Dreams of Shreds and Tatters (20 page)

“Run!” Antja flung the door open and Alex was hard on her heels, even as he cursed himself for a coward. She ran down the corridor and threw her weight against the emergency exit.
Alarm will sound,
the sign read;
Door will open in thirty seconds
. Sure enough, a shrill whine filled the air, reverberating through his skull.

He had to go back, gather his scattered wits and do something. He had to protect Liz. But the monster didn’t seem interested in her. It stepped into the hall, head snaking back and forth on its sinewy neck. No eyes, no ears, no features at all to mar the slick black curve of its skull, but it turned unerringly toward them. Alex’s vision flickered—one instant it was a man, lean and tenebrous, a long coat flapping around his legs; the next it slunk on all fours, wings furled to fit the hallway. Sickle claws sank into the faded carpet, and it was too easy to imagine them meeting flesh.

Someone called out in confusion and concern down the hall. The emergency door opened with a groan and spilled them onto a rain-slick fire escape. Antja staggered against the rusted railing, and Alex stumbled into her in turn. Raindrops spun toward the pavement below. Icy metal dented the soles of his feet and he remembered his shoes, abandoned along with Liz in the room. Their footsteps rang as they plunged down the iron steps.

“How do we stop them?” he gasped as they reached the next landing. Six more to go.

“Fire works.”

Rain fogged his glasses and trickled down his collar—he nearly laughed. Five more flights. The clatter of their descent echoed between the narrow alley walls, a faint and distant sound over the roar of his pulse. Four.

He felt the crack of wings an instant before the creature struck. Black talons whistled past his face and closed on Antja’s shoulder. Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her free, only to lose his balance and send them both tumbling down the stairs in a tangle of limbs and wet cloth.

Grey sky and black iron and wet brick kaleidoscoped around him, until his head cracked against the railing and everything washed red. Antja landed on him, driving the last of the air from his lungs. Sobbing, she rose and hauled him down the rest of the steps.

He fell again when they reached the alley floor, bruising his knees on rain-drenched concrete. His glasses slipped off his face, and the world washed grey and featureless. Pain was a hammer on the back of his skull, his lungs filled with molten lead. He slapped at his pockets, knowing it was futile—his inhaler, like his shoes, was still upstairs.

“We can’t stop moving,” Antja said, tugging at him. Alex wasn’t sure he could start. A quick death by claws, or slow asphyxiation. Choices, choices. Only contrariness let him stumble to his feet.

The alley mouth was blocked. The creature crouched like a gargoyle, its horned head trained on them. Oilslick haunches rippled as it started toward them. Even half-blind Alex could see the grace of its movements, its sinuous, Gigeresque lines.

“It’s herding us,” he said, glancing at the cavernous mouth of the parking garage behind them. Black wings spanned the alley and they fell back. There was no way to go but down.

Wind funneled down the slope of the driveway, slicing through wet cloth and flesh. Sodium lamps cast yellow pools on the slick floor, but shadows filled the corners. The monsters—two of them now—slunk down the ramp, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four, silent save for the scrape of claws on concrete.

Antja raised a hand and light crackled incandescent around her fingers, shuddering across windows and windshields and glazing the oily puddles at their feet. The glow cast her shadow and Alex’s huge and grotesque against the walls; the creatures cast none. They balked at the sudden brilliance, whip-sharp tails lashing, but didn’t stop.

The light showed the lines of strain carved on Antja’s face. “How long can you keep that up?” Alex asked. His voice was a thin wheeze, his chest cramping with want of air. Drowning on dry land.

“Not very.” Her voice was soft and grim; the light wavered. Broken glass glittered on the ground; his feet were bleeding, the pain a distant warmth. He wondered if he could hotwire a car.

He might not last much longer than her light. The drone of the lamps echoed in his skull, and his vision tunneled. He felt the adrenaline-scald of panic moving through him, but it too was distant. At least unconsciousness meant he would stop hurting.

He didn’t realize he’d stumbled until Antja reached to steady him. Her light died with the movement. A blister wept on her right palm where the fire had been. Her good hand lingered on his arm.

He ought to say something noble, like “Save yourself,” but he didn’t have breath to spare.

Antja shook her head as though she’d heard him anyway. “I can’t run anymore.”

It was, he thought dimly, a more interesting death than he would have imagined for himself. That didn’t make it any less annoying.

The shriek of wet rubber reverberated through the garage, followed by an engine’s growl. The creature’s blind heads swung round as headlights carved away the shadows. For an instant they paused, backlit by the glare; then they melted like tar and dissolved.

A familiar glossy, storm-grey car screeched to a stop in front of Antja and Lailah slid out of the driver’s side. Relief dizzied him— or maybe that was only hypoxia.

“Are you all right?” she called. A pale face watched them through the tinted glass of the passenger window. “Then let’s get out of here before they come back.”

“Liz—” Alex wheezed, even as Antja let out a strangled breath and whispered, “Oh God, Rainer.” She pressed her blistered hand to her mouth and left a smear of blood and fluid behind.

“You’ll be safer with us,” Lailah said. Alex wasn’t sure when they’d become an ‘us’, but he was in no condition to argue.

“She’s right,” Alex said, surprising himself. “You’re hurt.” Each word was more effort than the last. The world felt disconnected and far away.

Her eyes were black holes in the pallor of her face. “I can’t.” She brushed her fingers over his; his nails were shadowed lilac grey with cyanosis. “Take Liz and go.”

The last thing he saw before he fainted was her back fading into the gloom.

“I
DON
’
T KNOW
what else to do,” Rainer said. Whether he spoke to himself or to the empty shell in the hospital bed, he wasn’t sure.

He paced in front of the window, his shoes squeaking faintly on the tiles. Watery shadows rippled across the floor, and rainlight rinsed the room dull and grey. Only the bed lamp burned against the gloom. Its yellow glow lent warmth and color to Blake’s face, but it was an illusion—the truth was wan and cold and brittle.

Rainer hadn’t been here since he’d arranged for the private room. He’d told himself he didn’t want to draw attention to Blake, that his time was better spent finding a solution. In truth the sick knot in his chest whenever he looked at Blake was too much to endure. Even now his eyes strayed to the window more often than not.

Cowardice. He had to live with his actions. He forced himself to turn, to take the three strides to the bedside. He didn’t take Blake’s hand or touch his hollow cheek, though his fingers itched to do so. An uninvited caress might be more than Blake could forgive him, after everything else.

Machines dripped nourishment into him, but it wasn’t enough; the arches of Blake’s temples pressed sharp through papery skin, and Rainer could count the rings of his larynx. There were enchantments of stasis he could learn, ways to preserve the flesh beyond these tubes and wires—like Sleeping Beauty, or Brynhild in the fire—but without consciousness to reunite with the body, all they could do was prolong this cold unlife.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said again. Maybe Liz could accomplish what he couldn’t, if he hadn’t frightened her away last night. She wasn’t bound by his oaths. Or protected by them.

He trained his eyes on Blake again, curling his fingers around the bed rail until his knuckles blanched. He teased Antja about her Catholic childhood, but he knew a cilice when he used one on himself.

“I am trying,” he said softly. “Please believe that. And I’m sorry.”

With that he turned away, his quarter hour of courage spent, and fled the hospital and its weight of grief and misery.

W
HEN HE PULLED
into the narrow parking lot behind the gallery and turned off the car, it was all he could do not to lean his head on the steering wheel and weep. He couldn’t go on like this, but his oaths weren’t the sort to be forsworn. He had to find a way to serve that let him sleep at night. Would the King let him join a hermitage?

Rain snaked cold through his hair as he stepped out of the car. Only an hour past noon, but the alley was dark as dusk. His skin tightened as he hit the alarm button, fingers tingling. He paused, cupping the keys as he listened, but all he heard was the drum and rush of water. He shook his head, sending moisture trickling past his collar. Now wasn’t the time to start jumping at shadows. His shoes splashed across flooded blacktop, the cuffs of his trousers slapping against leather.

The streetlamp that lit the parking lot buzzed and sputtered, sending shadows writhing along the walls. Some writhed more than others.

Rainer spun, following a black flicker at the edge of his vision. The sour taste of nerves coated his tongue as he murmured a warding spell. There—a ripple in the dark, gone as soon as he saw it. Clawed feet splashed and scraped on wet cement, but when he turned toward the sound it vanished.

The creature struck as the last syllable of the spell left his lips. The charm slowed its claws but couldn’t stop them; instead of ripping his heart out with one strike it merely shredded his left shoulder. He fell, too stunned to cry out as he sprawled hard on the ground. Cold soaked his back. Heat soaked his chest. Rain stung his face as he struggled to breathe.

Two of them, identical. The darkness between stars made flesh. Whip-sharp tails lashed as they approached. Rainer scrambled backwards on three limbs, heels slipping in puddles, right palm scoring against asphalt. Warmth trickled down his left sleeve, cooling quickly. His arm was dead weight.

He had to focus, but the black shapes were mesmerizing as they closed on him, slow and playful as cats. Rainer stumbled toward the back stairs and fell on the lowest step. His blood swirled away in the rain, taking his strength with it. His own magic slipped fickle through his fingers. Drawing a painful breath, he reached deeper, for the power of the King.

It burned. Burned and froze the life from him. Blood thickened and slowed, sluggish as tar. He felt the darkness seeping across his eyes and fought the urge to retch.

The shadow-beasts paused, blind heads dipping as if they could sense the changes. As they tensed to strike, Rainer called the fire.

Smokeless yellow flame engulfed them, washing the alley black and gold. Alien flesh sizzled and popped. Fire was one of the few things that could hurt them, they’d discovered at the cabin. Too late to save anyone that night, but now he had the chance to repay his friends’ deaths. The monsters staggered, leaking sparks and blood black as oil. Rain evaporated with a steaming hiss, but they made no sound at all as they burned.

Burned, but didn’t stop their relentless approach. Black spots swam in front of Rainer’s eyes. He’d lost too much blood.

And by the time they reached Vancouver, he’d actually thought he wouldn’t end up dead in an alley. He tried to laugh and sobbed instead.

The back door flew open with a shriek and clang as his vision darkened. Antja called his name. Everything sounded dull and far away.

Silver light flared around him. A ward, hardly more to these creatures than a spider web, but it bought him a few more seconds. Time for Antja to grab his coat and haul him up the stairs. He screamed at the jolt, and the sound of his own pain was the last thing he heard.