by Tim Lebbon
“This way,” he said. “I think.”
“Sammi,” Angela said, and she hated that she was asking anything like this of the girl. Sammi grabbed her hand. It felt hot. Her skin was burning, and Angela noticed for the first time that the trace-work of fern-like scars had emerged once again on her forearm. The memory of the lightning strikes had come to the fore.
“I’m still not sure,” Sammi said, and she sounded so lost.
“Get sure,” Bone said. “Francine’s here.”
The ragged werewolf had mounted a small hillock close to the store’s remains, and now it stood looking down upon them, breathing hard, mucus and dust dribbling from its nose. It displayed no human attributes that Angela could make out. The sounds it made, the way it stood, indicated that its greatest desire right then was to eat them.
“Look at its eyes,” Lilou said, and Angela looked closer. The werewolf’s eyes seemed to glow a gentle yellow, as if backlit with a flashlight. The yellow dripped, a discharge that left twin sticky trails down either side of its long, thin snout.
It looked sick and old, furious and hungry.
“That’s the infection,” Bone said. “Don’t let her bite you. Don’t let her scratch you.”
“You’ve seen this before,” Angela said.
“She’s going to jump,” Bone said. “You have to keep her occupied.”
“It’ll be occupied eating my face off.”
Bone went for the thick wall, picking up something that might have been an old metal chair leg. He started scraping and hacking at the mound of silt washed up and hardened against the facade, and within a few seconds Angela heard a sharp rapping sound.
“It’s still here!” he said. Lilou went and helped, leaving Angela and Sammi standing side by side.
“Whatever you’re going to do...” Angela said.
“I’m working on it.” Sammi’s voice was deeper and more level than before, quieter, and when Angela glanced at her sidelong, she saw the concentration in her expression.
Angela looked around for a weapon. She found a rock the size of her fist and picked it up, hefted it, knew that it was all but useless against one of the risen Kin.
The werewolf lowered its head into an attack position. It was thin and wasted, but that detracted nothing from the threat it presented.
Bone and Lilou were frantically digging in front of the wall, and part of an old metal doorway was already exposed. They’ll never uncover it in time, Angela thought. And even if they do, it’ll never open.
“Don’t you have a gun?” she asked Bone, but he either didn’t hear or chose to ignore her. Need a silver bullet against that anyway, she thought, wondering if that were even true.
The werewolf stopped growling, relaxed, and eased back, and Angela stood taller beside Sammi and wielded the rock. She felt a momentary sense of hope—was the creature in two minds? Were there too many of them?
“Get down!” Sammi said, looking over her left shoulder. Angela dropped to her knees and rolled onto her side. She kept hold of the rock and brought it up before her face as she landed on her back, ready to smash it into anything that might be jumping or charging at them.
The figure she saw must have been the third Kin, Mohserran. He was running towards them, his steps unsteady but his intentions clear. His sunken, shrivelled face was moulded into a visage of pure rage. He was naked, skin folded and hardened into a leathery hide over the decades of his burial or submersion. His limbs were thin, but they seemed strong. Long hair flowed behind his head as he ran, like seaweed caught in a current. His eyes flamed yellow, much brighter than the werewolf Francine’s.
Hopeless, Angela thought, and then the world caught fire. Bright white light filled her eyes. She was blinded, and although she felt a pulse of heat it only caressed and stretched her skin rather than scorching flesh from bones. A boom thundered through the ground and air, compressing her eardrums and driving pain into her skull. The impact lifted her and slammed her back down, winding her. She felt a wave of dust and other debris drive across her, stinging exposed skin and scouring her face and upper arms. She clenched the rock in her hand even harder, and when she squinted she saw sparks leaping across her whitened fingernails, jumping from one to the next and dancing on the exposed stone in between.
The sparks were everywhere.
She rolled into a crouch and brought the rock up over one shoulder, ready to swing it forward.
Mohserran was down on his knees close to her, almost close enough to touch. His yellowed eyes were wide, his mouth drooped open, his long hair was splayed over his shoulders, heavy with dried mud. He reached for her with one clawed hand. His neck and left arm were coated with a smooth, dry fur, and here and there it was singed and smoking. Lightning danced back and forth across his bared teeth.
Though he reached for her, he was looking at Sammi. He was frozen to the spot, knotted muscles quivering but not obeying his silent commands. He was a sculpture of fury.
Sammi was on one knee beside Angela, left hand resting on the ground, right hand still held out before her. She held onto white fire. It rolled across her palm and back and forth between her fingers, a pet eager to do its master’s bidding.
“Francine!” Bone shouted.
Sammi knelt up and swung her hand around, and Angela felt the bolt of white fire—
Lightning, that’s lightning coming from my niece’s hand!
—surge past her on the right. She rolled to the left and turned just in time to see it striking the werewolf as it leapt. The creature was knocked from the sky, writhing in the dust as sparks coursed across its withered body. It set its denuded fur on end.
“Oh, no,” Sammi said, swaying where she knelt. Her eyes were wide and she drooled. The arm supporting her against the ground shook, and Angela went for her just as she fell. She dropped the rock and caught her niece in her arms, but her skin was so hot that Angela gasped and let her go. Sammi fell to the dusty ground, breath knocked from her with a gentle sigh. Angela reached for the girl again, but she could feel the heat radiating from her, and she didn’t know how Sammi wasn’t burning up, her brain and organs shrivelling and melting beneath the ferocious onslaught.
Maybe she will die, maybe she’s not ready for this and doesn’t even know what it is. The Kin have screwed with my family and this is the end result, this sweet innocent girl burning to death from the inside out before my eyes while I can’t do a fucking thing about it.
“Sammi!”
“Grab her!” Lilou said.
“I can’t, she’s burning hot and she’s in pain, can’t you just—?”
“We’re not out of trouble yet,” Bone said. “The gargoyle’s coming. You look after her, we’ll look after you.” He was wielding the metal chair leg, and Lilou had found a heavy spiked branch somewhere. They stood between Angela and the third Kin.
It was stalking them. Moving left and right, it glanced between its downed kin and them. Its face was twisted and contorted, its body squat and wasted. Time had only made it uglier.
“And we don’t know how long they’ll stay down,” Angela said. She scooped Sammi up, surprised at how easily she lifted the girl in both arms. Her skin was still hot, but no longer too hot to touch. Angela had heard urban myths about parents lifting crashed cars from their trapped children. Maybe her strength now came from love.
Her eyes watered at the heat. Sammi’s eyes flickered, sightless.
“I’ve got you,” she said.
“You sure that’s a gargoyle?” Lilou asked.
“Yes,” Bone said. “And he’s strong.”
“He’s been under water for forty years,” Lilou said. “He’ll be weak and confused. When he comes, take him from two directions.”
The gargoyle saw his chance and came at them. He stumbled, wings rising up for the first time as a form of balance, and Angela saw how tattered and ripped they were. Even if he wanted to fly, she doubted he ever could.
She readied herself to drop Sammi and protect her however
she could—fists, feet, nails and teeth, she’d fight to the last so that her niece might have a chance at survival.
Bone feinted left and then jumped right, swinging the chair leg in his left hand. It connected with the gargoyle’s right arm. The gargoyle cried out and fell, and Bone landed beside it and rolled quickly away, eager not to make contact. Lilou came in from the other direction and jumped on the fallen Kin, bringing the branch down across the back of the creature’s head. Its face was driven into the ground, muffling its cries. Careful to avoid the teeth, Lilou raised the branch to strike again.
The gargoyle rolled and kicked out, both clawed feet just missing Lilou’s thighs as she staggered back.
Lilou revealed herself, arms held out, smiling.
Angela had never experienced the full effect of Lilou’s alluring nymph power. Lilou spent most of her time keeping it close and tight, concealed from the world even though her true instincts urged her to be herself. Fighting against instinct was the way most Kin had survived this long, Lilou had once told her, and Angela had often been aware of the nymph’s struggle.
Now, Lilou allowed herself to flow, to be herself in the face of this danger, and the rapture in her expression was wonderful to behold. Angela felt her knees weaken. Warmth bloomed at her core, and at that moment she loved Lilou and desired her, more than she’d ever believed she would desire a woman.
She took a step forward, and Sammi groaned in her arms.
“Ang...”
“I’m here!” Angela said, tearing her eyes from the nymph. “I’ve got you.”
“I feel sick.”
The gargoyle halted its attack. It stared at Lilou in confusion, then when she turned and walked towards the half-uncovered walk-in fridge it followed. Lilou glanced at Angela and frowned, and even in that glance Angela flushed with desire.
Then she recognised the look. Lilou needed help.
“Bone,” she said.
“Yeah... yeah...” he said from away to one side. He too was caught in Lilou’s thrall, but he was also aware of the delicacy of their situation.
Angela put Sammi down. The girl sat up, one hand braced against the ground.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Go and help.”
Angela hated leaving Sammi in this state even for a second. Seeing her like that, feeling her burning up, only confused her love/hate relationship with the Kin even more.
“We have to get the door open,” she said.
“And we don’t have long.” Bone nodded behind them. Mohserran was still shaking where he stood, but there seemed more sense to his movements now, as if he was trying to extricate himself from some constraining fluid sticking him to the air. The werewolf that Bone had named Francine was still down, but no longer writhing in pain. It moved back and forth, feet slapping the ground, legs lengthening with each movement, hands propped beneath its shoulders once more. It pushed with every roll and came closer to rising up.
They didn’t have long at all, and Angela didn’t think Sammi had any more fight left in her.
They skirted around the gargoyle, both of them doing their best to avoid looking at Lilou. But it wasn’t only the sight of her that made her so alluring. Angela could smell her, like early morning blossoms, ripe fruit, smooth rich coffee. Everything she loved. She could almost taste her on the air, and she experienced a rush of sexual images that surprised and excited her in equal measures.
“Oh hell,” Bone said. “I’ve never known...”
“Nor me. But she’s not doing it for us.”
They climbed the low wall and dropped down the other side, landing in front of the entrance to the old walk-in fridge. From this close it didn’t look very large, but Angela guessed it extended back into the ground behind the wall, the rear half of the building smothered by decades of silt.
The door was largely exposed, but the handle was a rusted mess. Bone worked on it with the chair leg, but the metal merely bent and then cracked.
“Better hurry,” Lilou said. She drew a small knife from her belt and held it hidden by her hand.
“We’re trying.”
“I mean it.”
The gargoyle now stood directly in front of Lilou. Its face was more monstrous than before, its body resembling cracked stone, and its erection swung before it as if steering the way. Its yellow eyes burned brighter, and Angela realised the terrible danger Lilou had placed herself in. The small knife she held would be all but useless once this creature pounced.
Angela snatched the chair leg from Bone and stepped up beside Lilou, raising the bent metal back over her shoulder.
“Handle’s stuck!” Bone said behind them.
“You better stop,” Angela said to the nymph.
“If I stop—”
There was another bright flash, an explosion that turned the gargoyle’s eyes from yellow to white. A heavy impact thudded through her feet from behind, and Angela already knew what she would see when she turned around.
Sammi was slumped across the head of the wall, dregs of white fire dripping from her hand, falling slowly to the ground as if made from feathers.
The handle to the big fridge glowed, and Bone winced as he grabbed it and worked it back and forth. With a creak it clicked back into its housing.
“We’re in!” he said, and he swung the door open two feet before it stuck on the uneven ground.
Angela took a deep breath against the stink she expected to emerge, but whatever might have been inside forty years ago had rotted down to nothing. There was only darkness.
Lilou backed up against the door, and when the gargoyle followed Bone stepped around it and shoved it through the opening.
“What about the others?” Lilou asked.
“You stay and keep watch here,” Bone said. He shoved the door closed and waited until Lilou added her weight to its outer surface. “Me and your friend here will get them. Right?”
Angela nodded. She caught Sammi’s eye and, exhausted and drained, the girl still managed a smile.
In her eyes Angela saw a sort of madness, and she had the terrible feeling that she should fear her niece more than these mad, recently woken Kin.
Taking care to avoid tooth and claw, they dragged Mohserran and the spitting, shivering werewolf across the dusty ground and managed to force them through the doorway into the metal structure. There was a damp, forgotten smell to the fridge. It was larger than Angela had thought, but still barely big enough for the three Kin to be contained.
Every second they pulled and pushed, she expected the werewolf or the strange man Mohserran to shake off their fugue and bite back. Burning yellow, their eyes displayed a depth of madness that terrified her more than their teeth and claws.
With the door shut behind them, lock braced with the metal chair leg and loose soil shoved back in and compacted against the structure, her attention turned to her niece. She was sitting up on the wall now, and she looked shrunken by what had happened.
“I did it,” Sammi said.
“You did,” Angela agreed. “But what did you do?”
Sammi’s smile slipped. “Just for a bit I felt...”
“Powerful,” Lilou said. She was panting hard, sweating, and grey dust was stuck to her skin in dark streaks.
“I never realised,” Angela said.
“I didn’t know how much I could do,” Sammi said. “I knew I had something, felt it growing and changing. But I didn’t know how much I had until now.”
“You still don’t,” Lilou said.
“We can talk later,” Bone said. “Right now, we’ve got to figure out a way of permanently containing them.”
“That wasn’t Mohserran,” Lilou said. “That wasn’t my friend. I haven’t seen him for over a century, but I remember so much about him. How proud he was, how amusing, how he loved life and loved to love. That... thing wasn’t him. Whatever the army or whoever did to him, he’d never want to be like that. We don’t need to contain them. We need to kill them.”
Bone’s eyes went wide. H
is stance became harder, readied for more violence. He knows them, she thought. If he has a personal link, we need to watch out.
A deep and regular banging began from the half-buried structure. The exposed metal door shimmered, and with each impact it seemed to blur as dust fell from its surface. The bent chair leg wedging the handle closed seemed solid, and the impacts settled the silt piled back against the door.
Even so, she wouldn’t put a bet on how long the three Kin could be contained.
“How the hell are they even still alive?” she asked.
“The Kovo,” Bone said.
“What’s that?”
“The infection. It’s kept them alive, somehow. Didn’t you see their eyes?”
“You know them,” Sammi said.
“I know them,” he said, but he offered no more. Angela saw a level of control in him, as if he was accustomed to situations similar to this. He reminded her of the Kin-killer Gregor, but Bone seemed to have a link with the Kin, something close and personal, not simply a desire to kill.
“We need to figure this out,” Lilou said. “But there’s something else.”
Angela raised an eyebrow.
“That was fairy stuff,” Lilou said, nodding at Sammi. “I’m sorry, kid, but it can’t be denied. You’ve got fairy blood somewhere in your past, and everything you’ve been through is bringing it to the fore. I’ve suspected for some time, but didn’t want to say anything in case it confused you or... hurt you. But I’ve been keeping watch.”
Angela glared at her. Lilou shrugged in response.
“I never believed she’d have anything like this much power.”
“So what happens to her now?” Angela asked, terrified for her niece, sad for herself. I’m losing the one thing left pinning me to the world I know.
“Now, if Grace senses what just happened, she might show renewed interest in Sammi. She wanted her before. Now she’ll crave her company for eternity.”