“Stay behind me.”
He nodded.
I slipped out of the car, brought my gun up, and walked to the door, forcing myself to pay attention to the bodies. The guards were dead. Very dead, beyond all help. Someone had taken their weapons. The odor of blood hit me, salty and awful, mixing with something else, an odd stench that reminded me vaguely of ozone during a storm. I swallowed down bile and stepped over the corpses into the brightly lit foyer.
Blood marred the expensive marble tile, bright red against the soft cream hues. A few long, fading out smudges—someone had slipped frantically in his own blood, trying to get away. A bloodstain with feathered edges, as if someone had pressed a paintbrush against the floor—someone’s bleeding head met the marble tile. A long swipe—whoever had fallen here was dragged into the living room and he or she had tried to grab on to the floor with bloody hands. Please don’t let it be Rynda or the kids. Please.
I padded along the wall, avoiding the bloodstains. I was so glad I dumped my pumps for the sneakers. Best decision of the night.
The vast living room opened in front of me. The overturned Christmas tree lay on the floor, pointing like an arrow toward the center of the room, where, twenty feet away, two creatures crouched on their haunches over another dead body splayed out on the Oriental rug. About five feet long from head to the base of a prehensile tail, they had the build of a sleek greyhound, but there was something simian in the way they sat on their haunches, picking at the body of a young man with their black paw-hands armed with long white claws. Their stiff, greyish-blue fur stood straight up like bristles on a boar. Their heads, round and crowned by bat ears, swiveled toward me.
The man they were eating looked barely twenty. Death had frozen his face into an expression of utter horror. He had known he was about to die. He probably felt it as they ate him alive. Anger swept through me. They wouldn’t be eating anyone else.
Summoned creatures or not, they looked similar enough to our animals, which meant their eyes were close to their brain. Brain was an excellent target.
I fired.
The gun roared. The first shot tore into the left creature’s muzzle. Missed. The second took it in the right top eye. The bat-ape stumbled back.
I turned and fired at its friend. Bullets punched into the second beast’s face, ripping through bone and cartilage.
Two shots.
Three.
The bat-ape collapsed facedown.
The first beast jerked on the floor, gripped in spasms, painting its own blood onto the rug. I carefully stepped over the body and put another bullet into the back of its skull just in case it decided to get up. Six rounds gone.
Cornelius touched my shoulder, pointed to the right, toward the kitchen, and held up one finger.
Something thumped above us. Echoes of faint voices floated down.
If we went up the stairs and the thing in the kitchen decided to follow, we’d be in a lot worse shape. Being attacked from the rear wasn’t fun.
I moved into the kitchen, slicing the corner. A dark shape leaped at me from the kitchen island. I squeezed off a single shot before the bat-ape landed on me. My back slammed against the floor. All of the air rushed out of my lungs. The beast tore into my shoulders, pinning me down. The awful mouth gaped open, the needle teeth like the jaws of a trap about to enclose my face. The odor of ozone washed over me.
Something smashed into the beast, knocking it off me. I rolled on my side. Cornelius stepped over me and bashed the beast’s head with a frying pan.
The bat-ape tried to rise.
He bashed it again, then again, bringing the frying pan down like a hammer. Blood splattered the walls. The bat-ape shook and lay still.
Cornelius straightened. I got off the floor and looked at the mangled corpse. Cornelius hefted his frying pan, pondering the body.
“But you don’t like guns?” I whispered.
“This is different,” he whispered back. “This is how an animal kills. This feels more real.”
My new employee was a closet savage, but I wasn’t going to complain. I would take this surprise savagery and be grateful. “Thank you.”
He gave me a solemn nod.
I left the kitchen and crept up the stairs. Cornelius followed me.
“Any luck with making friends?” I whispered.
“No. Their minds are very primitive. It’s like trying to bond with an insect. All I feel is hunger.”
Ahead, the staircase turned in a grand sweep. A low eerie growl came from deeper within the house. All of the tiny hairs on the nape of my neck rose. A voice floated back, urgent, female, but too low to make out the words. Rynda.
We rounded the bend and I moved deeper into the house toward the sound. I glanced at Cornelius. He held up four fingers. Four creatures. I only had four bullets left in this magazine. I’d need a lot of firepower in a hurry. I ejected the magazine, slid it into my pocket, and put my spare in. Thirteen shots, twelve in the magazine and one in the chamber. I’d have to make them count.
A short hallway turned to the left, bringing me into the second living room.
“. . . bleeding out. There is no need for violence,” Rynda said. Her voice trembled.
“Give me the file and all your problems go away.” Male voice.
“How do I know that you won’t kill us?”
“You’re playing for time, thinking that whoever fired that gun downstairs is going to rescue you.”
I pressed my back against the wall by the doorway. I couldn’t see into the room, and once I got in there, I’d have to act fast.
“I’ve been doing this a very long time. Nobody is coming to save you, Rynda.”
Cornelius closed his eyes and opened them slowly. They were very blue and luminescent, almost catlike.
“Your knight in shining armor is clutching at his guts on your floor. Apparently, you don’t care.”
A man moaned.
“Stop it!” Rynda yelled.
“Keep going the way you’re going and I’ll make you watch as they eat him alive.”
“Leave him alone!”
“Fine. Pick a kid. I’ll do one of them instead.”
“You wouldn’t dare, Vincent.”
“You know perfectly well that I would. Just give me the fucking file. This mother’s last stand is getting tiresome. Here, I’ll pick for you. That one.”
“Mom!” a little girl screamed.
I lunged into the room. Someone pressed pause on the world, the room crystal clear in a split second. On the left, a dark-haired man in black clothes with his arms crossed on his chest. The summoner Prime. Vincent.
A creature waited next to him, indigo blue, with a spray of ghostly black and paler blue rosettes and spots across its fur. At least two and a half feet tall at the shoulder, six feet long, with a thick neck crowned with a fringe of tendrils, a short wide muzzle with dagger teeth, and wide paws as big as my hand. It reminded me of a tiger.
Two bat-apes crouched by Vincent, one by his feet and the other on the table behind him. On the right, fifteen feet away, the third bat-ape sat over Edward’s body. Edward lay on his back on the blue rug. A wet wound gaped in his stomach. The third bat-ape was digging in it with its claws. Edward’s eyes were open and filled with pain.
Rynda stood behind Edward, her arms around her two children, her face a bloodless mask.
If I killed Vincent, it would cure everything that was wrong with this picture.
“Run!” I barked, and fired.
The world snapped back to its normal speed in a roar of gunfire. The bat-ape by Vincent’s feet jerked upright, throwing itself into the path of the bullet meant for the summoner. I’d missed by a tiny fraction of a second.
I pumped three bullets into the bat-ape. Its head jerked with each impact, but it still stayed upright.
Four.
Five.
Rynda didn’t move. She just stood in the same spot like a deer in headlights. Damn it.
The creature by Edward leaped over his body and charged me. I pivoted and put six bullets into its skull. It toppled over. I spun back. The first bat-ape sprawled on the floor, dead. The last bat-ape had taken its place, blocking Vincent.
Only one shot left. I put it into the bat-ape’s left lower eye, ejected the magazine, brought the other out . . .
“I wouldn’t,” Vincent said.