Burn the Night

by Jonathan Yanez

  Frank’s right, Emma thought to herself. Desmond wants me to attack. It’s all a trap. If I give in to his cruel shenanigans now, he’ll have won. No way I’m giving True Blood that satisfaction.

  Desmond clucked his tongue. “Oh well, it was worth a shot. I thought you’d bite for a minute there. Guess I’ll have to use the Were you have with you. Were, I know you can hear me. I watched you approach down the street. Tell me, are you one of the elite families on your planet doing the whipping and whole enslaving thing or were you the one being whipped with the rest of your pathetic pack?”

  Emma’s eyes went wide at the words coming out of Desmond’s mouth. She already knew trying to stop Jace with a warning was out of the question. General Fox shouted through the comms while Jeba and Layga yelled from the side of the building they were still behind.

  It was difficult to make out all of their words, but Emma definitely caught a “No!” and “Stand Down!”

  Jace ignored them all.

  Emma turned to see a hurtling blur of black fur, yellow eyes full of rage, and purple vambraces sprint toward them.

  22

  “Jace, don’t give him what he wants!” Emma put herself in the way of the Were as he made a beeline for Desmond Delshire. “Stop!”

  Emma was fully prepared to tackle Jace, even wrestle him to the ground if that was what would keep her new friend from sprinting head first into the Vilmar’s trap.

  This is going to suck, Emma told herself as she constructed purple football pads and a helmet around her.

  Jace was on all fours tearing up grass underneath his paws with such ferocity a trail of dirt littered the air around him. Emma had never seen eyes like his. They were full of some primal animal bloodlust that held on to him in a way Emma could never understand, in a way she never wanted to.

  Right before the moment of impact, he sprang on his back legs, vaulting over her like an elite running back in the National Football League. Emma was fast, but in that moment with the anger fueling his body, Jace was faster.

  He was over Emma and streaking toward Desmond like a demon of speed had possessed him.

  Desmond was laughing, retreating into the building.

  Jace might have caught him outside if Frank hadn’t tried to stop him. While Emma had tried to block him with her body to hold him back, the Marine took a different tactic.

  Frank used his vambraces to create a rock golem that rose in front of Jace like some zombie rising from his grave. For what the creature lacked in definition, it made up for in sheer size. The golem was as large as a Ree and twice as thick. A pair of bright eyes shone as it moved a massive hand down to catch Jace by his chest.

  Jace faked right, then cut hard to his left, sending the golem over reaching, off balance. It crashed down to the ground in front of him. Jace disappeared into the asylum a moment later after the still laughing Desmond Delshire.

  “A golem, really?” Emma looked over to Frank, shaking her head.

  “Easy there, varsity linebacker,” Frank said as both Arilion allowed their constructs to fade. “I had a second to decide what to construct. I should have gone with a dragon blocking the entrance to the asylum, but oh well.”

  “What—what do we do now?” Layga asked as she and Jeba ran to Frank and Emma. “He’s walking right into Desmond’s trap.”

  “We’ll probably be following right behind,” Frank said, walking forward with the rest of the group. “General, I take it our orders remain the same?”

  “That’s right. Jace’s comm unit has gone dead. He’s in trouble,” General Fox said over the channel. “If Desmond has something to interfere with our comms, you have your orders. If you need the cavalry, you send us a sign: break a window, break a wall—I don’t care what you just tell us—and we’ll send in the Marines to take care of business.”

  “Roger that,” Frank said as the group reached the rear doors of the asylum.

  “Oohrah! Marine,” General Fox said with a ferocity Emma had never heard from him. “You all come back home safe.”

  “Oohrah!” Frank said in such a deep tone Emma took a step back for a moment. She had to remind herself it was Frank, the same guy who was on her side of this fight.

  The four members of the strike force stood at the rear entrance to the asylum. The most disturbing part for Emma was the lack of sound. The dark building rose up in front of them like some ancient mountain in a mythological land. The double doors that opened in front of them did so in a way that made Emma think of a mouth of a cave. Inside, she couldn’t make out more than a wide wall with cheap laminate flooring.

  “Sorry, Jackson,” Frank said as he constructed a large-lensed flashlight in his right hand that shot a purple beam of light into the dark interior of the building. “I told you we weren’t going to split up, but Jace had other plans.”

  “If we’re walking in there, we need as much light as we can get.” Emma imagined a torch in her right hand that flamed with a brilliant purple fire illuminating a circumference of a dozen yards in front of her. “Here we go.”

  Layga and Jeba had their weapons ready. The blades of their chosen weapons were each shining with a dull blue glow.

  “We’re with you, Emma,” Layga encouraged her friend. “You too, Frank.”

  “Until the death,” Jeba added.

  “I like your friends.” Frank smiled at Emma as he bought a handgun to his right palm. “They say sweet things.”

  Emma followed Frank, considering bringing her bow to life in her hands in exchange for the fire she acquired but deciding against it. At the moment, they needed light. When the fighting started, she’d be able to construct her bow within the space of a heartbeat or so she hoped. The construct was one she was familiar with but also one she still needed a lot of practice with.

  You’re a freaking Arilion Knight, Emma said to herself as they walked up the short flight of stone steps leading into the building. They crested the threshold. Whatever’s in here better be worried about you coming for them.

  Frank led the way with Emma a half step behind, Layga and Jeba bringing up the rear.

  The inside of the asylum was quieter than the outside, if that was even possible. A chill fell over Emma as if she were entering some long forgotten tomb. There was a musty odor in the building of a room that had been shut up for too long.

  Frank moved forward in a slightly couched position, his flashlight seeking the darkest corners while Emma’s torch lit up the rest of the area around them. Old towels, utensils, and rotting clothing lay in clumps along the hall. Doors with glass windows lay closed or half open on either side of the wide hall. Nothing moved.

  “I heard a slight static buzz when we came in,” Layga told the others. “At least I think I did.”

  “There’s some kind of jamming device in here,” Frank said, not taking his eyes from the path in front of him. “At the moment, we’re giving Desmond everything he wants. It’s starting to piss me off.”

  “We may be in his trap at the moment, but his trap exists in our much larger trap,” Jeba said in a moment of clarity. “The Marines surrounding this building will not let him flee. This is it for him.”

  Emma was about to agree, pointing out that Jeba was being positive for once and not talking about people dying when an old square intercom on the wall to their right crackled to life.

  Frank raised his weapon toward the speaker. Emma lifted her torch, ready to transition to her bow if the need came. Instead of any attack, Desmond’s silky smooth voice filled the hall.

  “By now, you’ve realized that there is no communication beyond this building,” Desmond said so cheerfully he could have been reporting the morning news at a high school. “Your little wolf is either dead or down for the count. I’ll let you discover which it is. It’ll be more fun for me that way. Oh, this is about to get so fun, I can’t wait! Come please, hurry and come. I’m waiting for you on the top floor, the fifth level. Emma, nice touch with the torch, very medieval. Good luck.”

  The
static line clicked dead.

  “How’d he know you were carrying a torch?” Jeba asked, her head on a swivel as she searched the dark passage for an answer. “Witchcraft?”

  “More likely he has cameras set up to monitor us,” Emma said as a shiver ran down her spine. “We’re being watched.”

  “Let’s find the stairs in this place and get going,” Frank said, moving deeper into the building. “He said he was on the fifth floor.”

  “He could be lying,” Layga warned.

  “Could be, but I don’t think he is,” Frank said without turning around. “He’s that arrogant. He thinks he’s already won.”

  “Well, he’s wrong,” Jeba snarled. “I don’t have any kind of love for the Were, but if he did in fact harm Jace, I’m going to—”

  “Shhh…” Emma halted. She lifted the torch that burned in her right hand higher to get a better view of the open foyer their hall was spilling into. “I heard something.”

  Emma’s senses were on overdrive. The group stopped, looking into a circular room with a line of elevators on their left and a staircase on their right. In the center of the room was a ring of desks that must have acted as some kind of check-in station when the asylum operated. Past all of this, in front of them was another hall and a pair of double doors, the entrance.

  The scurrying came again, tiny pairs of feet running quickly across the floor.

  Emma caught sight of a long hairless tail slip behind one of the desks in the center of the room. Judging by the size of the tail, it was an animal the dimensions of a small dog.

  “Now would be a good idea to armor up,” Frank said, constructing a purple suit around him that looked like he had stepped out of a sci-fi video game. Along with the change he made, he also transitioned his flashlight and handgun to a heavy assault rifle with a light attached under the barrel.

  Emma nodded, constructing her own armor. Hers was similar to Frank’s, but she relied more on what she knew. Her armor was sleek and simple, like the kind Iron Man wore. A visor formed over her face comparable to that of an ancient knight.

  “Here.” Emma transitioned her torch into a ball of light. She threw it up into the middle of the room. A purple tendril of energy connected her right vambrace to the orb of energy providing the light.

  The purple light painted the room, exposing every corner of the building’s floor from dark corner to blacked out doorways leading deeper into their waking nightmare.

  Black beady eyes glared at them. Hairless rodents that came up to Emma’s knees stood completely still mesmerized by the light. If Emma had to guess what the creatures were, she would say they had to be rats. They were like giant hairless rats whose skin wrinkled at their neck and on the joints of their limbs. Their long snouts gave way to a bush of bristling whiskers. Crooked teeth that ranged from urine yellow to rotting black filled their mouths.

  “Rats,” Frank said just above a whisper. “Why did it have to be rats? They look like those swamp things in Princess Bride except without any fur.”

  With no warning, the rodents that had no right to be such a size snapped from their trance-like state staring at the orb. They charged Emma along with the rest of the unit.

  23

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  Frank wasted no time painting the scene with lavender rounds as the rodents streaked toward them.

  Her right arm still holding the ball of lavender light in place, Emma used her left to construct a blaster from the top of her left forearm’s armor. She had no idea what she was constructing, but she had seen enough sci-fi movies to get the idea that a blaster was a cylinder weapon that shot energy bolts.

  Unlike Frank’s weapon that roared into the room proclaiming violence, Emma’s sounded like dry smoker’s hack when it went off.

  Round after round of her purple energy blasts found the skinless rodents as they scrambled to get to Emma and Frank.

  “Have at thee!” Jeba yelled as she and Layga took up a forward position in between and just ahead of Frank and Emma forming a kind of triangle.

  How many rodents there had to be in the room was beyond Emma. Definitely dozens maybe hundreds of the creatures poured from every open doorway. They came from every hole in the floor and walls.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” Frank yelled over his booming weapon and Emma’s blaster that had transitioned now into a wet flu-induced cough. “Emma, on point. I’ll bring up the rear!”

  Emma forced herself to move forward. Sure she had been in a fight before but not like this, not while using her powers up against hundreds of enemies.

  Emma bottled her fear and made for the left side of the giant room, where a stairwell hugged the wall, leading upward into yet more darkness.

  The rodents were relentless as they scurried toward her. A single blast from her weapon was enough to take one out, but more kept coming. Emma waded through the dead bodies of the rodents as a musky rotting odor filled her nose.

  Layga swung her axe like a trained professional, not once allowing a rodent to get within biting distance of her. Jeba wasn’t so lucky. With her shorter legs, it was hard for her to find her footing over and around the dead bodies of the rodents as they made their way to the stairs.

  Jeba slipped on the blood-soaked floor, sending her down to a knee. The two closest rodents to her zeroed in on her disadvantage. Their nails clicked on the floor as they made their manic attempt at her throat. Jeba caught their first one as it leaped at her left arm with the top of her sword. She skewered the creature right through its open mouth, sending her glimmering blue blade out the back of its skull.

  While she shishkabobed the rodent on her left, the other one on her right lunged. It chomped down hard on her right forearm.

  “Rawww!” Jeba screamed in pain.

  Emma looked behind her just in time to see Frank take out the rodent crunching down on Jeba’s arm with a single shot to its chest.

  BOOM!

  The rodent fell limp. Jeba cradled her arm, looking at Frank in admiration. “You saved my life.”

  “It’s nothing,” Frank shouted, drawing a bead on another rodent and making swiss cheese out of it. “Let’s go.”

  “No, I owe you my life.” Jeba looked like she was going to drop her sword and go and kiss Frank. “I am yours now as you are mi—”

  Layga slapped her friend across the face as gently as a Ree could.

  Emma wanted to roll her eyes, laugh, and scream at Jeba to keep moving all at the same time. She would have done one, maybe all of these if she hadn’t spied the stairwell to their right teeming with turned humans.

  They were so close now, only yards from their destination when Emma saw the front runners. But these turned were different from the normal humans Emma had come across. It was as if these humans had been baked too long in whatever it was that turned them in the first place.

  They were hunched over with arms longer than they should be. They were losing the hair on their heads and they trotted down the steps more like monkeys than men.

  “Um, Frank!” Emma shouted over the noise. “Stairs aren’t an option anymore.”

  “What?” Frank asked, dispatching another rodent. “Why no—”

  Frank’s words died in his mouth as he looked over at the stairs filled with the monsters slowly descending on them. The only silver lining in the cloud seemed to be even the rodents wanted nothing to do with these new creatures. Where once the furless animals were eager to throw themselves at Emma and her team, now they retreated back into the darkness.

  “New plan.” Frank pointed to the opposite side of the room, where a row of ancient elevators sat with their sleek rusted silver doors closed. “Elevators, move!”

  Emma obeyed. She had no desire to fight the horde of mutated humans descending the stairwell, but neither did she want to sit in a steel box in a building that for all intense and purposes Desmond Delshire controlled. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one.

  “Is it wise to enter an elevator?” Lay
ga asked, bounding over the husks of dead rodents with the rest of the unit. “Who knows if it’s working. Who knows if it’s a trap.”

  “We’re not taking the elevator.” Frank winked at her. “Trust me, I have a plan.”

  “Why don’t I feel any better?” Layga asked.

  While they hurried over to the opposite side of the room, Emma noticed Jeba cradling her right arm to her chest. It wasn’t in the Bracka’s nature to complain or show pain, but it was obvious there was something wrong.

  Emma glanced behind them. The creatures descending down the steps, unlike the rodents, moved slowly and deliberately, swinging their unnaturally long arms like orangutans.

  Frank and Layga went to work on prying open the elevator doors, giving Emma the time she needed to inspect her friend. With one eye on the turned monsters still coming down the stairs, Emma channeled her best motherly voice. “Let me look at your arm, Jeba.”

  At first, Emma thought her friend would protest. But the paleness in her complexion and the pain in her eyes forced her to obey Emma’s orders. Slowly, Jeba retracted her right forearm for Emma to see.

  The rodent hadn’t managed to puncture the lightweight yet durable armor but it looked like it had crushed Jeba’s arm.

  Emma slowly rolled up her friend’s sleeve, trying to be as gentle as she could. Jeba’s arm was a series of black and blue bruises. No bones were sticking through her skin. For that, Emma was grateful. She was no doctor, but it was clear something was very wrong.

  “There,” Layga grunted. A metallic screeching sound accompanied the word as she and Frank tore open the elevator doors.

  Inside, the elevator was bare. A pungent order of urine and feces permeated the air, telling them all the rodents had figured out some way to infiltrate the steel container and leave their mark.