Chapter Nine
The lush trees and grass tumbled down to crackling weeds and gravel. A curb drew a hard line around nature. She was back on asphalt. The street wound in a hard carving ribbon down the side of the hill. Expensive homes shouldered along the edge.
“When my friend Kim was in town, we came up here, pretending to be rich lesbians at open houses.”
He chuckled. His stride was easy, limbs loose, but tension still strung guitar-string tight around the two of them. His shirt was too torn to wear, so he was bare chested, tattoos dancing like shadow puppets across his muscles. “I’d like to meet your friend.”
“Don’t get any ideas.”
“Not like that.” He gave her ass a light spank. “There’s only one for me.”
Despite the occasional streetlights, the night seemed darker. “Can I have friends? Normal people?”
“We do. They come and go through the years. If they’re good friends, or valuable roadies, they know the truth. Eventually we change, become something new on the outside and start over.”
“I’m not a rock star now. I can’t just reinvent myself as one in the next life.” As exhilarating as it was to be in the spotlight with him at the club, she’d never had that much aptitude for music.
“You’ll find your voice. If not music, then another art. No one can accuse you of lacking passions.” He paused in front of a low house. A For Sale sign from a very expensive real estate company swung on its post. “This’ll do.”
Most of the front was covered with lattice and ivy. No lights shone in the windows.
She had no idea what time it was, but the night had the quiet of the small hours. “Don’t think you’ll have much luck getting a Realtor at this hour.”
“I own enough houses I never see.” He disappeared around the side of the house. She pursued him into the shadows. “This’ll just be a rental.” A quick jab of his fist punched through a side door. He reached through the hole and undid the lock, swinging the door open.
They scattered the still air from the rooms. The house was minimally furnished, giving the impression of an invisible family living there, using no dishes nor ruffling any pillows on the couches.
She stood in the living room, staring out the floor to ceiling windows. The Hollywood hills tumbled away in dark waves, crashing into the lights of Los Angeles. Trevor was a dim reflection in the glass. He fiddled with a fancy radio on a metal shelf.
“Is there a frequency that’ll bring the bad guys to us?” she asked.
“Hell, yeah.” He found a station and turned up the volume. It was remarkably loud for such a small radio. “Rock and roll.”
A classic rock station pounded out hair metal from the eighties. She watched Trevor’s reflection approach. He picked up a chair on the way toward her. She barely had time to brace herself as he swung the chair behind him and threw it through the window. Glass blasted into the night, multiplying the lights of the city.
Fresh air rushed inside. Trevor took a deep breath. Feet braced, fists curled. “The real evil shows up before the cops. That’s always how it is.”
She prepared herself, making her hands heavy with stone.
The song continued on the radio. Trevor smiled a little. “This is me. On the bass.”
Her laugh couldn’t be held back. “You were the bass player for Lipstick Bang?”
“The pants were ridiculous, but the music was good if you really listen to it.”
“Please don’t make me listen to ‘Hacksaw Heartache.’”
“I wrote a fucking great riff for that one.”
The song on the radio ended. A late-night commercial for an auto dealership chattered out. More night air swept into the house. It seemed to move, alive. Something came closer in the darkness. It came for her.
She tried to keep her nerves from her voice. “So write me a song, Trevor Sand.”
“It starts with a ticking, like a clock. A drumstick on a closed hi-hat.” His boot tapped on a shard of the broken window glass in a steady rhythm. “Then the bass thunders in, driving forward, like those beasts outside.”
Yes, they were coming closer.
He continued. “The guitar slices up, power chords of pounding artillery. A lot of distortion, gritty metal. The shrapnel to tear those fuckers apart.”
For years he’d lived inside her ears, her head and her imagination. She knew his sound and could almost hear the evolving song now.
He didn’t sing, but spoke in a steady cadence:
Clawing up
From the nighttime
On the cusp
Of the fighting
Be the bitch
She’s the witch
Who’ll grind them down
...
Whatever was outside was almost upon them. She pulled the song around her like armor.
“It’s got to have a title,” she said.
“‘Terror on the Sunset Strip.’”
The air dragged out of the room through the broken window, quickly replaced by several Shrouds. Sleek minimalist furniture crushed under their feet, or shoved away by their clawed hands. How many of the beasts were there? Seven? Eight?
One was too damn many. She still remembered the burning pain the talons left along her shoulder. Just knowing they wanted that kind of pain and blood from her transformed the fear to anger.
Two of the beasts tried to drive between her and Trevor. That was the only way the monsters could win. Separate her from him. Finish them one at a time. Yes, she grew stronger, and the elements of the earth came easier to her. But the idea of fighting without Trevor gave her the chill of drowning in an arctic lake.
His quick action showed he wasn’t about to let that happen. Diving low, he grabbed one of the beast’s legs and pushed it into the other one. The whole mass of bodies tumbled toward her. She leaped, letting them pass beneath. Claws rose up to tear stripes in her jeans, but her flesh was not cut.
She landed at Trevor’s side. He punched hard into the Shrouds on the ground. Bone crunched. He reared back for another blow as a third beast attacked behind him.
She got to the monster before it could touch him. The creature was driven back by her swinging fists. It tried another lunging attack, and she kicked into the side of its leg. Black robes swirled around it as the monster hit the floor hard.
Trevor was still occupied by the two Shrouds behind her, but he called back, “Be the bitch.”
“Fucking gladly.”
The Shroud was a mess of limbs and cloth, so she didn’t know what exactly she was hitting as she pounded her fists down. An arm. Ribs. It lashed out at her with a backhand that slapped across her jaw. She staggered back but attacked again quickly so she wasn’t overwhelmed. Hating black eyes glared up at her. She aimed for the head. One blow, another. The beast was driven into the ground. It broke beneath her and the eyes finally closed.
Pain finally throbbed through her face and neck as she turned back toward Trevor. He stomped down hard on the second of the two Shrouds. It fell, lifeless as the other. Three more crowded his corner of the room. There were at least four collected on her side.
Still, Trevor managed a rakish smile. “Told you they’d come.”
The beasts hunched, heads nearly scraping the ceiling.
“You didn’t tell me how many,” she said.
“It just means they’re desperate.”
“Which makes them dangerous.”
The Shrouds stalked forward, shoulder to shoulder, like a black tidal wave of death. She and Trevor stood back to back.
He spoke over his shoulder, low. “All I have to do is remember that they’re here to hurt you.”
He rushed the three closest Shrouds. They obliged his attack, glassy teeth and talons ready. One raked its claws down his chest, but Trevor was hard as stone. He grabbed the creature’s hands and spun it into the other two. The beasts stumbled into a dining table, shattering the wood.
Trevor turned from them and hurried back to Misty, motioning her toward the four monsters on her side of the room. “They have to pay.” He picked up a broken table leg and handed it to her. “Knees.”
She swung it like a softball bat into the first Shroud, putting the weight of her stone limbs behind the wood. The monster bucked forward. Gnashing teeth just grazed past her cheek. Trevor wrapped his arms around the beast’s head and twisted hard. The crack of bone sounded like a gunshot. Dead, the Shroud collapsed half on her shoulder, knocking her down.
But she still had the table leg and swung it, one-handed, at the next Shroud. It dodged back, avoiding the blow. While it was distracted, Trevor threw a hard punch into its chest. She got to her feet and smashed the table leg into the monster’s head. The wood splintered. The beast staggered back.
Two more of the killers replaced it. And the three behind her and Trevor were collecting themselves. She glanced about for another weapon, but there was nothing close.
“Hand grenade?” she asked.
He sneered at the monsters. “We do it dirty.” Ducking under a Shroud’s slashing talons, he slipped behind it and leaped onto its back.
While he pinned its arms, she punched its ribs and chest. The beast gasped rotten breaths. Until Trevor wrapped a forearm around its neck. Then it was a quick snap and the monster was done.
The one next to it grabbed her by the shoulders and lunged its teeth at her throat. She lurched back, driving a knee up under its chin. Broken fangs rained around her. The beast loosened its grip and she punched hard into its throat. Again and again, imagining her fist a boulder.
Another set of hands took her by the shoulder. She turned and almost put a fist in Trevor’s face. He glanced from the dead Shroud at her feet to the three coming behind them. “Don’t be greedy. Others want to dance too.”
If this nightmare was to end, it had to be by her hands. She’d become used to the hate and rage of the Shrouds.
Let them burn themselves out
, she thought as she weaved away from a taloned attack. But they seemed tireless. At least she could counter them with calm. The same dead gaze she gave the executives who ranted about how their visions weren’t being met. Only this time, she got to fight back.
She caught the monster’s wrists and the two of them struggled for balance. A second one rushed her and Trevor tackled it away. The third was free to attack, though. Claws rushed toward her. She would not allow this thing to take her blood.
When the talons reached her flesh, her skin was hard as stone. The cloth of her shirt tore, but nothing else. The beast shrieked and reared back, showing rows and rows of jagged teeth. As it bit down toward her, Trevor slammed into its side. Instead of biting her, the Shroud’s teeth sank into the shoulder of the beast she held. Its howls were louder than the first.
Trevor grabbed the biting Shroud by the sides of its head and twisted it away. The one she held was still reeling. She released her grip and chopped her hand into the side of its neck. Trevor finished off his beast and dragged hers to the ground to complete the kill.
There were only two left, clear on the other side of the room. They seemed to hesitate. Her calm was sharp as a razor. Trevor’s rage seemed to pulse out of him in searing waves.
She spoke. “When I imagined the possibility of meeting you tonight, and made up fantasies of doing dirty things with you, it was nothing like this.”
“We’ll get to your fantasies. Every last one of them.” He took a step toward the last two Shrouds. “Then you’ll make up more and we’ll do those.”
One of the beasts jerked, its torso angling unnaturally to the side. Trevor paused, watching. The monster contorted again, hunching its shoulders high. Each quick twist came with the sounds of snapping bone and tearing cartilage. Soon the Shroud was on its hands and knees. Black robes covered its form as it continued to contort. Its breath hissed out. Then it growled, low and guttural. Even the Shroud next to it seemed afraid.
The body shook quickly, sloughing the robes. It was a dog. Huge, monstrous. At least four feet tall at the shoulder. Slick brown fur pulled tight over a jagged skull. The whole thing seemed to be covered in teeth, from the ridges over its eyes all down its thick back.
Trevor paused, taking it all in. “Agony hound. Haven’t seen one of those since the twelfth century.” He added, “AD.”
The hideous canine snarled. Drool foamed over rows of yellow teeth. Muscular legs twitched as the beast glared at her with black eyes.
Edging in front of her, Trevor was poised on the balls of his feet, ready. “The Philosophers think themselves above all this, the purest human thought. But they’re just as ugly as the monsters they send to kill us.”
The dog pinned its ears back and charged. Clawed paws scraped on the hardwood floor until it got enough traction to speed forward. Misty tried to make herself as hard as she could. Stone, diamond, iron. It seemed like this new monster could crash through anything.
Trevor took the brunt of the attack. He elbowed the beast’s head aside while clutching its massive neck. The two of them careened around the room, scattering what furniture was left. The pools of dissolving Shrouds rippled in the wake of Trevor and the dog. Misty searched for an opening to help, but they moved in a blur.
Digging his heels into the ground, Trevor tried to slow the dog. But the monster coiled to one side, then sprang into a wall. Trevor was smashed between the beast and the plaster. He let out a grunt and the wall buckled into a crater around him.
Free from Trevor’s grip, the dog charged at Misty.
The nose
, she thought. Maybe it was like a normal dog and hated to be hit on the nose. Except that part of this canine was covered with sharp teeth, poking up through its skin. There was nowhere to run, she had to try it.
The beast was upon her. She tried to jump to one side and chop down on its snout with her hand. The blow only glanced away. The dog didn’t even blink. It threw its head against her. The air rushed out of her lungs. Her feet barely touched the floor as she flew across the room and shouldered hard into a wall, then fell to the ground.
Breath burned back into her. She may not be damaged, but it was still a struggle just to get to her knees. The hound lunged toward her, then yelped as it jerked back. Trevor held it by its back leg, using all his leverage to drag the dog away from her. Maybe if he could hold it and she could attack. She staggered to her feet. Or if together—