He abandoned the black-eyed ghoul he had been wearing, letting go of the creature’s mind and slipping back into the river that all the ghouls were connected to. He floated, spying visions and sounds and smells.
There, another one. It was alone, perched on a rooftop overlooking the center of Gallant. A lookout. He seized its mind, pushing it to the edge of its own existence and assuming command. It resisted, but not for long. Never for long. The black eyes were mere husks, as weak mentally as they were physically.
A horde stormed down the street below him, passing him by. They were searching for him, trying to locate the creature he had jumped into, unaware he was above them, watching—
Hands grabbed both his arms from behind, turned him against his will, and a fist punched through his chest.
Twin blue orbs pulsed in the darkness, surrounded by other blue eyes.
“There you are,” the creature said, its voice dripping with triumphant glee. It leaned forward while others held him in place. “Tell me, where are you hiding?”
Razor thin lips formed snakelike smiles.
“You’re close!”
He pulled back, back…
He opened his eyes. His real eyes.
“There you are,” the voices said inside his head. More than one, a dozen echoes overlapping, and as loud as if they were standing right next to him. “You didn’t think you could hide forever, did you?”
Footsteps converging on his location. Dozens? Hundreds?
“Take him!” the voices shouted. “Take him now!”
They poured in through the windows and doors, and some battered their way through the thin walls. He abandoned the darkened corner, legs that had been still for hours coming alive and pistoning under him. There was no hiding now. They knew where he was. They all knew where he was.
The black eyes were weak, slow things, and he snatched up a piece of metal from the floor and smashed his way through them, and when the floor turned into a writhing black tide of pruned flesh, he went into the air. Hands groped at him, fingers scraped against his arms and legs and sought out desperate pieces of the trench coat that fluttered behind him.
He crashed through the window and into the street. The gray concrete highway gleamed to his left, the city of Gallant to his right. He was close enough that he could smell the rest of the ghoul population moving toward him as one, coming out of the buildings. All the buildings.
Hundreds. Thousands.
He flung himself onto a car and used it to grab a windowsill and crawled up the side of a bakery. He hadn’t had the chance to swing up onto the ledge before there were three — four—five—throwing themselves at him.
“He’s ours!” the voices echoed inside his head. “There’s no escape for him! Not tonight!”
He shattered a ghoul’s skull with his fist and threw two more off the rooftop. The fourth and fifth attempted to wrestle him to the gravel floor by diving at his legs, but he caved in one’s chest with his foot, then twisted and decapitated the other one with the edge of his hand.
And he was free again, but not for long. The structure trembled as they raced up the stairs below him while more crawled up all four sides of the building, just as many plummeting back down to the street below when they lost their grip.
The wind whipped at his face as he ran, then leaped, across two rooftops. He sprung back up to his feet as they pulled themselves over the ledges around him. He raced past them and sailed into the air again—
Pop-pop-pop.
The sound of gunfire coming from nearby forced him to twist his body in mid jump until he was moving in that direction.
“Something’s wrong,” the blue eyes said inside his head.
Was it a trick? Another trap? No, not this time. There was no need because they had him where they wanted him. Here, now, within their grasp.
Pop-pop-pop.
He tasted blood in the air. Not tainted blood like the kind that flowed through his veins. No, fresh blood. Human blood.
Pop-pop-pop.
He leaped across rooftops and raced toward the source of gunfire even as they surged around him, clamoring against one another to be the first to reach him. But he was faster and he leaped when he had to, dodged when he could, and bashed a path through flesh and bones when it was the only way left to him.
The night was thick with their number. Ghouls. Black eyes. They had secured all the rooftops as far as he could see, and he was forced to go down. He plummeted, grabbed a windowsill, swung left, then right, and finally caved in the roof of a parked vehicle on the sidewalk.
And they were on him almost immediately. A wave of black flesh slamming into his body from all sides, bony fingers grabbing at the fabric of the trench coat while dead black eyes pooled around him. Jagged yellow and white and brown teeth bit into his arms and legs and neck in an attempt to slow him down, but still he fought.
He couldn’t let them stop him. Not here, not now. He fought, for Danny and Gaby. For Lara. For her future.
But there were so many, and they forced him to the cold, hard pavement. Blood gushed from fresh wounds and his legs weakened as they climbed over him, then over each other, their weight doubling, then tripling. And still they grew, until it became impossible to throw them off with mere physical strength.
Then something new and unexpected rippled across the sky, sending a ferocious gust of wind across him and the swarm that blanketed him. It froze them in place for a split second — which turned into a full second, then a full two seconds — as the noise grew and grew until it became unmistakable.
“No!” the voices screamed inside his head.
He managed to look up through a small sliver in the forest of wrinkled flesh just as the belly of the mechanical beast flashed overhead and its roar filled the world, shaking him — and the creatures around him — to the bones.
“No, no, no!”
As he watched it pass overhead, he was reminded that there were still things out there to fear that didn’t sleep in the shadows and hide from the sunlight.
Then the beast bellowed, and he might have smiled.
Brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!
Book Two
On a Pale Horse
10
Lara
“I don’t want bloodshed,” the man said. Lara detected what might have been a Southern accent, but those things were tricky over the radio, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure. “We can resolve this in a way that avoids that. No one’s been hurt yet, and I’d rather keep it that way. ”
You should have thought of that before you sent them over here, she wanted to say, but resisted.
“Bottom line,” the man continued, “we can still come to an arrangement. Nothing’s happened yet that makes that impossible.”
“What if we had opened fire on your men?” she asked.
“But you didn’t.”
“I could have.”
“But you didn’t,” the man insisted. “That’s all that matters, and all I want to focus on right now.”
She exchanged a look with Carly, who was standing next to her with her hands on her hips, and then with Blaine at his usual spot behind the helm. Morning sunlight slowly filled up the bridge of the Trident, pushing away last night’s chill. Unlike the last time she was in the room, all three of them were armed and rifles leaned against the walls within easy reach.