grunted. “And the other. Dark hair. Want you both.” Fluid sprayed from Wendy’s ravaged chest cavity as Henry kept tearing her open. The stuff was a mix of dark red and oily black.
Paige drew a .45 pistol from the holster under her jacket, and the Latina beside her drew a smaller gun from a little pouch strapped around her waist. Both women pulled their triggers at the same time, sending their rounds into Henry’s thick, dirty hide.
Cole wanted to help, but programming video games hadn’t exactly put him into the habit of walking around with a gun strapped beneath his arm. Hoping that he might find another weapon somewhere in the car, he reached for the first possible hiding spot he could think of. As his fingers were fumbling with the latch of the glove compartment, another set of thin, bony fingers tapped on the window a few inches from his face. The bald man stared at him with a set of dark green eyes that showed the slightest hint of black threads wrapping around them from the inside of their sockets. He smiled widely to show just how much of Wendy’s blood was smeared upon his lips and teeth.
“You want to come out now, Skinner?” the man on the other side of Cole’s window asked. “Or should I come in there after you?”
Feeling every muscle in his body tense, Cole leaned toward the open driver’s door and shouted, “Paige! Let’s go!”
Paige had already emptied her clip into Henry and was replacing it with a fresh one. She fired another two rounds into Henry’s shoulder and side, only to see a few shreds of Henry’s clothing and the upper layers of skin disintegrate on impact. She might as well have been shooting at a side of thoroughly frozen beef.
If Henry even felt the bullets hitting him, he gave no sign. He flailed and convulsed on top of Wendy in a perverse set of motions, but wasn’t invading her in the most obvious way. Rather than commit such a recognizable sin, he was scraping at her chest with his jagged fingernails. His hands, slick with the blackened fluid of her blood, moved quickly enough to send a gory spray through the air. Henry was digging into the woman’s chest the way a dog would dig into the earth.
After Wendy’s ribs had been pulled apart, he struggled to widen the terrible breach. The deeper his hands scraped within her, the faster Henry’s arms flailed. As she lost the strength to hold her head up, Wendy let out a gasp and allowed her eyes to wander amid the stars above her.
“Get in the car,” Paige said to Racquel.
Once Henry had ripped away the last layer separating him from his prize, he stopped and gazed down into the hole he’d made, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. Although his face was vaguely human, the way it swayed loosely at the end of his neck made the sight completely alien. It only got worse when he reached into the savaged chest cavity and pulled out something that looked like a black eel. Dozens of thin black tendrils reached desperately into the blond woman, causing her to twitch and squirm as they fought to pull the rest of its slimy black mass into her. Unable to extract the black eel thing completely, Henry leaned down and sank his teeth into the biggest section. As soon as they punctured the filmy skin, a greasy liquid rushed down his chin and into his mouth.
Although she’d been ready to fight Paige a little while ago, Racquel accepted her invitation now by jumping into the backseat of the car.
As soon Racquel’s backside hit the upholstery, Paige jumped behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. “Watch yourself, Cole,” she said as she gunned the engine.
Cole looked through his window to find the bald man reaching out for him with hands that were like skeletal claws wrapped in smooth, pale leather gloves. When the car sped away, the man leaned forward and allowed his nails to scrape noisily against the glass. Straining to get one more look, Cole was able to see the figure casually wave back at him. “What in the
“That’s Misonyk!” Racquel shouted as she stabbed her finger toward Cole’s window. “That’s him. Oh my God, get out of here!”
“Who the
“Meeshonyick,” Racquel corrected. When she pronounced the name, it wrapped around her tongue and made her voice drop to an intimate purr.
“I don’t care who he is or how you say it!” Paige shouted. Hooking her thumb toward Henry, she snapped, “What was
But Racquel wasn’t able to answer any of the questions. Her face had lost its color, which made the black lines beneath her skin stand out even more. As if reacting to the chaos around her, the lines retracted beneath the part of her that was covered by her shirt.
Paige gripped the steering wheel in one hand and took a corner almost fast enough to put the rusted Cavalier onto two wheels. Ignoring Racquel’s swearing and Cole’s involuntary, somewhat girlish yelp, she handed her pistol to him and said, “There’s fresh clips in the glove compartment, Cole. Can you reload this?”
Desperate to rebuild the dignity he’d just lost, he grabbed the gun and flipped open the glove compartment. “Yeah. I can do that, no problem.”
“Good, because that thing with the appetite is coming after us.”
Both Cole and Racquel twisted around to look out the back window. Sure enough, Henry was bounding down the street behind them, closing his distance from the car several yards at a time.
“Start talking, Racquel,” Paige snapped. “What is that thing?”
Sitting upright and straightening her top and skirt, Racquel slid back into her street persona. She showed Paige a bratty scowl and asked, “Why should I tell you anything? Just who the hell are
“I’m the one taking over Gerald’s territory, and your friend should’ve known better than to feed in public. If that blond bitch hadn’t already been torn apart, you know damn well I’d be putting her down myself!”
Although Cole was completely lost in the conversation, he wasn’t about to turn his back on Racquel for long. Looking up every couple of seconds from what he was doing, he could see the Latina twitch at the sound of a solid impact behind the car. Racquel didn’t even look behind her to see what had hit the cement in the Chevy’s wake. As soon as Henry landed close enough for Cole to make out the slick black ooze hanging from his chin, the Chevy was thrown into a sharp turn and the engine roared toward the upper limit of its performance.
“That thing’s Henry,” Racquel said.
Struggling to get control after the maneuver she’d just performed, Paige asked, “What the hell is Henry?”
Racquel sank down into her seat. “I don’t know what he is, but most of us didn’t even think he was real. Wendy used to talk about him. She said…” As much as she tried to fight it, Racquel couldn’t keep herself from wincing before her words stuck in the back of her throat. She swung her hand toward the back window and then pulled it back again when Henry landed behind the speeding car and took a swipe at the Chevy’s bumper. Calcified nails screeched against rusted metal before the car was once again out of his reach.
Cole held the gun out toward Paige and said, “Here you go. I think it’s ready.”
“Good,” Paige replied as she twisted the wheel to take another corner, scattering the group of kids who had been standing there. “Now do me a favor and shoot that thing.”
Cole rolled down the window and stuck his arm out before pulling it back in again. He shifted in his seat and started to aim out the window but caught a very surprised glance from a bar they were driving past. He tried shifting again, nearly dropped the gun, then fell back into his seat with a frustrated grunt. As much as he wanted to lean out the window and fire away, he grudgingly had to admit it looked a hell of a lot easier in the movies.
“So, what about Wendy?” Paige asked as she looked at Racquel in the rearview mirror.
Racquel pulled in a breath to steady herself. “She’s been listening to Misonyk and preaching all his bullshit to me and anyone else who’d listen.”
“Okay, tell me about this Misonyk,” Paige said.
“Gerald knew about him,” Racquel replied. Didn’t he tell you?”
“No. What’s Misonyk been spreading around? And will you shoot already, Cole? That thing already took my bumper off!”
“I’m trying! I don’t do this every day, you know!”
“Fine,” Paige snarled. “Both of you hold on.” With that, she blew past an expensive looking SUV and gunned her engine down a long stretch of road. She had to blaze through a few red lights along the way, but it was late enough at night and in a bad enough neighborhood for there to be a minimum of other cars around. The only police car Cole spotted was parked outside a Jack in the Box four blocks ago.
Paige stared at the road intently, pulled the wheel to the left and slammed on her brakes. She only needed to
