by Kelly Meding
Having eaten enough floor for one day, I concentrated on my ascent and nothing else. Sweat dotted my hairline and upper lip. The rope seared my scraped palms. My ankle was probably leaving lovely little blood smears behind. Up, up, up, until the top anchor post was just one lunge away. Urgency almost made me reach. The unwillingness to fall two stories and start over blocked that urge, and I inched my way up. Grabbed the post with my right hand and the floor with my left and hauled ass up to the platform. I hugged the wood, polished smooth with years of hands and bodies doing just what I’d done.
Gar-Bat screeched. Either he was getting frustrated by his own inability to climb the wall or he didn’t like my progress. Maybe both.
I had a better vantage point over the course from here, so I sat up. Heat whizzed by my cheek, slicing the skin. I jerked back. My knife was buried in the anchor post. Hell’s bells, the thing had thrown my own knife at me!
The next challenge made my heart sink. Six erratically spaced uneven bars were my only path to the next platform. Some trainees were gymnastically inclined and had excelled at this one. Me? Not so much.
I looked at my palms, both weeping and scraped. Then at the ground below. The air mattresses were deflated. One more time I tested my Gift. That same brittle distance filled me. If I tried, I’d probably end up inside of something or dead from my brain exploding.
“Fuck!” It came out like a plea and bounced around the open gym. Where the hell had Milo gone? He’d better be off saving lives.
Screw this. One wrong move on those bars and I’d break my neck. There had to be another way. I perched my toes on the edge of the platform and leapt for the nearest bar. My grip nearly slipped. I held tight and stiffened, stopping all motion. Inched sideways until I got to the support post, shifted my grip, and shinnied down to the floor.
The court was narrow and long, built up on all sides with two-by-fours nailed into thicker beams. Something slammed against the wall on my left. Gar-Bat was still at it. I worked my way along the opposite wall, checking for any sort of access or hatchway. The trainers had to have some way to get around this course. I just needed to find it.
At the end of the court, hope presented itself in the form of a square sliding door. I pried it up to reveal a crawl space barely large enough for a grown man to slither through. Good thing I was smaller than that.
Gar-Bat shrieked, this time above me. I looked up as a shadow fell. It was perched on the platform, braced to jump. I crawled through the rabbit hole and immediately sneezed. Didn’t stop. Seconds later Gar-Bat was scrabbling at the hole, too large to follow me inside.
I crept along the narrow path until it opened up into what looked like the interior of another raised platform. Judging from the wide spaces between the boards, it was another sort of climbing wall. I slipped through one of the wider slats and stumbled. My ankle was numb, making it difficult to walk. No sign yet of Gar-Bat.
I hobbled fast across another open floor, getting much closer to the end of the course. Two, maybe three, challenges lay between me and the end.
My frustration at being stuck doing this was nothing compared to my anger at not being outside, part of the ongoing battle. Had they killed the rest of the hounds? How many of Thackery’s projects were loose? How many had been captured or killed? How many of our people were wounded? Dead?
I dropped to my knee when the shadow fell, drawing the knife from my right ankle sheath. Blood dripped from above, viscous and bluish. Gar-Bat dive-bombed me. I pitched sideways at the last moment and thrust up, dragging the blade across its lower belly. More blood splashed on my hands and arms. Its rear legs lashed out and slammed me to the left even as it crashed to the floor. It thrashed and flopped, spreading its blood across the floor like a fresh coat of paint.
The raw-sewage odor turned my stomach. I crawled away, slipped, and finally got to my feet. The stink was on my hands. I wiped them on the seat of my jeans, then repositioned the knife so the handle was clasped between both hands. Gar-Bat’s thrashing had slowed. It lay on its stomach, wings folded close to its back, the pool of blood widening around it.
I almost felt sorry for it, whining in pain and paling quickly. It hadn’t asked to be created, and now it was paying the price. I thrust my blade down, directly into Gar-Bat’s skull. The impact jolted my wrists. Bone cracked. Matter oozed. My enemy lay still.
“Class dismissed,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-six
With less haste now that I wasn’t being hunted, I limped through two more hidden hatches and crawl spaces—bypassing a grid of dangling chains one had to swing through to pass and a complicated setup of balance beams, tires, and parallel bars—and hit the finale. A mirror maze, not unlike those found at carnivals and fairs, only this one didn’t just try to fool you into hitting a dead end. The space between each panel was supernarrow, twenty inches on average, and most of the joints hid a cruel punishment—nearly invisible razors. I’d gotten my fair share of slices in the past.
I remembered one trainee who’d barely passed the obstacle course, getting so tired and beaten up over the run of it that he’d been unsteady going into the maze. He’d stumbled out sobbing, coated in blood, but on his feet. Just barely. Too bad he’d failed the final exam.
Desperate to skip this one, I searched for another way out. A hatch or ladder or means to climb up and over. Screaming in frustration, I sucked in a breath and went in. I hit a wall first thing. Inched through sideways. Nicked my wrist and elbow on one turn. Sliced my other elbow on another. I ignored my reflection, uninterested in how awful I must look coated in blood and gore and sweat. All I wanted was out.
Out so I could finish helping. So I could try to save some lives today. Urgency kept goading me to speed up, but I battled to remain careful, steady. Patience wasn’t in my nature; taking it so slowly was torture. Even when the end seemed in sight, I kept up my tentative pace. One sliding step sideways, careful turns. Only a handful of cuts accompanied me outside.
Fucking finally!
I stumbled through the exit, into the narrow strip of open corridor that bordered the wall of the obstacle course and the wall of the gymnasium. It circled the length of it in straight sections of twenty feet or so, then sharply angled into the next. From above, it looked like a giant octagon or something, only with more than eight sides.
I turned and started jogging back toward the ladder, or any other way up that presented itself.
Halfway back I turned a corner and tripped over a headless corpse. Male, standard trainee outfit. I gagged at the heavy odor of blood and stepped around, only to nearly fall over two more. The three kids from the ropes. They’d made it through the obstacle course only to die here, ripped apart. Torn flesh and bits of guts made it hard to navigate without falling. My stomach twisted, and the sight sent a shock of fear through me. Whatever had killed them—likely a hound—was probably still close by, and I was down to one blade.
Something shuffled out of sight, ahead of the turn into the next stretch of corridor. I slunk back around the last corner I’d passed, behind the sprawl of bodies, pressing close to the inner wall. I crouched and palmed my last weapon. Switched it to my right hand, angled so the blade rested on the underside of my wrist, and shifted my weight to my strong ankle. Ready to pounce. The sound drew closer, then stopped near the bodies.
The footsteps were softer, predator-like. Over the stench of blood, I couldn’t catch a scent of the thing approaching to determine if it was human, hound, or other. I held my breath, adrenaline taking over. Attack first and ask questions later.
Survive.
Air shifted. A shadow fell. I twisted upward and lunged, knocking the body hard against the wall with my left hand across his chest and my blade against his Adam’s apple. Something cold pressed hard against my own neck, just barely slicing skin.
Wide navy-blue eyes stared at me, round with disbelief and shock. My heart jackhammered. I gasped.
“Stone?”
I stepped back, my hands drop
ping. My neck stung from the new cut. I’d come within a millimeter of slicing Bastian’s throat. A small part of me wished I had, the traitorous bastard. He was staring at me like he thought I still might.
“Surprise,” I said. “Your pal Thackery didn’t get the best of me after all. Disappointed?”
Something like fear flashed across Bastian’s face. “Is he dead?”
I wanted to slap him for being so stupid. “No, asshole, who the fuck do you think is responsible for all this?” I waved my hand sideways, toward the sprawled bodies nearby. “Thackery set off his pet projects to tear us apart. And, gee, I wonder how he knew they were here?”
He didn’t actually say anything, but he did lose every drop of color in his face. I took a step forward, knife up. He either forgot he had his own weapon, or I was menacing enough to cow him, because he didn’t protest. He actually shrank back.
“This is your fault, you—”
“Get down!” he shouted, eyes going wide.
I ducked low, and a bulky form sailed over me. It hit the bloody mess of bodies and skidded into the far wall. Bastian was already moving. I leapt up and pivoted in time to see him pull a GLOCK from a hidden back holster and unload four rounds into the flailing hound’s back. It flung itself sideways at him, roaring its anger, and sent Bastian careening into the opposite wall. He hit with a nauseating crunch and crumpled to the floor.
My temper spiked. I scooped up Bastian’s dropped knife and, one knife in each fist, whistled at the snarling beast. “Hey, ugly, come and get me!”
With a snarl and a sound eerily close to disdainful laughter, it charged. I raced down the corridor away from Bastian’s body, keenly aware of the hound gaining even with its multiple wounds. My ankle was still unsteady. I had one chance at this. The hound howled, and the hairs on my neck stood up straight. Hot breath puffed ripe and too damned close.
As the next corner approached, I measured my steps. I let my wounded ankle slide beneath me and twisted my body so that I ended up on my back. Every bone and joint vibrated. The hound didn’t have time to adjust its path for my roadblock and chose to leap over me. Perfect. I slashed up with both knives, and the hound’s own momentum ripped its abdomen open from ribs to nuts. Sour, suffocating blood rained down. It crashed to the floor as I rolled sideways to avoid being crushed.
Stop, drop, and roll isn’t just for fighting fires anymore.
I wiped my hands and knives on the hound’s fur-covered legs, fighting my gag reflex the entire time. I don’t know why their blood reeks so badly. Just another of life’s unanswerable questions.
The corridor behind me was silent. “Bastian?” My voice bounced and pinged. No one answered. I yelled again, louder.
I backtracked. The four bodies were still there, Bastian included. I checked for a pulse and found it weak, thready. Blood soaked his white-blond hair scarlet, oozing from a head wound I couldn’t see. Shit. I didn’t have time to wait for help, and some awful corner of my heart didn’t really care if the asshole lived or died. My compromise: I cut off a section of his shirt and pressed it against the head wound.
I followed the length of the track past the obstacle course exit I’d come through not ten minutes ago, and beyond. I found another ladder up to the high track. Two small smears of fresh blood marked the rungs at eye level. Someone had come this way recently.
A female scream, muffled and distant, broke the silence. I sheathed one knife, clenched the other in my teeth, and ascended the ladder. A few sprints down the upper track and I shoved through an emergency exit door. It was a different corridor from before. Half the lights were out, bathing it in shadows. There were a handful of doors, spaced pretty far apart.
The scream came again, somewhere down the hall. I ran. The corridor ended abruptly at a T junction. The left branch led to a heavy metal door, reinforced glass, and streaming sunlight. To the right were more doors. Before I could pick a direction, the door nearest me was flung open by a sailing body.
Greg hit the opposite wall with a pained grunt and slumped to the floor. His left thigh was bleeding heavily, as was his right bicep. He struggled to stand and slipped on his own blood. I took two steps forward. Something else flew through the open door and hit the wall above Greg with a disgusting splat, then fell to the floor like a sack of wet laundry. It was a human arm.
I palmed my second knife.
“Careful,” Greg said.
The plaque next to the door said Weight Room. Another dismembered limb joined the arm—calf and foot.
A horrible thought assaulted me: what if that was Milo’s foot? He was there somewhere, fighting. And while we weren’t exactly best buds, we were still friends. I hadn’t had real friends since Jesse and Ash died.
Rage and adrenaline drove me through the door. I ducked another flying body part, then tucked and rolled to the right. I came up with knives ready. The room was large, full of dozens of weight machines, benches, racks of free weights, and other equipment I barely remembered using once. In the corner nearest the door, something was huddled over the remains of a body.
Something was all I had. If someone took a gremlin, stuck a hose up its ass, and filled it full of chicken fat until it resembled an obese version of itself, it would look a lot like the thing in the corner—if you added extra fangs and clawed arms long enough to scrape the floor if it tried to stand straight. The fucking thing ripped the other arm off its victim, licked the gore at the shoulder socket, then tossed it out the door.
If I lived to be a hundred years old, that image would still be haunting me on the day I died.
It didn’t seem to see me. I saw enough of the victim’s torso to know it was female. My tiny flare of relief in knowing my sort-of-friend hadn’t become an entrée was squelched by the fact that someone had. Someone who was being picked apart by E.T.’s evil spawn.
The layers of fat and skin would make my small knives ineffective. Spawn’s claws tore flesh like a hot knife through butter, and its arms were strong enough to rend bone from tendon. I didn’t stand a chance up close. I sheathed the knives and crept to the wall where a dozen metal bars were bracketed to a wooden frame, just waiting for someone to attach weights to the ends.
I selected a thick bar and tested it. It should work. I choked my hands around the center like I would a baseball bat, drew it high over my right shoulder, and eyed my target. The rest of the first leg flew out the door. The puddle of blood around Spawn was so wide I’d never be able to avoid it. Just had to watch my footing and hope I didn’t splat into the puddle.
Like an Olympic javelin thrower, I raced toward my target. The bar pierced its skin with a squelching pop, driving down through fat, muscle, and other tissue, all the way to my hands. Spawn shrieked, glass-shatteringly high, and didn’t stop. It also didn’t whip around to try to swat me. Just huddled there over its dinner, squealing to burst my eardrums. Purple blood bubbled up from the wound. I got a higher grip and thrust deeper, until the bar popped out Spawn’s front and hit the floor.
I yanked down on the bar and twisted it sideways—anything to kill Spawn faster and shut it up. It didn’t like that. I crashed into a bench, and stars exploded behind my eyes. Then I felt throbbing in my ribs from the offensive blow. Damn and hell, that hurt. But at least the shrieking stopped. I sat up and shook off a wave of dizziness.
Spawn was slumped over the remains of its victim, purple blood swirling with human red. Vampires had purple blood, but there wasn’t anything vampire-like about that thing. Odd.
Yeah, like anything about today’s been normal.
I plucked another bar off the rack and retreated to the hall. Greg was on his feet, sweating heavily, shirt and pant leg soaked with blood.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” he said.
“I get that a lot,” I said. “Come on.”
We searched the rest of the rooms on the corridor and found nothing. No hounds, no hybrids, and no other Hunters. No more screams alerted us to trouble indoors. We backtracked to the exit a
nd burst into the morning sunlight. Humid summer heat pressed down like a damp blanket, instantly stifling, even out here in the mountains. We were behind the gymnasium, facing the single-story dormitory and, beyond it, the Pit.
Windows in the dorm were smashed out. Half a body lay on the ground nearby, a second mangled body not far from the first. A hound’s corpse, riddled with bullet holes, was halfway between us and the dorm. The bodies of two hybrids decorated the yard in other places. A spattering of gunfire erupted behind the dorm. Another on the other side of the gym. Were we winning? Losing? Who else was alive?
Greg’s cell beeped. He retrieved it with a shaky hand. Scanned the message. “Out front,” he said. “Near Admin.”
Halfway around the perimeter of the gym, Greg faltered. While my ankle was better and starting the familiar itch-ache, he’d lost a lot of blood. I looped an arm around his waist and used my last real burst of adrenaline to keep us going. I was panting when we got back to the gym’s entrance, well within sight of the smoking R&D building.
Two more Jeeps and a sedan had arrived and ejected the last of our forces. Their forces. Whatever. With two teams still in the city, every available body was now on site. Four people stood around a laptop, talking heatedly, practically shouting at one another. Kismet was easy to identify by her build and red hair. Baylor turned his head to say something to Kismet. The third man had to be another Handler, who offered what seemed to be a scathing reply to the man holding the laptop. That man wore black cargo pants with stuffed pockets, a black shirt of some sort, and a pair of twin shoulder holsters. He practically screamed black ops, but that was ridiculous.
I stared at the back of that man’s head, and as if sensing me, he turned to look. My mouth fell open. Phineas nearly dropped the laptop, his bright blue eyes going wide. I wanted to be happy to see him alive and well—since he’d been so close to death the last time—but extreme fatigue was short-circuiting my brain.
