by Anthony Izzo
She fired off two quick beams and fried two of them. There were too many, maybe thirty crammed into the hallway. And she heard the winged creature thumping into the wall, determined to get inside.
The Dark Ones began to shove the captives toward the rear of the crowd. She saw Laura look back, attempting to reach for her. She had to do something.
A short, squat demon with a chest full of wormlike scars started toward her. Its eyes were milky white and devoid of pupils. She got a whiff of it, a scent of rot that seemed to settle in the back of her throat.
Laura and the others were almost out of sight, swallowed up by the horde, perhaps meant to be taken away and killed.
She looked at the milky-eyed creature and said, “Leave them. I’m the one he wants.”
It stopped, bared its yellowed teeth, and said, “What did you say, girl?”
“I’m the one Engel wants. Take me instead of them.”
The demon was on her in a flash, turning her around and lifting up her shirt. Its hands were cold and rough against her skin, and she felt a wave of nausea ripple through her stomach as its skin came in contact with hers. It pressed her against the wall, and she half expected to be run through, but instead it spun her back around. “You bear the mark.”
It shoved her forward, into the crowd of them, and rough hands pulled her into the group.
She heard a gruff voice say, “Take them all to him. Let him judge.” She thought she might have spared them, but for how long she didn’t know. They shoved her along, prodding with the hilts of their weapons, and with each jab a sickening little ripple danced over her skin. She saw Laura and the others being pushed toward the stairway door.
They were all still alive, for now.
Sara reached the bottom flight out of breath and dripping sweat. She saw Milo being dragged along by two gray-skinned demons. Up ahead, Laura tried to turn and mouth something to her, but one of them placed a clawed hand on her head and wrenched her back around.
The horde moved them into the lobby, where more of them waited. She guessed the hotel never expected to have guests like this.
They were shoved forward, toward the doors, the hands clawing, grabbing, scratching at her the whole way, as if they enjoyed inflicting even small amounts of pain. Now she was at the front of the crowd, standing at the doors that led to Delaware Avenue. Laura and Mike were to her left, each of them with a demon wrapping its arm around their throats. Milo had been thrown on the floor like a sack of laundry. Debbie started to go to him, but they pulled her back and held her arms.
What were they waiting for?
Jenny had stopped the truck a hundred yards from the building and Frank saw the Dark Ones on the sidewalk and in the street outside the Statler. They lifted their black weapons in the air and pumped their arms. He was about to ask Jenny what the hell she thought was going on when someone—a girl—was shoved through the front doors. It might have been Sara, but between the distance and the darkness, he couldn’t tell. A demon came out from the building and poked her forward and she staggered. The crowd around her gave her a wide berth. Frank soon saw why.
From above, a winged demon swooped in low and he saw Sara raise her arm to fire a beam, but the demon was too quick and it swooped in on her.
Sara felt the clawed feet grip her shoulders. There was a whipping of wings, and its foul smell washed over her. She felt terrified, thinking it was going to pick her up and carry her. They would stay alive for a few more moments, anyway. The demon squeezed harder and she was afraid the claws would dig in her shoulder, but instead there was hard pressure and she found her feet leaving the sidewalk. The beast gained momentum and it pulled her free of the ground and she felt her stomach get woopsy. She was looking down at the crowd of demons and then she shut her eyes as it carried her higher.
She felt her legs dangle and dared a look and saw the asphalt roof and the air-conditioning units of the Statler’s roof, then the white monument in the traffic circle, all looking like a railroad miniature. They soared higher, the cold air rushing over her skin, and she peeked again and now the city was a mess of pinprick-size lights, like jewels on a black blanket.
They came to the black cloud and she wondered what would happen if it dragged her in there. She screwed her eyes shut and held her breath but there was a whoosh, the cloud parting before them, and they were up and over, looking down at the black fog that covered the city.
CHAPTER 29
Frank watched five people being carried up into the sky. He thought of using the Everlight to drive off the carrying demons, but by the time they were close enough, he would’ve been in danger of causing them to drop their passengers.
He saw the cloud part as the last captive was carried up and out. “Go, follow them.”
“What about them?” Jenny asked, referring to the host of Dark Ones massed in front of the Statler.
“We have this,” he said, and took the stone from his pocket. It glowed in Frank’s palm and he instructed Jenny to speed up. She did, and he rolled down the window and, grasping the stone tightly, held his fist out the window. The beams shot out like rays of the sun, knifing along Delaware Avenue toward the Dark Ones. They covered their eyes, some of them running for cover. Others fell to their knees, wailing and howling.
Jenny drove the truck to Niagara Square, the demons parting before them. Frank instructed her to go around Niagara Square to South Elmwood, and get on the Skyway.
“We’ll have to go through the cloud.”
“That’s what the stone is for?”
“It won’t work in a vehicle.”
“It will.”
“It’d better,” she said.
Jenny passed City Hall, checked the upcoming intersection, where the light was stuck on red, and got on the Skyway, an elevated highway whose future was currently in doubt. Some wanted it torn down. From what Charles had told Frank, the city shut the thing down whenever the snow got heavy, sticking a Buffalo cop car at the entrance.
They accelerated, Jenny weaving the van in and out of abandoned vehicles, a few times nearly getting wedged between a car and the concrete barrier. They passed the brown and gray Memorial Auditorium, now occupied only by flooded basements and mold. Charles had taken him to a Sabres game on a visit to Buffalo back in the eighties and all he remembered was how the blue wooden seat had made his ass hurt.
They came to the bottom of the Skyway, which led to Route 5. The wall of mist was a couple hundred yards away. Frank held the stone, and it began to glow stronger. Jenny accelerated and the truck lurched forward. Frank looked up, trying to spot the winged ones and their captives, but saw only the mist.
They got within fifty feet of the mist. The Light’s beams cut white hot holes in the fog, and soon the truck was shrouded in light and Jenny drove it through the fog, her head bent forward as she squinted over the steering wheel to see.
They came out on the other side, Jenny steadying the truck’s wobbly front end. She braked a little and slowed it down.
Now Frank looked up and saw the winged creatures, each of them with a captive dangling from its talons. They flew out over the gray slate sheet of Lake Erie and toward the abandoned steel mill. Its dirty gray roofs broke up a nice view of the open water.
That was where he was holed up, then. Frank suppressed a stitch of fear in his belly, telling himself they had the girl and the stone on their side. But they had to get into the mill and find Engel first.
He urged Jenny onward.
The Dark Ones began to descend. The air knifed into Sara, and the demon’s grip sent pains down her arms. They went lower and her feet just cleared the chain-link fence that surrounded the mill. It set her down on the concrete, Sara lunging forward but catching herself as the demon rose back toward the sky and went into a circling pattern. It stayed there for a moment and then dipped and flew toward a long, narrow building on the other side of the concrete tarmac.
Laura looked around, examined her surroundings. She was near a guard shack and won
dered if the man who had been killed at the mill worked at this one.
She looked out over an endless sea of concrete. Beyond the concrete were the remaining buildings, all painted in hues of gray and black. There were furnaces with black pipes and stacks raising toward heaven, and a skeletal structure that she thought did something with loading ore. She waited, heart hammering, for the others to arrive, and they did, their escorts dropping them off next to her, all of them landing smoothly except for Milo, who hit with a grunt. The demons climbed high in the air and flew in a circling pattern overhead.
Debbie went to him, got on her knees, and cradled him against her. He was holding his side.
“God, my side hurts. Wish I had a drink of water.”
Laura didn’t want to tell him what was really wrong, that he would be dead soon and would die horribly.
Laura joined Debbie, kneeling on the blacktop. She asked if she could examine him and he nodded. Then she lifted up his flannel coat and shirt underneath, exposing a pale, hairy belly. Then she got to it, the wound, like an open mouth, and the hot orange of the spreading infection. Or whatever it was.
“What is it?”
“It’s caused by their weapons. We need to get you to a hospital.”
Milo moaned and buried his head against Debbie’s arm. “It hurts,” he said in a muffled voice.
“What is it?” Debbie asked.
“It’s more than I can help him with now,” Laura said. “He needs to be on painkillers.”
Sara noticed she didn’t say they could cure him, or that he would be just fine. Giving him false hope would be a sin, and Laura didn’t do that. Sara admired her for it.
Mike was growing impatient, pacing along the fence. “What are we waiting for? Let’s hop the fence.”
“And get torn to pieces?” Sara asked.
“What do you mean?”
She pointed to the sky. “Look.”
He looked up, eyed the fence, and said, “They’re probably too quick, anyway.”
It wouldn’t matter, because Sara saw someone emerge from the long, narrow building. He was heading toward them, and now more figures, perhaps a dozen, followed him. She could make out his silhouette and saw long hair and lanky limbs. The ones that fell in behind him carried the exotic weapons of the Dark Ones, long spears on poles this time.
“Looks like we’re getting a welcome,”
They watched the man approach. She got a better look at him and found he looked like central casting’s version of a nightmare. His long, stringy hair hung in hanks over his pale face. The open trench coat he wore bore greasy brown stains, and she saw his ribs and sternum protruding under the skin.
He frowned, eyes glinting like newly minted coins. The other Dark Ones fell in line to either side of him. That meant Sara and the group had their backs to the fence and the Dark Ones were in front of them.
“So this is the little girl who is supposed to destroy me?”
“Engel,” Sara said.
“That is I. You know what awaits you, don’t you?”
Laura came up next to her and put an arm around her shoulders, a move that she appreciated, because she had begun to tremble. “No, what?”
“Why, pain, what else?” he said and grinned, the pale, thin lips stretching open.
“Let the rest of them go. I’ll go with you.”
Laura squeezed her tight, whispered, “Sara, no.”
“And you”—Engel said, pointing an impossibly long finger at Laura—“are Charles’s little bitch, aren’t you? How nice to get mother and daughter here together. Your father will be glad to see you.”
Laura let her arm slip off Sara’s shoulders. “You’ve seen him?”
Engel threw his head back and laughed. “Poor little fool, I’ve done more than see him. I saw to his personal suffering. After what he did to me, it’s only fair, yes?”
“You should have rotted in that grave.”
“Oh, but I didn’t,” he said in a mocking singsong voice. He then turned to the creature to his right, an eyeless thing with sharp, bony hooks where its hands should have been. “Bring them.”
Mike moved first. He still had his pistol and brought it out from in his coat and fired at Engel, catching him in the chest. The bullets struck Engel and he fell to one knee, holding his chest and whimpering. Head lowered, he continued to whimper until it eventually turned into a laugh. He stood up, and opening the coat, exposing the bloodless bullet hole. He stuck his finger in the hole and twisted. “You can’t kill me.”
Sara had to do something. “No, but I can.” She fired a beam at Engel. It struck him and knocked him backward. With a quick slash of her arm, she created a white blade of Light that sliced across the Dark Ones that had been to Engel’s right. It cut their heads off and the corpses fell to the ground. There were five left, and as they started forward, Sara dispatched them with a quick succession of beams. The air took on the smell of burnt, dead flesh.
Engel began to rise.
Sara looked at Laura. “Get out. He wants me.”
She ran, Laura trying to grip her arm, but Sara broke away, jumping over the bodies of the Dark Ones. She would run and hide in the mill, at least giving Laura and the others time to escape. Perhaps she could avoid him long enough to—to what?
CHAPTER 30
Engel rose to his feet. The girl had surprised him with that blast of light. He looked at the other pathetic wretches she had brought with her. They backed toward the fence, cowering. He didn’t need them. They were an added bonus, and he had planned on using them for sport. It was the girl he wanted.
He turned and saw her running in the moonlight, toward the strange metal towers.
He turned to follow.
Laura watched her go for a moment. Sara’s form got smaller and darker as she crossed the grounds of the mill. Are you going to let her be hunted down by him? Can you lose her again and still keep your sanity?
She couldn’t.
As Engel turned, she charged him, catching up to him and leaping on his back and wrapping her arms around his throat. The smell of him made her stomach wrench. It smelled like something old and spoiled.
He broke her grip on his neck and she slid to the ground, landing on her butt. He turned around and she quickly got up. Now she’d pissed him off. Scowling, he cocked back his arm and flung it forward and something black and solid slammed into her stomach, exploding the air from her lungs and sending her down.
She tried to breathe, desperately tried to suck air, but it felt as if her lungs had locked up. She rolled on the ground, clutching her gut and staring at the thing he had thrown. It was round and smooth as a cannonball, solid black. God her gut hurt.
When her lungs unlocked and she was able to suck in some air, she noticed Mike at her side. She looked up and saw Engel taking quick strides toward the furnaces. Overhead the winged creatures circled.
She started to rise, and Mike stopped her by putting his hand on her arm. She didn’t like that. “What are you doing? You’ll get killed.”
“I can’t just sit here.”
“You saw what he just did.”
She had a dull ache in her gut from Engel’s volley. “I’m going after her,” she said, and shoved his arm away. She took a step and then the pain hit her again and she doubled over.
Frank and Jenny pulled up to the fence, stopping the van on the shoulder of Route 5. They got out, Frank looking up and seeing the winged creatures circling the mill. As they approached the fence, he saw a group of people standing near the guard shack. A college-age girl was holding a guy in a flannel shirt. Even in the darkness, Frank could see the guy’s face had gone paper white. A younger guy holding a gun and a dark-haired woman who was bent over clutching her stomach completed the group.
“Hello!” Frank called.
They turned and looked at him and Jenny as if they were aliens stepping from the mother ship. “Reverend Frank Heatley and Jenny Chen, at your service.”
“Is there a gate?” Jenny a
sked.
The young guy with the gun said, “Locked. You’ll have to climb it.”
Jenny scrambled up the fence and was over the top in an instant. Frank took a bit longer, nearly losing his balance when he swung his legs over the top bar. But he made it down.
They all introduced themselves. To Laura he said, “It’s nice to finally meet Charles’s daughter.”
“He’s here. Engel has him somewhere,” Laura said.
That was the best news he had heard in a while. Providing he was still safe. “And the girl?”
Laura straightened herself up, but still kept a hand over her midsection. “She ran for the furnaces. Engel is after her. We found the stone, but it was dead.”
“We figured it might be. I was able to recover the last one,” he said and brought the Everlight from his pocket. “We have to find Sara. Jenny and I will go.”
“You’re not leaving me here,” Laura said.
“You can’t help. I know she’s your daughter, but you’ll have to trust us.”
Laura looked as if she might cheerfully strangle Jenny. Frank intervened, saying, “I have the stone. We’re both Guardians and we can fight them.” He nodded toward Milo and said, “Stay here. Help this man. Get him inside.”
Laura pondered it for a moment. “Time’s wasting. Bring her back to me. Please?”
She had such a look of sorrow and fear on her face that if there were time Frank would have given her a hug and told her yes he would bring the girl back. Instead, he nodded. “Which way?”
“To those furnaces,” Laura said, pointing. “What if we get attacked?”
“His army is occupied in the city. It’s not you he wants right now anyway. Go inside and lock the door. You should be okay for a bit.”
