by Cecy Robson
The world of the living vanished in one gradual space of time. “Do you feel that?” I whispered to Aric.
Aric nodded. “Yeah. Stay close to me.”
Funny. That was usually my line to my sisters when evil was afoot.
The path curved to follow along the Truckee River. The melting snow from the mountains had caused the river to rise to the edge. Chunks of ice slid over the roaring rapids. I shuddered, dreading an accidental soak. Swimming remained a skill I’d never mastered. And by the looks of the raging stream, it wasn’t an optimal place to learn. Note to self. Avoid having some scary evil thing take you for a dip.
The firs along the river dwindled. Benches fashioned from tree trunks rested between the more open spots. A beautiful place to enjoy, I supposed, minus the intensifying creepiness digging a hole into my chest.
The growing heaviness forced Gemini to escort Taran next to me so he and Aric could flank our sides. But then something stirred in the wind, like the heavy sweep of an invisible sail. Pained howls blasted my ears, and the gallop of massive paws shook the ground beneath our feet, sending pebbles to roll like marbles along the trail. Taran instinctively reached for me. The wolves didn’t possess her ingrained response. Then again, they never had my unique ability to rely on. I grasped their wrists and shifted the four of us far beneath the ground. My rare gift broke down our bodies into tiny molecules, minute enough to pass across the packed earth. We surfaced in the thickness of the woods just as a herd of black bears raced past us along the path.
We probably could have sprinted out of the way, but I would have risked contacting one of the bears. Animals and my “weirdness” didn’t play nice. With my protective shields down, I’d fall to the ground in a massive seizure and emerge as Celia the Bear. Considering that I’d have no way to change back to Celia the sort-of-human or Celia the formidable tigress, shifting us from harm seemed like the ideal way to go.
Aric’s and Gemini’s mouths parted as they examined their forms. I’d never shifted them before and they seemed surprised all their important parts remained intact. “Sorry. I didn’t have time to warn you.” My face heated, but my unease kept me from experiencing the full range of my humiliation.
“It’s all right,” Aric said. We stepped back onto the path cautiously, unsure what lay ahead. Aric didn’t finish watching the bears disappear around the bend. Instead his preternatural side searched where I searched, in the direction they’d run from. “Gem,” he said, his voice bordering close to a growl.
Gemini slipped his sweater over his head, revealing the muscular T-build common of all wolves. Taran’s jaw fell open and I think she might have drooled. “Will you hold this?” he asked.
She nodded. This time it was her turn to fall speechless. Gemini cracked his neck from side to side. A large black wolf punched his head through Gemini’s back, sniffing the air. Like solidifying ink, he slid his powerful form onto the hard soil and sped off in a blur of black. The human half of Gemini that remained blinked his dark eyes. “Come. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Gemini’s ability to split into two remained, hands down, the coolest supernatural feat I’d ever seen. Taran squeaked when he whisked her into his arms and raced after Aric and me.
My tigress made us fast, faster than wolves. Common sense, and the realization that “danger lurked, Will Robinson,” kept me from bolting ahead. Aric still felt I moved too quick despite being a breath behind me. “Don’t get ahead of me, Celia.”
“I found it,” Gemini’s low voice said behind us. “This way.”
The path veered in two separate directions. One led deeper into the woods. Gemini kept us on the one paralleling the river.
The sour stench of death stung my nose just as Gemini’s other half appeared before us, baring his teeth. We followed behind him. Our pace slowing as we ambled down a small, steep hill where an abandoned mill hugged the edge of the river. The large broken wheel sat in the water, moving just enough to squeal. The rest of the large structure dented inward where the moss-covered roof had partially collapsed. A death trap in the making, and one long forgotten. Someone should have demolished it decades ago, but the small town didn’t strike me as possessing funds to see its destruction through.
The closer we neared the mill, the more the foul odor increased, its acidic scent sharp enough to make my eyes water. “Son of a bitch,” Taran muttered. Her blue eyes blanched to clear. Something skulked inside. And it didn’t want us there.
Aric whispered into his phone. “We found something. Track us.”
“On our way,” Koda said on the other end.
Gem eased Taran onto the ground as we crept onto the rickety porch steps. A few good tigress strikes and the moldy and graffiti-lined brown building would collapse inward. Too bad we had to investigate before sending it, and the malevolence lurking inside, to hell’s trash heap.
A padlock the size of my palm lay discarded on the mud-splattered floor, its hook twisted as if broken off. Slowly, Aric opened the creaky door.
Foot marks cut into the thick layer of dust. Drops of dried blood splattered like raindrops alongside each step. My growl rumbled in sync with the wolves. My tigress didn’t like it here. But she hated what waited even more.
Pockets of light trickled through the holes in the wall, illuminating sections here and there in the otherwise pitch-black room. The increasing aroma of death forced my claws and fangs to shoot out. I barely kept my tigress from emerging.
A set of stairs led up to the second floor. A small office with a door opening to another room sat to our far left. The vast room on our right housed bent and broken pieces of metal office furniture. This must have been the area where the administrative staff worked back when the mill had still struggled to stay open.
We abandoned the small sectioned-off area without so much as a sniff. After all, the revolting fragrance of sulfur permeated stronger to our right. A few folding chairs leaned against the dirty 1960s wood-paneled walls, and a tattered armchair lay tucked in the corner. The calendar push-pinned into one of the panels remained opened to February of many years past.
We followed Aric through the large room, trailing the footsteps, and of course, the blood. I bit back a gag, the smell of decay threatening to bring up my lunch. Taran swore beneath her breath. She didn’t have to possess an inner beast to sense the death. Death slapped at our faces and demanded respect.
The roar of the river echoed from the back. Likely a section of wall had caved in based on how loud the sound of rushing water carried through the mill. We passed through a small room where the branches of firs poked through the busted sections of moss-eaten walls. Despite the growing Grim Reaper aroma, I thought we’d have to cover more of the building until we found our quarry.
I thought wrong.
The mill opened to one enormous area strewn with burlap sacks, broken rakes, and, oh yeah, a stack of corpses. Most girls got flowers, or maybe chocolates on their dates. I got dead bodies. Lots of them. Lucky me.
Taran stumbled away, choking back her sickness and burying her face into Gem’s chest. Aric gripped my arm, offering me comfort. He didn’t need it. He witnessed death as often as I witnessed life as a labor nurse. And yet as much as I wanted to mirror Taran’s actions, my tigress kept us in place and took in the horror.
Four males lay slumped like a deck of cards toward our right, their bodies rigid, but no obvious signs suggesting cause of death. The lack of decomposing flesh and the few flies circling their forms suggested they’d met their demise fairly recently.
And yet as gruesome as I found them, they didn’t compare to the naked woman left abandoned in the center of the room. My hands trembled. Perspiration slid like ice against my chilled skin. Her clouded eyes stared blankly at the ceiling while an expression of sheer terror and agony froze the features of her young face. Her entire abdomen appeared chewed open from the inside out and her half-eaten bowels lay over her hips like wet ropes. Flies swarmed her and took their fill. Small wate
r bugs crawled along her bloody nails. She’d clawed at the splintered floor. God only knew the pain she’d endured before her heart had mercifully stopped beating.
Part of me wanted to run screaming. The other part struggled not to release my tears. Humans generally feared me. Their fear often manifested into dislike and more than often hate. I’d been mistreated to the point of cruelty throughout my life. But as horrid as others had often behaved, no one deserved to die like this. No one.
Aric pulled me into him, his voice harsh yet gentle all at once. “You don’t have to look, Celia. And you don’t have to be brave. If you prefer, Gemini can escort you and Taran outside.”
I shook my head, unable to rip my gaze from the poor soul in the center of the room. “No. I’ll stay.”
Aric gave me one last hug before releasing me and stepping forward. He said I didn’t have to be brave. So I wasn’t. I stayed put as he and Gemini’s wolf examined the bodies. They inspected the males first, circling their forms and drawing in their scent. I stopped trying to work so hard to smell. It remained my last-ditch effort to keep from hurling. All the dead men had their mouths open. They probably had screamed until their last breath. A cricket crawled out of one whose tongue hung open. That’s when I stopped looking as well.
I heard Aric and Gem’s wolf tread toward the woman. They paused. “Do you see what I see?” Aric asked, rage clipping his words.
“Yes,” Gemini’s human side answered. He clutched Taran close against him with his head lowered. I supposed he could see with his other half. “Two burrowed out in separate directions.”
I forced my mouth open. “Two what?”
Gemini raised his dark almond eyes. “Demon children,” he answered.
CHAPTER 5
Taran’s shakes turned into full-out convulsions. She jerked when I touched her, burying herself deeper against Gemini. I didn’t want to scare her further, especially now that it appeared her dreams were transforming into reality. Nor did I care to frighten myself more. As it was, I wouldn’t sleep until roughly the following spring. And yet I asked. Despite my reservations and the aching pain claiming my belly, I asked. “What are demon children?”
Gemini stroked Taran’s hair, probably debating whether to explain in Taran’s presence. Aric’s body heat warmed my back, preventing me from jumping when his arm circled my waist. “They’re the extremely rare offspring of a demon and a human female.”
“How rare?”
“Very. The last one we’d heard of was the one my great-uncle prevented from being born.”
“So then, how did this happen?”
“A witch likely called the demon forth and used that poor woman to incubate the spawn.”
I took a chance and glanced over at the men. Bad mistake. More hungry bugs had found them. “That doesn’t explain the men.”
“No. It doesn’t. Something else ate them.”
I swerved my body to face his. “Ate?”
Aric nodded. “Their bodies are drained of blood.”
“But not from infected vampires?”
“No. Definitely not. Vampires lick their fang marks to seal the wound when they’re done feeding. It’s an ingrained response. Infected vampires aren’t in a frame of mind to maintain their practiced habits. All they care about is quenching their thirst.”
I wasn’t a racist. But I hated infected vampires. All of them. They were big, green, mean, and hard to kill. On the plus side, they didn’t breed. I straightened to my full height. Yeah. Like that made me tougher. “Do demons drink blood?”
“As they consume flesh and organs, yes, but they would have left bite marks.”
The image of the woman’s body hit me like a sack of rocks. She’d been gnawed on by her babies. Okay. I was officially done with my questions then.
The wolves and I whirled around, growling at the sound of approaching steps. “It’s just us,” Koda snarled from the front. Our not-so-happy feelings and the aroma of mutilated-demon-consumed body parts had peeved his wolf. And he’d yet to get a gander at the bodies. Good times.
“Keep the girls there,” Gemini ordered. “We’ll come to you.”
That was Taran’s cue to storm out of the house of decomposing corpses. I chased after her, more out of worry than anything. The presence of the four wolves eased my tigress’s fury, but not her vigilance. And every sense I possessed told me my sister needed me. “Don’t go outside without us,” Koda warned.
Taran did anyway, followed by Emme and Shayna. Taran didn’t stop until she reached the center of the path. She bent forward, placing her hands on her knees as she took in huge gulps of air. The air continued to carry the heavy scent of death, but paled in comparison to the bowels of the mill. Shayna knelt in front of her, her blue eyes wide as she took in Taran’s pallor. “Dude. Are you okay?”
Taran’s glare knocked Shayna back on her butt. “No, dude. I’m not okay. Fighting evil is horseshit!”
Emme covered her mouth and glanced over her shoulder. She probably worried Taran’s oh-so-accurate description would offend the wolves. They’d all returned indoors with the exception of Gemini’s furry half. He sat on the porch, his coal eyes bright as he watched over us. Shayna stood and dusted off. I placed my hand on Emme’s elbow and nudged her forward. “There are a few dead bodies inside. Try healing Taran’s emotions; it was a lot for her to take in.” Hell, it was a lot for me to take in. But bless my tigress’s heart, she had a way of helping me through pain, and in this case, revulsion. My urge to bolt and shriek lessened with each passing breath. Still, that didn’t mean I desired to hang with the wolves within the confines of the mill.
Emme cautiously stepped forward. She continued to watch me as she placed her palms on Taran’s back. “A few dead bodies?”
I nodded. Shayna veered toward the porch, fast enough to make her long black ponytail whip behind her. “Koda probably won’t let me see.” Her grimace trained on Taran. “Not that I really want to. How many were there, Ceel?”
“Four men drained of blood and a young woman . . . naked with her uterus torn open.”
Emme’s pale yellow light receded from her hands as she took in my words. Her power sputtered as she took a breath. She closed her lids tight. “D-d-did you say her uterus was torn open?”
Taran dropped her head lower. “She’d given birth, Emme. To twin demons. They freaking ate their way out of her belly.”
Shayna unzipped her blue jacket and alternated fanning each side out like a cape. Her fingers skimmed over the hilts of the eight daggers fastened around her leather belt. Shayna often counted her weapons to soothe her. Or in this case, to make sure she had enough to kill whatever could burst a stomach open like a rotten tomato. “Um. Uh. Did you kill—you know—the twins?”
I only told them because I wanted them to stay sharp. “No. We didn’t find them yet.”
Once more she counted her weapons. This time, she unsnapped the holsters keeping them in place for easy access. “So, what do you want to do about dinner?” she asked with an underlying tone of hysteria to her voice.
Taran homed in on her like a hawk on a band of bunnies with broken legs. “I’m seriously trying not to puke all over my new shoes. Do you really think I want to talk food right now, Shayna?”
I stepped in front of Shayna. If Taran had the ability to shoot laser beams from her eyes, poor Shayna’s body parts would have littered the forest floor in diced chunks. “Stop it, Taran. Shayna’s just trying to think about other things.” Taran didn’t have a beast or possess a power like Emme’s to soothe her. She hated being scared. So when terror showed its face, her protective instincts called anger and attitude to the surface, unleashing her emotions like a rising inferno. It’s how she rolled. But that didn’t make it okay to sick her hyenas on Shayna. She needed a distraction. I stroked her black waves and tried to sound encouraging. “It’s not such a crazy idea, you know? I think the wolves plan to hang out with us tonight, including Gemini. I couldn’t help noticing how he tried to comfort y
ou in there. It’s like his shyness dissolved. All he cared about was seeing you through your trauma.”
Taran’s menace erased, softening the criticism lining her face and bringing out her beautiful exotic features. My sister didn’t fall for men. They fell for her. Hard. This time, though, she’d met her match. I turned my head to Gemini, knowing he’d heard me.
He stood with Aric and the other wolves. “We need to track the demon children,” Gemini said. “The scent of the woman’s death is too fresh for them to have gone far, and they’ll need to feast soon.”
“We’ll need more noses,” Aric said. “Call Paul and the other team.”
“I can change and help, too.” It’s not like I’d forget that festering smell soon.
Aric sighed, moving toward me. I tried to meet him halfway until an odd sense of cold shoved at my chest like a pair of enraged sports fans. Gemini the wolf leapt to his feet, snarling at the same time my tigress snapped to attention. An earth-shattering scream cut through the silence. The twins had found their next meal.
I charged toward an overgrown path leading deeper into the woods only to be yanked back by Aric. “Stay here,” he growled.
He released my arm and changed, joining the rest of his pack already jetting into the dense forest in beast form. Only the original Gemini wolf remained. His hulking body blocked mine when I ignored Aric’s request. “Damn it, Gem!”
“Celia?”
Emme’s shaky voice kept me from barreling through Gemini. I didn’t want to leave Aric to fight this thing alone. I glanced back at my sisters. Shayna already palmed two daggers. Taran’s blue and white flames danced along her fingertips. No, I didn’t want to leave Aric. But I also couldn’t abandon my family.
“Wh-what is it, Celia?” Emme stammered.
“I don’t know.” I paused. Something dropped onto the roof of the mill from one of the overhanging branches. One. Two. Like softballs . . . with feet. My ears perked. Whatever it or they were pushed between the splintering shingles and scrambled into the building. Gem crept toward the door. He’d heard it, too.
