Taken By Storm (16 page)

A pang of guilt for the motel owner hits me between the ribs, but I push it aside. The vinegar in the carpet is going to be the least of his worries.

The room is littered with harkast corpses, and it smells of rot and sewage. "We have to get through that jeeling," I say.
 

Evis nods. I leap from the bed onto the head of a still-alive harkast. My brother follows, and together we slash a path to the door. His sword strokes are untrained, but strong, and the tops of two harkast heads fall onto the floor in a spatter of gray brains and skulls. There's some movement behind me, but any harkast to attack me from there is going to have to climb over about twenty of its buddies' bodies.
 

I motion with my sword point at the jeeling's knees, and Evis jerks his head to show he understands.
 

I can smell the relative freshness of the outdoor air, even if it's perfumed by the smell of hells-taint, it's an improvement on this closed motel room.
 

Holding up my hand, I count down from three on my fingers. On one, Evis and I strike in unison, our swords finding the jeeling's knees.

The eleven foot monster pitches forward and hits its head on the wall above the door jamb with a loud thud. It slumps to the ground, and we fall on it, with me beheading it just as Evis pins its torso to the ground with a downward thrust. We're out of the room.

But we're surrounded.

Harkasts fill the open air corridor, and behind them I see the slummoths that were the source of the roars from before. A dead pair of humans lies cooling in the parking lot, their upper bodies half shredded.
 

And beyond the slummoths, I see the quick, darting movement of a pair of markats.
 

Fuck me sideways.

"Be careful of those ones back there," I mutter to Evis. "Their spit burns you."

"Like Mira's face."

I forgot I told him about that. I think of Mira and I getting splashed with markat spittle, of the scars both of us will wear forever. I don't want any more.

"Like Mira's face," I agree. "If we can, let's take them out first."

What I said to Evis just before these hellkin burst in on us was true.
 

I'm always afraid.

Something presses into my left hand. The hilt of my short sword. "You need this."

I give my brother a tight smile, and I see his hands ball up, then his fingers twitch like claws.

"Kill as many as you can," I say.

I spin away from him, my swords cutting an arc through the closely-gathered harkasts. More surge forward to take their places, and a slummoth picks its way between them, aiming at me. I keep the markats in the back in my frame of reference. I do not want them sneaking up behind me. I have no leathers, and markat spit'll cut through the cotton shirt I'm wearing like a branding iron through cream cheese.

The slummoth leaps over the harkasts, ramming into me before I can get my sword point up. I stumble backward, tripping over the jeeling corpse and falling into the door jamb. I forsake elegance and stab the slummoth through the side with my left sword. It roars at me and takes a swipe with its claws, cutting me across the ribs. I bring my saber up and stab it in the ear. Harkast claws scrabble at my bare legs, and I gasp. The slummoth corpse falls on one of the stumpy demons, and I stab two others in the eyes.
 

Blood trickles down my side and down my legs. My bare feet are covered in blood, mine and demons', and they burn with the corrosive acidity of the hellkin fluids.
 

Evis is dismantling harkasts, and I hear the screech of the two markats as they go for him, and a low, undulating burble that only means one thing.

"Evis, get out of the way!"
 

He dodges just as a geyser of hot spittle flies through the air. It splashes his right arm, and he hollers, but it doesn't hit him full on. I do a kneel-and-spin move, not caring that the rough pavement scrapes the shit out of my knee because I take a full five harkasts down in one swipe. Another slummoth is coming at me, and I dispatch it with a lucky slash across its throat. Evis dances around the markats. The other still has its spit-reserve, but I don't know which is which. I hear more roaring in the distance and know that if we don't take out these demons and get out of here quick, we won't have to worry about acid burns. Or anything else.

I clear a path through the harkasts, stepping on one of their bodies to bury my saber in a markat spine, slipping my lefthand weapon around to cut its throat before that chuffing gurgle can start again. Evis picks up a harkast by the head and throws it at the second markat.
 

The harkast panics midair and slashes at the markat's face, distracting it enough for me to kill them both with a quick one-two.

Evis takes down another of the slummoths, but they keep coming. I can see a herd of at least eight coming our way. I have no shoes and my body burns, and I'm sure Evis's arm feels like one big paper cut under a lemon juice shower.
 

"We can't take them all," I say. "We're going to have to run."

I don't have my car keys. They're in the room, buried somewhere under a half ton of harkast.

A pink glow materializes beyond the oncoming slummoths.

The sky is lightening, but the sun won't be here soon enough to stop us from dying.

To the north, there's the slummoths and the jeeling. To the south, plodding harkasts. They're the best option for us right now.
 

The pink glow suddenly goes horizontal and splits in two.

At first I don't know what I'm seeing.

Then the phalanx of slummoths splits, and howls fill the air.

Udo.

It's fucking Udo.

"Get the harkasts," I say to Evis.

We turn as one and fall on the stumpy demons until ten becomes two. We take out the last two together, just as Udo makes it to us. He's covered in slummoth slime and green blood, and behind him I can see the fading glow of the dead jeeling.

A curtain twitches back down the way, and a brown face momentarily appears, then vanishes when the eyes catch me watching.

"You didn't answer your phone," Udo says.

"We were busy."
 

Looking around us, there's a sea of corpses. Even when I took down an entire horde a couple months ago, I didn't have to face this many. And then I was armed and outfitted.

The skin on my legs is flaming red. But I need my backpack and keys, and I'm not spending more time in this motel room than I have to.

"Evis, get the cooler and your stuff."

I'm just thankful we put our shit in the closet.
 

Except for the keys, which bounced off my bed in the fight. Those I have to wash in the bathroom sink for five minutes to get all the harkast blood off.

I use the motel stationary pad to leave a note on the door telling them to call the Summit for cleanup.

It had to be Gregor.

That he saw me and the same night we get slammed by an entire horde cannot possibly be a coincidence.

Both Evis and Udo agree, and Udo comes with us as we find a new motel. I don't have an icy clue in hells why or how Gregor was able to find us, but I'm going to have to take some steps to make sure that doesn't happen again. I only pay three days in advance this time, because I don't really feature spending all of the money Alamea dropped in my account on motels.
 

This one isn't as nice, but the slightly moldy smell in the room is approximately twelve thousand steps up from eau de harkast in the other one, so I'm not complaining. We take turns in the bathroom, and I'm thankful I have my anti-venom handy for Evis's arm.
 

My shower is less than fun. My shallower cuts have healed around the venom before I could scrub it out, and they'll be nice and inflamed for a while until my body tells the infection to fuck off. My legs itch and burn. I wish sandpapering them were an option.

The claw marks on my side are deeper and tender, the lips of the cuts angry and red.

I wash myself as best as I can and apply a healing salve. My tub of it's almost empty, and I'm not sure I can get more any time soon.
 

Once we're all clean and in our full flush of life again, I ask Udo why he turned up when he did.

"I found a host." He looks outside at the grey dawning day, calculating. "She is due tonight, so we have a little time. But I thought you should know that I know where she's been staying, and I can track her. We can catch her in time if we leave later today. I tried to call you."

My phone thankfully escaped the onslaught of slime at the Suquamish Sleeps. "We should rest up a little before we go," I say. My stomach is rumbling, and I think of my fish and chips, flipped over and doused in harkast blood.

I order a pizza, triple meat. It arrives in record time, and I eat half of it while Udo and Evis snooze in a pile.

They must be getting more comfortable with one another.

When late afternoon rolls around, we suit up and head out. I feel better with all my gear.
 

Udo leads us to a quiet suburban neighborhood on the south side of Seattle. It's heavy with rhododendrons and towering maples, and it looks like the last place anyone would expect to find a parade of hellspawn.

He takes us to a house in the middle of a street that looks busy enough. There's a Jill Homeowner mowing her lawn, her black hair in one thick braid and her brown skin glowing with perspiration in spite of the cloud cover.

Two houses down, Udo leads us around back. "Mavis said she's here. I asked if we could take care of this one. I thought you might want to talk to her."

I'm not sure want is the right word, but I appreciate the thought.

Udo opens the back door, which is unlocked, and we go straight down to the basement.
 

The sight of the host makes me blanch.
 

She really is about to pop, and she's completely alone, sprawled out on a mattress that is at least an upgrade from the disgusting nest of the last one I saw.
 

She sees us and beams from ear to ear. "It's you."

"Uh, sure." I walk up to her, stomach churning. Except there's no way my stomach could ever do what hers is.

Her head seems almost detached from her body, so alien is the rest of her. How she can still speak and smile is beyond me. I saw Lena Saturn like this, and it's still a shock. There are two bodies smushed into one, the clear outline of the shade within her skin pulsing and moving with every passing heartbeat.

If we kill her now, will the shade burst out and try to eat us? I don't know, but the answer is almost certainly yes.

"My baby," the woman says. She stretches backward on her mattress, rapturously reclining, her arms running up and down her bulbous middle.

There's no talking to her. I know that. Whatever it is that keeps her from feeling pain while her insides are liquified like a caterpillar in a chrysalis also keeps her doped to the gills. I unsheathe my sword, fighting the knot of bile that rises in my throat.

She murmurs dreamily, her eyes glazed and vacant. "My baby will go to his alpha."

"What did she just say?" I freeze, my saber tip only just free of the scabbard.

"The alpha will rule this city, and I will be rewarded."

"You'll be deaded, is what you'll be," I say. "The alpha. Who is it?"

Images of Gregor commanding hordes of murderous shades and demons intrude into my head, and tinny saliva fills my mouth.

"If only it was my baby who was the alpha," she says. "But I will still be rewarded. My baby will serve him."

"The alpha is a shade?"

"The alpha will rule the city." The woman's stomach roils.
 

She doesn't even move when I kill her, her face in the same fatuous mask of ecstasy I saw on the decapitated head of Lena Saturn.

I only make it three steps before I vomit up half that pizza all over my own shoes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Udo calls Mavis as we leave, and she tells him the Summit is getting about one in three of the hosts before they manage to burst baby hellions into existence. It's not enough.