CHAPTER 33 GHOSTS IN THE DARKNESS
Byrne scrambled away from the Egyptian, the machete lost, but his face wild with a kind of reborn hope.
He was halfway onto his feet when Cole lunged forward awkwardly.
Racked in pain, his aim was off, and rather than impale the killer with the rebar, the makeshift weapon stabbed through the meaty part of Byrne’s thigh.
The man’s scream was enormous, echoing through the chamber, but a second gunshot instantly obliterated the sound.
Cole instinctively dropped, his body hitting the freezing concrete as the world spun. He looked up to see the Mangler step through the doorway, wounded but still operational. The second shot hadn’t been aimed at anyone, just a warning shot.
Daniel looked at the Egyptian, lying still like a big-game kill, then at the squalling man writhing against the rebar, with no emotion for either.
Cole’s attention was on Cochise, his panic escalating with each second.
We need an ambulance! I need to call a fucking ambulance!
But he was frozen—he didn’t even have a fucking phone anymore!
The Mangler crossed the floor slowly and methodically, as if he had all the time in the world.
He stepped over Byrne’s spasming body, stopping to nudge the handle of the machete with his boot, as if checking if it still had any use.
The air around him seemed to stiffen, the cold growing stronger with each step.
He moved toward the fallen gangster and looked down, head tilted, as if the Egyptian was not a person at all but a trophy to be won.
The pistol was steady, the muzzle a black hole pulling in the light.
He aimed it at Cochise’s head, his own slightly tilted, his eyes dark, murky depths of pure death.
“ No…” Cole struggled to his feet. “Don’t!”
Daniel craned his head toward Cole, eyes narrowed—and slowly drew back the hammer. “Bad behavior doesn’t get rewarded,” he murmured. “How will you learn… without punishment?”
“Then punish me!” Cole cried.
A faint, barely discernible smile twitched the corner of his mouth. “I am.”
“No...” Cole swallowed hard as tears blurred his vision. A part of him had believed that the two gangsters were invincible— indestructible . Seeing the Egyptian lying motionless scared the fuck out of Cole. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real—wasn’t possible . They couldn’t die!
The Mangler’s face turned deadpan, eyes like the devil himself. “Your husband’s faith is misplaced,” he said with a vacant tone. “I am God.” He straightened his arm as his finger curled around the trigger.
“ NOOO—”
A figure hurled out of the gloom—massive, hooded, an avalanche in human form—slicing off Cole’s cry.
The Mangler spun around, but the giant was faster, a blur of monstrous muscle.
He grabbed the killer’s arm, twisted it with a crack of bones, and hurled him.
Daniel’s head slammed into the wall with a force that shook flakes loose from the concrete.
The Mangler went limp, falling to the floor with a heavy, wet smack.
The giant loomed over the heap, chest heaving, and for a moment, Cole thought the world had simply run out of new horrors.
Then the heap shifted. The Mangler tried to rise, pawing for the gun that was out of reach as if his depth perception was broken.
The giant responded with a boot to the torso that caved in the ribcage.
The air filled with a wet, collapsing sound, as if someone had stepped on a bag of pudding.
“Fucker…” Byrne rasped, and with a furious cry, ripped the rebar from his thigh. Blood jetted out in a stream, but he paid no attention as he scrambled across the cold floor toward the abandoned sidearm, leaving a smeared blood trail behind.
Cole lurched forward, his legs suddenly giving out and dropping him onto his cracked ribs. The air rushed out of his lungs in an instant, and he couldn’t move as he struggled just to breathe.
Byrne’s hand clamped down on the gun when a chittering noise—a tittering cackle —broke the tension.
Cole looked up just in time to see something small and furious dart from the shadows and fling itself onto Byrne’s back, wrapping its legs around the man’s waist with gymnast’s grace, and driving its hands straight into the thigh wound, fingers digging deep into the flesh.
Jitterbug.
The killer howled and tried to throw the smaller man off, but the thing only shrieked louder, biting deep into the side of the man’s neck.
The cartilage gave with a sick pop . Blood jetted sideways, splattering the floor.
The little psychopath clung tight, mouth working like a lamprey, and with a series of savage jerks, he ripped away a chunk of skin and spat it to the ground with a splatter.
Byrne’s screams, twisted up with the creature's shrieks, were something straight out of a horror movie, chilling Cole’s blood.
Byrne staggered, slackening, but the thing didn’t let go.
It squeezed harder, a python on a dying rabbit, and when the killer finally collapsed, twitching and seizing, the little man clambered over the ruin, panting, face lacquered with blood and flecks of pale, shredded tissue.
Jitterbug looked at Cole with a wild, feral intelligence—a glint that recognized him not as kin, but still something less than prey.
His tongue flicked out, feline-like, as if testing the air.
Then he skittered backward, hands and feet splayed, barely human in its movement, and vanished into a well of shadows amidst the old machinery, leaving Byrne to leak and shudder in the gathering puddle of blood.
Cole could barely process it. Cochise was down, the Mangler unconscious—or dead—and the only sound was Byrne whimpering and bleeding out. Somewhere behind him, Jitterbug giggled, a sound so out of place in this slaughterhouse silence that it sent a cold trail of fear through Cole’s spine.
Cole crawled through the muck, every inch an agony, vision doubled and tripled at the edges.
Something primal inside was pushing him, the will to live shrieking even as the body flagged.
He focused on Cochise, who lay silent, unmoving.
Cole dragged himself toward the gangster—his husband’s brother— ignoring the gristly horror display behind him.
He reached the Egyptian’s side, his hands shaking as he tried to turn the big man over, but each strain of his body sent blinding pain screaming through his ribs and lungs.
There was no exit wound in his chest, and Cole didn’t know if that was bad.
He didn’t think it was good. Or maybe it was.
He didn’t fucking know! He checked for a pulse, and relief shuddered through him when he felt the thrum against his fingertips.
“Stay with me,” Cole choked. “You’re gonna be all right…
fuck… you’re gonna be all right.” He looked up, tears streaming down his face.
What the fuck am I gonna do? He can’t die… he can’t…
A radio suddenly crackled, and Cole jumped.
“Cochise—where are you? I heard gunshots—are you okay?”
Clint!
Cole dug the radio from Cochise’s belt, the device slipping in his trembling hands. His unsteady fingers slipped off the call button when he tried to press it, and he swore brokenly, then managed to push it. “Clint!” Cole cried. “Where are you?!”
A brief pause, then, “ Who the fuck is this?” Alarm turned the cowboy’s voice brittle.
“It’s Cole!” he choked. “Cochise… he’s… he’s hurt! Where are you?”
“ Hurt? How bad?” Clint’s voice strained with real fear. “ How bad?!”
“It-It’s bad,” Cole stuttered. “He was shot. He needs help— now! Where are you?”
Clint swore sharply through the radio. “ I’m in the fucking basement! One of those fuckers locked me inside. I can’t fucking get out! Cochise was on his way back to let me out.”
Cole looked around desperately, his frantic eyes shifting to the dark void around the machinery, where quiet, eerie tittering giggles emanated.
“Jitterbug…” Cole trembled. “Please… help me…” he swallowed, his chest heaving with the effort to breathe.
“For Savannah… these are her friends… they came here to help her.”
Jitterbug crept from the shadows, a maniacal grin splitting his face, baring his pointed teeth, with bits of Byrne’s bloody flesh caught between them.
Cole shivered at the sight. “Her friend… he’s locked in the basement… can you… can you let him out?”
Jitterbug slinked closer, and Cole knew he was just as likely to attack him as he was to help him. Madness flashed through his green eyes, and Cole steeled himself—when the little creature abruptly dashed across the large room and out the door.
“ Cole!” Clint shouted through the radio. “What the fuck is happening?!”
“Just… Just hang tight,” Cole mumbled. “Someone’s coming to let you out. Just don’t…” His eyes darted to the giant. “… don’t hurt him.” Or we’re all fucked.
Don’t hurt him?
What the hell did that mean? Clint stood in the cold chamber outside the small office, the radio clutched in his fist, about to shatter beneath the pressure of his grip.
The fear and desperation in Cole’s voice scared the fuck out of Clint.
He raised the radio to his mouth. “Who shot him?” he growled, a deadly tremor running through his body.
“The Mangler,” Cole said, his words shaky. “My… dad.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s down… maybe dead,” Cole said. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”
“I can’t explain right now.” Cole’s voice pinched, as if in pain.
“Are you hurt?” Clint asked.
“Yeah,” Cole rasped. “But not as bad as…”
Clint’s breath surged. “Is he breathing?”
“Yes… barely. But he’s not moving.”
Clint inhaled deeply, trying to calm the chaos invading his mind. “Who is coming to let me out?”
A short pause. “His… His name is Jitterbug,” Cole murmured. “He’s… different. Kind of… scary. But he helped Gabe and me, and the kids.”
“Is Gabe there with you? Is he all right?”
“He took the kids to find a way out of here. He’s injured, but he’ll be all right.”
Clint pressed the radio to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut, his control wavering. He cleared his throat and lowered the radio. “Where was Cochise shot?”
“In the back. Between the shoulder blades.” His voice shuddered. “There… There’s no exit wound in the front.”
“Is he bleeding?”
“What?”
“Is he bleeding—” Sound outside the door silenced him.
His pulse quickened when the outer lever screeched as it disengaged.
“He’s here,” Clint said into the radio. “I’ll be there soon.
” He clipped the radio to his belt and slowly drew his weapon, keeping his distance from the door as it inched open with a squealing protest of the rusted hinges.
What crept through looked more creature than human—hunched down to all fours, its body thin beneath a baggy overcoat, dark stringy hair hanging in its face, and then it grinned at him, baring razor-sharp teeth. Clint took a startled step back, his grip on the gun tightening.
After a moment of them staring at each other, the creature beckoned to him. “ Come, come.” The voice was that of a nasally child. “I’ll show you the way.”
Clint hesitated only a moment before slowly lowering his weapon; Cochise was hurt, and there was no time to waste. Clint holstered the gun and moved cautiously forward. “Show me.”
The creature—a young man in his early twenties upon closer inspection—jittered excitedly and backed quickly through the door. “ Come, come—hurry.” Then he was gone, racing up the corroded steel steps.
Clint ran after him, heart pounding frantically, praying he found his brother alive upon arrival.
Cole gritted his teeth against the pain and rolled the Egyptian onto his side to check the entry wound. The bullet had shredded a hole through the back of the man’s thick jacket between his shoulder blades.
Fuck—please hurry!
The Mangler suddenly shifted, then moved, and began to drag himself along by his one working elbow, his other arm trailing uselessly. His legs didn’t appear to work, dragging behind him like dead slugs.
Cole reached for the machete, but the giant’s boot landed on the blade, pinning it. They stared at each other, man and behemoth. The giant bent down, not at him but at the Mangler, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, and lifted him effortlessly, intent on smashing him against the wall again.
“Don’t…” Cole rasped, and the giant went still, the killer dangling from his grasp like a rag doll. “Don’t… kill him.” He coughed and spat out blood, meeting the hulk’s black eyes. “He’s my… father… let me…”
The giant looked at him from the shadows of his hood, then loosened his grip, and the Mangler sagged to the floor. Just then, his jittery little companion scampered through the door and jumped onto the giant’s back. Seconds later, the cowboy burst into the room at a dead run.
The giant backed out through the doorway, Jitterbug leering over his shoulder, the two slowly fading into the shadows of the factory like ghostly apparitions.