“Hello?” said Casey.
I heard Sam answer frantically, “Casey?” at the exact same moment.
One of the perks of vampirism was my recent uncanny ability to eavesdrop, even when I wasn’t trying to. Sort of like listening to a couple having a noisy argument in a restaurant. You don’t want to listen to it, but it’s right there, and too loud to ignore.
“What’s the matter?’ he asked, but Sam was already babbling over him.
“The abomination isn’t dead, and the mist is transferring hearts! Casey! It’s not dead.”
“The mist? What mist?” he asked, shaking his head.
The earth suddenly shook but it didn’t last long. The quake was minor, maybe a 3.5 on the Richter scale, barely enough to make the bottles and plates rattle on the shelves.
However, I collapsed into a heap on the floor when it occurred.
I felt like all the oxygen in my lungs abruptly solidified before shattering into a hundred pieces that were now trying to come out of my body. I opened my mouth and sucked in air but it tasted like smoke. I closed my eyes and something gold and glowing like magma appeared in my mind, then a million golden bodies that materialized out of nowhere. Somewhere in the distance, but also right next to me, and echoing from everywhere, I heard the unmistakable clang of a massive metal gong.
“Dulcie!” said Casey before he was at my side. I could barely hear him.
The metal ringing deafened my ears, growing louder and louder, like the shrill feedback at a sound studio. I plugged my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, but it wouldn’t go away. When I opened my eyes again, the room was gone, and all I could see were gleaming, white-gold silhouettes. Some were standing, some were curled up on the floor.
I heard a voice that sounded deep and gravelly, ancient too, that said, Your army.
And it was over.
The room snapped back into focus. The sudden quiet was more than a little jarring. I inhaled and exhaled, my whole body shaking with the movement.
“Dulcie, what the hell?” asked Casey. “Are you okay? What happened?”
I pushed myself up to my feet, my lungs burning like I was holding my breath underwater. He gripped my forearm and pulled me up. “I’m fine,” I said. “I think. Um.” My brain was still in a fog. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The gong.”
“The gong?”
Fuck. “Yeah, the gong, you know, a big, ringing, metal thing? You didn’t hear it?”
Casey shook his head and frowned at me. “Do you ever have visions?” he said. “Like prophecies or anything?”
“No. I’m probably just hallucinating,” I said, which was really fucking dumb. Nobody we knew was immune to clairvoyance, especially not me. Maybe visions were on my list of new powers.
Casey turned back to his phone. “Sam, did you feel that?” he asked.
“No,” said Sam. “Feel what?”
“The earthquake.”
“Earthquake? No, I didn’t feel anything!”
Outside, we heard a shift and a heavy whump as something big fell hard onto the concrete.
Casey and I looked at each other.
“Not an earthquake,” I said.
“Casey?” Sam called from his phone.
We stood up and ran out the front door, scuttling down the fractured driveway to the crater where the abomination lay. The ground wasn’t shaking anymore, but the body was jittering slightly, almost vibrating.
“Casey,” I said.
“I see it.”
The body spasmed.
And it opened its eyes.
Change of plans—now was the perfect time to have a meltdown.
I indulged my panic, letting it fill me until I thought my heart would burst. My muscles swelled and my skeleton even shifted, stretching my bones and rearranging them until I was just a little taller and a little wider. My nails became claws and my vampiric night vision turned grey as I let myself shift into the werewolf part of me, or what I hoped was the werewolf part of me.
“The fucking thing just came back to life!” Casey yelled as if I wasn’t seeing the same thing happening right before my eyes.
The abomination was lumbering to its feet, twitching and stumbling like a broken marionette. Its neck was snapped, probably by Bram or the great fall, and it was looking over its shoulder, its bones poking out underneath its skin. The sound it made was horrific, like spoons in a blender or the screaming of the damned. It clumsily got to its feet and wheeled around to look at me with widened white eyes, reflecting the orange light of the flickering streetlamps.
I heard Casey’s phone ringing from his pocket. He lifted it up to his ear but didn’t say anything.
“What’s going on?” Sam demanded.
“The abomination’s moving. It’s in a bad way, but it’s still alive.”
Bram’s voice was muffled but it came through: “It will soon gain more ground as the mist anchors itself to the secondary heart. I do not know how long that will take, but you probably do not have much time. Dulcie must rip the heart out, if she can.”
“Through its mouth?” I said, eyeing its many, sharp teeth dubiously.
“Maybe don’t,” said Casey. He was probably also thinking that now was not a good time to have my arm bitten off.
The abomination took a long, whistling breath. “Sister,” it whispered, its voice a bloody gurgle. “Come… home…”
“What did it say?” Casey asked.
“It asked me for directions to Los Angeles,’” I said, rolling my eyes at Casey when he looked confused.
“Home,” said the abomination. It dropped on all fours and started to crawl towards us, dragging one leg limply behind it. “Home.”
“Home?” Casey asked.
“Yeah. Come home. To Meg, probably.”
“I got that far,” he said.
We watched it lumbering slowly towards us. It had a hell of a time getting around. I could hear its bones crunching together like gravel under tires, digging into its muscles with soft squelching sounds, sawing at its tendons, and making parts of it go limp when they finally snapped.
I took a step forward and flexed my claws. Casey grabbed my arm. “Wait.”
“Why?” I asked. “It’s basically dead already. I can probably just rip its head off and pull the heart out that way.”
“What if it grabs you?”
“It won’t.”
“And if it does and drags you back to Meg?”
Okay, not a thrilling thought, but still. “Then we’ll know where she is and we’ll have one less problem,” I said. “She’s not gonna hurt me, I’ll be fine.” I hoped.
“Dulcie, things tend to get much, much worse when you go missing.”
“Sis… ter…”
“Shut up,” I said to the ugly thing.
And then it was right on top of us.
It grabbed me by the shoulder, sinking its claws deep into me until it hit bone. I felt it for barely three seconds before my werewolf adrenaline kicked in. Then I got a shot of energy and stupid bravery that was strong enough to convince me I could eat the whole planet if I chose to. The pain ended abruptly like a bursting lightbulb.
I turned to the hideous thing, grabbed its wrist, and snapped my hand down hard enough to break the bone and rip the hand clean off.
“Bad puppy,” I said, looking at its distinctive, wolfish snout.
It howled and stumbled back, its black blood gushing from the stump at the end of its arm, but I doubted it could actually feel pain. Its howl was more like a reflex, left over from the various bodies that reacted to having a hand ripped off, which usually hurt. I looked down at my shoulder, which was covered in blood, both mine and the abomination’s. For one stupid adrenaline-high moment, I was enthralled by its shine.
“Fuck, are you okay?” Casey asked.
I nodded, feeling all giggly inside as a weird combination of bloodlust and hysteria overtook me. It was not much different from when I took a m
andrake potion to stay awake during the dreamstalker ordeal.
“Hey, look,” I said, pointing to his shoulder and mine. It was my own blood, but fuck, it smelled good. “Twinsies.”
Casey only looked confused.
Suddenly, a wing came at him from out of nowhere that slapped him roughly aside. He hit the concrete hard enough to skin his cheek and took a sweet second getting up.
I turned to help him before I felt the remaining claw snatching my arm. It yanked me up to stare at the side of the abomination’s head, while trying to wrench its face around to look at me. However, there were too many bones in the way, and it only succeeded in getting itself stuck.
“Home,” it said much sharper this time. The look it gave me was almost friendly.
“Nope,” I said, my mouth stretching into a smile I couldn’t resist.
I twisted my arm so I could grab it instead, pulling it forward until it was standing with its back to me, its wings outstretched.
I dug my nails into the muscles on either side of its spine and raked them down as hard as I could. Its skin split open and thick, black blood came gushing out from between my fingers. It stained the back of my hand and matted the fur around the wounds, more than it lost in all the time we were inside. The smell was awful, and it was as cold as metal and wet, like slippery mud, reeking with decay, as if it were dead and buried in a swamp. The stench went straight to the back of my throat and I gagged, reeling back and letting go.
It started to turn towards me and I jumped on its back, holding my breath. It kicked and thrashed, flapping its wings and spattering the concrete with blood. I could feel it on my face and taste it on the edge of my lip, a harsh, bitter flavor like septic dirt and rotten fruit. Doing my best not to gag, I pulled myself up to its face, which was twisting almost all the way in my direction, and I dug my claws into its eyes. It reared its head back and opened its mouth, exposing three rows of mismatched teeth. Then it screamed the high, piercing shriek of a banshee.
I let go, fell, and rolled away, landing in a crouch. Casey was on his feet too now, doing his best to stay out of the way.
“Fuck,” he said, watching the abomination stumble and scream. He looked at me, seeing the blood on my hands, my face, my shirt, and my mouth with some of it slowly congealing in my hair. I probably looked like a monster from an eighties’ horror flick, heavy on the gore.
I heard Sam’s voice from the phone, sounding panicked now. “Casey, what the hell is going on?”
“It’s attacking us,” he said breathlessly.
“We’re almost back. Hang on.”
I laughed an hysterical, bubbly giggle as I looked at the monster. It was on all fours now, scuttling backwards like a frightened ape, looking left and right, and up and down, even though it couldn’t see a damn thing. It opened its mouth to hiss at me and a spray of blood spluttered out. It was bleeding from its gums and its teeth were bent and cracked, like it bit down hard enough to break them. It sort of resembled a dog’s discarded chew toy, all bent out of shape.
I remembered something about ripping out its heart and wondered if I should get on that.
Then the ground shook again, only harder this time. It was enough to make the buildings move and the broken concrete shift like turbulent waves. The abomination staggered backwards and fell, planting its ass into the crater from which it had risen. Casey and I dropped to the ground, crouching and looking at each other while trying to keep our footing.
“Can you feel that?” Casey shouted into the phone.
“Yes!” Sam’s voice was garbled and mostly static. I wondered if a cell tower went down somewhere.
Something in the air also changed. It was very cold, the same way it got when Meg’s dark magic was close, but this time, it was different. The cold had a smell, a slight underlying odor, sour and muddy, like a rotting corpse. It zapped me like electricity in the back of my throat, filling my lungs with a substance that felt similar to liquid lead. I couldn’t breathe without gagging.
“Dulcie!” said Casey, maybe feeling the same sensation. I looked over at him and saw him standing up before stumbling backwards over a rising cliff of concrete. Tree roots poked out from the bottom, raining down dirt. He pointed and I followed his hand.
Then the air split open.
Behind the abomination, quivering in the dark, was a thin, red line like a half-healed cut. Light spilled out of it in wispy coils like smoke. Its aura struck me as hard as a boulder in the face, very hot and empty, reminding me of the burning breath of a dragon. Underneath it, I saw something cold and blue like lightning mixed with Arctic water.
Knight.
Three things happened in quick synchronicity.
First, Casey fell. The concrete slab he was standing on fractured as he leapt forward, rolling when he hit the ground, and landing three feet away from the wailing monster.
Second, the red line widened, turning into an oval with sharpened points. Beyond it was a pale, red sky, swimming with dark clouds, and lit from within by crimson spiderwebs of lightning. The smell of sulphur and smoke poured out and settled on the ground as a thick mist.
Third, the abomination stood up. Bloody and stupid, it grabbed the closest thing to it—which was Casey—and dragged him backwards into the swirling, red scar. I heard the echo of the gong again and a voice: You will need each and every one. The scar grew larger and pulled open like an unhealed wound, exposing another swirl of smoke and darkness beyond it.
“No!” I shouted in violent protest.
On the ground, Sam’s voice crackled through his phone. “Casey?”
But he was already gone.
FIFTEEN
Bram
We arrived on the tails of our friends, the Feds. They came in bulky, black SUVs, wearing excessive gear that was specifically designed to thwart the less mundane side effects of offensive magic. They were expecting carnage, and that was exactly what they found: the street was torn up in a hundred pieces, scattered like a child’s building blocks, and deep lines etched the concrete from the monster’s claws. Dulcie stood in the center of it all, staring at a patch of empty air. She was panting.
The agents descended upon her bruised and bloodied form, swathing her with bandages and potions manufactured by government witches. She tried her best to tell them what she witnessed, but none of the medical personnel could be bothered to listen to her. That was someone else’s job.
That someone-else had plenty of questions for her. The kind that can only be asked in a dark room with a two-way mirror.
The abomination from Vander’s apartment was strapped on a table somewhere as people in HAZMAT suits dissected it with silver scalpels or chainsaws, whatever a paranoid human preferred to use to examine a distinctly evil animal conglomerate. I warned them of the extra hearts and a few other organs that a decrepit soul might choose to hide in. But they took my information with a grain of salt, hurrying off to seek more interesting conversations with more important people.
Dulcie, Sam, Quillan, and I were unceremoniously scooped up and carted off to their headquarters, where we were dumped abruptly into the various interrogation rooms. Expecting to be questioned and examined, as well as generally frowned upon, seeing all the cross expressions of the human faces, I guessed they were absolutely certain this latest crisis was all our fault.
“I will return,” said a man, rising and tapping his papers on the table to straighten them out. “Thank you for your patience.” He offered Dulcie an apologetic shrug, brimming with condescension, and left the room when I swept into it, just having ended my own interrogation. He looked between us and gave me a scalding look as he said, “Ten minutes and no more; I don’t expect to have any trouble getting you out when I return.”
“Perish the thought,” I icily responded.
The door shut with an unnecessarily loud bang as metal clanked against metal. Everything in this building was reminiscent of a swordfight. The people were on edge, peering over their shoulders, and walking on their toe
s. Every face was that of an enemy, every pair of eyes scanning for a way in, trying to break down your guard, straining to observe any shift in your balance, waiting for you to falter, poking and prodding through your mind with blunted foils.
Naturally, there was a camera in the corner of the room, one of those small, black spherical gadgets set to capture every inch of the space. We’d certainly been left alone for the express purpose of surveillance; and someone undoubtedly watched us on the other side of that camera, waiting to hear what we had to say to each other. I found the whole thing rather offensive. I had no illusions regarding the general opinion of my species and my standing with the human world as a whole, let alone, its bureaucracy. Dulcie, however, was infinitely nobler than I, and leaving her in a room with a suspected nefarious something-or-other, hoping she could inadvertently coax him into saying something incriminating, or worse, saying something to incriminate herself—offended me on her behalf. She’d certainly endured enough discomfort by now to warrant some kindness and common decency. She should have, for instance, been inside a room with a window overlooking a nice view, sipping a hot cup of tea. A sink in which to wash her bloody hands had not even been provided!
“Dude, are you okay to be in here?” she asked.
“Of course not,” I replied. “But I will vanish before anyone notices.”
She was in no mood to scold me. “I’ve never seen anything like that portal before.”
“But it felt like Meg?”
“It felt like Meg and a couple of other things,” she said. “Like…when you mix Play-Doh and it turns purple but you can still see traces of red and green in the purple?”
“I am not familiar with Play-Doh.”
“Of course you aren’t,” she muttered on an exhale.
“So it was mostly Darkness, and something else. Perhaps in the plural,” I tried to understand.
“Yeah, something like that.” She pressed her lips together and looked as though she had more to say; but I wasn’t the person she wanted to address anymore.
“I felt Knight too,” she added.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Knight,” she said. “I felt him through the portal. That red line in the air? I swear I could feel him on the other side of it.”
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