Chapter 7 #2
“Hopefully the crowd got thinned out a bit,” Girard said, in a similar, calm voice. He glanced across at her, eyes shaded dark. “This is not where I’d hoped to be this evening.”
It took Hallie a moment but then she caught his meaning. Dinner. “Me neither,” she answered with a grim smile. “On the other hand, we’re getting some time together.”
Girard laughed. It was short and didn’t have a lot of humour in it, but it made Hallie want to draw closer to him, and there was no time for that now.
“Do you know what they are?” Hallie should have asked earlier, but right now she really wanted and needed a distraction.
“Warrimel,” Girard answered, voice heavy. “They’re a ground-dwelling species, with sharp claws and sharper teeth. They might be small, but a mass of them is deadly. Oh, and they’ll also turn on each other if they’re injured.”
Hallie had to pause to take a careful breath, suppressing nausea at the description. The scratching overhead was getting louder, or perhaps that was just her imagination, now that she was listening for it.
At her hip, the zauber stirred. Hallie was so used to carrying it now she barely noticed its presence, until moments like this one when it seemed to wake up.
She could not help think of it as a cat stretching, reluctantly rousing itself from sleep.
It sent what she could only think of as a silent question to her. Wanting to know if she wanted its help.
Not yet, she told it. She wasn’t sure how much the zauber understood, or even if she should be thinking of it in those terms, but it settled back in place, watchful and waiting.
The scratching sounds were getting louder, along with the squeals and shrieks of the creatures.
And then the doors moved. Hallie gasped, body freezing for a sharp intake of breath.
She had been expecting it, but it was still a shock to see the table pushed back by the force being applied to the doors.
A narrow, dark gap appeared in the middle of the doorway along with small, clawed feet and then a head poked through.
The moment slowed for Hallie. The single creature she could see was indeed small.
Its head was perhaps the length of her little finger, but its dark eyes fixed on Hallie and Girard with a primitive hunger, long white teeth gleaming.
It wanted to kill her and eat her. Not necessarily in that order.
Mouth dry, palms damp, Hallie moved a fraction away from Girard, to give them both room to swing their chosen weapons, and waited.
She knew better than to take a fight forward, to meet her enemy.
She had room to fight here, and solid ground under her.
The doorway would get crowded very quickly.
The wooden door shifted again, the opening widening, and more creatures appeared, then started spilling through the gap.
Hallie met the first wave of the creatures with a swing of the metal pipe, sending small, furred bodies flying back into the air, thumping into the doors and into more of the creatures that were even now trying to force their way inside.
Squeals and shrieks of what sounded like anger and pain rose in the air, filling the space.
She had no time to be sick or to flinch away.
Every time she swung her weapon, more creatures appeared in the gap.
She was dimly aware of Girard next to her, using a long-handled hammer in smooth strokes to thump into the oncoming wave of creatures, bodies flying back.
Sweat pooled under her clothes, and her arms ached as her muscles tired, but she kept swinging, kept pushing back against the onslaught.
Her whole body was trembling with effort when the pipe shattered in her hands.
She’d taken a step too far from the table with its store of weapons. She was out of reach to grab for something else to defend herself. The creatures flooded towards her. Almost at her feet.
Now! Hallie yelled internally to the zauber. The watching, waiting cat inside lifted its head, eyes fixed on its enemies, and struck.
Magic rose in the air around her, sending more static charge across her skin, drying the sweat.
The creatures shrieked and squealed and howled in pain and fury as they were flung backwards, a series of thud, thud, thud sounds marking where the individual creatures slammed into the partly-opened doors.
More of them poured through the gap, high-pitched cries of rage filling the air as they were denied access to Hallie by an invisible wall of magic that the zauber had raised in front of her.
The zauber gave a low silent purr of satisfaction and settled on its haunches, ready to fight again. The magic wall was still there, shimmering just at the edge of Hallie’s sight.
“Show me how to do that?” Hallie requested, not realising she’d spoken aloud.
The zauber twitched, but obliged. Wordless instruction unfolded in her mind and she nodded to show she’d understood. It was easier - far easier - than the magic lessons she’d had from Emmet. This was more instinct.
She pulled energy from her body and pushed it out, forming a barrier in front of her, spreading out around her and Girard, and their weapons stash, holding the creatures at bay.
“How long can you hold that?” Girard asked, his voice tense.
“I don’t know,” Hallie answered honestly. “It’s taking up a lot of energy. The zauber started it and is still doing some of the work.”
“Can you push outward? Get the creatures to the outside?” Girard asked.
“I can try,” Hallie said, even as the zauber twitched again, as if deeply offended that there was even a question about its capabilities.
The magic wall moved, shivering under the press and weight of the creatures trying to get to Hallie, but the creatures couldn’t get through the magic and, little by little, Hallie and the zauber pushed them back, outside the room.
Faced with the barricaded door, the gap big enough for the creatures but not for people, Hallie stood, swaying slightly, breath harsh and rapid. She was sweating again, a fine tremor running through her.
Girard dragged the table away, somehow not affected by the magic wall, but kept to Hallie’s side as they moved into the outer room. The front doors were in tatters, seemingly chewed up into splinters by the creatures.
“There are so many of them,” Hallie said, voice a whisper, looking out onto the once bare ground.
“Not so many as there were before,” Girard said, satisfaction in his voice. “We did a lot of damage, even before the magic.”
Hallie tried to answer, but her vision was wavering at the edges. Her strength was failing, and she could feel the zauber likewise weakening. “We don’t have long,” she told Girard.
“Understood.”
They’d reached the door now and Hallie realised that she could see the edge of the swarm.
Several paces away from the outer wall of the building the creatures ended and bare earth began.
The sight gave her a tiny spark of hope and lift of energy.
There were still hundreds of the creatures, but there was an end to them.
Sudden heat rose beside her and she spared a moment of attention to look at what Girard was doing. He seemed to have managed to add a length of pipe onto the fuel container, and set fire to the end of it so that long, brilliant flames shot out from the pipe.
“Stay behind me, please,” Girard said.
She didn’t try to answer, just held her ground, keeping the barrier in place as best she could while Girard stepped in front of her, spraying the deadly flame in front of him in smooth, easy arcs.
The remaining creatures burned with ear-splitting shrieks, agony and fury all rolled together. The ones out of reach of the flames didn’t turn away, didn’t try to save themselves, instead they rushed on, into the flames, into the path of the weapon Girard had made.
Hallie sank to her knees, vision failing, the magic all but gone, the zauber the softest of presences in her mind as it, too, ran out of energy.
As she slumped to the filthy floor, amid the remains of mouldy food and dead creatures, she heard the roar of the flames die, replaced by the steady flat crack of Girard’s gun.
She tried to move. She had a gun, too. She should be helping him.
But she couldn’t move, darkness swallowing her.