Shutter

by Courtney Alameda

  “Did you get a visual?” Ryder asked.

  “Just a shadow.”

  Those monsters were already loose in the city, and we didn’t have the firepower to exterminate them all. We’d have to tip off dispatch, maybe get the Harker Elite to blast the nest with napalm or something. Or had Jude seen the ghost’s miasma, waiting for us?

  “Keep moving, backs to the wall,” Ryder said. The boys sneaked sideways, keeping their weapons trained on the windows. Ambient light punched out the darkness ahead.

  Behind us, metal squealed like a disemboweled animal. A necro shrieked. Without a word, we broke into a run, slipping into the auditorium. Ryder grabbed one door, Jude the other, tugging them closed soundlessly. Jude ran his hand over the lever handles.

  “I can lock these,” he said, taking a knee and pulling out his picks. “It’ll slow them down.”

  “Hurry,” Ryder said.

  I turned to face the auditorium. The smell of decay sweetened the air. Ryder ran his rifle-mounted flashlight over the room, touching on cracked bones, maggot-infested flesh, and wisps of black fog that slithered back from the light. I’d seen this room before, in the vision back at the house, and the details rushed me all at once: the huge windows, the chandeliers, the delicate artwork inlaid in the ceilings.

  I crossed myself and powered up my flash as the room’s pressure shifted, an impossible breeze moving through the air.

  “Helsing,” our entity whispered. “Predictable. Little. Fools.”

  Ryder’s rifle muzzle hissed through the air as he turned toward the voice, his leather holsters creaking. Jude glanced up, but kept working the locks with his picks.

  Violet ghostlight sparked at the auditorium’s west edge, bright enough to illuminate a large stage before the black fog twisted around the entity again. My soulchains jerked in my gut, and I knew, I knew, this was the entity I’d fought last night.

  “It’s here,” I said, swinging my monopod off and clipping it onto my camera. “Hold the doors and cover me.”

  “Three minutes,” Jude said, pulling a steel chain out of his pack and threading it between the door handles. “That’s all I can guarantee.”

  “I’ve got your back,” Ryder said to me. “Focus on the takedown.”

  I nodded, not taking my gaze off the miasma.

  Three minutes.

  I’d make it enough.

  SATURDAY, 3:02 A.M.

  THE ENTITY LEAPT DOWN from the stage, its miasma bubbling over the floor. The black fog touched corpses, slipping into their mouths and putting on their bones. Staticky groans split the air like bullwhips, the corpses rising, animated not by a bacteria but by the ghost’s own power. Instead of ghostlit beacons, they became voids. In one shaky heartbeat, I learned what it meant to face down the dead in the dark, to see the world through normal eyes and be rendered vulnerable by shadow.

  “Corpses up,” I shouted. Ryder called my name as I sprinted toward the stage, dodging bodies. A rifle barked, taking out a half-gone corpse that lunged at me. Two steps more, and a crawling corpse grabbed me by the ankle. Catching myself, I pivoted and stomped on its wrist, breaking bones. Its fingers loosened. I jammed my monopod’s knife in its spine, spilling black miasma onto the floor.

  As I zigzagged through the mob, I prayed Ryder would aim true. The dead thinned as I approached the stage, bullets singing and ricocheting around me, death on all sides.

  My ghost waited for me, surrounded by miasma denser than bay fog. Coward. I lifted my camera and fired, cracking the darkness. The ghost bounded aside, splitting its miasma into two figures. The shadows charged me from both sides—I shot one and it dissipated into the flash. Dodging the shadow containing the ghost, I spun and shot it again, knocking the miasma away. Before I got off another shot, something tackled me from behind. Slimy hands scrabbled at my skin. With a grunt, I flipped on my back and elbowed the corpse in the face. A bullet shoved it off me—Ryder tracked my movements with his flashlight, covering me.

  I recovered my footing, but the ghost’s miasma materialized close and lashed out. A physical pressure slammed into my chest, knocking me back to the ground. I rolled to protect my camera, keeping it in a cage between my body and arms.

  “What do you want?” I shouted at the entity, pushing back to my feet.

  “Vengeance,” it rasped. “I’ll rip the heart right out of Helsing, starting with you.”

  I snarled. “Is that you, Luca?”

  “Luca?” The entity’s laugh sounded like claws scraping chalkboard. It beckoned to me, making the soulchains bubble up and sear my skin with frostbite. “Are you stupid as well as blind, girl?”

  “How’s this for stupid?” I aimed my lens and fired. The flash seared through the miasma, blasting it apart. Every window along the wall reflected the flash’s white brilliance. The ghost screamed, the sound grating against my frontal lobe. Gritting my teeth, I fired a second time.

  When the shutter opened, I almost couldn’t process the scene:

  The ghost stumbled back toward one of the windowpanes,

  No more than a smear of light, and shrieking.

  The glass crackled with violet-white sparks—

  Like a reaping mirror would spark while absorbing a ghost.

  I wasn’t sure what it meant, and I didn’t care. Whatever happened, however it happened, I’d finally scored a hit. I advanced my film.

  The ghost dove left, drawing its miasma close as a funeral shroud. Sidestepping, I lined up my lens with the next window, hitting the shutter just as the ghost moved between glass pane and lens. The flash detonated and the shutter cut, blacking out the world for an instant.

  The ghost roared. A waterfall of sparks crashed over the windowpane—not absorbing them, of course, but somehow splitting the entity’s energy between the windows and my lens.

  “Enough,” the ghost hissed, thrusting a ghostlit hand from its miasma. Its shadows exploded toward me, weaving into black chains. I ducked as a chain lashed at my head, then used my flash to stop another one from slamming into my abdomen.

  “Micheline,” Ryder shouted. “We can’t hold the doors much longer.”

  “A little busy,” I shouted back, the effort breaking my focus long enough for a chain to smack into my back. It whipped the breath out of me. A fourth chain wrapped around my ankles and yanked me skyward. The world inverted and I swung like a freaking piñata. Blood rushed to my head and almost knocked me out. I glimpsed the ghost’s miasma crawling up the wall, roach-like. Coming for me. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a wash of light near the auditorium entrance.

  The boys backed toward the middle of the room, their rifles leveled at the pregnant doors. Ghostlight-tinged arms reached inside, doors bending inward under the pressure and only held closed by Jude’s steel chain. Curses mashed up in my head.

  “Find the exit,” I shouted. The effort made me dizzy. They called out to me, pointed their flashlights right at my face, singeing my sight. “Just go!”

  My night vision corroded, I barely saw the miasma slithering down the chain. With what strength I had left, I put my viewfinder to my eye, did an abdominal curl, and hit the shutter. The flash ricocheted off the ceiling, reflecting the light. The entity shrieked and the chain gave way, dropping us onto the auditorium floor. Pain rammed my spine, stunning me.

  The metal doors squealed. A scorpion-necro breached the room, lifted its stinger, and screamed. Rifles barked, bullets whizzing over me and chewing into the creature’s back.

  I tried to move, but cold shadows whispered over my knees and up my thighs, calling to me. Ozone sizzled in the air, and the ghost’s hand clamped over my ankle, its miasma rolling over my body. My camera lay faceup on the floor, my index finger on the shutter. If I could just move my finger an inch or so …

  “You’ll be less curious without your pretty eyes, little Helsing,” the entity whispered, its fingers sliding over my cheeks. “You can’t die yet, but I can’t have you coming after me, either. Shush now—”

&n
bsp; Nobody shushes me. The thought triggered my index finger and I shot off wild, blinding light. The entity scrambled away, its shadows ripped to shreds for an instant, hidden to my burned-up vision. I grabbed my camera and rose into a crouch.

  The auditorium doors gave way, spilling the necros into the room. A flashlight’s beam bounced over me. “C’mon!” Ryder grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to my feet.

  “Let me finish it off—”

  “No time.” Ryder pushed me ahead of him.

  The entity shrieked, but I didn’t look back. Jude’s flashlight blazed twenty yards ahead. Ryder and I sprinted toward the light, bullets screaming by on semiautomatic. I plunged past Jude and into the fire escape stairwell.

  I scaled the stairs on a breath and broke out onto the roof. The wind whipped at my face. Jude came through next, Ryder at his back. Ryder slammed the door closed and grabbed me by the hand.

  We ran for the building’s edge. Jude leapt up beside one of the big eagles. “We’re on the west side,” he shouted over the wind. “We should have a clear landing if we jump due south, there’s a park.”

  “Are you crazy?” I shouted back, uncoupling my camera and strapping my monopod across my back. “We can’t jump in this fog—”

  The doors slammed off their hinges, the necros crawling out on a tide of black miasma. My breath caught in my throat. Ryder pulled me close, coupled our harnesses, and shoved a small cylindrical object in my hand. A trigger for a claymore mine—a bomb.

  “You set the claymores?” I shouted. An explosion wouldn’t harm the ghost, but it would blow the scorpion-necros all to hell … along with the building’s top floor.

  “Hit the trigger as we jump,” Ryder said.

  “See you on the ground,” Jude shouted. He leapt off the building, disappearing into the fog’s gullet. My stomach somersaulted. We were so high up.

  “Ready?” Ryder asked. I linked my arms around his neck, my thumb on the cylindrical trigger.

  “Go,” I shouted.

  We leapt out into the air—I hit the trigger reflexively. Wind screamed in my ears and tore at my skin, making me weightless. Our chute deployed with a bang and broke our fall, yanking us upright.

  Ryder aimed the jump well, letting us cruise over the Museum of Modern Art and touching down in the park across the street. We fumbled the landing, tumbling over the ground in the ripstop parachute. I ended up on top of him, half sobbing, half laughing, and shocked to be alive.

  Explosions rent the night, lighting the fog like blurry fireworks. Ryder uncoupled our harnesses and pushed up into a sitting position. I straddled his lap as we watched the flames gnaw on the building.

  “I almost had the ghost,” I said, pulling off my monopod and dropping it on the ground. “All I needed was a few more minutes.”

  “We didn’t have a few more minutes,” Ryder said. “We didn’t have the firepower.”

  “You want to talk firepower?” I punched him in the arm. “What about the claymore? You almost blew us all to hell.”

  Chuckling, he cradled the back of my head in his hand. “Almost as brilliant an idea as tracking a ghost with a Ouija board, hey?”

  And then he pulled me close and kissed me.

  SATURDAY, 3:48 A.M.

  JUDE CAUGHT UP TO us as we jogged back to the Humvees.

  “That was wicked,” he said, one arm skinned, face flushed, eyes sparking. Adrenaline did that to boy brains. “You guys okay?”

  “Never better,” Ryder said, his grin fierce. He spoke too quickly—my world twirled around me, the streetlights kaleidoscopic. I told myself it was shock, but I wasn’t about to assign it a cause, not with the horrors I’d seen, not with the entity still at large, not with the massive download of adrenaline still running my body.

  Not with Ryder’s kiss still stinging my lips.

  If Jude sensed anything between Ryder and me, he didn’t let on. I examined him as he fell into step with us, waiting for a derisive remark, a raised eyebrow, a short laugh—Jude read faces as easy as he read the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. Perhaps the shift in territory between Ryder and me wasn’t printed on my skin, even if I felt like it burned me up and dyed my cheeks scarlet. Maybe it wasn’t even visible in Ryder’s closeness, or the way our arms brushed as we walked.

  Alarms wailed from the museum. Dust fell down in sheets, turning the air to sandpaper and my saliva to mud. I pulled my shirt over my nose and mouth. Bits and pieces of necro gore twitched on the ground, and I winced when I spotted a dismembered scorpion stinger atop a dumpster.

  I scanned the PacBell’s windows for ghostlight and saw none. Where the ghost would take refuge now, I couldn’t know; and the thought of daring the Ouija planchette and map again made my arm ache. Could we risk going in a second time, since we had the ghost’s location?

  My comm buzzed. “Move it, guys. Police are already on their way,” Oliver said.

  Scratch that idea. Getting caught by the police would just land me back in my bedroom on Angel Island, walking on Dad’s mosaic of broken cameras.

  “Glad to hear you’re alive, too, Einstein,” Jude said.

  “Save your sentiments for later,” Oliver said. “I tipped off dispatch, so our people are on their way as well. We need to get out of here.”

  Ryder shoved our parachute into the back of Jude’s truck. “Where are we headed?”

  “St. Ignatius?” I said. “I think we need to talk to Father Marlowe.”

  “I don’t trust the guy,” Jude said. “Why go have tea and crumpets with him?”

  “Because Marlowe was the first responder at St. Mary’s, and maybe he’ll tell us something we weren’t able to pick up from the crime scene.” I didn’t want to concede a man I trusted like a father could hurt me, but my bruised cheek made anything seem possible. “And if Marlowe is responsible for the attack on St. Mary’s, you’ll know, won’t you?”

  Jude hesitated, weighing the cost of what I was asking him to do. “Yeah, okay, I’ll try to get a read on him.”

  In the distance, a siren roared. We revved engines and ran.

  Ryder and I rode in silence. I didn’t know what to say. We’d almost died at the PacBell, and then he went and kissed me. I bit my lip, trying to press the feeling out with my teeth. Had he even meant it? Or was it a reflex? I swore I heard the empty click of a revolver barrel whenever we touched. How many clicks did we get until we hit the live round, until life as we knew it lost and ended up blasted all over the wall?

  At the next stoplight, he leaned back against me, coming down from the rush. I gripped him tighter, and he looked back at me and smiled. He knocked the wind right out of me, despite the stripe of necro gore on his cheek—or maybe because of it.

  I looked away too quick, knowing I said too much by it. My blush made my injured cheek ache. What the hell was wrong with me? My heart shouldn’t have been beating so fast, scattering the details of the hunt to the wind. I needed to analyze the details and figure out why the ghost’s energy reacted the way it did when caught between my lens and a reflective surface. I’d never tried shooting ghostlight against a mirror, and could only hope it helped me capture more of the ghost’s energy on film than normal.

  Yet here I was tumbling down a rabbit hole, thinking of bruised lips and blush rather than business. The business of survival. Ryder shouldn’t have kissed me—if Dad found out, he’d buy Ryder a one-way ticket back to Melbourne, no questions asked. Dad didn’t pay attention to many things in my life—but I knew he analyzed every little interaction between Ryder and me.

  As dangerous as it was to let Ryder kiss me, I thought I might let him do it again. He kissed me like we’d done it a hundred times before, like he’d studied the landscape of my lips and knew them with his gut and not his head, the way he knew throttles and times tables and triggers.

  He nudged me with his elbow at the next stoplight, maybe asking if we were okay. I squeezed him once. We were alive, so we were still okay for now—but our now might include only a han
dful of nights, no more. I worried about my future because I’d promised myself I’d survive this nightmare, but the possibility of death in five days or less still weighed on me.

  When the cathedral came into view, Ryder and I circled the block, on the lookout for Helsing Humvees. The streets were clear, but I’d bet my best lens Helsing trackers had already paid Father Marlowe a visit, looking for traces of me.

  We parked in a dark alley in the University of San Francisco’s student housing and walked two blocks toward the cathedral, keeping our heads down. I felt overexposed on the empty street, the streetlamps dumping too much light on us. Hopefully the PacBell would throw off Dad’s trackers for a few hours—we left a whole lot of Helsing lead in the walls, after all.

  Jude and Oliver headed toward us. Oliver waved; Jude pulled off his right-handed glove with his teeth and stuck it in his back pocket.

  The boys and I entered the massive cathedral from the east, stepping through a side door and into a darkened foyer—not a public entrance, but I’d been to Marlowe’s offices more times than I could count. The cathedral’s warmth buffered the cold off my skin. The place was packed with people seeking sanctuary, exorcist priests walking down the aisles, reading prayers of protection aloud. Personally, this was the last cathedral I’d seek sanctuary in, since the attacks at St. Mary’s happened a mere two blocks away.

  Out of habit, I dipped my fingers in the font of holy water and crossed myself. My soulchains stilled till the water dried on my fingertips.

  I didn’t recognize the priest who greeted us. When I asked for Father Marlowe, he nodded and ushered us toward the offices, glancing over his shoulder at the cathedral’s front entrance. Senses prickling, I followed his line of sight but saw nothing but the parishioners.

  “There were some men from Helsing waiting here,” he whispered to me. “They left twenty minutes ago and in a hurry.”

  No doubt they got called to investigate the PacBell. I exchanged a look with the boys.

  “Best keep out of sight, then,” Ryder said.

  We walked parallel to the saints’ alcoves, passing St. Michael the Archangel, patron saint of exorcists and tetrachromats. I usually paused to light a candle for Mom and my brothers, but skipped the devotion for the night.