mark went down, stabbing at one demon that was ferociously trying to latch onto his neck. Jordan moved fast, but the demons were just as fast. No matter how good or fast Jordan was, she was outnumbered this time.

  I put my fingers to my lips and let out a sharp whistle. “Hey, you fat ugly worms, come and get me.” One of the demons turned my way, and I gripped the whip handle so tight my knuckles turned white. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, you overgrown maggot!”

  The demon made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a shriek and came at me. Oh shit! This ranked way up there on the list of the stupidest things I had ever done, and that was a pretty big list.

  I struck out with the whip and felt it connect with the demon’s body, leaving a long smoking gash along its side. It wasn’t enough to stop the demon, and I dropped the whip to fend off the thing with my bare hands. The force of its body hitting mine sent us both tumbling down the stairs and knocked the breath out of me when my back hit the bottom landing. The demon recovered fast and struck, and my hands came up just in time to grab it and keep its nightmarish jaws away from my throat. It thrashed its powerful body, and I grunted as I fought to hold it away from me. No way could I fight this thing off alone. I was totally screwed if help didn’t come very, very soon.

  “Sara! Are you okay?” Jordan bellowed.

  “Could . . . really use . . . some help!” I panted.

  The demon twisted violently, and I suddenly found my body pinned beneath it. “Argh!” I pushed with all my strength at the head mere inches above me. Drool dripped onto my face and neck, and I nearly choked on the fetid breath invading my nostrils. As I stared into the deep funnel-like mouth with its rows upon rows of undulating teeth, I swore there was no way I was going out this way. I had not survived all I’d been through just to be taken down by an overgrown grub with teeth.

  Static sizzled across my skin and crackled through my hair. My whole body felt like there was electricity buzzing just below the surface, building in intensity and looking for a way out. Instead of fearing it, I welcomed it and fed it with more power. Heat spread through my arms and filled my hands until they began to glow like they did for a healing, and the air around me sparked and filled with the thick smell of ozone.

  The demon began to writhe and thrash frantically as it tried to tear away from me, but my hands were welded to its head. Tiny bolts of electricity leapt from my fingers, and it felt like I held a lightning storm in my hands. Power surged forward into the demon until the creature began to swell and glowing cracks appeared in its skin. I watched its fishlike eyes bulge in terror a second before it let out a gurgling shriek and exploded, raining me with hot, stinking blood and guts and thousands of demon bits. Stunned, I stared at my raised bloody hands for few seconds before I rolled over onto my side and puked up my popcorn lunch.

  Jordan was the first to reach me. “What the fuck?” she swore when she caught sight of me and what was left of the demon. “What happened? What did you do to it?”

  I held up my hand and shook my head as Mark and Olivia crowded behind her, staring at me covered from head to toe in demon guts. There was no way to tell them what had happened. Even if I could share my secret, I wasn’t even sure what I had done.

  The doors below us slammed open, and Niall and Seamus burst into the theater. They came up short when they saw Jordan, Olivia, and Mark standing over me lying on the floor, covered in blood and guts. Their sharp eyes quickly swept the scene and took a count of the dead lamprey demons littering the stairs and the four of us, bloody but standing. Well, most of us were standing.

  “Sweet Mother!”

  One of the twins crouched beside me. “Are you alive beneath all that, lass?”

  I raised an arm and tried to wipe some of the gore from my face. “Yes, but right now I kinda wish I wasn’t.”

  He grinned and held out a hand to me, easily pulling me to my feet. I wasn’t the only one who blanche
d when demon pieces slid off me and slopped onto the carpeted floor. I looked around at the expressions of shock and revulsion and then at the wide area spewed with black demon blood and guts. I had seen a lot of strange and awful things in the last few months but exploding demons definitely beat them all.

  I am so glad I don’t have to clean up this mess. I imagined the expressions of the theater’s cleaning crew when they saw this and a giggle burst from me, earning me confused stares from the two warriors and the three teenagers standing a few steps above me. Something in their expressions struck me as incredibly hilarious and I couldn’t help myself, I started to laugh. The harder they stared, the harder I laughed until my stomach hurt and tears ran down my cheeks.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Olivia asked, her voice quivering.

  Jordan narrowed her eyes at me. “I think she’s hysterical.”

  “N-no,” I stammered, straightening. “Can you imagine being a janitor here and having to clean up this?” I waved at the gore around us. “Talk about a realistic zombie movie.”

  The twin who had helped me up shook his head at me as he put his phone to his ear. “It’s Niall. We need a clean-up crew. Bloody lamprey demons in the movie theater. Hell, your guess is as good as mine.” He looked at us. “No, they’re all okay, just a little beat up. No, they took out the lot of them on their own. Some civilians were hurt, too, and we’ll need to treat them. It’s a pretty big mess so put a rush on it.”

  He gave them directions and hung up. Pursing his lips, he studied the carnage at his feet. “Someone want to tell me what in bloody hell did this?”

  I was still fighting back laughter, which probably made me look slightly unhinged, so he addressed the others. Jordan shrugged and pointed at me. “Ask her. I was busy keeping one of those bastards off my ass when she did . . . whatever she did.”

  “Same here,” Mark added.

  “All I saw was Sara and the demon falling down the stairs,” Olivia supplied. “I saw a white flash and suddenly the demon exploded everywhere.”

  Niall looked at me, and I shook my head. Whatever he was thinking, he did not push the matter and instead pulled off his coat. “Remove your coat, lass, and try to wipe off your face and hair as best you can. Then put this on. It’ll cover the worst of the mess.”

  I did as he instructed and let him put his much larger coat on me. Jordan, Mark, and Olivia did what they could to clean up as well. All we could do after that was wait for backup. Niall and Seamus managed to lock the doors to keep the civilians out, except for the two boys who were sitting in their seats now and staring at us like we were a satanic cult about to sacrifice them. I didn’t know if the Mohiri had something to modify memories. If so, these two were going to need a strong dose of it.

  The cleanup crew wasted no time, and fifteen minutes after Niall’s call, the employee door to the left of the screen opened and they filed in. The eight-man crew could not hide their surprise as they took in the number of dead demons as well as what was left of the one I had exploded. Their initial reaction passed quickly, and two of them headed for the teenage boys who had witnessed everything while the others began to assess the situation.

  “You weren’t kidding about the mess. We’ll need to bring in another team,” one of the men said to Niall. “Paulette is waiting in the van to take the trainees home. Looks like they all could use some medical attention.”

  “How did they get here so fast?” I asked Seamus, and he told me they kept teams in the major cities in every state. It made it easier to respond to situations like this one.

  Before I knew it, we were shuffled outside to a black van where a tall blond woman gawked at my bloody hair and clothes before she started ushering us into the vehicle. I hung back while everyone else climbed in, wishing I could change my clothes before I crowded in with them.

  Without warning, coldness slammed into my chest, leaving me almost gasping for breath, and I had to hold onto a stair rail for support. Not now.

  “You okay?” Seamus asked, and it took me several seconds to nod. He helped me into the van’s second row of seats and got in behind me. We had plenty of room because everyone gave me a wide berth.

  As soon as the van started Jordan raised the question on everyone’s minds.

  “What the hell are lamprey demons doing in a movie theater? Don’t they live in sewers?”

  “Yes,” Seamus responded. “I’ve never heard of them attacking humans in the open like that.”

  “Do you think they were after us?” In my experience, bad things like this did not happen by coincidence, especially not to me.

  “I doubt it,” Niall said, but I noticed a slight pause before he spoke. “Lamprey demons are not known for their intelligence. They are more like leeches, and they’ll latch onto the nearest warm-blooded creature. They attacked a few humans, too, so I don’t think they were targeting you specifically. You were just the last unlucky ones left in the theater.”

  The ride home was a lot less fun than the one to Boise. When the van pulled up to the main entrance, Tristan came out to meet us. He asked if we were okay and walked with us to the medical ward where a small team of healers waited. One of them ushered me into a room with an attached bathroom where I immediately stripped and showered. I couldn’t help but shudder as the water ran off me in black streams until I was clean. I dressed in a hospital gown and lay on a bed while a healer tended to the bite on my leg. She cleaned the wound and applied a special salve that drew the pain from the wound even before she had finished dressing it in a light gauze bandage. Then she gave me some of the dreaded gunna paste and told me to get some rest before she left the room.

  Tristan entered the room a minute after she left, and he gave me a quick hug. “How are you feeling?”

  “These guys have good drugs. Not even feeling an ounce of pain.” He did not look convinced, so I gave him a reassuring smile. “Trust me; I’ve been hurt a lot worse than this. It takes more than a bloodsucking demon to keep me down.”

  His expression was serious. “It must have been very frightening.”

  “Are you kidding me? Have you seen Jordan with a sword? That girl is scarier than a dozen demons worms.”

  Tristan laughed softly, and some of the tension left his body. “Niall told me about the demon that exploded, and he said no one could tell him what happened. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  I started by telling him what I had done to the bazerat a few days ago, followed by my fight with the lamprey demon. “I honestly don’t know how I did it,” I confessed. “It feels like my healing power – only different if that makes sense. It’s like it’s amped up on steroids, and I don’t think it likes demons.”

  “Elementals are very powerful beings and natural enemies of demons. It is very likely that you are beginning to come into some of those powers. Unfortunately, we know very little about them.”

  “Aine said she would visit me. I hope she comes soon because I could really use some answers.”

  “Well, I doubt she will come tonight, and you need to sleep so your body can heal.” He stood and tucked the blanket around me. “I’ll come back later to check on you.”

  I tried to sit up. “Can’t I go to my room? I’d sleep much better in my own bed.”

  He gently pushed me back down. “The healers want to keep you all here overnight for observation. The bacteria in a lamprey demon’s mouth are very potent, and we need to watch for signs of infection.”

  The healer came in then and gave me a glass of sweet smelling liquid to drink. I looked at it warily, and she said, “This is takhi juice. It will help you sleep and fight infection. Drink it all.”

  I drank it obediently, and Tristan nodded in approval. “Sleep now and we will talk about it tomorrow. Is it okay if I come back to sit with you tonight while you sleep?”

  I smiled sluggishly, already feeling the effects of the takhi juice. “Okay.”

  My dreams were filled with zombies with large round sucking mouths full of teeth. I tos
sed fitfully and tried to wake up, but the sleeping potion held me in its grasp. First, I felt like I was freezing and warm thick blankets were laid over me. Then my body felt like it was on fire, and I cried out until someone pressed a cool wet cloth to my face. A few times I almost gained wakefulness and heard people talking softly nearby, but I was pulled under again before I could open my eyes.

  After what seemed like forever, the flames subsided and all I could feel was the warmth of a hand encasing mine where it lay on the covers. There was comfort and safety in the touch, and I reached for it instinctively until the strong fingers entwined with mine. I sighed as the nightmares were banished, and I sank at last into a deep healing sleep.

  * * *

  I awoke slowly, listening to the sounds of people talking and moving around outside my room. My body felt stiff, my throat was parched, and my head pounded with a fierce headache. I moaned and lifted a hand to rub my forehead.

  “Here, this will take care of your headache.”

  I turned my head toward Tristan who sat by my bed, holding a glass of brownish liquid. After the sleeping draft from last night, I was hesitant to take any more medicine.

  He smiled as if he read my mind. “You had a bad fever last night from the demon bite, and you are dehydrated now, which is causing your headache. I promise this will only ease your pain.”

  My head was pounding, and his words were all the reassurance I needed. I accepted the glass and downed the contents, then lay back on the bed. “I heard someone here with me last night. Was that you?”

  “I came in a few times. Your fever made you very restless.”

  “What about the others? Are they okay?”