“Shit,” I said, and raised a hand for everyone to stop. I held it together, pushing the sickening sensations down deep, and looked to Dragon. Her eyes were veined in burning gold. Vigil’s pistols were in his hands.
“What?” he asked softly.
“Something … not from here,” Dragon said, “a predator, a big one.”
“Come on,” I said, running to the door. “It’s inside!”
“Ballard, wait!” Vigil shouted, charging up behind me. I kicked the door at the knob plate and felt it give, smashing open beneath my boot. My breathing was tight, angry, and not proper or healthy—I didn’t give a fuck—I threw open my Manipura chakra wide and gathered pure, annihilating force around me, like a cloak made of screaming suns. Vigil was beside me, covering me as best he could, the guns arcing, his senses tracking every mote of dust in the air. Dragon appeared at my other side. I could feel the heat roiling off her, streamers of ash smoke wreathing her face, her molten, alien eyes cutting through.
The smell hit me almost at once. Anyone who’s ever dealt with gut wounds knows it, fresh blood and opened bowel. There was music playing on the sound system in the den off to my left. It took me a second to recognize it. It was the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs.” Vigil tried to get in front of me to sweep and clear, but I’d have none of it. I stepped into the doorway of the den.
“Peggy!” I yelled.
“Damn it, Ballard,” Vigil muttered, coming in right behind me.
The moment my boot touched the carpet, it squished. I looked down to see bright, fresh blood pouring out of the saturated carpet. The den looked like it had been decorated by a couple of grandparents from Miami Beach. There were photos from vacations, a nautical themed compass-clock, a stuffed swordfish, a wide-screen TV that was on, but muted, showing what looked like some kind of celebrity dancing contest. A wide static shot, like something out of a Stanley Kubrick film: George Wilde sat on his plastic-wrapped sofa, both of his eyes ripped out of their sockets, leaving ragged, dark holes. His legs splayed stupidly, his checkered golf pants slowly soaking up the blood on the floor, the stains up to the level of his socks. His eyeballs were speared on little plastic cocktail swords, one in each of the large martini glasses on the table in front of the couch, clouds of diffused crimson swirling in the gin and vermouth.
Peggy, Elextra Dare, sweet, funny, honest, comical Peggy, was cut into dozens of pieces, chunks actually, scattered across the floor. Her intestines and organs were partly pureed and sprayed everywhere, as were blood-splattered scraps of paper. I knelt by one of her severed hands. It clutched a stained black-and-white still of Caern Ankou, Crystal Myth, captured from one of her films. I took the photo out of Peggy’s lonely, orphan hand. Something in the picture startled me, jarred a memory loose. I crumpled it up and stuffed it in my jeans pocket, almost without thinking. Of course, some part of me whispered.
“I’m sorry, Peggy,” I said. “I’m damn sorry, Nancy Drew.”
“It looks like they shredded the boxes of Caern’s effects too,” Dragon said, picking up part of a torn cardboard box. Shredded photos and notebook paper tumbled out, scattering pieces of Crystal across the floor to mingle with Elextra’s torn flesh and cooling blood. I heard a squeaking sound, like the rubber wheels on a shopping cart. My head snapped in the direction of the noise, toward an open door and a corridor just outside the den. An odd, boxy-shaped shadow shrunk as its source disappeared down the hall.
“Son of a bitch!” I cried and dove toward the open door. Vigil and Dragon shouted and cursed after me. I spun around the corner, almost slipping on the blood-wet floor, ready to hurl all my seething power, guided by my anger and guilt. I felt more than saw the space at the far end of the hallways twist and fold like origami as something that looked nothing like a human slipped between the folds of what was and wasn’t, and then it was gone. Dragon was beside me.
“What was it?” she asked.
“I have a notion, but it seems impossible,” I said. “They aren’t supposed to exist anymore.”
“One of the Hungry?” she said. “From the outside?”
“No,” I said. “It came from inside.”
There was a shout from the den, Vigil and some other voices. Dragon and I moved back to see what was going on. A man and a woman, the man in a work shirt and Harley-Davidson T-shirt, and the woman in a black pantsuit and white blouse, stood by the broken front door. Vigil was covering both of them with a gun.
“Stand down,” the woman said.
“Not going to happen,” Vigil said, his gaze as unswerving as his hands. A glowing, golden light shimmered into being around the left hands of both the man and the woman. Vigil began to squeeze his triggers.
“Vigil, wait!” I said. The knight held his fire as the glow diminished. A swirling, three-dimensional five-pointed star—a pentacle—hovered silently above the two strangers’ hands. I recognized it, it was the Brilliant Badge. Vigil recognized it too.
“Nightwise!” the man said. “By order of the powers that bind and protect, stand down.” Vigil holstered his guns, and looked to me and Dragon.
“Bridgette, Luke, what are you two doing here?” Dragon asked.
“Got orders, Lauren,” the woman, Bridgette, said. “We were told to find Ballard and bring him in, now. Didn’t realize we were going to be walking into a goddamned slaughterhouse, but then again, that is Ballard’s reputation.”
“Bring me in,” I said, “for fucking
