Night-Blooded Boys, page 27
part #3 of Pitchfork County Series
Then the pale bodies burst through the doorway, a dozen of them at a full run. Joe shouted and jammed his pistol back into its holster. He slid the shotgun from its scabbard and dropped to one knee to aim. He braced the barrel across the back of his injured arm and threw what power he could muster into the weapon. Its runes glowed brilliant scarlet, then flashed to green.
Joe squeezed both triggers, and the gun vomited fire and a sizzling combination of lead and silver into the onrushing horde. The special shot and bilious fire shredded the small bodies, separating limbs from torsos, punching oozing black holes through their chests, burning their faces off and melting their fingers and toes together. The first group of boys lay on the ground, smoking and convulsing as whatever passed for life fled from their pasty flesh. Joe broke the shotgun open and crammed a pair of shells from his gun belt into the still-warm barrel.
The Haunter and the Long Man were screaming in Joe’s head, a competing torrent of obscenities and panicked pleas. They were terrified he’d die here and kill the pieces of them he’d stolen. They wanted him to run, to get into the wind before he was murdered where he stood. “Shut up!” Joe roared, tired of their self-serving fear.
The room flashed from inferno hot to glacial chill in the time it took Joe to draw a breath. He heard a tremendous crash and turned to see Stevie flung across the room into one of the shelves. She flopped bonelessly to the floor.
What he could see was the auctioneer, standing behind the sizzling urns. His suit was still impeccable, but his face was torn and bubbling in places. Joe watched as the man’s flesh cooked away to reveal a slick, crystalline structure. The thing’s false face split down the middle and sloughed off either side as the creature inside swelled, pushing through the fleshy confines it had hidden within.
Joe swiveled toward the auctioneer and squeezed the shotgun’s left trigger. Fire and shot blasted it in the face and the chest, knocking it back. Joe didn’t know what the auctioneer was becoming, and he wasn’t going to wait to find out. He got up and walked toward it, firing the second barrel as it struggled to get back on its feet. Chunks of black crystal flew off in all directions, popping and sparking as they disintegrated into burning powder. Joe slammed the empty shotgun back into its scabbard and drew his pistol.
He advanced around the growing puddle of black goo, firing as he went. His first shot caught the crystalline head dead center, shattering off a fist-sized chunk of smoking darkness. The auctioneer went down, flopping onto its back, hands curled onto its chest as it shed its skin. Joe fired again, chipping away more of its skull, then pumped a few rounds into its chest until it stopped moving. He shoved the pistol back into its holster and drew its brother. He pointed the weapon at the auctioneer, daring it to move. He couldn’t tell if he’d killed it, but it made no effort to defend itself, even as he pulled the hammer back for another shot.
Movement dragged his attention away from the auctioneer. More little bodies were flooding into the room, surging forward on all fours like mutant dogs. They shrieked as they came, tinny voices shaking the air with their fury.
Joe saw Stevie shaking her head, regaining her senses. She saw the threat, too, and raised her shaking hand. A dark word spilled from her mouth, and Joe felt the whole room shake like a rat caught in a terrier’s jaws.
The boys flew back, bodies shattered by a fist of pure force. Their pale bodies ruptured, spewing torrents of black blood in every direction. The force of Stevie’s attack carried the corpses out of the room, shunting them into the hallway where their remains splattered against the far wall like bugs against a windshield.
But more were coming, their screams drawing near. Joe rushed to Stevie and hauled her onto her feet. “You good?”
She nodded, though Joe could see she wasn’t back to full strength. An ugly bruise turned the left side of her face purple. “I got this,” she said, forcing a grin.
Joe pressed a hard kiss against her cheek. “Get ‘em, girl.”
Then he holstered his pistol and broke the shotgun open over his knee. He was cramming two more shells in when he felt the temperature spike and heard flames roar. The screaming began again, and Joe ground his teeth against the sound. On top of everything else, he was pretty sure he was going deaf from that racket.
Then another noise joined the cacophony, a thundering moan that shook Joe’s heart in his chest. “What the fuck?” he shouted and turned back to the molten urns.
The auctioneer was back on its feet, all of its legs shifting and scuttling as it righted itself. It had shed the remnants of its human disguise and now stood revealed in its alien majesty, a crystalline monstrosity with three arms spaced evenly around the hexagonal pillar of its body, six legs jutting from its base. The wounds Joe had inflicted were still visible, but the auctioneer seemed ready for business. It stomped forward and plunged its faceted head into the lake of boiling, black fluid, ignoring the fire Stevie poured onto it. Joe could swear he heard the thing slurping over the rest of the noise. “Ah, you motherfucker,” he snarled.
Even as Stevie destroyed the godsblood, the auctioneer devoured the rest. It seemed to grow in intensity, becoming more concrete by the second, gaining a sense of gravity that threatened to destroy everything around it. Its arms snapped through the air, clattering and cracking as they grew and added new joints to their length. Each arm ended with four sharp prongs in a radial pattern, alien gigging forks that darted and tested their new strength.
Joe ran back through the shelves. It was over. They’d lost. They had to get out of there, now, before the auctioneer tore them apart and feasted on their gizzards. He snatched Elsa up without a word and ran back out to where Stevie was bathing the monstrosity with fire. He grabbed his wife by the shoulder and dragged her toward the door. “Gotta go,” he shouted, and she backed away from the auctioneer, still keeping the fire blazing to cover their retreat.
But the doorway was filled with pale bodies. They crawled over their fallen brothers, black tears running down their faces as they screeched in inhuman anguish. Joe could see their sharp teeth in the black craters of their mouths and knew it was over. They were trapped. There was no way he could fight off all of them before the crystal horror behind them tore his family apart. He lowered Elsa to the floor and drew his shotgun from its scabbard with his good hand. He stared at the mob of boys as he crammed shells into his shotgun. “Let’s go,” he taunted and squeezed the trigger.
54
The supernatural buckshot tore through the pale boys, but Joe knew it wasn’t going to be enough. There were too many of them. He killed a dozen of them with the first shot, then more with the second, but he wasn’t stopping them. He slipped the shotgun back into its scabbard with one hand and whipped a pistol from its holster with the other.
The boys he hadn’t killed outright were healing. They reached out severed limbs to one another, fusing their wounds together, creating something bigger, more powerful than the sum of their parts. Joe fired into the forming behemoth, but he couldn’t stop the pale golem from stitching itself together. It grew and grew, fattening on the bodies of the boys as it merged with them. He fired into their blank-eyed faces until the revolver’s hammer fell on an empty cylinder, then jammed that pistol back into its holster. He didn’t have time to reload, the golem was coming on too fast.
The floor shook, and Joe looked over his shoulder at the auctioneer. It stomped through the molten silver and midnight-black godsblood, flinging droplets of hot metal and boiling liquid in all directions. It struggled to make headway against the flood of fire Stevie was pouring onto it, but Joe knew the thing would win, in the end. Stevie’s face was pale and drawn, fresh blood oozing from her wounds as she stretched herself to the breaking point.
He pulled Elsa close to his leg and reached back with his wounded arm to give Stevie a clumsy squeeze. “I love you!” he shouted, knowing it might be the last words he ever said. The boys were coming, preparing to drive his family into the deadly arms of the auctioneer. There was nowhere to go. They were done.
The behemoth the boys had become strode forward, multiple heads brushing the ceiling, tentacular, ropy arms thrashing the air as it stomped ahead on thick, trunk-like legs. Joe pushed his daughter behind him and squared his shoulders. He ripped power away from the warring entities inside him, and they no longer resisted him. The Haunter and the Long Man were terrified of losing the pieces of themselves tied to Joe, and lent him their mystical aid in a last-ditch effort to turn the tides of the battle. He wasn’t going down without a fight.
The first punch crashed into the side of Joe’s head, an unexpected blow that moved much faster than he thought possible. His ears rang, and his vision strobed black and red. It was like being hit with a wrecking ball, and Joe felt things slide around inside him that weren’t supposed to move. He came back with a punch of his own, but it was slow and clumsy, glancing off the thing’s body with about as much effect as a feather pillow. The golem’s second punch drove him to his knees and had him spitting blood.
He could see more boys piling into the fray, merging with their brothers. A third punch battered him onto his belly, and he didn’t think he had it in him to get back up.
Elsa screamed, her voice a strident protest. “Stop it!” she shouted. “You know better!”
To Joe’s shock, the golem recoiled from his daughter, flailing hands covering its many faces in surprise.
Elsa stood in front of her father, hands raised. “We didn’t do this!”
The merged boys wailed in dismay, suddenly uncertain. Joe dragged himself off the ground, shaking with the effort. Elsa stood firm, hands stretched out in front of her, hair whipping around her head like a nest of angry copperheads. “You know we didn’t do this.”
Its many heads wavered in the air, turning from side to side, trying to make sense of the little girl before it. Despite its formidable presence, the golem was made up of dozens of primitive, child-like minds. Joe didn’t know why it was listening to Elsa, but he prayed it would keep doing just that. He glanced over his shoulder and shouted in surprise.
The auctioneer was close. Its arms were stretched out around Stevie, held at bay by the fire, but so very close. It was less than five feet away, leaning into his wife’s attack, driving itself forward with single-minded intensity.
Joe drew his shotgun and cracked it open, filled the barrels and slammed it closed.
He swung around the fire Stevie was pouring onto her attacker and pointed the shotgun up at the auctioneer’s head, unloading both barrels into its jaw. Fire and smoke obscured the auctioneer, and it reeled back from the explosive attack, all of its arms scraping the ceiling as it stumbled. Joe broke the shotgun again and reloaded, hoping he’d have time for another shot.
But he didn’t.
A black crystal arm lashed out, smashing the shotgun from Joe’s hand and opening a deep gash across his chest with each of its four dagger-like points. Blood splashed out of him, and his eyes rolled in their sockets as horrific pain lashed through him. It was like having a belt sander running on exposed nerves.
Stevie screamed, and Joe saw the auctioneer fling her aside with another arm. Blood trailed away from Stevie’s unconscious body as she flew across the room.
The auctioneer’s last arm drew back, points glinting with a light all their own. Joe saw where it was aiming and struggled to rise, but all he could manage was a croaked, “No.”
Then the arm was flashing through the air, aimed straight at Elsa’s back.
55
Al ran through the mansion, head low to the ground as he trailed his mother’s scent. Blood ran off his slick skin, the remnants of his battle with the guards. He felt sick at the number he’d killed, but exhilarated as well. He was stronger than he’d ever been, he had become something new and strange. And all he’d had to do was stop fighting against his true nature and the godsblood inside him.
He threw himself over the edge of a spiral staircase, plummeting through the blackness, slowing his fall by snatching at the railing as he fell. His body grew slimmer, longer, more streamlined as he dropped. His protean flesh seemed to know what was needed and how best to give Al the tools he required to survive now that he no longer fought its wishes.
He’d battled this for so long, confined by his own beliefs and fears. He’d been a fool. He knew his family would have a hard time accepting what he’d become, but he found he was not as concerned about that as he’d once been. They wanted him to be one thing, but he was another entirely. There was no way to reconcile those two ideas of Al, and he’d given up trying. If he wanted to survive, he had to embrace what he was, not pretend to be something else. He hadn’t asked to be this, but he was tired of resisting his true nature.
The sounds of battle filled him with a dark glee, and he raced toward them. His body shifted again, changing as he ran. Powerful legs propelled him forward even as his clawed hands dragged him ahead, digging into the walls on either side of him for purchase. He roared as he went, a hideous, warped cry that tore through the air like the thunder of a fighter jet’s afterburners.
He hit the first guard and shredded the man without breaking stride. His claws tore the guard’s throat out, and his feet beat the man to the floor before his companion had a chance to react. Al lashed out with his other arm, driving the second guard to the floor in a gout of blood that pulsed from his opened chest. The dying guard’s finger spasmed around the trigger of his submachine guns and bullets stitched across the ceiling as Al rushed into the next pack of thugs.
These were more prepared, but still no match for Al. His flesh warped and twisted around their attacks, leaving them swinging at air and shooting at nothing. His claws and teeth ripped through them, spilling blood and entrails in a flurry of motion. The guards slipped and skidded on their own internal organs and splashing blood, dying even as they fell. There was no challenge here for Al, they were mere obstacles for him to slice through. How had he ever let anyone try to restrict him? How much pain could have been avoided if he’d just let go?
He leapt over the last of the guards, killing one of them with a snap of his leg that drove razor-sharp talons through an exposed throat. The guard went down, his blood blinding the guard next to him. Al hit the ground on all fours, roaring and rushing toward the pale bodies ahead of him.
He didn’t have time to fight the strange creatures, he had to get to his family. Al dove past the boys, claws catching in wooden walls. He ran over and around the pale forms, sliding down the wall and slipping past their growing bulk when he reached the storeroom.
The stink of spilled blood, of his family’s spilled blood, filled Al’s nostrils at once. He took in his fallen parents and the crystalline monstrosity towering over them, and rushed to battle. He saw the swooping crystalline spikes aimed at his little sister, and Al knew what he had to do.
He threw himself in front of the attack meant for Elsa. The quadruple tines raked along his shoulder and impaled his left hip, but didn’t reach Elsa. The pain was an immense, crushing pressure that threatened to overwhelm Al, but his body responded at once. His flesh rejected the wounds and the things that made them, flowing around the damage and coming out the other side whole once more.
Al pivoted and leapt, twisting in the air, and came down hard on the crystalline tower’s back. His claws dug gouges in it, and he wrapped both hands around one of the spearing arms. His muscles bulged beneath slick skin, and he wrenched it across his body. Stone splintered, then cracked away. Al roared and lifted the broken arm over his head. He slammed it down into the back of the crystalline monster’s head, smashing again and again.
Another arm came up behind Al, slamming into his side and knocking him from his perch. As he fell, he swiveled to land on his feet, but another blow disrupted his fall. It crashed down on his back, all four tines piercing his flesh and driving him to the ground. The spikes burst from his chest, and Al felt something break inside him, a terrible pain that burst in his mind like an artillery shell.
He struggled against his attacker, trying to lift himself from the floor, but he couldn’t get the leverage with his arms, and his legs weren’t listening to him anymore. He could do little more than writhe against the thing on top of him, and when it brought one of its legs down on his shoulders with crushing force, he couldn’t even do that.
“You worms,” the monster spat, its voice cracking the air like the sound of an avalanche. “You have disrupted a rite ten thousand years in the making. You will be made to suffer for your arrogance, to endure unending torment until we can prepare ourselves once more.”
It twisted the spikes in Al’s back, winding his spine around them like spaghetti around a dinner fork. He screamed as it ripped out his backbone.
“How dare you?” the auctioneer screamed. Al could feel it stepping off him, crushing his left shoulder blade as it shifted its weight. “How dare you, you insignificant creatures, disrupt the succession?”
Al heard his father’s barking laugh. “Fuck you, geode.”
Then he heard and felt enormous crystalline feet pound across the concrete. There was a meaty thud, and Al recognized his father’s grunt of pain.
He felt something tickling at the edges of his wounds. Even as his body tried to fix the damage, tried to flow into a new shape that could survive this injury, there was something trying to get inside of him. Al recognized the touch of the godsblood, the intimacy of its need to be one with him. He’d embraced his darker nature, but that at least was part of him. The godsblood gave him something else, something strange and alien. If he let himself, Al could become something strange and powerful, but he didn’t know how much of what made him him would be left.
The godsblood slipped along the edges of his wounds, and Al could see what it wanted, how it needed things to be between them. He struggled with his feelings, but with his back ripped out and his body failing on its own, he knew he didn’t really have a choice anymore.
