Incendiary (The Premonition Series (Volume 4)) (30 page)

At t
he doors a
t the top of the stairs, shadowy figures
creep
around the doorframe, moving down the walls of the stairwell.
“Werree,” I shiver
, taking a step back
and
feeling an eerie chill
.
Shadows move between the crevices as the disembodied demons stalk us.
They’
re not alone because a
wave of
Inikwi have joined them,
speaking in
garbled
voices as they cautiously climb down the stairs
on all
fours.

Reed’s need to
protect
me
shows as he inches in front of me, cutting off any direct line to my position.
“Light—
” Reed says
, “w
e need light
to kill the Werree
, love.” He assesses
the wi
ndowless walls. “I can kill
Inikwi. You focus on the Werree.”

I nod
, hoping the room stops spinning for me soon.

Inikwi group
t
ogether
in a pack like
wolves.
Mold
er
ing
skin and the scent of mildew-
deco
mposition make
s
the windowless cellar musty and nauseating
, but
i
t’s their absolute contrast to each other that makes them eerie as well. If they were “normal”
humans, they probably wouldn’t be together. An elderly woman with a lime green headscarf covering her wiry
gray
hair shifts agilely to the right, her
white
orthopedic shoes make
no
noise on the stone steps. The extremely tall, middle-aged man, who must have died from the gaping slash across the base of his throat, accompanies this lady
.
A
twenty-something hipster
inikwi
with
skinny jeans goes left,
his once cunning scarf frayed and dragging behind him.
He’
s followed by
a grizzled,
ancient-looking corpse in a brown nylon suit.

In the center of the inikwi, a
thirty-something female corpse with wheat-colored hair and unnaturally milky-blue eyes gives the others a garbled-voice
d
command.
One of her cheekbones has been crushed in
and
discolored
.
Black liquid mold slips from t
he corners of her mouth to speckle and mar
her ivory coat
. A second later, she breaks
from their ranks
, running
straight
at Reed while the other four try
to flank us
on all fours like dogs
.

Reed speaks to Anya in Angel, giving her some kind of order.
Anya notches
a gold-tipp
ed arrow in her bow
before
lifting
it
and letting
it fly. It strikes
;
the arrow pierces
the charging inikwi in the
chest, spewing silver blood
in a growing circle on the ivory fabric of her coat
.

The blond inikwi’s head
shift
s forward while her
hair obscu
res her face. The host carcass
crumpl
es
to her
knee
s
, and then she tumbles backward to the floor. A
thick
,
snake-like creature begins wiggling
out of the dead woman’s
gaping mouth. I
t almost looks like her
large intestine is try
ing to liberate itself from her body. C
r
r
crrack,
her
jaw
bone
breaks apart
as the wet tail slides over her teeth
.
Anya’s second arrow punctures
the
slimy
flesh
of the s
i
l
very inikwi
, tearing a hole through it.

As I look away from the gruesome scene, I see Reed
al
ready tearing the hipster i
nikwi apart, cutti
ng it off before it could
coord
inate an attack with its
nylon-suited partner
.
Having been distracted by
the Inikwi, I completely miss
the
Werree coming at me from above.

A shadowy
w
erree notches
an inky arrow that is really an extension of
itself. It lets the arrow fly at me. The
projectile pierce
s
my side, propellin
g me backward from
the
force of
the strike
. The dark arrow melts into me and is absorbed into my skin.
F
rigid poison
corrodes
up my side and down my leg.

I
let out a
whimper
of
pain
, trying to grasp the
shaft
and pull it out
of me
, but it’s not solid
and the poison continues to seep into my side
. “Russell!” I grit my teeth.

Russell
growl
s
as
his
face becomes a mask of
indecision
. Instantly, he crouches
at my side, asking, “How do you
get this out, Red?”

My teeth chatter
from
a growing coldness bleed
ing
through me.
“I d
dd
on’t know,
” I whimper
,
and
I close my eyes
to think. When I open them again, I scream, “Russ
—behind you
!” I warn
, p
ushing Russell aside to focus
on a group of w
erree above us.
I lift one hand and murmur through gritted teeth,
“Darkness hides the
light. L
ight destroys the night
,
”
while
a
ll
of
the
energ
y
I collected
flows
from my body.

A beam of white-
hot energy
burst
s
forth from me, shining directly on the Werree. The l
ight licks at them as if it were
orange embers destroying decaying brown leaves
; it causes
them to fall from
the ceiling and w
rithe
in agony
as they turn
to ash and smoke
.
The Werree that remain change
direction t
hen, slinking backward away from us—retreating to
the stairway and out of the bar.

Russell’s expression is
anxious
. “Red, you’
r
e
wounded,” he states
, hovering near me
.

“I’m…not…
” I murmur
,
running my hand along my side and feeling for the arrow, but it’s not there anymore.
“But, I was
.”

“What’d
you
do? He
al you
rself or somthin’?
” Russell breathes
, seeing that I’m
no longer bleeding as he lifts
my shirt to help. A red scratch is all
that is
left from the W
erree
’s black
, shadowy
arr
ow. “How’
d y
ou
do that?”

“
Maybe it was the light?” I ask
.
Then
, I witness
two i
nikwi knock
Anya
down
. One is stomping on her
chest, while the other
is easing
around toward her head.

Ru
ssell
sees it too and
moves fast, plucking an i
nikwi
off of Anya’s chest and hurling i
t into its
buddy. The
creatures fall
back into the wall. R
ussell follows
them, picking
one
up
in each hand; he bashes
them together like he’s pound
ing dirt off the bottoms of a pair of
shoes.
Silvery blood oozes
out of their mouths, a sure sign that whatever was in them is definitely dead
now
, but Russell does
n’t stop pounding them.

It’
s quiet; t
he only sound
now comes
from Russell
beating the dead i
nikwi
. Reed ha
s already
ki
lled the rest of the i
nikwi and is now crouching over Anya, helping her
to
sit so that he can check her wounds.

“Russell,” I say
, but he’s
not hearing me;
he’s sti
ll beating on the clearly dead i
nikwi.
I put my hand on Russell’s arm to stop
him.

Russell’s face is growing pale. “Is she all right?” he asks
with fear in his tone, like he’s afraid to turn around and see for himself
.

I gla
nce at Anya. “
Reed, how is she
?”

Reed tears a white tablecloth into strips and starts wrapping Anya’s ribs.
“She has two broken ribs and a laceration on her forearm. She shoul
d heal quickly,” h
e
reports
.

“She’s going to be okay,” I say
to Russell,
touching his arm and indicating
that
he should drop
the I
nikwi in his hands. He does
, turning slowly to look at Anya.
“She
’s an ass kicker,” I comment
, wa
tching her cringe as Reed pulls
the binding tighter on her ribs.

“
I shoul
d’ve had her back,” Russell says
with stiff remorse
.

“You just did, Russ,” I say
, indicating the pulverized corpses
on the
floor.

Russell’s expression darkens again.
“She
shouldn’t be here,” Russell says
, turning on me
ominously
. “We have to make her go home.”

“She doesn’t look like s
he wants to go, Russell.
”

H
is frown deepen
s
. “Then we gotta
make her go somehow,” he replies
with a grim twist of his lips
.

“How?” I ask
in confusion
.

“I don’t know how, but
I can’t keep track of both of y
’
a
ll
,” he replies
angrily.

I frown. “But, what if—”

“Naw, Red!
Don’t argue with me!
Y
ou
made me
stay here, so
now
you
gotta help me!” he counters
in a tense tone
of intimidation
, his brown eyes stormy
.
Stab
bing his finger in Anya’s direction, he say
s
,
“I don’t know exactly what she is to me, but she’s somethin’ and I…y
ou
just gotta help,” he says between clenched tee
t
h.

“Okay,” I agree
, feeling a wave of guilt hit me because I
did make him stay here with me
when I healed him.
“But, first we
have to get out of her
e
.
”