We were stuck in the concourse, in the lobby and between the buildings, with only exterior glass between us and monsters, and no way to get into the protected parts of the buildings.
Stuck, and alone. “Where did everyone go?”
Marko pointed at the heavy doors. “In case of a hostile attack, protocol is to get as many residents as we can behind the locked main building entrances.” He nodded to the left, and the closed and locked doors between Building Two and the concourse.
The only protocol I knew about was the evacuation plans in case of a fire. All the exterior doors automatically unlocked if the fire alarm activated, or if the building fully lost power.
The lights were off. The second wave from the distortion must have damaged the building’s systems, but the generators were kicking out enough power to open and close the slide doors. “Will the manual locks override the power-loss protocols?” I asked.
Marko rubbed his head. “Looks like it, at least for now.” He pointed at the door to the office behind the check-in desk. “I have ammunition.”
I pulled out my key card and jogged toward the office door.
Marko and Nax glanced at each other.
“What kind of Shifter are you?” Marko asked.
“I can’t enthrall,” Nax said. “My calling scents build glamours.”
Marko raised his chin. He contemplated for a moment, as if trying to determine if he should tell a secret. “My abilities won’t help. I’m a morpher, and I change too slowly to make a difference.”
I ran to the door and swiped my keycard. The door clicked open. “I’m in,” I said. Let them talk their magic jargon. Part of me suspected they wouldn’t explain anything to me anyway, even if I asked.
Marko backed toward me. “Second locker. It’s open.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Check the phone.”
A loud thud echoed through the lobby, with a second right after. The second thud had been higher pitched, as if accompanied by a crack.
Two more of the monsters hit the exterior door. One of them must have damaged either the glass or the frame.
A half-consumed can of soda sat next to the monitor, as did a still-sealed sandwich from the vending machine in the employee break room. The lockers at the back of the room were wide open just as Marko said.
I picked up the phone and dialed an outside line. Nothing happened. No clicking. No tones. Just silence. I checked my phone. Same thing.
We couldn’t call for help.
“Del!” Nax called. “Hurry up!”
I leaned over the counter and looked out the check-in window. Ten, maybe twelve of the glowing monsters paced outside the exterior doors.
A grizzly-sized one rammed the glass.
Behind the monitor, on a hook, hung the keys to the Paradise Homes mini-bus. I stuffed them into my pocket. Then I grabbed Marko’s backpack, opened the main pocket, and pulled open the second locker.
Ammunition. No guns, but boxes and boxes of bullets.
“All right, then,” I said, and stuffed as many as I could into the pack.
I pushed my way through the door and back into the lobby.
“… know what that shard is, don’t you?” Marko was asking Nax. He looked me up and down and put out his hand for the pack.
I handed it over. “It’s a magical artifact, isn’t it?” I said. “Like an enchanted cup or a medallion or something.”
It had to be. Rainbow colors still effervesced off the shimmering bubble of magic visible down the front walk and in the circle. Next to the dead bodies.
And behind at least thirty of those cuttlefish-wolf monsters.
Because those things, they were not of this world. They were hideous horrors that had bounded through a rip in reality and into Paradise Homes, where we housed the vulnerable.
Vulnerable who were also magical.
“Something like that,” Marko said.
Nax walked over. “We should try for the dining hall,” he said. “We can’t get through the main doors into the buildings, but the hall and kitchen should give us some cover.”
I hadn’t noticed before, but he wasn’t wearing his old man sweats. He had on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved, dark blue, button-front flannel shirt. No jacket. No gloves.
He really was professional linebacker size, and probably weighed at least two hundred and sixty pounds.
“What the hell are you? Why have you been faking old and frail?” I wanted to shove him, but he was a mountain and it would do no good.
“Not important,” he said.
“Not important?” I yelled. “Does it have anything to do with that?” I pointed at the monsters ramming the glass.
“No!” he yelled.
“We need to go,” Marko said.
Another monster rammed the glass just as the bubble of magic flared upward and outward as if bursting.
But it didn’t burst, and the only increases were in the senses of motion and velocity the damned thing threw off like spittle.
The monster backed up. It wagged its shimmering, color-flashing head, and hit the door again. Fractures appeared.
Fractures in the glass. Fractures in the bubble. Fractures that let in more than just the monster-beasts.
Fractures that let in a demon.
Chapter Six
Outside the door and down the walk, the distortion expanded the same way it had just before it released the wave of energy that let in the monsters. It pushed out in all its candy-colored glory and whipping, spinning, stationary velocity.
Nax unzipped the backpack and peered inside as if counting the boxes of bullets. “Marko, did the Fates see this coming and stash more guns in the buildings?”
Marko stared at the bubble. “How the hell would I know?”
“Guys.” I pointed at the distortion.
The rainbows flipped to orange, green, and purple, and the bubble once again contracted.
Every monster backed away from the glass. They shook their heads and turned toward the bubble.
Marko looked up. “Someone’s coming through.”
A woman stepped through the membrane. She swung her arms as if readying herself for a swim meet. She sniffed the air, did a little jig, and stomped toward Paradise Homes.
She wore big black boots and at least three layers of leggings—singed holes in the top black pair revealed ripped, garish, yellow-and-pink running pants over bright red tights. The hem of an equally red hoodie hung around her thighs, and the cuffs of the sleeves hung beyond her hands.
Strands of black hair fell out of a messy, singed-looking bun. Smudges covered her cheeks. She looked as if she’d just walked out of a fire.
She came from the same place as the monsters. “Is she a demon?” I asked. A crazy demon that hopped side to side in her clown-colored, ripped-up clothes.
Marko sniffed. His eyes widened and he holstered his gun. “She’s a Burner,” he said.
“What the hell is a Burner?” Paradise Homes hid their Fates and their Shifters—not that I understood what either label meant—but not once had anyone ever hinted at the clear crazy that had just stepped through the distortion.
Nax looked at Marko, then the woman. “I don’t smell her.”
Marko shrugged. “I have a good nose.”
“I don’t smell anything,” I said. The monsters smelled faintly of rotten eggs, but the woman was on the other side of two walls of glass.
Marko sniffed again. “Sulfur and ozone, as if someone set a car battery on fire in the middle of a toxic waste site.”
Nax nodded knowingly. “Both of you. Behind me. Now,” Nax said.
“Your calling scents work on Burners?” Marko asked.
I ducked behind Nax’s substantial back and peered around his arm.
Outside, the woman whistled. All the beasts turned toward her. A couple looked as if they yipped. One flashed. She patted another on the head.
She rolled her shoulders and leaned her head to the side at what had to be a painful angle. Then she walked
toward the entrance—and us.
“We go right, toward the dining hall, understand? Stay behind me.”
I was stuck between two men who understood the magic of the world. One was displaying a magical power all his own. Marko wasn’t being obvious about his, but he knew what the hell was going on.
Marko pointed at the woman. “Burners bite,” he said.
Unfriendly magic was bad enough, but now we had a biting, stinking demon outside?
The woman stopped about halfway up the walk and turned toward the west, as if inspecting the rings in the sky, then to the east as if contemplating the future.
She tapped her chin. Then she turned her back to us and toward the bubble-distortion gateway through which she’d walked.
An intricate scabbard nestled against her back, one that looked more like a webbing of mechanical arms than any sleeve.
In that scabbard, she carried a short-ish sword with an unadorned hilt. The blade and guard were as black as the shard at the core of the distortion.
I’d seen swords of that design before—my stepdad enjoyed historical dramas, and I used to eat popcorn with him while watching docu-battles.
They were called gladii, those short swords. They were the preferred weapon of the Roman legions. But this one was not some ancient relic. This one shimmered in its blackness.
The power of the distortion pulsed from it.
“She’s wearing a Roman short sword,” I said.
“Shit,” Nax breathed as if he knew exactly what that sword meant. “When I say run, you both run, understand?” he whispered.
Fear was one thing. Fear had fueled every single action I’d taken since the cartoon rings of death appeared in the sky, and a bubble of death and movement opened onto Paradise Homes. Fear of pain. Fear of my own death. Fear that all the strangeness would kill more residents.
But my fear crested over into indignation and for a single, sweet moment, I just wanted answers.
But I wasn’t going to get them. The “Burner” woman’s attention swept around again and landed fully on the doors to Paradise Homes.
The woman threw her arms wide and turned in a circle. She breathed deeply, and laughed.
Marko pulled out his weapon again.
“Put that away,” Nax snapped. “She’ll take all of Paradise Homes with her if she pops.”
“Not for her,” Marko said. “For the critters. I’m not stupid.”
“Pops?” I asked.
Marko mimicked an explosion with his free hand.
“What?” Maybe I didn’t want answers.
Nax humphed. “Stay behind me.” He moved us toward the dining hall.
“She’s an exploding demon?” I breathed. “With a sword?” An exploding, stinking, biting demon.
Marko sighed. “Close enough,” he said, as we moved as quickly as we could toward the doors.
“She will eat you, Del,” Nax growled. “That’s what Burners do. They eat people. And explode.”
He said it as if eating people and exploding were the natural order of things, at least for demon women. “You said they bite. You didn’t say they eat. So you mean that metaphorically, right? Like she’s a crazy hothead?”
The woman squatted and ran a finger over a monster track pressed into the salt residue on the walk. Then she stuck the finger in her mouth, recoiled, and spit fire. She pursed her lips, pulled in her cheeks, and spit a small firebomb onto the concrete. The little glob burst into a loud crack and a cloud of vapor and concrete chunks.
The woman giggled. She pointed at the destruction, as if proud of herself.
No metaphors there.
Nax grunted.
The rings in the sky contracted again, and flipped over to their original red, yellow, and blue colors. She inhaled as if taking in all their crazy, and swung her arms again. Then she looked directly at the sliding doors.
The woman grinned like Death itself and charged the glass.
“Run!” Nax pushed me toward the dining hall.
He pushed, but… I didn’t move. I don’t know why. Maybe my cresting indignation had finally made me obstinate. Maybe my fear froze me in place.
Or maybe a part of me needed to truly see what I was up against.
The demon ran headlong, at high speed, into the glass. She bounced off and giggled as if she was a kid on one of those bouncy blow-up houses.
“Del!” Marko pulled on my arm.
The woman cupped her hand over her eyes and peered through the outer door. With the lights off, we couldn’t hide in the glare they normally threw onto the windows, but the dark should have given us some cover.
But I was transfixed. The woman’s eyes glowed with death itself, like two scabs on fire.
On the horizon, the thing in the sky brightened momentarily and… vanished from the western sky.
The distortion bubble, though, continued to throw out its non-spin spinning momentum and its evil rainbows.
Another monster, this one the size of a horse, trotted through. It lifted its head to the sky and roared a sound as angry as the colors flaring along its sides.
The burning woman whipped around. She pointed an accusing finger at the monster. “Hellhounds,” she yelled, but she returned her gaze—and her death’s-head grin—to us. “So many snacks for my puppies and me.”
Snacks, as if we were all her smorgasbord.
She was worse than the hell beasts. Worse than any questions I held, or any secrets kept by the now probably-murdered staff of Paradise Homes.
Nax and Marko had called her a Burner, but she was obviously much, much more.
This woman really was a demon.
A demon who had sniffed us out.
“Philadelphia!” Nax yelled.
“Keycard!” I answered, and pulled my lanyard out from under my coat.
Marko made it first, and swiped his at the lock.
The woman tugged up-out-up on the sword. The scabbard released, and she swung it up and over her head, then twirled it around her wrist like a professional trick performer.
She slammed it into the glass.
Nothing shattered. Nothing cracked. The sword slid in as if cutting through butter. She pulled down, then to the side.
A demon cut a hole through the tempered and reinforced glass of the Paradise Homes front door like some movie villain wielding a high-powered laser.
How sharp was that thing? I should have run toward Nax and Marko. I should have paid attention to the door clicking open so that we could escape.
But the indignation returned. The need to not be infested with a hive of lies. I had no idea how the world actually worked. No clue, and unless I figured it out soon, I’d get myself murdered by impossible magic.
The glass cutout thudded to the mats between the outer and inner doors. The woman ducked through, and walked up to the inner door.
“Who are you?” I shouted.
She tipped her head to the side at the unnatural angle again, then smiled her death’s-head grin once more.
“The last time we did this, my dear Del, I found you at the end, not the beginning.” She pointed the sword at where the rings had been in the sky. “This place was still standing.” She waved it at Paradise Homes. “And all those ancient, warehoused Shifters and Fates thought they could stop us.”
A large arm wrapped around me again. A huge, previously-hidden arm.
Nax pulled me toward the door leading to the dining hall.
“Nice to see you again, Lesser Emperor!” she yelled. “Once a coward, always a coward, I see. Run away, little man! Run!”
She didn’t cut the inner door, nor did she send more of her monsters to ram the glass. She just winked and waved.
Marko looked between the demon woman and Nax. For a split second, I swore he understood her taunts. That somewhere in his head, he was thinking exactly the same thing as the demon. But then his expression changed to surprise.
Nax wasn’t looking at either of us. He scowled at the demon woman. “Do you recognize
her, Marko?” he asked as he pushed me through the door.
I swore Marko recognized her, but again, his expression switched to dismay too quickly for me to be sure.
“No,” he said.
“That’s because she’s dead,” Nax said.
Marko twitched—and once again, I got a sense of infestation. Of layers and layers of smothering lies that were going to hold me down and keep me still while the demon on the other side of the glass ate not only my body, but also my soul.
Nax hauled me through the door and I lost sight of the demon. Marko slapped the lock and closed the door.
“That’s Ismene of the Jani Prime.” Nax pushed us toward the dining hall. “One of the world’s most powerful Fates has been turned into a Burner.”
Most powerful Fates meant someone who, from my limited interactions, was considerably scarier than Mrs. Carmichael.
This particular someone also sparked like a sentient cigarette lighter, and she had a magic sword that cut through glass as if it was water.
All of which was obviously bad. Smotheringly bad. Slicingly bad.
We weren’t running from a demon. We were running from a goddess.
Chapter Seven
“Go!” Nax pushed me into the shadows behind the doors. Marko followed, and re-activated the locks.
The concourse between the lobby and the dining hall was dark even on sunny days—offices lined both walls, plus the beauty shop and one of the many craft rooms—and the passage, though short, lacked windows. All the natural light came from the normally always-open doors to the lobby, and filtered in from the dining room.
The generators were locking the doors, but the concourse lights weren’t a priority, and someone had closed off the dining hall.
How many residents were trapped behind the partition? I’d left Mrs. K in there.
We jogged the thirty feet of what should have been the archway leading into the dining hall.
A reinforced curtain had been pulled across the concourse. Unlike the accordion doors used to divide up large rooms, each panel of this one locked into the others in a rotating geometric pattern not unlike the tiles in a mosaic. But these tiles were coated in friendly blue fabric, and most definitely weren’t ceramic.
Witch of the Midnight Blade Page 4
