Old wounds.
It was me, minus the help of the spirits.
A spirit-bird hopped around, not quite real, a sketch brought to life. It cocked its head, looking down at me.
“Didn’t like that either?” I asked. It was my voice, reedy and weak.
It cocked its head the other way.
“You know I’m your best bet,” I said. “You want to be big? You want to grow up to be a badass spirit? Hitch a ride.”
One by one, they found the openings. The parts of me where the branches stuck out and there was no more flesh beneath. They wormed their way inside.
My body returned to normal piece by piece. Three fingers, then the forearm, then the shoulder, and finally the rest of my arm. All of me, coming back bit by bit. The wood grew back, the tattoos finding purchase on my skin.
I pulled myself to my feet.
The Drains are reminding me that they can take me back.
Or something else? Outside interference?
The bastard mountain-man had my sword.
I returned upstairs, bypassing the second floor.
The little toothy bastards were climbing over the barricade – a dresser and two chairs piled against the stairs. Eva was dealing with them much as I had. Almost effortlessly.
“There’s a big-” I started.
Eva reacted instantly, slamming her foot in my direction before she’d even turned to see what I was doing.
Sending me back into the great nothingness beneath the basement.
This time, it took nearly a minute for me to surface.
Leaving me lying in the reflection in the basement, the spirits having largely abandoned ship yet again.
“Note to self,” I muttered. “Don’t spook the witch hunter.”
The birds stared at me. One fluttered up to the highest point of my head, perching in my hair.
“We’re all in this together, guys,” I said.
They returned to the interior of my body.
Once again, I pulled myself together.
Swearing under my breath, I headed back upstairs.
Alexis, Ty, Peter, and Callan were all at the base of the barricade, trying to hold it there, while Eva was perched on top, a curtain rod with a broken end held in one hand, spearing down with short, rapid strikes, machete in the other hand, held high. She raised one foot as a large hand swiped at her, the Hyena’s blade narrowly missing her leg.
I looked to the landing of the stairs, but there was too much foot traffic for the ground to serve.
The wall… the press of bodies had smeared much of the blood away.
But not all.
I emerged, grabbing one of the weedy little tooth-and-claw creatures by the throat, and struggled forward, shaking off others as they scratched and bit me. My focus was on the mountain man.
Still holding the toothy motherfucker, I slammed it mouth-first into the space where the mountain man’s thigh met his buttock. Teeth sank into muscle that stood out like steel cable, and the force of the hit dislocated the little guy’s jaw.
The rest were clustering on me, each no more than twenty pounds, but there were enough of them that I was weighed down.
I let myself fall, moving out to the nearest reflection. The creatures fell away as I disappeared.
I was back in the hallway.
The big guy had eased up, and the group was slowly gaining ground, Eva standing on the railing with one foot, her hand braced against the wall. Suspended above the staircase, she stabbed down at the big guy, and the curtain rod came back with one end slick with blood. I could hear the mountain man roar.
She dropped back onto the toppled dresser to add her weight to it. The mountain man’s hand settled on the edge as he tried to find leverage, and she chopped at it with the machete. Nothing severed, but his hand disappeared.
The entire dresser jerked as the Other bodily threw himself into it.
A drawer slid open, long spidery fingers tipped with horrendous looking fingernails grasping the edges as one of the bald toothy things began to worm its way through, entering by some hole in the back face of the dresser and passing through the half-open drawer, between Ty and Tiff.
Ty tried to shut the drawer, but all of his focus was on maintaining traction on the wet floor, one foot on the doorframe of the bathroom, the other on the ground, shoulders and one hand against the dresser. He didn’t have the leverage.
The little thing came out, teeth gnashing, and Ty opted to roll away rather than get bitten.
Without Ty’s efforts helping to keep the dresser in place, the mountain man managed to push it back. Eva hopped back to the floor to try to cover for Ty’s portion, but momentum was momentum, and the wet floor let it coast.
Around the time everyone collectively abandoned their efforts to hold the barricade together, the mountain man grabbed the dresser with one hand and hurled it. It flipped end over end, clipping Tiff and Eva both, before crashing onto the floor in two pieces.
A dozen of the spindly little tooth freaks, and a trio of other Others were in the stairwell now, the mountain man in the lead, blood pouring from one destroyed eyeball, and a gash on his cheekbone. The trio were composed of a nigh-identical brother-sister pair, dark haired, expressions grim, glaring, as they ascended the stairs. Teenagers, he wore shorts, she wore a skirt, her polo shirt had lace at the collar and sleeves, her hair long at the back, but they were otherwise the same. Same severe bangs, same expression, same exact rocking of their bodies from side to side as they picked their way around the spindly things and made their way up the stairs.
The one behind them was a robot, it seemed. I didn’t get a very good look.
Callan ducked into the room with Roxanne, Kathy, and Christoff. I could see Christoff peering through the ajar door before the mountain man stepped forward. Callan appeared, a flash of his face, and the door slammed.
“Eva,” Ty said.
She glanced back. Ty held out a set of nails with what looked like gift tags attached to the ends with string. I couldn’t make out the letters on the tags, but they didn’t look like English.
“They work?” she asked.
“Probably not.”
All the same, she flipped the machete over, gripped the handle in her teeth, and took the nails. The tags fluttered.
“Confined quarters,” Alexis commented. She was supporting Tiff, who’d toppled when the dresser went flying. “Hard to fight.”
The big guy moved, swinging the Hyena, which looked ludicrously small in his grip. Eva blocked it with the curtain rod, and the rod lost in the exchange.
He lunged, swinging his fist with the Hyena clasped within it, and Eva tossed the remains of the curtain rod down.
The mountain man’s foot came down right on the rod and flattened the end. Solid metal, by the look of it.
“Harder for him than for me,” Eva commented, as she moved the machete to her free hand. “Don’t presume to know anything about fighting.”
“Whatever,” Alexis said. “It doesn’t look like you’re winning, and our escape route is behind him.”
“Or through the window,” Eva said. “Sloped roof, snow…”
“I put a diagram on the window,” Ty said. “There’s stuff out there.”
“Of course there is,” Eva said. “But maybe that stuff is easier to deal with than this stuff.”
“The diagram, that the crucified bat thing?” I asked.
“Yeah. I figured like repels like, so… what better to scare off the gargoyle-bats than a dead gargoyle bat? I was improvising.”