Halfway House (40 page)

He felt a hundred tiny needles pierce his skin. Pain flared briefly, then disappeared as he lost all feeling except the pressure of the tentacle accompanied by the sickening sense that he was suffocating. His vision blurred as he reached blindly for his weapons. Then he realized he’d never dropped them and brought them up. As soon as the weapons came close to the tentacle it tightened, making him choke and gasp until he had no choice but to lower them.

Lucy caught Trujillo’s gaze and saw the truth. There was no escape from this creature. Some earthbound man-o-war had snatched them on the second floor of this supernatural rooming house and was about to end their lives.

Lucy’s gaze shifted to the other three Angels bobbing from tentacles. One he recognized as Salvador Ruiz, or Chava as they all called him. Lucy remembered telling the boy’s father that no harm would come to him.

A scream erupted from behind. He couldn’t see what was going on, but the tentacles began to wave again. The screams were followed by the sounds of impact and shredding meat.

The tentacle around his neck tightened and tightened until he thought his head would pop. Suddenly he fell free. He felt himself hauled to his feet to where Manolo stood, grimacing.

“My turn to save your ass.”

Lucy tried to speak, but a length of tentacle still constricted him. He went to pull it away, but found that whatever had pierced his skin still held it in place. The pain took him to his knees. Instead of removing it, he sawed away the ends so it looked as if he wore a thick slimy collar.

Manolo had shredded all the tentacles, even those holding prey. All the Angels were dead except Trujillo. Lucy rushed to his side. His hands pulled the tentacle free from the man’s waist, and with it came skin and muscle. Innards began to spill free in a gush of blood and bile. Trujillo caught and held them in place, but the pain in his eyes said he wouldn’t be able to hold them for long.

“
Mijo
,” Lucy gasped, his voice raw and low. “I’m so sorry, my old friend.”

The oldest Angel’s eyes unfocused then focused.

“What do you want, old friend? Do you want me to...?”

Trujillo nodded, the movement barely detectable through the shaking that was beginning to consume the man.

Lucy didn’t hesitate. He drew the razor-edge of the spur across the Angel’s throat and released Trujillo from a slow painful death. Two gasps and life left his eyes.

When Lucy finally turned to go, rage filled him.

“Enough of this bullshit. Where’s that dead bitch?”

 MS 13 was a block away when Vincent told Bobby to leave.

“Get out of here. Me and my boys will handle this. I have an old score to settle with them anyway.”

But instead of running down the street to where Vincent had gestured, Bobby grabbed a 9-mm pistol from Vincent’s waist and dashed toward the house. Bobby thought for a desperate second that Vincent would chase after him, but the only thing that followed him as he ran into the house were the words, “Be careful, Bobby!”

He shoved the door open with his shoulder, keeping the pistol pointed to the ground. He’d heard Manolo’s comment on the phone and knew that things were more under control than they’d appeared to be. But the scene he came upon was nothing he’d ever expected to see this side of a comic book, where Doctor Strange and Green Lantern did battle against wasp-men mutants and undead monsters.

He stepped over the remains of some mutated version of a warden and giant wasp. Bodies and their disparate parts littered the floor. Halfway down the hall he came across a man who’d been eaten by the wall. The lower half of his body hung like a hunter’s trophy in reverse, his upper half nowhere to be seen. Bobby prodded the leg to see if it would kick back, but it was dead meat.

From behind him and in the street came the sounds of shotguns blasting. From in front of him and down the long hall came a scream.

He moved his pistol to the ready and ran toward the scream. He had to turn three corners and leap a dozen bodies, including something trussed and struggling within a sheet, before he found the remaining Angels huddled in a group as a doorway ate one of them.

“What the fuck, Lucy? We’re never going to get down there.”

Bobby picked out the gang leader in the crowd of twenty gangbangers and pushed his way through. “Lucy!”

The man turned, and when he did, Bobby halted in his tracks. Lucy’s face was splotched with orange, red and green spots. What he’d mistaken for some sort of wrap around the neck seemed to be a piece of tentacle that had lodged there. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Lucy croaked. He gestured behind where Bobby stood with what looked like the leg of a giant insect. “What’s happening outside?”

“MS 13.”

All eyes shot wide.

“What the hell? Can’t they leave us alone?”

“Vincent is taking care of it.”

“The hell he is, this is Angel turf.” Lucy pointed to ten of his men and told them to get out front.

They edged past Bobby, nodding with respect as they passed.

Bobby saw in their eyes the full realization that they’d much rather face gangbangers than houses that ate people, no matter how outgunned they were.

“What about the mourners? Anyone seen Kanga?”

Lucy shook his head. “We didn’t have time to take inventory.” He turned to the others. “Anyone see the old surf bum?”

Tired, blank stares.

“I can’t tell you, Bobby. Maybe one of them wrapped him up in a nice little bow. I don’t even know if they’re worth saving.” He held up an arm with a bite-sized chunk of meat missing. “They were zombified. For all we know, it’s contagious.”

Bobby bit his lip, then thought of something. He stepped close to Lucy, eyeing the tentacle. “Could you get two of your men to get them out, maybe drag them out the back? When we find the
Bruja
we’re going to set her on fire and there won’t be too much time to collect them.”

Lucy’s hard gaze held for a moment, then softened as he nodded. “Yeah. It’s the right thing to do.” He got on the cell phone and called the three who’d been guarding the back door, then ordered them to sweep through the house and remove everyone tied up in a sheet or blanket. When he was done, he put the phone away. “Good enough?”

Bobby nodded.

“Now help us with this next problem.”

“Sure. What?”

“How can we get downstairs without that door snapping another one of my Angels in half?”

Bobby examined the doorway. It looked deceptively normal, if one ignored the gore and blood coating the inside of the jam. He strode close to it.

“Careful, Bobby.”

“What have you tried so far?”

“Other than trying to jump through it? Nothing.”

Bobby nodded as he saw two dismembered bodies spilling their insides down the steps to the basement. Bile rose in his throat. He swallowed to keep from vomiting.

“Any ideas?” Lucy asked.

“Have you tried to wedge it open?”

Bobby watched as Lucy slowly formed the words
wedge it open
. Then the gang leader shook his head. To no one in particular he said, “Get a door and bring it here. Even better. Get me two.”

They looked at Lucy uncomprehendingly.

“How we gonna get a door?” one of the asked.

“Rip it off. Use your teeth. I don’t fucking care, just get me two fucking doors.”

Three Angels turned and ran. Soon the sound of wrenching wood could be heard.

Bobby touched the tentacle around Lucy’s throat. It felt hard and slimy. He drew his hand away and wiped it on his pants. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore. But I feel sick. Whatever it’s doing to me can’t be good. They tell me my face is green and red.”

“And orange.”

“True?”

Bobby nodded.

Lucy gulped painfully. “My only hope is to kill the witch and trust that her death will stop all of this insanity.”

The Angels returned with two doors they’d wrenched free. The wood around the hinges had splintered and snapped. Lucy took one and eyeballed the opening. By the looks of it, the door would slide right through. Lucy laid it on the floor, counted to three, then slid it through the opening.

Nothing happened.

Which was a good thing.

Had they wedged the door open?

One way to find out.

Bobby shoved the pistol in his pocket and stepped through. He heard a groan as if the doorway wanted to close, but the door held. He turned and grinned. He was about to say no problem when he felt a hand push him backwards. He lost his balance and fell down the stairs, careening off the rail and landing on one of the bodies. He vomited as his elbows plowed through what was left of a stomach.

Above him the doorway snapped shut from top to bottom, like a normal mouth. When it opened again, Lucy shoved the other door perpendicular to the floor. The doorway snapped shut, but stopped on the door and stayed there, leaving a three-foot by three-foot space to crawl through. They’d finally figured it out.

Bobby struggled free from the bodies. He dry-heaved as he found solid ground. He panted on hands and knees before gathering himself into a sitting position.

In front of him was a large area with metal chairs arrayed in rows before an altar that stood four feet tall and covered by a frayed and yellowed lace tablecloth. Decomposing flowers covered most of the surface with a white fifty gallon barrel as the centerpiece. A cross had been painted in red on the front of the barrel. The paint had bled in places.

In the chairs in front of the altar sat two of the mourners, Kanga and the black boy with the bling. They stood and cleared the surface of the altar of flowers with awkward sweeps of their arms. They reached for the barrel.

Bobby understood what they were about to do and tried to get to his feet. He fell again on the slick blood, but got to his feet just as the two zombified men twisted the top free from the barrel.

“No!” Bobby cried. “Don’t do that!”

They ignored him. With a gut-wrenching squeal the top came free. They tossed it aside and stepped back. Right out of a nightmare, a body appeared rising like a snake from a basket. Dressed in a white dress with a brilliant ruby necklace around her neck, there was no mistaking who she was.

And as her head turned and her arm rose to point at Bobby, he felt real fear. He managed to pull the pistol out and fire it once before the woman screeched—the sound of a million fingers spider-dancing across a chalkboard the size of the Milky Way.

His vision dimmed. He tasted copper. Warmth rushed through him. “No!” he cried again, realizing what was coming. And then he fell into the bottomless pit of a grand mal seizure, only dimly aware that his body tap-danced on the floor of a nightmare.

Lucy heard the screech and almost passed out as the tentacle came to life and began to squeeze, as if responding to the sound. He urged his men to hurry, while warning them to be wary of the door. Somehow they all managed to get inside and down the stairs.

The first one to the bottom panicked. He turned to run, but was jerked from behind and disappeared from view. Another figure, this one a black kid he recognized as Theopolis, rushed in and bit into the chest of one of his Angels, dragging him away.

The screech sounded again and half of his men tried to turn and run, except there was nowhere to go except back up the entrail-covered stairs and through Lucy. He growled and yelled for them to help their friends. He made it to the bottom of the stairs and took in the scene.

Bobby rat-a-tap-tapped his limbs on the floor in the midst of a seizure. Chairs that had been arranged before a fifty gallon drum were scattered as Angels pulled the two zombified mourners from their victims. They knew not to kill them if they could get away with it, but if necessary, kill they would.

The centerpiece to the chaos locked eyes with Lucy. The dead witch stood from within the drum, pointed toward him and screeched again. The tentacle squeezed tighter, but not as tightly as before. He stared back at the woman and felt his fear diminish.

* * *

Bobby stood transfixed. The single note was so perfect it could shatter the world. A voluptuous black-haired woman in a white dress stood atop the stage, her finger pointed at him, a microphone to her red, luscious lips, singing that beguilingly curious note until he thought she’d expire from the effort. But just as she seemed to carry it too far, she dropped three octaves, and in the husky drawl of a southern blues singer, slid into the well-known words about a hotel named Heartbreak.

Arms suddenly appeared on the stage, disembodied and thrust from the wood. Each hand held a lighter that was lit in a mockery of a rock concert. The arms began to sway in unison as the
Bruja
—for Bobby realized now that’s who was singing—gyrated on the stage.