Izzie felt like she’d had about enough of this. Just listening to him speak was like nails on a chalkboard.
“You are the loa, then?” Izzie said, cutting him off. “The thing down in the mine? From outside this world?”
He rolled his eyes in annoyance, and Izzie could see shadows swirling deep within.
“Obviously,” he said, his voice sounding less like Patrick’s with each passing moment. “Honestly, you’re as bad as the professor was. So, what do you say, ladies? This is a limited-time offer. Are you in, or are you out?”
The shadows that writhed and pulsated around his head grew larger as she watched, and the flames that she could see limning his body were strained and weak.
“Izzie?” Daphne breathed in a harsh whisper.
Izzie could feel Daphne’s mounting concern radiating from beside her, and knew that they were both thinking the same thing. The loa was consuming more of their friend with each passing moment. Even now she could see pinpricks of inky black bloomed on his cheeks and arms, as more and more of the loa was forced down into his body.
“Patrick, if there’s anything still left of you in there,” Izzie said, lowering the barrel of the shotgun, “just know that I’m sorry about this.”
Then she pulled the trigger and fired.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Patrick’s body collapsed to the floor, his right leg below the knee stippled by the impact of the silver shot and salt, blood already staining his shoe.
“Izzie!” Daphne shouted in surprise and alarm. Izzie didn’t waste time answering, but shifted her shotgun to her left hand, then knelt down and pressed the fingertips of her right to Patrick’s neck, checking for a pulse.
“The longer we waited, the less of Patrick there was to save,” Izzie said, relieved to see that his pulse was regular and steady. The shadows that had wreathed his head had dissipated, and the flames around him burned low but had not yet gone out. Izzie had gambled that a small amount of silver in his system would break the loa’s hold on him, as it had with the Ridden woman in the lobby. That much, at least, seemed to have worked out. “At least now there’s a chance he might pull through.”
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Daphne, and saw that she was radiating concern.
“Help me find something to use as a tourniquet,” Izzie said. “I don’t want him bleeding out before we can get him back to the . . .”
Before she could get another word out, she was interrupted by the sound of a door slamming open on the far side of the room. She looked up in time to see a dark figure emerge from the open doorway, with more crowding in from behind.
“Damn it,” Izzie spat.
The Ridden were pouring into the room, their skin so mottled with inky blots that they were practically walking shadows themselves. But with the ilbal in her system, Izzie could see the actual shadows that writhed around them, so thick that they seemed almost a solid mass of pulsating darkness, hanging heavily above the room like a malevolent cloud.
“Ke-ke-ke-ke.”
As Izzie jumped to her feet, Daphne stepped in front of her and fired off a round from her own shotgun. The silver shot and salt pelted into the Ridden in the front of the pack, and the shadows spiked and gyred as their bodies fell motionless to the floor. But still more Ridden surged from behind them, stepping over the bodies of the fallen, advancing on them.
Izzie moved to Daphne’s side, and fired into the inky mass. Then again, and again. The room echoed with the booming reverberations of each blast, but still the tide of Ridden surged closer and closer.
Patrick hovered in darkness, feeling himself slipping away. From far off he could hear a sound like distant thunder, booming again and again, but he was too tired to focus. It was time to rest now. Time to let go.
Though the floor was crowded with the motionless bodies of the Ridden, still more came pouring through the door, closing in around Izzie and Daphne.
“Izzie?” Daphne said as she slammed her last magazine into her shotgun. “I think we need to go now.”
Izzie scowled, swinging the barrel of her shotgun around and taking aim at a cluster of the Ridden who were approaching from the side. There was no way they could retreat, cover their backs, and carry Patrick out all at the same time. And since it would take both of them to lug his unconscious body, either they abandoned Patrick to the tender mercies of the Ridden, or they tried to carry him out together, leaving themselves open to an attack from the rear before they’d taken more than a few steps toward the door. Neither option was a very good one. But they needed to choose one before they were left without an option at all.
Izzie squeezed the trigger, then stopped short. The spent shell failed to eject, but was stuck in the ejection port between the bolt and the chamber. She couldn’t fire another round without clearing it first.
“Cover me!” she shouted at Daphne, and turned the shotgun so that the ejection port was facing the floor, working to knock the shell loose.
Daphne stepped around her to fire at the approaching Ridden from her side, and then swung
