Dweller on the Threshold (9 page)

“Why don’t you use your magic?” It slurred, claws ineffectual against the apparitions crowding it.

“Taunts don’t work well with me.”

It stopped, confusion twisting what features it had. I used that second to glance down the hall a few yards to where Nikolos had skewered his demon into the floor. Blood dripped from various wounds on his body and new ones formed as the thing swiped claws across his back.

I winced. My attention whipped back to my own demon. It lunged. I used its momentum to grab it and send it flying over my shoulder. It hit that damned gurney. The bed collapsed in squeal of twisted metal. The demon released another creepy laugh as it jumped toward me again. I hopped to the side. Stuck out my foot. I missed. It reached down and slammed its claws through my jeans and into my thigh.

I cried out and kicked with my free leg to shove the demon off me. Fred and Phro hit it with another gust of wind and its claws were ripped out of my leg, shredding my jeans—taking skin and muscle with them. Hot tears burned my eyes as I screamed. I knew my guides wouldn’t have the energy to hit the demon again.

I had to take it out. Now.

The stairwell door behind the demon crashed open. White-coated people ran into the hallway. Several security guards and two cops followed. “Stop!” One of the heavy, red-faced cops aimed his gun.

The demon turned. Grinned. The cop fired. Missed.

The sound was like an echoing crack inside a canon. I winced, shook my head to try to stop my ears from ringing. “Get back!”

The cops ignored me, one of them firing again. The other one just stood there, mouth open.

The heavy one was a lousy shot. This bullet hit the wall two feet away from the demon. New screams added to the cries of the wounded. People dropped to the floor. The demon jumped, extended its claws and took the cop’s head clean off.

I choked, horrified, then shrieked in fury. I leaped onto the demon’s back and tried to shove my blade into its ear. I hit skull. The impact rattled up my arm.

The demon spun and flung me off like I weighed nothing. I crashed onto the floor hard before scrambling back to my feet.

It turned back to the group who’d come through the door. It flung out an arm. A female doctor screamed. Long claws impaled, lifting her into the air. The woman released a gurgled cry, her legs flailing as the demon threw her at me.

Catching her knocked the air from my chest again. “Sorry,” I breathed as I dropped the woman. I didn’t have time for finesse.
Had to stop it before it skewered someone else
. I jumped over her and ran at the demon again. I swiped the knife as fast as I could, my blade hitting chest, stomach—slicing into its arms. The thing growled at me as thick, gelatinous fluid leaked from different wounds.

I stabbed at its face and missed the eye. My knife glanced off a hard cheekbone. The jolt rattled up my arm. “You are one hard-headed son of a bitch!”

It slammed the back of its hand into the side of my head. I saw stars.

“Shit! Shit!” I stepped back, rapidly blinking the world into focus. Blood dripped into my eyes. I kept swinging the dagger, holding onto it with a death grip. With my control at an all-time low, the ghosts around me began to grow in number. They tried to attack the demon but had little effect since the newly dead didn’t have the ability to gather much force. However, the sheer number of them helped distract it.

I bent over to catch my breath without taking my gaze off the monster. The security guards and the remaining two doctors were now on the floor. Not hurt. Playing dead, maybe? I didn’t blame them. I watched the demon. It watched me.

Hell, it was toying with me
. I should be dead but it was having too good of a time playing.

This pissed me off.

I growled and dove for its feet. Twisting the dagger at the last moment, I severed its Achilles tendon. I hoped to Goddess it had an Achilles tendon.

It had something similar
. Screaming in pain, the thing jumped back from me and lost its balance. I scrambled to my feet. Lunged after it. That’s when I heard Blythe yelling something strange from behind me. She ran past. Sloshed a cup of liquid into the demon’s face.

“You idiot!” I reached for her. “Get away from it! You aren’t strong enough to—”

I broke off as she screeched out something foreign. At least I thought it was a language. It didn’t seem to have any vowels. I grabbed her but she was all slippery. I smelled oily, stale water. Castor oil.
Blythe had thrown castor oil at the demon
. I tried to hold onto the woman. The demon lurched to its knees, and the strangest expression crossed its face as it looked at the witch. Blythe yelled something again. It blinked.

Behind it, Nikolos used both hands to slam a knife in his demon’s eye. He rose, tall and furious. His boots thudded loud in the sudden quiet of the hospital’s hallway as he ran toward us. He had to leap over the wounded.

And the dead.

I felt the sudden slam of newly dead souls surround me, grief blackening the edges of my vision.
Not now
. I couldn’t let them zap my strength now!

I let go of Blythe and rushed the demon. I reached it as Nikolos did. My dagger slammed into its eye. His scraped noisily against bony skull as he pierced the ear. I snarled, aimed a glare at Nikolos, and prepared to tell him I wanted the damned kill. But when our eyes met, power smashed into me. Apparently it hit him, too. We both let go and staggered back. I winced when my sore spine hit the wall, but I couldn’t look away from him. Couldn’t help but feel that he could suddenly see deep into my soul. See into a place where I wanted no one to look.

My hands had remained steady in the fight. Now they shook. I ripped my gaze away as the demon shuddered. The light went off in the eyes as its body bubbled, squished and made this slurping, wet slapping noise as it melted to mush.

“Oh, what the…jeez.” Nauseated, I turned away, moved to the wall and pressed my forehead to the cool surface. Noise in the hallway increased as the wounded realized the fight was over. People scurried in from every available doorway—some yelling in horror, some crying. My belly cramped and I swallowed several times. I was
not
going to throw up in front of Nikolos. My chest heaved as I struggled to get a handle on my breathing. And my control.

I felt his heat as he came to stand close—was hyper-sensitive to the brush of his hot breath over my cheek. I closed my eyes. He had blood and other things I didn’t want to guess at splattered all over him. I knew I looked the same. “There will be more of those, right?”

“Yes.” He touched my shoulder. “They’ll be stronger the next time.”

I gagged over the metallic taste of blood and the fetid scent of death riding the air. Opening my eyes, I turned to meet his gaze. “The one you fought…was it wearing…was that a person?”

He nodded.

“One of the coma people?”

I could see the answer in his eyes. My knees turned to jelly. He reached out to hold me up. Fear, infinitely more painful than the deep cuts in my arm and leg, stole my ability to stand, and I didn’t care that this man saw the sudden weakness. All I could think about was Elsa. My sister lay helpless on that fucking bed waiting for one of those things to take her body.

“No. Oh hell no.” I straightened my legs and pushed away from him. “I will not let anything near her. I won’t. Tell me how to stop this. Now.” I narrowed my eyes. “You do know what’s going on, don’t you?”

“Yes.” He stared at me. I could see my reflection in his eyes. The look on my face was one of fury. Of determination. I didn’t flinch when he pulled sweaty strands of hair off my cheek or when he smoothed them behind my ear. “Your sister is vulnerable no matter where we put her. They don’t come from this realm and it takes some time for them to work through. We need to get these wounds taken care of and feed you. You’ve lost a lot of blood. Then we’ll work on finding a way to stop them.”

I knew I was coming down from the fight adrenaline. My protective mental shields were also down from exhaustion and the shocked souls around me ate into my chest. The grief
ate
at me
.
I needed food. I didn’t know how Nikolos knew I did—and well, right now I didn’t really care. I nodded and turned, looked at the damage all over again.

Fred and Phro stood next to Frida. From his more ghostly than before look, I guessed he’d added his energy to theirs. That would explain the force of the demon hitting the wall. He was an experienced spirit. I smiled my thanks. He tipped his head in reply.

I didn’t see Blythe and started to panic until I noticed the little woman kneeling over the doctor the demon had thrown at me earlier. Something shiny sparkled around Blythe’s fingers as she moved them over wounds that were obviously fatal. It suddenly felt as if a heavy weight draped over my shoulders.
I should have moved faster
.
If I’d only moved faster
. Gotten to the demon before it did all this damage.

Nikolos touched my back. “There will be many more dead before this is over. Accept it now or go insane.”

I knew he told the truth. Understanding and accepting were two very different animals, though. Walking to Blythe, I heard her murmuring softly to the doctor. The woman’s eyes were locked on Blythe’s.

I knelt—my back, leg and arm aching so badly the pain made me sick. I placed my hand on Blythe’s shoulders. Blue eyes, shiny with tears, lifted to mine. “Thank you,” I said.

Blythe managed a small smile. “I think maybe we’re supposed to work together.”

“I think you may be right.” I slowly stood. Another doctor yelled, and within seconds people surrounded the fallen woman.

I stepped back and tugged Blythe with me. “Hey, I think I get why you threw the castor oil on it—that stuff repels demons, right?”

She nodded, her eyes on the activity in front of them.

“But what were you yelling?”

Blythe shrugged. “A mix of Slovak and Czech—mostly gibberish because I couldn’t remember the right words. I do need to work on that as it may come in handy. But I’m pretty sure I got some of them right.”

We were quiet as the doctor was wheeled away. It was slow going since the hall was still so littered with people.

“What did you yell?”

She took a deep breath and raised trembling fingers to pull at the neck of her blood soaked dress. She blinked, looking pale. Shocky. “Did you know that demons are easily confused? You can yell anything and just switch the words around…or you can just give it a confusing order. I just told it to chew on its hand—something like that.”

“Oh. Well, it worked.” I turned to find Nikolos reaching for me. I lifted an eyebrow. He sure liked to touch.

The corner of his mouth quirked. “I’ll take you to find food while the witch does her larvae spell.”

“How about I
go with
you to find it?”

He inclined his head. “As you wish.”

I’d been transported into the Princess Bride. The extra gory version.

Blythe hurried toward Elsa’s room. I sent my guides with her and forced myself to follow Nikolos into the stairwell. People filled every available space. The scent of their sweat and fear blocked my throat. I swallowed heavily. The sound of police sirens was loud in spite of the crowd. “You know what? I’ll get food later. We need to hurry the witch so we can get out of here.”

He nodded, chuckling softly as we retraced our steps.

“What could possibly be funny right now?”
 

“Your witch did yell a lot of nothing. Confused the hell out of the thing. But that last part did the trick.”

“When she told it to chew its hand?”

“No. That’s not what she said.” His laugh was deep and it vibrated through my chest like low, rumbling thunder.

“What did she say then?”

“She told it to lick its own ass.”

Chapter Five

“The demons come through the bodies.” It finally hit me.

Stopping in the middle of the parking lot, I took a deep breath of rapidly cooling night air and rested my palm on a light pole. The metal was still warm from the sun and though it hurt my arm, I wrapped both hands around it as if to anchor myself to earth. I stared for a moment up at the full moon—a bright, beautiful beacon of reality in a sooty black sky. Cold pain tightened my chest—a combination of grief, shock and yeah, terror. I’d been tracking the monsters for more than ten years—had started as a teenager—and I’d never, ever, come across anything like what I’d fought in that blood-spattered hallway. I’d never seen so many people slaughtered without hesitation or thought, with such casual disregard.

And,
oh Goddess
, I had never stood ankle-deep in ravaged remains with the metallic tang of death clogging my throat.

The wounds in my arm and leg should have been enough of a reality check, but they burned funny—a creepy sort of scratching fire that felt as if live things were eating into my muscles. Blythe had swiped some towels from the hospital and wrapped my injuries—Elsa’s room still stinking of burned juniper and coriander from her larvae spell. We’d had to move quickly to avoid the cops and media. Neither Nikolos nor I could fade into a crowd easily.

I needed more than towels. And I really, really hoped that faint smell of cooking flesh wasn’t coming from underneath the terrycloth.