Ilona Andrews - Magic Bleeds

“Brenna?”

A vicious growl spilled from Brenna’s deformed mouth. She shook. Gashes crisscrossed her body, oozing black pus and blood, as if her skin had randomly burst in places.

Dali scrambled back on her butt, leaving bloody tracks in the snow, until she bumped into the car with her head. “Brenna, it’s me! It’s me. We’re friends. Please don’t.”

Brenna snarled again.

“Brenna, don’t do this.” I stepped toward her.

Brenna’s eyes fixed on Dali with the unwavering focus of a predator about to charge.

“Please, please don’t.” Dali pressed tighter against the car. “Please!”

Brenna lunged.

Her mangled body flew above the snow, as if she had wings.

Brenna or Dali. No time to think.

I lunged forward and sliced at her back. Slayer cut through flesh, aborting Brenna’s charge in midleap. She twisted in the air and hit me. Huge jaws fastened on my leg, searing my thigh with pain.

“No!” Dali screamed.

I cut again, cleaving through her spine.

Brenna’s fangs let go. She crashed into the snow, jerking like a marionette on the strings of a mad puppeteer. Blood and spit flew from her terrible mouth. She growled and bit the air again and again, rending invisible enemies with her teeth. Behind me Dali sobbed uncontrollably.

I raised Slayer and brought it down. The saber pierced Brenna’s chest. I twisted the blade, ripping her heart to pieces. In my head, Brenna’s voice said, “Don’t worry, Kate, I won’t drop you.”

Brenna stopped thrashing. The glow in her eyes dimmed.

Dali whimpered small incoherent noises.

A tortured snarl echoed through the street. I jerked Slayer free and whirled to the building. A clawed arm scratched at the first-floor window next to the door. Thick fingers slid on the glass, leaving bloody streaks.

Bloody hell.

I grabbed Dali and pulled her to her feet. “Dali! Look at me.”

She stared, wild-eyed. “I knew, I knew something was wrong, I drove up, and it didn’t smell right—”

“Get into the car. Drive down two blocks, go into the bakery, and call the Keep. No matter what happens, don’t leave the store. Do you understand?”

“Don’t go in there!”

“I have to go. If they get out, they might kill somebody.”

“Then I’ll come with you.” She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “I’m a fucking tiger.”

A vegetarian, cross-eyed, half-blind tiger who got sick at the sight of blood. “No. I need you to get into the car and go call Curran. Please.”

She nodded.

I released her. “Go.”

A moment later the Prowler rolled down the street. I stepped over its tracks. The door of the house gaped open, like a black mouth.

I pushed the door open with my fingertips.

A body sprawled across the rug ten feet away. It lay in a tangle of shredded clothes, stained with black pus. A bitter odor filled the hallway, like the scent of chicken meat gone to rot.

I’d seen shapeshifters bleed gray before, when struck with silver. Silver killed Lyc-V, and the dead virus turned gray. To bleed black, Lyc-V had to be present in record numbers in the body. Only loups carried that much virus in them.

I stepped inside. The carpet muffled my footsteps. Above something thudded.

Slow and easy.

I reached the body. He lay on his stomach. Dark lesions striped his back, filled with viscous ichor, so dark it resembled tar. The odor of rot choked the air. I gagged and nudged the body with my foot. The head lolled. Unseeing milky eyes looked up at me from an unfamiliar face. Dead.

I kept moving through the long corridor.

Right room, clear.

Left, clear.

Right, clear.

Kitchen.

A pot boiled over on the stove. Two shapeshifters lay unmoving. One sprawled on top of the table, midway through the change, his body a mess of fur and skin. His deformed limbs clutched at the table, bones exposed, torn muscle oozing pus onto the green tablecloth. A chef’s knife protruded from his neck, pinning him to the table.

The other body lay under the table, on the floor littered with chunks of peeled potatoes. A huge gash split open his chest, long ragged tears—a claw strike. The same black pus spilled from his lips, staining his chin. Nausea squirmed through me.

The scene played in my head: the shapeshifter on the right lunging over the table, striking at the guy chopping potatoes. His target taking a hit to the chest, thrusting the knife into his attacker’s neck and falling . . .

I moved on to the stairwell. Upstairs or downstairs, to the basement?

I leaned to the side. Blood stained the green wallpaper on the landing above. Up.

The old stairs creaked under my feet. I ran up and pressed against the wall. Short hoarse grunts broke the silence in a steady rhythm, each grunt followed by the screeching of nails on glass. I checked the hallway.

Something crouched in the gloom, far to the right, on the clump of mangled bodies, digging in the flesh with bloody claws. The creature struck a corpse and wiped its deformed hand on the window. Claws scratched the glass. Screeech.

I stepped into the hallway.

Screech.

Screech.

The beast looked up at me. A girl. Barely older than Julie. She looked at me with pale dark eyes, the blood and black tarry pus falling from her mouth.

Her face was almost perfectly human. The rest of her was not. Her limbs protruded too far, ending in oversized hands. A hump bent her spine, sheathed in gray wolf fur. Her chest was concave and her ribs were piercing her skin.

“It hurts,” she said.

I kept walking.

“It hurts.” She dipped her hand into the blood pooling in the stomach of a woman next to her and wiped it on the glass. Screech.

“What happened?” I asked.

She leaped at me with a guttural snarl. I dodged left, and sliced across her side. She bounced off the wall, twisting, and lunged at me. I flipped the blade and sliced up through her stomach into the heart. Human teeth snapped an inch from my mouth. Her claws gripped my shoulder and she sagged on my blade, her life bleeding out.

I pushed the child off my saber gently and kept going.

Bodies lay strewn across the hallway, one after another, all facing to the end of the hallway, where the solid door to Jim’s office stood half-ajar. They must’ve run here and didn’t make it. I checked the faces as I walked, afraid I’d see someone I knew.

Whatever it was came through the front door. The first shapeshifter collapsed where he stood. The attacker hit the kitchen and headed upstairs. The shapeshifters on the first floor and in the basement must’ve heard the noise and chased after the intruder. Nine people dead, including Brenna and the child I’d murdered. Jim must’ve reinforced their numbers, expecting trouble. All of them went after the intruder. Nobody tried to get out until it was too late.

A muffled thud came from behind the door.

I pushed it open.

A naked man sat among the shambles of broken furniture and clumps of papers. A metal manacle clamped his ankle, attached to a spike in the floor by a chain as thick as my wrist. The loup chain—every Pack house had one.

A twisted mess of limbs and wounds lay in front of him. To the left a female shapeshifter hung on the wall, nailed by a sword to the boards.

The naked man looked up at me. An oily sheen slicked his skin, stretched tight over the lean body. His eyes were the dim yellow of old urine. The stench of rotting chicken swirled about him.

“My favorite niece,” Erra’s voice said. “Only you could make this better. Welcome to Venom’s party.”

The body in front of Venom moved.

“You again.” The undead stabbed the shapeshifter with a wooden shard and jerked it out for the second blow.