Descent07 - Paradise Damned (20 page)

It punched a fist through the glass.

With a shout, Malcolm threw himself back on the seat, kicking at the groping hand. His boot connected with its wrist. It withdrew and reached for the inner lock.

Hard metal pressing against his hip reminded him of the knife that Alsu had given him. He wrenched it out of his belt and stabbed. Blood gushed out of the back of the hybrid’s hand.

Its mouth opened in a cry, and Malcolm saw human-like teeth that had been filed to points. Its slimy, black tongue lashed like a snake’s.

Malcolm stabbed again, forcing the creature to pull out of the window.

It circled around the harvester, as if considering a better way to attack. He felt like a mouse in a trap being toyed with by a cat.

There was no fucking way for him to get out of there without getting eaten.

The hybrid ducked below the windshield.

Malcolm braced his hands on the dashboard and pressed his forehead to the glass, craning around to see where it had gone. He didn’t see so much as a hint of a black feather.

Then the harvester tilted.

“Oh,
fuck
!” Malcolm swore, grabbing the controls as the seat tipped underneath him. The hybrid was lifting the harvester with superhuman strength.

His hand accidentally slammed into a lever.

An engine groaned, and the blades at the front of the harvester whirred to life. Each one of them was as tall as Malcolm. They accelerated until they were nothing but metallic blurs in front of the machine.

The creature dropped him. The harvester slammed to the ground again, and the windshield was pulverized by the impact.

It leaped. Malcolm raised the knife.

But the hybrid never reached him. It jerked to a halt inches away, eyes widened with shock.

Something yanked it off of the hood of the harvester. Malcolm could only watch in horror as its wing was pulled into the workings of the machine.

Its scream made his eardrums shake.

With a
crack
, the blades jammed. The harvester creaked and groaned, struggling to continue spinning.

Malcolm kicked his door open and jumped out.

The creature was thrashing, bleeding, trying to free itself. Malcolm ducked under its swiping arms, getting a better grip on Alsu’s kitchen knife. He kissed the hilt. “Please don’t break,” he said.

Malcolm drove the knife underneath the hybrid’s jaw.

One of its kicking legs connected with his gut, but Malcolm’s hold on the knife was too tight to let that force him back. Instead, he dragged the blade down its throat. Blood gushed over his hand, soaking his sleeve, splashing on his shirt.

He pulled the knife out, and cut again.

Another crack—and the harvester’s blades began to spin once more, with a belch of smoke that smelled like burning gasoline.

The hybrid wrenched free, missing half of one wing, and stumbled toward Malcolm with its hands clapped to its throat. It stumbled. Malcolm brought the knife hacking down on the back of its neck, and blade bit into bone.

The neck severed.

Even decapitated, the body continued to flail, swiping leathery hands through the grass—either searching for him, or for its own head. Malcolm kicked the head into the bushes.

Eventually, its legs stopped kicking. The harvester continued to whir.

Malcolm didn’t even
realize that the hybrid had injured him until he was staggering back to Oymyakon. The side of his face was cold with blood—
his
blood. Malcolm gently probed his face for a wound and found a gash near his missing eye. One of its claws must have caught him when it punched an arm through the windshield.

He lifted the head, which he carried under one arm. “You asshole,” he told its vacant stare.

The boys were playing football again when he returned to the village. Malcolm gave a half-hearted wave to Timer before stepping into the kitchen.

Alsu was the only one of the nieces left, reading a book at the table. The oven filled the room with the smell of roasting meat.

Malcolm dropped the head on the table. “I brought you a present, you foxy thing,” he said.

Shock whitened her lips. “What is wrong with you?” Alsu snapped, tossing the book aside. She whipped her apron off and concealed the head with it.

“Thought your aunt might be interested in what I picked up in her backyard,” Malcolm said. “Now I’m going to fall down. Blood loss, you know.”

Alsu shoved the head, apron and all, into the chest freezer. “You can rest in the back bedroom. I’ve made it up for you.”

“The room Grandmother’s in?”

“She died,” Alsu said curtly. “My sisters are burying her now.”

“
What
? I was gone for an hour!” Malcolm stared around the house, expecting that someone would leap out and reveal the hidden cameras, but it didn’t happen, and Alsu wasn’t laughing.

Babushka couldn’t be dead. The boys were playing, dinner was cooking, so little time had passed.

“It was right on schedule,” Alsu said. “We’ve been preparing for her funeral all month. Now her room is empty, and it’s yours.”

“You people are
fucking insane
,” he said.

She shoved a hand towel against his bleeding eye socket. “I don’t have to let you rest here at all. And I wouldn’t if Grandmother hadn’t left instructions. Take the bed or the living room floor—it’s your choice.”

Malcolm briefly entertained the idea of finding a Union convoy and surrendering himself to their mercies again. They might have been assholes, but they were
sane
assholes. They didn’t schedule deaths and keep heads in their freezers.

His knees wobbled.

“I think I’ll rest right here,” he said, sitting down hard in one of the kitchen chairs.

Malcolm’s blood had soaked through the rag. Alsu gave him another, this one damp, and he wiped up his eye as best he could.

“Are we going to be attacked?” she asked. There wasn’t as much confidence in her voice as there had been earlier. Even if Babushka’s death had been scheduled, it seemed to have shaken Alsu—and thank fucking God for that, because Malcolm wouldn’t have known what to think if it hadn’t bothered her at least a little bit.

Malcolm tied the handkerchief around his head in lieu of an eye patch. “Do you have a phone?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

Alsu tossed a cell phone at him.

“I need to talk to my sisters,” she said. “Keep an eye on the oven.”

She left.

Malcolm had tucked the piece of paper with the phone number for the Faulkner house in his pocket before leaving Colorado. It took him a few tries to remember how to dial internationally, and several long moments of silence passed while he waited to be connected.

The phone finally rang. An answering machine picked up. “
You’ve reached Leo Faulkner
…”

He disconnected.

Although it was possible that nobody was in the house to hear the call, Malcolm was certain that James wasn’t in Colorado at all anymore. He had been taking Ariane and Hannah to the Haven. Maybe James had followed them in.

If James was out of reach, then there had to be someone else he could talk to. Hybrids were a big fucking deal—Malcolm
had
to tell someone what he had just killed.

Another phone number came to mind instantly. He dialed again.

It took just as long to connect, but it only rang twice before someone answered. “Leticia here,” responded a woman. She sounded stressed. A baby wailed in the background.

“Tish, hello! This is Malcolm Gallagher. How are the kids?”

“They’re good,” Leticia said cautiously. She probably didn’t remember him. Her husband had a lot of kopis friends, and Malcolm hadn’t visited the McIntyres in years.

There wasn’t time to explain at the moment. He barely let her finish before pushing on. “Right, I need to chat with Lucas. Pass me over?”

Leticia paused for so long that he almost thought that she had put him down to pick up the screaming baby. But the wails didn’t stop, and she finally said, “Who is this?”

“Malcolm Gallagher. I’m a—”

“I know what you are,” she said. “You can’t talk to Lucas.”

“It’s about Elise,” he said.

“Elise? Oh,” Leticia said. Her voice brightened a little. “What about her?”

“Just give me Lucas.”

“That’s the thing…” She trailed off. “Look, why don’t I take a message?”

A hand rapped on Malcolm’s arm. He turned, phone pressed to his shoulder, to find Alsu holding a shotgun beside him.

Babushka’s warning suddenly came to mind again.
I will have my nieces slit your throat.
The sight of her hands wrapped around the shotgun made his testicles shrivel.

Alsu shoved the gun into his hands.

“Intruders,” she said, pulling another knife from the belt of her dress. “Follow me.”

Malcolm scrambled to hang up. “I’ll take care of the intruders. You can stay inside,” he said, but Alsu ignored him.

Everyone was gathered outside the house, including Timer, his friend, and all of the withered old nieces. Each was armed with knives, makeshift bludgeons, and shotguns of their own. If they had been coming after Malcolm, he certainly would have been intimidated, but they didn’t stand a chance against more hybrids. Not a single fucking chance.

Two figures approached them on the road.

He stepped in front of the family. “Go inside,” he said, but they ignored him.

Malcolm braced the shotgun at his shoulder, taking aim. He watched down the barrel as the shapes grew closer and closer. They weren’t hybrids—they were too short, and there were no wings in sight.

As they grew closer, he realized that he recognized one of them.

Lowering the gun, he held out an arm to keep the others from shooting. “Wait, stop,” Malcolm said.

“Do you know these men?” Alsu asked, knuckles white on the handle of the butcher knife. Malcolm didn’t consider women of her age to be his type, but she seemed determined to kill, and it was a fetching look on her.

“Aye, I know them,” Malcolm said. He gave the shotgun to her. “Please, uh, don’t shoot me.”

He jogged out to meet the men.

Lucas McIntyre was getting fat in his old age. He must have been in his mid-twenties now—which was well beyond middle-aged for a kopis—and the extra weight layered over his muscles made him roughly the size and shape of a bear. His hair was buzzed to a bright blue mohawk. When he smiled, it stretched the holes of his lip piercings.

“Malcolm,” he greeted, clapping his hand on Malcolm’s forearm. Lucas’s grip was much like a bear’s, too. “You are ugly as fuck.”

“You too,” Malcolm said. He pushed the new scarf off of his face to bare the seeping eye socket. “Like it?”

“Looks great,” Lucas said.

“Bet that was fun getting through airport security.” Malcolm gestured at the piercings. “Speaking of which, you’ve got good timing. I was just trying to call you in as backup. How’d you know about the hybrids?”

“What? What hybrids are you talking about?” Lucas asked.

“You didn’t come here because of the angel-demon things?”

“Actually, we’re here because of a prophecy. Apparently the Union’s converging somewhere here.” Lucas waved vaguely at the hills.

Malcolm felt dizzy.
The Event is here
, he realized, much too late.
The Event is fucking
hybrids.

And he had walked right into it.

Lucas kept talking. “This is my trainee, Anthony Morales.”

Anthony was a dark-skinned guy in his early twenties with messy brown hair. The stock of a shotgun sheathed at his spine jutted over one shoulder. Aside from that, he carried one shoulder bag, too—that was all of the luggage between the two of them. He offered a hand to shake. Malcolm just stared at him.

“You all right?” Lucas asked. “Has it been bad here?”

With the crazy family still milling behind him on the road, a Union army on the way, and a hybrid’s head stuffed in the freezer, “bad” didn’t seem like a nearly adequate description of the situation.

“You could say that,” Malcolm said. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

The hybrid’s head
steamed in the cool evening air, sitting out on the table behind Alsu’s house. A half hour packed in ice between steaks and ice cream hadn’t chilled it even one degree. It stared up at the sky with vacant eyes and a gaping mouth. If not for the fact that it had lacked a body for hours, Malcolm thought it might have looked like it was still fresh. Alive, even.

“Why are we out here?” Anthony asked. His eyes scanned the fields behind the house, as if wary of attack. “Can’t we look at this thing inside?”

“The women of the house told me ‘no more severed heads in the kitchen.’ If you want to argue with them, be my guest. Otherwise…” Malcolm poked the hybrid in the eye again, just to make sure that it was deader than it looked. It didn’t react, thankfully.

Lucas circled the table, tugging on the plug stretching his left earlobe. “What is it?”

“I think it’s a hybrid. A mix of angel and demon.”

“That’s not possible,” Lucas said. “The Treaty of Dis forbids it.”

“Yeah, the Treaty is kind of shattered,” Malcolm said. “Cool, right? So this is just the start of the party. And what were you saying about the Union?”

Anthony shrugged. “They’re coming here with an army. Benjamin Flynn said we had to be here, too. That’s all I know.”

Ah, shit
. Malcolm really should have read those prophecies while he was still commander.

“What a coincidence. Elise is due to show up here at some point, too,” Malcolm said, tapping the nonexistent watch on his wrist. “James asked me to pick her up out in some harmless field filled with prancing, adorable cows. That’s where I ran into this guy.”

Lucas and Anthony exchanged looks.

“Hybrids, Elise, and the Union,” Anthony said.

Malcolm clapped his hands together. “Right! So, now we’re all up to speed. You handsome gentlemen have this covered, eh? Tell Elise I said hi. I’m going to find a bunker where I can ride out the apocalypse.”

“No,” Lucas said. “We’ll need you here.”

“No?
No?
”