The first floor landing was a narrow tunnel within the web. The door to apartment 1A was intact, but buried in white strands. The same solid wall of white sealed the way downstairs, and none of it was torn. No sign of Darin going that way. The door to 1B lay in a splintered wreck. Bloody marks stretched across the threshold, pointing into the apartment. Someone had been dragged inside.
I stepped into the hallway. A new scent tugged at me, a slightly sour, prickly odor that set off instinctual alarms in my head. Not good.
The apartment had the exact same layout as mine: a narrow hallway, opening into the kitchen on the right, the living room on the left, then the first bedroom, and then a short perpendicular hallway leading to the utility room and guest bathroom, and finally to the master bedroom with a bathroom en suite.
I moved in, nice and easy, slicing the pie around the corner: starting at the wall and moving at a ninety degree angle away from it, leaning slightly away from the wall to see the threat around the corner before it saw me. Jumping around the corners was very dramatic but would get your head blown off.
Kitchen—clear.
I moved into the living room.
On the left, by a coffee table, sat a large wicker basket full of yarn. Two long wooden needles stuck out of it at an angle. Next to the basket lay a severed human arm. The blood had pooled from it, soaking the beige wall-to-wall carpet in a dark red stain.
Pale skin. Not Darin Haffey. No, this was likely Mrs. Truman who lived in this apartment with her two cats. She liked to play bridge with her knitting club and collected yarn for “special” projects, with which she never did anything. Now her torn-off arm lay next to the basket with her knitting stash. No time to absorb and deal with it. I still had Darin to find.
I moved on. The sour prickly scent grew stronger.
Bedroom—clear. Bathroom—clear.
A huge hole gaped in the floor of the utility room. Something had smashed through the floor and tile from below.
I circled the hole, shotgun pointing down.
No movement. The floor below me looked clear.
A muffled noise cut through the quiet.
My ears twitched.
Woof! Woof!
Chief was still alive somewhere in there. I jumped into the hole, landed on the concrete floor of the basement, and moved away from the light streaming through the hole. No need to present a clear target.
Gloom filled the basement, dripping from the web into dark corners. The walls no longer existed. There was only web, white and endless.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Shapeshifter vision guaranteed that as long as there was some light, I wouldn’t bump into things.
Wet dark smears marred the concrete. Blood. I followed it.
Ahead the concrete split. A long fissure ran through the floor, at least three feet wide. The apartment building was already none too sturdy. The magic hated tall buildings and gnawed on them, pulverizing brick and mortar until the structure crashed down. The bigger the building, the faster it fell. Ours was too short and too small and so far we had escaped unscathed, but giant holes in the basement didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
A snorting noise came from inside the gap. I leaned over it. A whiff of dog-fur stink washed over me. Chief, you silly knucklehead.
I crouched by the hole. The bulldog squirmed below, snorting up a storm. He must’ve fallen into the fissure, and the drop was too sheer for him to jump out.
I put my shotgun on the ground and leaned in, grabbing Chief by the scruff of his neck. The bulldog weighed eighty pounds at least. What in the world were the Haffeys feeding him, small elephants? I yanked him out and jumped to my feet, shotgun in my hands. The whole thing took half a second.
Chief pressed against my leg. He was an Olde English Bulldogge, a throwback to the times when the English Bulldog was used for bull-baiting. A powerful, agile dog, Chief feared neither garbage trucks, nor stray dogs or horses. Yet here he was, rubbing against my calf, freaked out.
I took a second to bend down and pet his big head. It will be okay, boy. You’re with me now.
We started forward, moving slowly out of the first narrow room into a wider chamber. The web spanned the walls, creating hiding spots in the corners. Creepy as hell.
I carefully rounded the corner. At the far wall to my right, two furnaces sat side by side: the electric for the times when technology had the upper hand and the old-fashioned coal-burning monstrosity for use during the waves, when the magic robbed us of electric current. To the right of the coal furnace stood a large coal bin, a four-foot-high wooden enclosure filled with coal. On the coal, half-buried, lay Mr. Haffey.
Two creatures crawled on the concrete in front of the bin. About thirty inches tall and at least five feet long, they resembled huge wingless wasps, with a wide thorax-chest slimming down before flaring into thick abdomen. Stiff brown bristles covered their beige, nearly translucent bodies. Their heads, bigger than Chief’s massive skull, bore mandibles the size of garden shears. Their claws scraped the concrete as they moved—an eerie, nasty sound.
The left creature stopped and planted its six chitin-sheathed legs. Its tail end tilted up and a stream of viscous liquid shot out, adhering to the wall. The creature scrubbed its butt on the floor, anchoring the stream, and moved away as the secretions hardened into pale web.
Ew. Ew, ew, ew.
Mr. Haffey raised his head.
The creatures stopped, fixated on the movement.
I fired.
The shotgun barked, spitting thunder. The first steel slug punched into the right creature, cutting through the chitin like it was paper-thin plywood. The insect broke in half. Wet innards spilled onto the floor, like a bunch of swim bladders strung together. Without a pause, I turned and put a second shot into its buddy. Chief barked next to me, snapping his jaws. The creatures jerked and flailed, dragging their body chunks. The sour, spike-studded odor filled the air.
Darin Haffey sat up in the bin. “I see Kayla dragged you into this.”
I smiled at him. “No, sir, I just came to borrow a cup of sugar.”
“Heh.”
The web obscuring the rest of the room to my left tore.
“Incoming,” Mr. Haffey snapped, raising his firearm.
The first insect burst into the open. I fired. Boom!
Two more. Boom, boom!
Boom!
Boom, boom, boom!
The broken chitin bodies crashed into each other, making a pile of jerking legs and vomit-inducing entrails.
Boom, boom, boom! Boom!
An insect leaped over the pile, aiming for me. I swung the shotgun up. The impact exploded the creature’s gut, spraying foul liquid over me. Bug juice burned my lips. Ugh.
A smaller insect dashed toward me. Sharp mandibles sliced at my leg. You bastard! Chief rammed the creature, ripping into the thing before I could sink a slug into it.
Boom! Boom!
I kept firing. Finally the revolting flood stopped. I waited, listening, but no more skittering came. My calf burned. The pain didn’t bother me too much, but I’d be leaving a blood trail, which would make me ridiculously easy to track. I had five shots left in the AA-12. No way to know if I had killed them all or if this was the calm before the second wave of insects. I had to get Mr. Haffey out of here.
He was sitting in the coal bin, staring at the pile of insect parts. “Damn. That’s some shooting.”
“We aim to please,” I told him.
“You aim like you mean business.”
Funny thing, praise. I knew I was a great shot, but hearing it from the PAD veteran made me all warm and fuzzy anyway. “Have you seen Mrs. Truman?”
“I saw her body. They ripped her to pieces, the assholes.”
Poor Mrs. Truman. “Can you walk?”
“The fuckers got me in the leg. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig.”
That’s why he’d hidden in the coal. He’d buried his leg in the coal dust to smother the scent. Smart. “Time to go, then.”
“You listen to me.” Mr. Haffey put some cop hardness into his gruff voice. “There’s no way for you to get me out. Even if I lean on you, I’m two hundred and twenty pounds and my weight will just take you down with me. Leave me a gun, and you get out of here. Kayla must’ve called over to the station. I’ll hold them off until…”
I swung the shotgun over my shoulder and picked him up out of the coal. I wasn’t as strong as a normal shapeshifter, although I was faster and more agile, but a two-hundred-pound man still wasn’t a challenge.
I double-timed it to the hole, Chief at my heels. The bulldog had a death grip on a chitinous leg as long as he was. He had to lean his head back to carry it, but the look in his eyes said no army in the world could take it away.
“This is embarrassing,” Mr. Haffey informed me.
I winked at him. “What, Mrs. Haffey never carried you over the threshold on your wedding night?”
His eyes bulged. “That’s just ridiculous. What are you?”
I’d spent most of my life pretending to be human. But now the hyena was out of the bag, and sooner or later I had to start owning up to it. “A shapeshifter.”
“Wolf?”
“A bouda.” Well, not exactly. The truth was more complicated, but I wasn’t ready for those explanations yet.
We reached the hole. If I were a regular bouda, I could’ve jumped out of the hole with Mr. Haffey in my arms. But I knew my limits and that wasn’t happening. Throwing him out would injure his dignity beyond repair. “I’m going to lift you. Can you pull yourself up?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
I lowered him down, grabbed him by the hips, and heaved. Mr. Haffey pulled himself over the ledge and I got a real close look at that wound. It was a four-inch rip down his leg and touching his sweatpants left my palm bloody. He needed an ambulance yesterday.
I tossed Chief and his prize out of the hole, jumped, caught the edge, and hopped up.
“Will you at least carry me fireman-style?” Mr. Haffey huffed.
“No can do, sir. I’m trying to keep your blood from dripping out of your leg.”
He growled deep under his breath.
I picked him up and started out. “It will all be over soon.”
He guffawed.
