Night Owls

23

THE CREEP IN front of her exploded in a shower of ash as Silver and Pointy found its mark. Elly pushed right through the greasy cloud, bits of dead Creep coating her skin. She kept her lips closed; once, she’d made the unfortunate mistake of sucking in a breath right after staking one. She’d tasted rotten meat for weeks.

Asshole had twisted Justin’s arm up behind his back and pulled him in close. Justin kicked at his shins, but every movement wrenched his shoulder. Elly could hear him panting from the pain. The wave of Creeps carried her closer, all other enemies forgotten in their desire to get a taste of Justin’s sweet, untainted blood. She uncapped another bottle of holy water as they clambered over one another and splashed it on the closest ones. Two to her left dropped to the floor and rolled, howling. It tripped up a couple of others, but not for long. They trampled over their fallen comrades, intent on the prize in the center of the room.

Elly pulled a rowan stake from her belt with her left hand and swung it to the side. Her arm slipped through the Creep directly in front of her, but connected with the one behind it. Both the real Creep and its illusion clutched at the spot where the stake went in and fell to their knees. She left the stake where it was; it wouldn’t kill the Creep, but he’d be too pain wracked to do much more than crawl. She’d come back and finish him off later. Two more went down in similar fashion as Elly shoved her way to the front of the pack, illusions peeling off as well and thinning out the throng.

Still, for every Creep that fell to her stakes, another took its place. In the brief glimpses she caught between Creeps, Elly could see them pouring in from everywhere now—not just through the broken bay window, but spilling down the stairs, shoving in through the hallway that led to the front door, and streaming in from the kitchen. Cavale was in there. Panic shot through her. She hadn’t seen him since he’d backed those others through the doorway. With an effort, she forced herself to face forward again. She’d never be able to fight through the Creeps to get to him. He can hold his own. Help Justin.

From outside, there came startled, pain-filled yips. They started far away and got closer, fast, like someone had turned up the volume in another room. For a moment, she thought Cavale had made it outside, but then she saw the streak of red tearing its way through the Creeps. Val.

Elly didn’t know what she’d been expecting, really. Seeing the succubi fight was like watching an exquisite dance. The vampire’s movements were rhythmic, too, but hers were marked by a military precision: rake her claws through this Creep’s spine, step to the right and drive a stake in the next’s chest, step again and shear a third’s head clear off its neck. She never stopped moving, just killed one and went on to the next. Some of her targets were illusions, but she course corrected easily when she encountered one.

The Creeps around Elly seemed to sense that death had entered the room. They started pushing back against her, trying to get away. Elly shoved forward, driving Silver and Pointy into the backs of these Creeps attempting to flee. As she got closer to where the one Chaz had dubbed Asshole had Justin, there was still a wall of Creeps two or three deep. They hadn’t quite realized there was a vampire wreaking havoc among their brothers and sisters.

She burst clear of the seething mass of them and found herself next to Val. Black blood was smeared across the woman’s mouth; she must have bitten a few on her way in. Elly shuddered at the thought of anyone willingly swallowing Creeps’ blood. Val nodded at her, then looked around and frowned. Elly followed her gaze.

The Creeps at the front were holding back, pawing at the air and drooling as they breathed in the scent of Justin’s blood, but there was a good three yards between the front-runners and the place where Asshole held Justin. He’s keeping them away. As if to prove it, one Creep edged forward from Asshole’s left. It was a furtive movement, like the Creep thought she might be able to dart forward and make a snatch at Justin before his captor could react.

Asshole’s head whipped toward her and he snarled. He wasn’t in full, head-to-toe Creepskin, not yet, but his teeth were sharp, his claws out, his nose stretched into a snout. The woman whined and slunk back, her head bowed so low her chin touched her chest. If she’d had a tail, it would’ve been tucked between her legs.

Sunny emerged from the other side of the circle, taking up a position behind Asshole while Lia guarded her back. Black ichor coated the keris’ blade. It streaked past the hilt and down over Sunny’s wrist, winding like vines down her forearms. Her eyes flicked to Elly and Val, and Elly understood what she wanted. She circled a few steps to the right, passing through a phantom Creep to get a better angle of approach. Val stayed where she was. Asshole yanked Justin close against his chest, using him as a shield as he shuffled in a tight circle to watch them all.

“I can smell you back there, demon bitch,” he said. “Take me down and they’ll tear him apart.”

“We won’t let that happen.” Val reached behind herself almost casually and caught a Creep by the scruff of its neck. Never breaking eye contact with Asshole, she dragged it forward. “Maybe you forgot: I was at Sacramento.” She slid her palm under the Creep’s chin, ignoring its sudden, panicked flailing, and wrenched its head sideways. The crunch of breaking vertebrae told Elly everything she needed to know.

Val took the dead Creep by the collar and tossed it at Asshole’s feet. Its head lolled at an unnatural angle as it rolled to a stop. “You want me to count to three?”

He looked around the room and seemed to realize how much of it had cleared out since Val’s entry. There was the circle around himself and Justin, and that was about it. The others had all slunk away. Cavale came in from the kitchen, a nasty-looking cut on his cheek and the sleeve of his jacket only hanging onto the shoulder by a few stubborn threads. He was marching a Creep along in front of him, holding a fork up to the scrawny man’s neck: Twitch. From the four burnt-looking parallel scratches down the side of Twitch’s face, Elly guessed Cavale had found Sunny and Lia’s good silverware.

“The rest are running,” said Cavale. “I’m guessing the woman’s around here somewhere, but I haven’t seen her yet.”

“How about it, then?” Val stepped forward. Elly and Sunny did the same. “You going to let him go?”

Elly had to hand it to him—he hid his panic well. His snout grew even more canine; his incisors lengthened. You had to be close to see it, and she was a couple of feet closer than anyone else. Val could likely smell it on him. Her nostrils flared as she waited for his response.

Asshole turned a bit, shifting to put Justin more firmly between himself and Val. Elly could tell how he’d assessed the threats in the room: Val was the scariest, and she wouldn’t argue that. But he’d twisted to keep an eye on Sunny and Lia, too. Which meant he’d forgotten what his alpha had told them about herself and Cavale.

He wasn’t looking at her, so he didn’t see the smile that quirked her lips. Val, did, though, and her slight nod was all the permission Elly needed.

Her boots pounded along, squelching in the blood of dead Creeps. She had to jump for it—Asshole was a good head and a half taller. He started to face her, realizing his fatal mistake far too late. Justin shrieked as he was yanked around again. Elly heard the pop as his shoulder came out of its socket.

Then she was there, barreling into Asshole. Her aim was true as ever: with one good stroke, the silver spike sank through his leather jacket and pierced his heart. Asshole gasped, sending a spray of ash from his already-turning insides out into the air.

Behind the others, Twitch let out an outraged howl. The other Creeps took an extra second or two to realize that the only thing keeping them from their wonderful feast was gone, but once they twigged onto it, they were clambering over one another to get to Justin.

Val, Sunny, and Lia were already on it, a whirlwind of blade and claw tearing through the first ones to move. Elly hauled Justin up from where he’d dropped into a crouch, intent on putting some extra distance between him and the slavering Creeps. He was muttering as he gained his feet, something she couldn’t quite make out. “What was that?”

He looked up at her and she froze.

His eyes are yellow. She was certain they’d been brown earlier today.

A Creep broke out of the pack, just out of Val’s reach. It loped forward, a rope of drool trailing from its mouth. Out of instinct, Elly let Justin’s arm drop and readied Silver and Pointy, but she didn’t get to use it. Justin pushed her aside with his good arm and stood waiting for the Creep. It pulled up short, scrabbling back a step when it got a look at his face.

Then Justin let out a string of syllables that made Elly’s skin crawl. She’d heard it plenty of times before, but only from Creeps.

The one in front of him blinked, then whined low in its throat. It did what its packmate had done at Asshole’s snarl earlier, ducking its head and backing away.

Then they all were backing away, slinking out of the house as quickly as they’d come. Twitch jerked himself out of Cavale’s grasp and booked it out the window. Val, Sunny, and Lia ran down a few stragglers, but once the Creeps were outside, no one gave chase.

“Let them run,” said Val. “They won’t be back tonight.”

Elly stood in the middle of the living room, surveying the damage. The place had been cozy and neat not an hour ago. Now, the carpets were saturated with blood, the end tables and coffee tables had been reduced to splinters, and the upholstery had been shredded by the Creeps’ claws. The whole room reeked of blood and burnt flesh, and there were streaks of ash everywhere. Not to mention the Creeps’ corpses strewn all around.

Justin was in the middle of them all, like the epicenter of an earthquake. He held his arm and looked at them all as, one by one, they turned to stare. “Elly?” he said, his yellow eyes locking onto her. He swayed dangerously off center and she reached out a hand to steady him.

What the hell did you do? she wanted to ask, but what came out instead was, “You’re okay.” The first-aid training Father Value had ingrained in her kicked in. She started running her post-fight triage checklist in her head: Justin’s arm, Cavale’s cheek, her own dripping jawline. As the adrenaline wore off, the pain rushed right on in to fill the void. She’d worry about herself after. Justin, his arm, and his newly yellow eyes were her priority. “We’ll get that arm fixed for you. Can you walk to the couch with me?” She guided him to Sunny and Lia’s torn-up sofa and helped him lower himself onto it.

He smiled weakly at her, then went slightly green. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

WHERE THE HELL is Chaz? He should have been there by now. Val surveyed the shambles that was Sunny and Lia’s living room and found herself straining to hear the dull purr of the Mustang’s motor coming down the street. All the times she’d given him shit for how loud it was, and now she’d welcome its peace-disturbing sound.

She dialed his cell again. Still no answer. Five more minutes and I go looking for him.

Cavale came to stand beside her. He had a wad of paper towels pressed to his cheek, blood seeping through slowly. Sunny and Lia had disappeared upstairs to change back into more mundane-looking skins and put on some clothes, saying something about “putting the ladies to bed.” Elly sat on the couch beside Justin, murmuring softly to him. His arm hung off-kilter; they were going to have to pop it back into its socket soon.

“He’ll turn up,” said Cavale. “He might have pulled into the driveway and seen them all, realized there was no way in hell he could get past.”

“I thought about that. But it doesn’t explain why he’s not picking up now. And I never heard the engine.” She didn’t know the specifics of the wards Sunny and Lia had laid, but she was fairly certain sound could get in, but not out.

“Val, we don’t know how far the Creeps’ illusion carried. Maybe they were doing something that made him think he couldn’t get down the street.”

“I’d have heard the car half a mile away.”

“Okay. Well, he’s a smart guy. He’s probably going to roll in here with a perfectly good explanation in a few minutes.” They didn’t like one another, Chaz and Cavale, but Cavale could find a compliment for Chaz now and then. Where was he?

She shook it off and turned to the pair on the couch. “How’s our man of the hour?”

Elly looked up. “We’re out of puking danger for now.”

Justin gave Val a weak smile as she crouched down in front of him. “My arm hurts.”

“Yeah, it’s going to.” Val couldn’t help but stare at the change in his eyes. Last night, they’d been dark brown. Now, they were the color of burnished amber, maybe a little darker than your average Jackal’s, but not by much. She sniffed, trying to separate Justin’s scent out from the rotten meat stench of the corpses in the room. To her relief, he was easy to find—not because he was sitting right there before her, but because to her nose he was still bright and human, smelling of sweat and blood and the same soap Cavale used.

“Why did they run?” He addressed the question to Val, but looked around at everyone. “I didn’t think that last one was going to stop.”

“I don’t know.” She smiled at him gently, at first confused as to why he looked so alarmed. Fangs, she realized. And blood. She swiped her sleeve across her mouth, but it wasn’t going to do much more than smear the Jackals’ ichor around. “Justin, do you remember what you said to them? What it was you yelled?”

“You were right there, didn’t you hear?”

“Humor me.”

He looked, if anything, a little embarrassed. “I told it not to touch me. And, um, to go away.”

“No you didn’t,” said Elly softly. “At least, not in English.”

Justin twisted to stare at her. “What are you . . . Oh. Oh, shit. Seriously?”

“You said earlier you were starting to understand some of the writing. Maybe you picked up a phrase from the book.” The lie was obvious in the flatness of her voice and the way she ducked her head to look at her hands.

Cavale came to crouch beside Val. “I don’t think he’s buying it, El,” he said, and passed a shard of a broken mirror to Justin. “Look at your eyes. I think it dug in further.”

Justin took it and stared. And stared some more. “What the hell is this?” That yellow gaze swung wildly among them. “I’m still human, aren’t I? I don’t feel any different.”

“You still smell human,” said Val, pushing as much certainty into her tone as she could. “You’re not one of them.”

But she didn’t miss the uneasy glance that passed between Elly and Cavale that said they weren’t so sure.

Footsteps came clumping down the stairs as Sunny and Lia reappeared. They’d gone back to their preferred faces, and had donned paint-splattered sweatshirts and jeans. Lia carried a basin full of cleaning supplies; Sunny had an armload of rags.

Justin looked at them, then at the ash-smeared, blood-spattered disaster area that had been their living room. “Oh, no. Your things. Your house. I’m so sorry, you guys. I’ll—”

“You’ll nothing,” said Lia. “You’ll sit there and let Elly see to that arm.”

“But there are bodies. What do we do with the bodies? You can’t just, like, bury them in the backyard. The neighbors will know something’s up, wards or no. It’s an eleven o’clock news story waiting to happen.”

Elly blinked. “Your arm’s dislocated and we just got attacked by Creeps, and you’re worried about what the neighbors will think?”

“He’s polite,” said Sunny. “And probably in a fair bit of shock. As for the corpses.” She let the rags tumble from her hands and picked through the splinters that had been the coffee table. Her fingers closed over one of the rowan stakes. “There won’t be any.” She stepped over to the closest Jackal and toed it so it lay on its back. In one swift motion, she brought the stake down, into its heart. Ash began to spread from the spot. “It’ll take a little longer since it’s rowan, but it gets the job done.” She grinned at Elly. “That spike of yours would make it go even faster, but I know some women don’t like others touching their partners.”

The spike sat to Elly’s left. Her fingers twitched toward it, but she didn’t snatch it up. After a moment, she smiled, chagrined, and pulled her hand away. “It’s all right. I’ll try not to be jealous.”

“Good girl.” Sunny took the stake with mock reverence. It lasted about ten seconds, until she turned to the small pile of Jackals she and Lia had taken care of in the fighting. She hauled them out one by one and set to staking.

Cavale glanced sidelong at Val. “I guess the meeting with the vampires didn’t go so well?”

She shook her head. “Ivanov said we could handle it on our own. It was a test.”

“What kind of a test?”

“He knows who you two are. Your Father Value’s something of a legend. He wants to meet you, offer you some sort of jobs.” Elly perked up a bit, but Val cut her off. “You don’t want to take him up on it, Elly. Vampire turf wars never end well.”

“I think I can decide that for myself,” the girl said primly. “It’s not like I have any other offers on the table.”

Cavale grunted. “We’ll talk about that later.” He peered at Val. He knew her well enough to sense she’d left something out. “So he was testing us?”

“. . . and me. He wants me to Hunt for him.”

Cavale went still. The sounds of Sunny’s staking and Lia’s sweeping paused. Elly looked thoughtful.

Justin laughed into the silence. Hysteria tinged the edges of it, made it harsh. “Val’s not a hunter. She’s a bookseller. Booksellers are, like, peaceful, and . . .” He faltered and looked at Elly for help, but she was shaking her head.

“Are you kidding? You saw the way she took out those Creeps. Of course she’s a Hunter.” Her eyes shone as she said it, like a kid describing a cool scene in an action movie. Val half expected her to get up and start acting it out.

She couldn’t deny it: fighting them had felt good. Like she’d never stopped. No. Justin’s right. I’m a bookseller. I am. Only, she was more than that, too. She sighed. “I was a Hunter before I came out here, and Ivanov knows it.”

“Why’d you stop?” She could see Justin reassessing his image of her, and it stung. She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed that she’d stopped Hunting or if he was uneasy that she ever had in the first place. Those yellow eyes were too hard to read.

“There was a raid. Biggest nest we’d ever seen, probably a hundred Jackals squatting in an abandoned apartment building. Three stories aboveground, couple more below. We went in to wipe them out. We did wipe them out. But I was the only one who survived.” If she closed her eyes, she’d see the carnage all over again. Bad enough that she could still hear Angelo’s last labored, rasping breaths; she didn’t need to see the light going out of his eyes, not right now. “I left. I gave it up and came here.”

“Funny,” said Elly, tapping on her knee. “You came here to get away from Hunting. So did Professor Clearwater. Any particular reason you picked Edgewood?”

“Aside from it being on the other side of the country from Sacramento, no.”

“And yet you both ended up here, and when Cavale left us, he settled down in the next town over.” She cocked a thumb at the succubi. “From what I understand, Sunny and Lia came here to get away from things, too. Isn’t that . . . a little bit much for coincidence?”

Before any of them could mull it over, Val’s phone rang in her pocket, making her jump. She snatched it out, not bothering to look at the caller ID. “Chaz? Where the hell are you?”

There was a pause on the other end, then an older woman’s voice spoke: “Valerie? It’s Mrs. Hagerty from next door. I’m sorry if I’m interrupting you at the bookstore, but your friend’s car is out in front of my house. It’s running and the headlights are on, but I don’t see anyone inside it.”

Val’s heart dropped into her stomach. “Thank you, Mrs. Hagerty. I’ll come move it.” She snapped the phone closed and stood, trying to keep the anger at bay.

“What is it?” asked Lia. “What’s happened?”

“He never even left my street.” Her hands balled into fists. The claws were back, digging deep into her palms. There was only one thing she could think of that could have stopped him from trying to get to Sunny and Lia’s to help, and Val could see the sneering, foxlike face in her mind. “Katya took him.”