Bad Blood
Page 32
“Tell me your names,” she whispered, horrified. This was so much worse than the plague of The Damned. It was such a quick transition, no incubation period. No abstinence of touch could keep a person safe. The airwaves were being infected exponentially, and even people in the most remote villages had radios and televisions in small general stores!
Carlos cocked his head to the side and asked her a question. She could tell by his worried expression that he was asking something important of her. But the reply that should have been hers was instead a shadow turning to her before it entered the body of a man on the streets. It smiled a sinister smile, bearing mangled, yellow teeth in a hollow black pit devoid of a face.
Her husband’s voice drifted farther and farther away until she was spinning in a panicked daze within a crowded market, then she was on a crowded street. All around her people were being taken over. All around her chaos was simmering beneath the surface of human potential. An army was being raised right on the streets and right before her eyes. Vertigo claimed her as her vision jettisoned her from New York to Copenhagen, from Kenya to Milan. Remote islands, metropolises, it didn’t matter, the invasions were unrelenting.
Arms outstretched, she ran toward a schoolyard and then skidded to a halt as high school students fell into darkness. She couldn’t breathe. Not the children. Her gaze fell upon a middle school and she watched as dark entities swarmed the windows like locusts.
Damali covered her face and turned away. Tell me this plague’s name so we can send it back into the pit! Within seconds she was in a hospital, her hands pressed flat against nursery glass, and she saw the shadows eerily slide into the nurses’ bodies, but none touched the babies. Yet that provided no relief. One nurse simply smiled and turned off an incubator’s oxygen.
“No!” Damali’s voice escalated with her panic. She had to know what this entity was in order to fight it. Not vampire, not succubus, the team had never seen a manifestation like this. “Tell me its name!”
Suddenly every person on the streets everywhere she looked had a sinister companion, and they all smiled at her simultaneously and whispered back, “My name is legions.”
“Damali. Damali!”
A tight grasp held her upper arms and she was mildly aware of being shaken. Time snapped back. She caught Carlos by his elbows, panting and covered with sweat.
“You all right? Damali, talk to me!”
“I saw it,” she gasped. “It’s already starting.”
As soon as she’d made the statement, she shrugged out of Carlos’s hold and covered her mouth and nose.
“Get that out of the house!” she demanded, jumping down from the stool and backing away from the counter, pointing at her untouched food.
“Oh, shit!” Carlos toppled his stool as he backed up quickly and stared at the larva teeming over the edge of the container.
The moment his silvery line of vision hit it, the entire platter exploded, sending disgusting, maggoty gore everywhere. Instantly shielded by a golden disc, the couple took refuge as they watched the wriggling mass rain down on the translucent surface to sizzle and disappear with a sulfuric stench. Everything the larva plopped down on made them fry and evaporate. Marlene’s kitchen was well anointed, and Inez had undoubtedly backtracked through it and given it a second blessing.
No less than they’d expected, they immediately heard heavy footfalls and knew the team was headed into the kitchen in a call to arms. Carlos and Damali shared a glance.
“Inez is gonna have a cow,” Damali said, dry heaving from the residual sulfur smell.
“After Marlene has a heart attack,” Carlos muttered, checking twice before lowering the shield to be sure it had stopped raining maggots. “This happened in her kitchen.” He looked at Damali. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, swallowing down the feeling of nausea and then stepping around his shield to assess the damage. “So I guess it’s officially on now. Vacation is over.”
Carlos nodded and set his jaw hard as fellow Guardians came to a halt at the kitchen’s threshold.
“What the f—” Rider stopped mid-expletive as he spied Inez’s mom and toddler, and he held out his arm to bar them from fully entering the kitchen. “Sulfur’s so thick in here you’d think we’d entered a Hell hole.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Berkfield muttered as his gaze scanned the black pock-marked kitchen cabinets, floor, counter, and appliances.
“I’ll just be damned,” Marlene’s words seethed between her teeth as she entered the kitchen with Inez, both women placing their hands on their hips. Marlene’s gaze narrowed as she surveyed the damage. “Up in my laboratory . . . where I do my sacred work?”
“Aw, hell to the no,” Inez said, unable to curtail her rage as she walked across the smoldering floor and folded her arms over her ample breasts. “A breach in here, my kitchen, where I feed my family?”
“What happened?” Shabazz said, putting the safety on his Glock nine-millimeter. His long dreadlocks were staticcharged with fury and the muscles in his toned arms, shoulders, and back kneaded like that of a stalking panther’s as he walked deeper into the abused room.
Yonnie’s and Carlos’s eyes met.
“Were they looking for me?” Yonnie asked, making the group turn and stare at him. “ ’Cause if it’s my time, I’ll go out there and let them take me rather than bring this bull on the family, yo.” He glanced at Valkyrie and lifted his chin. “Bound to happen sooner or later, so, if they’re—”
“They’ll always be looking for you, man,” Carlos said in an angry rumble. “Just like they’ll always be looking for me and everybody else on this team. We ain’t sacrificing no family to appease the beast—got that, man?”
“Cool. Then, I’ll take that as a no, this wasn’t personal then,” Yonnie said, sniffing the air and retracting his fangs.
“Oh, it was personal,” Carlos assured him. “They personally want me, you, and everybody else on this team dead.”