by Meg Collett
The aswangs prowled out from the southern buildings’ juncture. Shadows peeled off their black fur as they advanced with their heads low, snouts snarling over glistening white fangs. They were huge, bigger than I’d ever seen. I imagined I felt the pavement vibrate with every touchdown of their paws. I counted six, but more shapes were forming out of the darkness.
“Go,” Luke said under his breath.
We pivoted and ran.
Hatter’s crushing grip on my hand propelled me forward, launching me past him. I stumbled and nearly went down on one knee, but I scrambled, arms pinwheeling for balance, and took off.
Behind us, I heard the war cry of growls and howls and the scratch of claws digging into the pavement for traction. They were coming.
I fixed my eyes on the alley’s dark maw and prayed they hadn’t flanked us.
Pumping my arms, I ran as fast as I could, dodging jagged cracks and leaping over potholes, never once taking my eyes off the alley. My breathing turned to panting and a high-pitched whine escaped my mouth. Luke pounded behind me.
The ’swangs gave off a series of clipped bark-like sounds—communications within the pack.
We were halfway across the parking lot when I heard a grunt and the sound of flesh hitting road.
I faltered. Spinning halfway around, my hair tangling across my face, I looked back.
Luke was on the ground, rolling with a ’swang. He had his thumb in one of its eyes, his other hand braced against its neck as they skidded to a stop. Behind them, the pack closed in.
Hatter spun back and sprang through the air, aiming a flying kick straight for the ’swang’s face. His spiked-toe boot connected, and the creature released Luke with a cry of pain.
I started running sideways as Luke clambered to his feet. Hatter wrapped his hand around Luke’s arm and yanked him up. The pack was close enough to snap their teeth at the guys’ pants as they picked up their pace and closed in on me with every step.
Facing forward, I surged ahead, with the metallic tang of the ’swangs’ breath like a cresting wave behind me. Luke’s ragged breathing and Hatter’s hissed curse words filled my ears with every stride.
One step. Two. Three. I reached forward, collided into the alley’s sidewall, and pinballed down the narrow straight. The guys impacted behind me, their boots ringing through the space.
“Get down, Sunny,” Hatter gasped, grabbing my shoulder and pushing.
I slid down, my knee buckling under me. “We’re not running back?”
“Never make it,” Luke grunted.
“I’ll take the front. Watch her.”
“Nothing’s happening to her. I swear it.” Luke shouldered behind me to guard our backs. I fell to my knees, the soggy garbage lining the ground soaking through my jeans. My hand connected with something cold—metal.
At the entrance, the ’swangs battled to be the first one through. Their snapping growls were redirected at each other as they fought to gain ground through the opening. They piled up in one big blur of fur and teeth.
My fingers wrapped around the cylinder, and I pulled it up from beneath a molded newspaper. A lead pipe. “Hatter!”
He shot a glance back, eyes instantly falling to the makeshift weapon. Without a word, he took it and readied himself in front of me, close enough to touch.
Behind me, Luke kicked aside garbage and detritus, having seen my discovery, and found a chunk of wood. His hand went to my shoulder, keeping me down between them. If I had my throwing knives, I could have helped, but without them, in simple hand-to-hand combat, I would only get in their way. So I stayed down, my breath tight in my chest.
A shadow slipped across the alley. We all looked up at the same time as something flew by overhead. I made out long, opaque wings and streaming hair against the clouds.
Nothing normal.
Something wrong. Very wrong.
It screamed down at us—part woman, part monster. There was a moment of quiet in the alley. Everyone stilled. I’d gone cold. Everything stopped as we scanned the slip of sky we could see above us. It didn’t come back.
“What the hell—”
A ’swang managed to fight through, cutting off Luke’s sentence, and the ’swangs resumed their scramble.
“Here we go,” Hatter said through his teeth.
He took a step forward, meeting the aswang almost halfway. He spun the pipe in the air and lashed out, the end whizzing by the ’swang’s snout. The creature’s lips pulled back in a snarling grin. It lowered its head and leaped, colliding with Hatter midair.
Its teeth gouged into Hatter’s flesh, spraying blood.
* * *
Ollie
Hex slowly cocked his head, examining me.
“You will be that kind of killer,” he said, words thick with a rumbling from deep within his chest, like a growl or a building howl. “If you choose not to accept this task, I will be forced to do it, and I will not be so discerning with who dies. Do you understand?”
My eyes were drying from the lack of blinking. I went to step back, but his hand was suddenly on my wrist, without hardly moving, holding me in place. His skin was feverish, but still pale.
“Luke,” he murmured. “Hatter.” He released my hand. “Sunny.”
“No.”
“It’s an easy task. You’ll see. Once you understand what your mother fought for here, you’ll be glad to do it, and those you love can live if they also accept the rules of nature. Now,” he said and his edges seemed to flicker, like a movie reel skipping a frame, “you need to go back to the warehouse. You remember the way? Go. Hurry. Run.”
He flickered again, but I still didn’t blink.
To the south came a scream—a gutted animal or a woman howling with laughter, like ecstasy—that echoed through the buildings.
“What was that?” I asked slowly, nearly breathlessly.
“Something bad,” Hex said, his voice sounding like it was coming from the far side of a cliff. “Something close.”
I blinked and he was gone.
Swiveling around, I scanned the nearest shadows. From between the buildings across the playground came a long, ripping growl that sounded like a chainsaw tearing through the air. A long black ink of fur and tilting ears vaulted from the darkness toward the south, where another scream sounded back in answer.
I knew that scream.
I turned and ran toward Sunny.
N I N E
Sunny
Luke snagged me around the waist and hauled me back behind him. He clubbed at the black fur relentlessly. I caught flashes of Hatter’s red hair in the fray, but he’d gone down beneath the ’swang. Blood shot up the alley wall. Another ’swang launched itself behind them, trying to climb over the pile to get to me.
Again, I screamed, “Help!” I took a deep breath. “Someone help!”
Luke slammed back into me, and I went sprawling onto my back. We were getting pushed back toward the other end of the alley, toward a vast open area where nothing could keep the ’swangs off us. I kicked at the ground and scuttled back, my eyes raking across the alley for anything to use as a weapon. I couldn’t see Hatter. Luke had his back to a wall with a ’swang wrapped around him.
I couldn’t breathe. Tears streaked down my dirty cheeks, and my glasses sat crookedly on my face. Something cut my hand—a shard of glass. I closed my fingers around it and fought to my feet.
With a cry, I shoved forward and rammed the glass into the ’swang’s throat. Its blood splattered across Luke’s face as he shoved it back and used the club to slam the shard deeper into its flesh. I caught sight of Hatter’s boots and a flash of red hair.
“Hatter!” I screamed, my voice breaking apart.
Something collided close to my head, sending a spray of brick across my face. The new aswang Luke had been fighting dropped like a stone. More yelps and cries filled the alley.
Nearly twenty halflings stood on the building’s roof, raining bullets down into the pack.
“Careful!�
�� I shouted as another bullet hit the ground, inches from my foot.
Luke dove through the swarm of bodies as ’swangs stopped fighting and tried to run. The alley turned into a pileup of tractor-trailer-sized creatures skidding over the pavement as if it were ice. Bodies and limbs went everywhere, and blood coated the air in a fine mist. It clouded my glasses, and I choked on it. Above us, halflings rappelled down into the mess, landing on ’swangs and stabbing knives through the backs of their necks. Barks sounded and some ’swangs managed to turn around and race back the way they’d come. Others thrashed, half dead on the ground, and more stayed to fight.
Every time I managed a step forward, I got shoved back three. I could see nothing but flesh and fur, blood and bone. The enemy mingled with allies until the snipers above had to stop firing for lack of a clear shot. I grabbed someone’s hair and tried to leap over them and the massive aswang body they were entwined with.
An elbow cracked across my mouth and my head snapped back against the building’s wall. For a second, darting white stars spiked my vision, and I had to keep blinking to clear them away. I tasted blood and felt it running down my face.
An aswang’s back collided into me and we fell together. We hit the ground with a thump, and I immediately started scrambling to get out from under it, expecting its mouth to close around my throat at any moment, but its head lolled back on my shoulder, eyes blank. Dead.
By the time I got out from under the thing, the sounds in the alley had died down to just the ragged breathing and moans of the injured.
I struggled to stand on shaky legs as I pushed my glasses back up my nose, my eyes bouncing over humans and ’swangs until I found him.
Luke had Hatter’s arm slung over his shoulder as he hauled him over the carnage. Their faces were a smear of blood and grime. As they came forward, I couldn’t count their injuries or separate their blood from everything else.
“Halflings!”
I recognized Thad’s voice, but I couldn’t see him.
“Call out!” His shout echoed down the alley.
I pushed passed a halfling holding her head, her ear hanging by a piece of cartilage in her hand. I needed to help these people, but I could only see Hatter.
Above me, someone shouted down, “Lauren! No injury!”
Then, “Rimmel. Injured, nonfatal! No assist required.”
I reached Luke and Hatter, who sagged forward. One of his eyes was swollen shut, his bottom lip split through. His shirt was torn down the front, and I saw the first bite. The flesh along his neck and atop his shoulder had been torn clean through. Inches over and the bite would have hit his main artery. He brought his hand to my face, his thumb raking across my cheek.
“Yvonne. No injury!”
“Taylor. In-injured.” The voice was no more than a rasp behind me. “Assist . . . assist.”
“First assist!” Thad boomed. “Now! Keep calling!”
The darkness of the narrow space was nearly absolute. The people around us were no more than shadows as the moon slipped behind the cloud cover.
“You okay?” Hatter choked out.
I nodded, too busy running my hands over him, searching for more bites. I found three more before Luke sagged against the wall. The three of us crashed down together in a pile. Luke coughed thickly and couldn’t stop. Hatter’s head rolled forward onto my shoulder, his weight crumpling against me. I wrapped my arms around him and held on.
“Someone help over here! It’s Sunny!” I called out.
“Second assist!” Thad echoed back instantly.
Next to me, a halfling turned, took us in on the ground, and grabbed Hatter. With one easy lift, the guy had Hatter on his feet.
“Reece,” he called out. His skin was tanned, like he’d somehow found a beach out here, and his eyes shone brightly back at me. “No injury! Third assist needed,” he added, seeing Luke.
“Third assist!”
Another halfling came to us and followed Reece’s order to collect Luke. The halfling slung him over his shoulder and herded us down the alley to the other opening. All around, more and more halflings called out, most injured. Some didn’t fill the gap between calls, so Thad would shout for an assist. They still hadn’t finished the roll by the time we stepped into the opening, which had become a triage of sorts. Bodies were lying spaced across the pavement, with halflings crouched over them. Some worked to stop the bleeding and others fought to hold a person down as another set their bones. Bandages were torn from shirts and used to wrap up wounds.
The fight had lasted seconds, but in that tight space, it had decimated us.
Reece and the other halfling helped me lower Luke and Hatter to the ground. More people streamed out of the alley, the shouting dying down. I glanced back and saw some people were hauling out the ’swang bodies. With a hand to my shoulder, Reece went back to help.
“You didn’t answer me,” Hatter gasped, wincing.
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I’m okay. Where are you hurt?”
“Everywhere. You have a lot of places to kiss and make better.” His mouth fluttered into a sideways smile before he grimaced.
Luke finished coughing and braced himself against the ground, where he sat hunched over.
“Are you bitten?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Just banged around a bit. Nothing ser—” Another round of hacking coughs cut him off.
“We need to get back to the warehouse,” I said as I peeled back Hatter’s shirt, my eyes scanning his bloodied skin. I counted four major bite wounds and a few more minor cuts.
Halflings lay all around us, some worse off than Hatter. Many had bites all over their bodies. I needed to go to them, but I couldn’t make myself move.
“I’m fine,” he said, reading my face. “Go. It’s okay.”
“I—”
“Sunny!” Thad jogged up behind me. “We could use another hand.”
I nodded as I stood. “We have to get them back to the warehouse. It’s not—”
A scream, far different from the cries of the halflings around us, ricocheted off the buildings. I was already lifting my face to the sky as the shadow slipped by. People ducked and flinched away, but most looked upward in time to see the winged creature circle over us.
The moon came out from behind the clouds and shone down on us, silhouetting the creature. It hung in the air just above the building’s roofline, its wings slowly undulating. It was close enough for us to make it out. Flesh hung in strips from its waist as if it had torn through its skin. Where its legs should have been dangling, there was only bone and swinging entrails. Bare breasts hung over its sharp ribs. But its face . . . I had never seen anything like it.
The creature was a woman, no doubt. Dark hair billowed in tattered streams around her. Her eyes were wide-open black saucers above jutting cheekbones. She opened her mouth, a gaping black hole, and screamed again. A long, slender tongue, like a snake’s, slithered out and tasted the air.
Halflings scrambled into action and started firing. The thing rose up with a fierce beat of its wings, sending a stinking blast of air down on us that smelled of rotting flesh and sour fish. She ducked and weaved, rising up then diving down at us. Bullets scattered around her but never connected.
Hatter took my hand and pulled himself up. Luke stood beside him, clutching his side.
Thad had joined in with the firing squad, and together they drove her farther up into the sky. With another scream, she disappeared over the buildings and into the night.
Slowly, one after the other, the halflings lowered their guns and looked around, faces stunned and terrified. No one spoke, but we all felt the same bone-deep chill.
Thad swallowed heavily and said, “Ha-halflings.” He paused and cleared his throat. “We’re moving—now. Assist those who can’t move and fucking double-time it back. Stick to formation. Injured in the middle. If I see one damn person lagging or not helping, I’ll shoot you myself. Go!”
He turned to me. “I�
��ll get Hatter. Help Luke.”
“I’m fine,” Luke growled, but I went to him anyway, forcing his arm over my shoulders.
“Move out!” Thad had to shout again when no one started forward.
“Sunny!”
The shout rang out from across the lot. We all looked up to see Ollie hurtling toward the group at full tilt. She caught sight of us, her eyes bouncing from me to Hatter to Thad and finally to Luke. She shoved through the halflings jogging past her and threaded her way to us.
“Sunny,” she repeated, her mouth hanging open, panting out breaths.
“We’re okay,” I said.
“What the hell happened?” she asked, taking a position by Luke’s other side. “What was screaming?”
Ollie was taller than me, so when she took most of Luke’s weight, he was lifted well above my shoulders. Her eyes scrutinized every inch of him, their faces close together. He set his forehead against hers and took a long, deep breath. It was the closest I’d seen them together since we’d arrived in Anchorage, and it was the first time I’d seen Ollie actually touch someone willingly.
Luke, wounded as he was, seemed to savor every moment of it, leaning into her more than he needed to and breathing her scent in deep.
“No clue,” Thad said. He sounded shaken and looked more scared than I’d ever seen him. “It was flying.”
“Flying?” Ollie’s head snapped toward us and away from Luke’s injuries. “How?”
“Wings,” Hatter hissed. I went to Thad and helped him with Hatter.
“It was a woman,” I said, positioning myself under Hatter’s arm. “Her legs were just bones, and she had these strips of flesh hanging . . .”
Ollie cursed and picked up her speed toward the warehouse. We all did. The other halflings were well ahead of us. On the way back, we didn’t talk. Our focus was solely on getting to a secure location with a roof over our heads and locks on the doors. By the time we were halfway back, we all caught the first strains of a low-thrumming tick tock.
