Stacia Kane - Demon Inside

Too late she realized he was falling sideways, taking her with him to the top of the staircase. Another inch or two and they would tumble back down into the impenetrable blackness.

“Help me!” she screamed, but the words weren’t even out of her mouth when the body was lifted away, when Nick’s hands found hers and he hauled her up so fast she fell forward into him.

The boys were yelling, struggling with the frantic body of her father. Megan remembered well how strong zombies could be, how terrifyingly focused.

Something cracked. She had no idea what it was, but Malleus’s grip loosened for a second, and that second was enough for her father to lunge at her again.

This time she was ready, bracing herself, but at the last second something else happened, something that made her heart—both of her hearts—leap. Roc appeared, and trailing in his wake were four or five of her demons. So few, but enough to get her demon heart moving, to send a jolt of power through her body. It combined with what was left of the energy she’d stolen from Nick in the hall below, and she focused it, focused on it, and put as much of it as she could behind her swinging fist.

Her arm vibrated. All of her knuckles cracked, and she felt two of her fingernails break off at the quick.

Her father—she should start thinking of him as “the zombie,” but she couldn’t, it was her father, it was his body—barely paused, reaching for her again. Nick’s sword came down on his arm, slicing it off, but again, her father didn’t stop.

Megan slipped sideways and lifted the gun, but her fingers were too sore and clumsy to fire it. Malleus and Maleficarum dragged the zombie a few feet away and Nick attacked him again with the sword, its blade black and sticky with rancid fluid.

Her father howled, confusion and pain and anger in what was left of his voice, and Megan couldn’t take it anymore. It probably wouldn’t work, it probably wouldn’t even matter, but there was such a cruel, ironic symmetry to it all as she stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the gun to his head, just above his right eyebrow.

It felt like she should say something, but she couldn’t think of anything to say; she squeezed the trigger and let the gun speak for her.

Its report echoed so loudly in the stairwell and hall she thought it would never stop. Her father’s body slumped forward. The horrible bright light left his eyes, and he became again what he should have been. A corpse. Just a corpse.

The rattles started then, the metal stair railings sounding like a piece of aluminum shaking in the wind. Little snickering sounds, dry scratches and rasps. Her demons were coming, down the stairs from the fifth floor or up from the other floors, alerted to her exact location, and she was crying too hard as she looked at the blurry, messy figure of her father on the ground to care. It wasn’t until Roc touched her hand and spoke to her that she was able to look up.

“…to go, Megan, hurry! Hurry!”

The others stood behind him, terrified. They would die if she didn’t beat Ktana Leyak, if Megan didn’t manage to get the relic before she did. At that moment exhaustion weighed so heavily on Megan’s body that she almost didn’t care if she survived or not. It would be so easy to sit down, to rest, to wait for it all to end.

Greyson still hadn’t appeared…

“Hurry!”

Maleficarum scooped her up from the floor, and they ran down the hall to the other staircase.

“I finally managed to get Krantus and Rentoran to join up with me and they brought Varigon and Aberas, and we came straight here,” Roc managed, panting, as they raced past more empty rooms. The next floor up was the fifth; the next floor up was where the showdown would happen. Megan was trying as hard as she could to care. Roc helped with that. So did Maleficarum’s strong arms holding her up. They would want her, need her, if Greyson was dead, she knew they would. She couldn’t die, she had too many fucking responsibilities.

“I think we can get the others,” he continued. “Once they see you’re winning they’ll come back, and when they bring their power back to you—”

“They won’t come back unless I’m winning?”

“Would you really expect them to?”

Right. Stupid question.

They were halfway up the stairs when Megan felt it. Her demon heart leaped, really leaped, and starting dancing in her chest, throbbing.

“I feel it, Megan,” Nick said. “It’s here, it must be in your room.”

They paused at the doorway to the hall. What would it be this time? More zombies? Blood? Hellhounds? Rabid townies with guns and knives?

But only silence greeted them, silence and the sense of something vibrating, waiting. It seemed to sigh when their feet hit the dirty tile floor.

Maleficarum put Megan down. Her legs jiggled for a minute before steadying, and she took Nick’s hand to help her stay that way. If she needed more energy she could have it, especially when Roc clambered up onto her shoulder and the others hovered behind her.

The graffiti on the walls here was worse, more vicious, more plentiful. The entire hospital was a vermin-ridden shambles, but it seemed the particular listless rage of trespassers had been reserved for this floor—or perhaps this floor had attracted the worst of the worst.

She glanced to her left, scanning an absolutely revolting sketch of an eviscerated naked woman, and caught a glimpse of the sky through the window of one of the empty rooms. She’d forgotten it was snowing, forgotten Christmas lights still glowed, forgotten that from this side of the building the town square was visible. It was so beautiful, even with everything she knew, everything that was happening. Her throat closed up and for a moment she just stood there staring.

Then she heard something rustle at the end of the hall and knew Ktana Leyak waited for her in room 526, Ktana Leyak and the last piece of the Accuser that still lived outside Megan’s body.

“Let’s go,” she said, and headed for the door.

Bad as the graffiti was by the elevators, it got worse the farther down the hall she went, hate and pain vomited all over the walls. It was like walking into a museum of misogynistic racism, with some crazy thrown in for spice.

The demon inside her leaped and twitched, a sort of inner Geiger counter, but she didn’t need it. The sense of unease, of wrongness, coming through her shields would have alerted her without it, just as it had that day at the diner.

The door frame of room 526 had been ripped out, leaving a jagged, gaping hole. Megan stopped in front of it, took a deep breath, and walked in.

A streetlight glowed on the corner, not far from the empty window, making this room the brightest she’d been in since entering the hospital what felt like hours ago, months ago. Even with that light it took her a second to see Ktana Leyak, and that second cost her.

Ktana vaulted away from her hiding spot on the ceiling with her arms outstretched, her face curled into a vicious snarl. Too late, Megan ducked, avoiding having her jugular severed by Ktana’s sharp claws but not sparing her left cheek. Her tears ran rivulets down her face and stung in the sharply painful grooves.

Blindly she swung back, using her still-aching right hand. It hurt, oh how it hurt, but she managed to land a solid blow to Ktana’s chin as she swung upward.

Malleus and Maleficarum crowded into the room, shoving Ktana, trying to force her down, but Megan already knew it wouldn’t do any good. Stuffed with power from Megan’s demons and the chaos they’d caused in Grant Falls this night, she was too strong for them. As Nick had said, the boys weren’t psyche demons. They had all the physical strength they needed, but they couldn’t draw power the way she could.