And I’m so cold. . . .
Funny, I thought as I began to fade. I always figured I’d burn.
“No!” Chance shouted, but his voice sounded as if it came through a long tunnel or maybe out through a pipe organ.
As I blacked out, I dreamed I saw Kel locked in terrible battle with a dark figure wreathed in unholy tendrils of smoke. God’s Hand carried a slim silver knife, the blade flashing too bright in the heavy air. Kel muttered, “Go with God,” as the warlock raised both arms. I wanted to flinch, fearing the outcome.
But I was so very cold. . . .
The next thing I knew, the whole world lit up with blue-white fire. A terrible crack split the porch overhead, and Chance shielded me as charred wood fell. The air smelled charged, different than the smoky plume rising from the ruined house.
Thunder boomed, shook the very ground we crouched upon. Lightning. Only Chance could’ve made that happen. A thousand and one probabilities . . . He spins the coin a hundred times and comes up tails every time.
“Oh, God, Corine . . . your lips are blue.”
Three times now, I’d nearly been taken by shadows. And three was a weighty number. Fire had saved me, just as it claimed my mother’s life. I didn’t understand, but the meanings would come later.
“I’m all right,” I managed to say through chattering teeth. “We should see how bad it is out there.”
The sounds of fighting had either ceased or were overwhelmed by the burning house and the raging tempest. Chaos raged around us, energies snapping like broken electrical wires. Chance reached for me, the back of his hands crisscrossed with new scratches and ash, and I let him tug me to my feet.
Huge raindrops spattered us, rousing a hiss from the burning house behind us. The black storm gathered power as if fueled by its master’s fury. Howling wind lashed us, made it difficult for me to keep my balance. Chance put an arm around me as hail pelted us.
Together, we rounded the house, staying well out of back draft range. The open plain assumed a nightmare hue, stinking of death and decay. His flesh golems staggered toward us, no longer lacking direction.
Which meant God’s Hand had failed.
The Threshing Floor
I could hardly wrap my mind around it. We’d survived only by virtue of Chance’s luck and my strange relationship with fire. Flames had stolen my mother and nearly slain me in Tuscaloosa, and I suffered its kiss anytime I used my gift. Maybe that meant something, but I didn’t possess the leisure for self-analysis.
Behind the house, we found him.
Kel lay still as death, covered in more blood than I had ever seen. Once I would have screamed like a maniac, but we still had to deal with the master’s meat puppets.
And when the dark one showed himself, it wouldn’t be good.
Animated corpses closed in from all sides of the smoldering farmhouse. With his power depleted, doubtless the warlock hoped to wear us down. If only we could find the bastard, end this once and for all—but his mindless children would rend Kel limb from limb if we left him where he’d fallen.
We stood back-to-back once more, ready to make our last stand. Chance slung the automatic rifle from his back, removed the safety. His gun sparked as he fired into oozing zombie flesh. A young girl, beautiful in life, jerked as pieces of her shoulder and arm went flying. Still they came.
Their unseeing eyes never moved, whitened with a grotesque film that spoke of the veil between this life and the next. No matter what we did, what damage we inflicted, their expressions never changed. Like inexorable automatons they came, robbed of everything but their master’s will. Their clothes hung in bloody tatters.
Adrenaline sang in my veins. These things were slow, so it worked to our advantage. My grenade landed in the path of a half dozen figures, and being brain-dead, they didn’t detour around it. The subsequent explosion churned dirt all around them as the flash of fire and metal tore them apart. The air stank of burnt meat, and still they crawled toward us, if they had limbs left to drag themselves forward.
“Damn,” I muttered, swaying to my feet and falling back. “We need some napalm.”
Chance flashed me a grin. “Chuch would’ve needed to special order it.”
I realized that the zombies behind us were guarding something. The wounded warlock must be hiding, taking shelter behind his remaining minions. Booke had said destroying his foci might kill the bastard, so this warlock must know something Booke didn’t. Well, it didn’t matter what tricks he had up his sleeve.
Righteous anger rose up in me. “This is for Lenny!”
I primed another grenade, sent it skimming along the ground toward the nearest group, and then dove for cover. When it detonated, the earth churned up, bodies flew to pieces, and the stupid things fell, stumbling over their own severed limbs. Chance unloaded a full clip into them as they twitched and split wide open beneath the barrage of automatic fire. The creatures sounded like splitting melons when he hit them in the torso. The stench of bodily effluvia joined the bitterness of smoke and charred flesh.
Bile rose up in my throat. Even though I hadn’t taken their lives, I despised being forced to decimate the remains of girls who had surely suffered enough. It would take a field team days to figure out who was who and notify their families. Grief warred with outrage. There’d better be a special circle in hell reserved for this son of a bitch.
And why? To keep us from finding out what happened to Chance’s mother? The cold rain felt like tears spattering my cheeks. Who the hell did this guy work for?
Reaching back, I came up empty-handed, and the last wave swept over us. I went down in a foul-smelling pile of rending hands and severed limbs. I struggled and screamed as teeth sank into my shoulder. They had no appetite, but they would consume me.
I kicked out, feeling my knee lodge itself in someone’s open abdomen. I couldn’t tell how much blood belonged to me. Above me, I heard Chance swearing, fighting to reach me. All around I heard the sickening snap of bone.
For one shining moment I saw his face, livid with rage and resolve. Chance raised his rifle and smashed it into a dead woman’s face. I tried to scramble to my feet, sobbing. His hands slid against mine, wet and sticky as he pulled me up.
“Jesus,” Chance breathed.
He bled from a hundred shallow cuts. And I was worse off. Our fury and determination wouldn’t be enough, could never be. The stream of bodies never seemed to end. As soon as Chance knocked them down, they struggled to their feet again.
And we were only human.
As if in answer to a prayer I hadn’t thought to offer, Kel struggled to his feet nearby. His silver knife gleamed as he waded through the putrid corpses like a threshing machine. His pale skin ran with blood and black ooze. His tattoos glowed with a faint blue light through gore and mud.
Claws sank into his flesh; misshapen arms and legs tried to drag him down. Their teeth tore whole chunks from his torso while he snapped necks and broke jaws. I didn’t know how he kept going; Christ, I’d thought he was dead. His blood ran but he didn’t seem to feel it; each new wound appeared to drive him to greater ferocity. Kel wouldn’t stop until he reached his target, not for death or the devil himself.
Kel carved the last of them into pieces so fine they lay in writhing chunks on the ground. Like the tormented animal the warlock had sent to break the wards, these poor things had no choice but to answer his command, even through the failings of fragile flesh. I’d never seen anything so macabre.
Half buried in bodies and dripping with gore, God’s Hand swayed on his feet. A few wounds on his back showed the pale glint of bone. For a minute I thought he might die on his feet like a gladiator of old. A chill went through me, made of equal measures awe and alarm. I thought about steadying him but I couldn’t make myself reach out.
“We have to find him,” Kel said in a voice as weary as the grim reaper itself.
Chance nodded. “If he gets away here, now, it’s over. We have no hope if he has a chance to rest up for the next round.”
To say nothing of Chuch and Eva, whose lives depended on us. Since I could barely walk unassisted, that didn’t bode well for them. But I wouldn’t give up. Not when we’d come this far.
“Can you home in on him?” I asked Chance hopefully.
He shook his head. “I’m burnt, nothing left. I’m sorry.”
I remembered how he’d bled out the nose. “Don’t be.”
“If he tries to run, we’ll have him,” Kel said.
I frowned. “He won’t run. Not when he knows this area better than we do. He’ll lay low, hoping we limp away. But he doesn’t know us very well if he thinks we’ll accept a standoff. I guess you didn’t see where he went after—”
Kel fixed me with eerie eyes. “No.”
“The hangar,” I realized out loud. “The house is destroyed. Maybe he’s got a car or a panic room.”
The guys exchanged a look, and then Chance said, “Let’s go.”
All of us limping, we slid into the shadows of the hangar. The storm had begun to abate, tapering to an almost natural rainfall. It drummed on the metal roof, giving the space an oddly tympanic sound.
So many empty crates, from which the bodies of stolen women had risen up. I found myself jumping at each creak, each scuff of a shoe against the cement floor. I couldn’t see shit, and I hurt all over. More than anything, I wanted this to be finished.
And then I got my wish.
“Move, and she dies,” came a raspy voice.
Arms came around me from behind. I couldn’t see him, but Chance could because the nose of his rifle came up. Kel hesitated, knife in hand. I could see him weighing the likelihood of making the kill.
“I’m nearly spent,” the warlock continued. “But I have enough power left to take her with me when I go.”
Since he stole souls, I’d wind up bound to him in whatever hellish afterlife awaited. I tried not to whimper; I really did. I’m not altogether sure I succeeded. At that point I just focused on not pissing.
“Okay,” Chance said soothingly. “Let’s talk terms. What do you want?”
“Oh, it’s too late to parlay,” he rasped. “But I’ll take her with me as insurance.”
Like hell you will. I couldn’t feel a weapon; nothing pressed into my ribs or against my throat. He wasn’t terribly tall either because I could feel his breath on my hair.
In one motion I slammed my head back against his nose and stomped down hard on the top of his foot just as Chance muttered, “Just like Tuscaloosa, Corine.”
I dropped onto my face, hoping my ex was fast enough to save my soul.
The rifle report echoed like mad inside the hangar, but it did the job. A warlock who’s shot his wad dies just like anybody else. More blood spattered me.
Arcane energies crackled around us as the madman fell, reflected in the rumbling thunder. The earth shuddered as if it would split wide open beneath our feet. But as the warlock gasped his last, I thought I heard the rustle of leathery wings.
Kel reached me first, tugged me to my feet. I didn’t know what it meant when I accepted his help without hesitation. Christ. I stared at the dead guy on the ground. Chance had blown his face clean off.