The Revenant Road (24 page)

Kowalski moved toward me, his eyes roving around the room, lingering on the rafters overhead. “We got a squatter somewhere on the premises,” he growled. “We can’t afford the distraction.
Leave her
.”

The outrage I’d nursed since meeting Kowalski began to churn in my gut. I bit back a shout, forced calmness into my voice.

“I’m not leaving her hanging there so that thing can
butcher
her.”

I was fed up with Kowalski, fed up with the suffering of innocents: I was hacked off enough to chew Death a new Asshole.

Kowalski spoke through gritted teeth.

“Listen, shit fer brains...”    

“No
you
listen,” I said. “I’ve had it with you. You’ve been nothing but demeaning and abusive since this whole thing started.”

“Grudge...”

“I’m taking her down,” I said. “If you don’t like it, go hunt Bigfoot yourself,
Shit for brains.”
    

I made my way to the altar.  But even a cursory glance was enough to inform me that I wasn’t going to make it: Arrayed across the makeshift shrine was a display of butchery that would have made Vlad the Impaler look like the official spokesperson for Amnesty International.

Whoever had murdered these people had torn them limb from limb. Severed arms, legs, heads, entrails and a variety of organ meats adorned the pile. Many of the bodies displayed obvious bite wounds.

The bound woman’s eyes drew my focus away from the atrocities before me. She’d been gagged with some filthy strip of cloth that reduced her cries to muffled grunts. Even beneath the blood and filth that covered her face I could see her exhaustion. And her terror.

What would Marcus do?

But she was still alive.

What would Kevin Doyle do?

I knew the answer. I bit back the geyser of vomit that pummeled up my esophagus and climbed onto the corpse pile. Above me, the bound woman’s struggles grew more frantic. My foot slipped in something wet: I looked down and discovered that I’d stepped on someone’s exposed spinal column.

Meanwhile, Kowalski was quietly suppressing a shit-fit. Finally, he broke. “Of all the stupid, unprofessional, sentimental horse hockey you’ve pulled,” he hissed. “
This
has to take the goddamn cake.”    

I reached the top of the corpse pile and climbed onto the broad back of a very fat, very dead white matron. I stood up, somewhat woozily, and came face to face with the bound woman.

“Mmmmmmphhh!” she said.

“Wait,” I replied. I removed the gag.

“He... He’s... It’s...”

“Calm down,” I said. “You’re safe.”    

“No no no...!”    

“We don’t have time for this,” Kowalski said.    

“Shut
up
,” I hissed.     

“He’s... he’s...”    

“Easy now,” I said. “What’s your name?”    

“Sandra,” she said breathlessly, “Sandra Woo. But...”    

“Grudge…”

“SHUT UP, KOWALSKI!”    

“You’re gonna blow the whole goddamn
scenario
!”

Suddenly Sandra Woo’s eyes went as wide as white saucers. She pointed at the chapel floor. I looked down.  Something, a dark shape, rose up behind Kowalski, its outline hunched and tremendous.

“It’s...it’s...!”    

“Oh quiet down, lady,” Kowalski snapped. “You know, I told him. I
told
Marcus you didn’t have the stones to do the job right.”    

“Neville...” I said, my lips numb with horror.    

“I quit drinkin,’
cold turkey,
” Kowaslski raged. “I’ve killed blood-skates, were-tigers, three different varieties mind you...”    

“Kowalski...    

“Once, I staked a Walpurgi Death Lord to the roof of a moving fucking hearse while fighting off a defensive Familiar and a fucking Half-dead man-servant,
single-handed!”

“Kowalski...”

“But in
all that time
I’ve never wanted to take a fucking drink like I do right...
fucking
...
now
!”

Behind him, the squatter grinned and raised its claws.

I let Sandra Woo go, raised my cross-bow and screamed—    

“Kowalski, behind you!”

—as Woo pinwheeled her arms and tumbled off the corpse shrine. Kowalski spun, too late, and saw what was standing behind him.

The Yeren was huge, black-furred. Its eyes shone fever-bright in the shadows. Its arms hung to its knees, massive hands tipped with black talons as long as daggers.

Kowalski froze. “Jesus Holy...”

The rest of his oath was drowned out as the Yeren screamed, a blast of sound that shattered the remaining windows inside the chapel. The force of the scream slammed Kowalski like a battering ram. He staggered backward, dropped his crossbow and fell to his knees.

“Kowalski get down!” I screamed.

Kowalski dove onto his face and I fired.

The iron-headed bolt flew across the chapel and slammed into the Yeren’s shoulder. The squatter screamed and wheeled on Kowalski who was scrambling to reach his cross-bow where it lay beneath a demolished pew.

The Yeren leapt. This time, however, Kowalski was prepared. He came up with the Colby and fired.

The Yeren was faster. It spun away, became a blur of motion. Kowalski’s bolt shot through the empty space it had filled a moment earlier. Kowalski notched another bolt and lifted the crossbow, too late: The Yeren slapped the weapon out of his hands. The crossbow flew across the chapel. 

I was still struggling to reload another bolt into the Seward. My frantic movements upset the corpse shrine and I tumbled off the fat lady’s back. I landed ass-first on the hardwood floor behind the shrine next to Sandra Woo. She crouched there with her hands over her ears.

“Stay here,” I said.

“Grudge!” Kowalski cried.

I grabbed my crossbow and dove out from behind the shrine as the sound of gunfire peppered the night with explosions. Kowalski had both automatics out, firing them simultaneously. He struck with deadly accuracy, each shot sending bright spatters of blood across the floor. The Yeren staggered, hurt by the iron bullets.

But it wasn’t enough.

I notched my second bolt, aimed and pulled the trigger.  

The bolt struck the Yeren high on the right side of its chest. The creature shrieked, grasped my arrow and snapped it in half. But the iron head was still buried in its flesh.

The Yeren turned, fixed me with a glare of amber-eyed malice, and my testicles retreated into the safety of my lower G.I. tract.

“Catch!” Kowalski screamed.

A second later, his silver automatic sailed toward me. I caught it while managing to hold onto the crossbow.

Kowalski swept in and rammed a long-bladed knife into the Yeren’s back. The Yeren whirled and launched a backhanded blow at Kowalski’s head. Kowalski raised his arms to absorb the brunt of the Yeren’s attack. Even so, the power of the squatter’s blow batted him away.

I dropped the crossbow, lifted the Sig Sauer and fired. A red rose sprouted in the black center of the Yeren’s chest. The monster screamed and leapt straight up, nearly twenty feet straight up, and vanished among the rafters.

“Don’t let it get above you, kid!” Kowalski screamed. “That’s how it attacks, from above!”

I aimed the automatic at the rafters over my head, but the exposed girders and charred timbers were empty.

Something moved in the shadows off to the right.

I fired.

Behind me, there was a flicker of motion above the corpse shrine: I spun and fired again.

The massive chandelier that dangled over my head groaned and began to sway back and forth.

“Where did it go?” I said. “
Dammit where is it?”

The chandelier groaned again, louder this time. Its swaying motion increased. Behind me, the Yeren screamed. I spun toward the sound fired, once, twice, three times, and hit empty air. 

Above me, the chandelier swung back and forth, creaking like an ancient Viking battleship.

Then it broke free.

“Watch your ass, Grudge!” 

I dove out of the way a moment before the chandelier hit the floor with a thunderous clatter. Kowalski’s scream of warning barely registered over the tidal wave of breaking glass and clanging metal.

“Heads up!”         

I lifted the gun—knowing even as I did that it was too late—and the Yeren plummeted toward me.

Kowalski knocked me out of the way a second before the Yeren struck the floor hard enough to splinter oak. I slid across the chapel floor and slammed headfirst into the pastor’s lectern.

The Yeren grabbed Kowalski and hauled him off his feet.

For a moment, hunter and squatter faced each other, eye to eye, Kowalski wriggling like an unruly manikin, six feet above the floor.     

“You’re one hideous sack o’ shitworms, that’s fer sure,” Kowalski said.    

The Yeren bared its fangs.

For the day of your end and even the bringer of your Doom is known, and marked in the Book of the Nolane.

“Not today,” I snarled.

I reached for Kowalski’s empty automatic, grabbed it, and something...
something
akin to an electric shock ran up my arm. The place where my flesh met the warm solidity of Kowalski’s Sig Sauer grew warm, then hot.

For a split second I had the impression that the gun was melting into my hand: that my flesh and the gun had joined together, given up their individual structures to form... something new.        

The Yeren paused. It turned toward me with Kowalski dangling in its fists. They were both staring at me.

“I was right,” Kowalski said, wonderingly. “Jesus H. Barbarella.
Look at you
.”

I looked down at the gun in my hand and a blood-red burst of incandescence seared my sight. The light faded almost instantly, leaving a crimson lightning scar across my inner eye.

“Grudge!”

I threw the Sig Sauer with all my might.

The gun flipped end over end, arcing across the chapel like a scarlet comet, and struck the Yeren’s forehead.

The Yeren dropped Kowalski and wailed. A moment later, its forehead burst open. Blood spurted out of a deep gash in the squatter’s head and splashed the floor.

I grabbed two crossbow bolts out of the quiver on my hip and gasped as crimson force exploded in my clenched fists.

Borne forward like a blazing star over treacherous seas, I moved across the chapel. There was a sensation of rushing wind: a scarlet torrent, like a river of burning blood, seemed to expand my limbs, quicken my steps. A nano-second later, I smashed into the Yeren and drove the two cross-bow bolts into its heart.