Slay Bells #2
I felt the knot in my gut tighten. Chests caved in and eaten. I supposed most people would think of coyotes, or even bears. But I knew better. A corvathos preferred humans, but it would take what it could get.
“You sure the sheriff thinks it’s coyotes?” I asked. “He’s not bringing in any outside help?”
“She,” Dylan corrected me. “And I mean, I wasn’t there when it happened, but that’s what Alanna told me. Why? Are you some kind of game warden?”
“Something like that.” I pressed my hands on the bartop. “Listen, Dylan. Why don’t you close up early tonight?”
He grinned like I’d played right into his hands. “Oh, yeah? You want me to kick Marty and Walt out so you can get me alone?”
“I’m trying to get you somewhere safe,” I said, flat enough to make a point. “You said it yourself, it’s not exactly a busy night. You’re not making any money off two guys who lost the thread three hours ago.”
“My boss would kill me.” Dylan’s smile went lopsided in apology.
“And anyway, I tried to wake Walt up twenty minutes ago. He launched himself at me with fists up, like I was trying to steal his beer. He swung, missed, and fell onto the next table. Banged his head on the edge.” Dylan gestured at an empty two-top next to Walt’s booth.
“Started bleeding like crazy. I grabbed the first-aid kit and tried to help, but he shoved me away and face-planted again. I don’t think he has a concussion, but I’m not poking that bear a second time until I absolutely have to. ”
He chuckled, like it was an absurd little customer service story. Any other night, it would have been. It took him a moment to realize I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t even smiling. My eyes had gone to the corner where the old man snored, to the glinting sheen by his cheek that I’d dismissed as drool.
“He’s been bleeding?” I scraped my stool back and stood. The sound made Marty jump and look around in slow confusion. I ignored him.
“Yeah,” Dylan said, straightening a little at the tone of my voice. “Small cut, but face wounds always bleed like crazy. He’s fine though. I mean, drunk and belligerent, but fine.”
Blood. I’d written that metallic scent off as nothing, but now that I let it in, the copper tinge stepped forward and waved itself like a flag.
The corvathos liked easy meals. It liked night, and dark alleys, and the path of least resistance. It liked the call of a heartbeat. But fresh blood? That was something it couldn’t ignore.
I scanned the door, the windows, the way the shadows pooled on the floorboards. Every hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Dylan, you need to—”
Before I could even finish my sentence, the door slammed open. It hit the wall with a crack that rattled the bottles behind the bar and knocked a paper gingerbread man off its hook above the window. The cut-out twirled through the air and skittered across the floor.
Cold air rushed in through the door, cutting through the stale heat of alcohol and grease. Snowflakes swirled in on the draft, glittering for half a second and turning the scene into a holiday greeting card—if holiday greeting cards had demons in the middle of them, that is.
The corvathos demon filled the doorframe.
Its chest was hollow, ribs stretched wide and gaping.
The cavity was empty—no lungs, no heart—and it pulsed with a faint red glow.
The creature’s face was a pale white mask, featureless as it stretched over bone.
It had shadowed hollows where its eyes should have been. No expression. No humanity.
And then there was the jaw.
It split vertically down the middle, revealing a maw with row upon row of sharp, gleaming teeth. Teeth that continued down into a throat that looked bottomless. Teeth hungry to rend flesh.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to get the hell out of there.
Beside me, Dylan whispered, hoarse and small, “What the fuck is that?”
“Nothing you want any part of.” My voice was rough. “Run.”
The corvathos stepped inside, snow melting off its shoulders. The floorboards creaked under its weight.
“But—Marty and Walt—” Dylan’s gaze cut toward the corner, where the old man snored against the table. “I can’t leave without them.”
A crash behind me made me whip my head around. Marty, the drunk who’d been shredding napkins, had staggered out of his booth only to knock over a chair one table over. In a high-pitched, strangled voice, he yelped, “What the hell? It’s not Halloween for two more weeks!”
It wouldn’t be Halloween for ten more months, but I wasn’t going to belabor the point.
“Get out of here,” I yelled at him and Dylan.
Marty didn’t need to be told twice. He was already weaving toward the back exit, hands flailing, face red and blotchy from equal parts booze and fear. Good. One less person I had to worry about—and one less corpse, I hoped.
I turned back to the real problem. The corvathos’s gait was slow and deliberate, every step that of a predator savoring its kill in advance. Its head angled toward the table where Walt lay motionless, blood crusted at his temple.
The creature could smell the blood—and the closer it got to a beating heart, the wilder it would get. It would tear through bone and cartilage like wet paper to get at that organ.
“Go,” I shouted at Dylan without taking my eyes off the demon. “I don’t have time to take care of you too.”
I hoped he took my advice, but I couldn’t spend any more time thinking about it. The corvathos was closing in on Walt. The phantom heartbeat inside its ribs pulsed faster, feeding on anticipation.
I needed to keep the creature from killing Walt. And in this cramped, stale little room with nothing but barstools and Christmas tchotchkes for cover, I didn’t have much space to make that happen.
I jumped into the space between the corvathos and Walt.
The creature refocused on me in an instant, then started forward again in a lurching glide, like every joint in its body had rusted shut, then been suddenly greased with oil.
Its ribcage flexed as it moved, individual ribs spreading with a wet clicking noise.
That thready red glow pulsed in its chest, and I swore I could feel an answering tug in my own chest, like the bastard was drawing me to him.
I moved first, pulling a knife from my wrist sheath and slashing low at its leg, going for the hamstring.
The demon sidestepped, but I still got its calf.
Instead of blood, jet black ichor hissed out of its skin like pressurized oil, spraying across the floor.
It stank of bile and steamed as it hit the wood.
The thing shrieked, that vertical mouth peeling open its face, displaying those endless, rancid rows of teeth.
The corvathos reared back, hand going to its chest. It snapped off a rib as easily as I would snap a candycane—a razor sharp candycane that wanted to draw blood.
In the background, Gene Autry sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
I almost laughed. Nothing said ‘holiday spirit’ like a demon trying to gut you while a man in a cowboy hat sang about a reindeer with a sinus problem.
The corvathos swung its rib like a sickle.
I ducked under the first swing and caught the second with the flat of my knife.
Sparks flew where bone met steel. The third swing got my shoulder, and I hissed as the blade cut through my shirt.
Blood leaked down my arm, and I felt the impact reverberate down my spine.
I pulled a second knife free of my other wrist sheath and drove forward with a stab aimed at the faint glow in the thing’s chest. My blade nicked inside the ribcage, and the demon shrieked loud enough to shake the glassware behind the bar.
I wasn’t quite fast enough pulling away, and I caught some of the ichor that sprayed out.
It burned my arm, and the wood smoked and hissed where it hit the wall.
My arm protested as I stabbed forward again, but the creature stepped out of reach. At least it hadn’t gotten any closer to Walt yet. I couldn’t see Dylan anymore, which I was grateful for. He was cute, but I’d rather never see him again than watch him get torn apart by this thing.
People like him shouldn’t end up in fights like this. People like me… Well, I’d made my choices.
The corvathos lunged forward again, trying to outflank me and get to Walt.
I shoved a table in its path and followed it up with a toss of my knife.
The blade lodged in its clavicle, right above the chest cavity.
The demon roared and pulled my knife free, tossing it to the ground.
Then it broke off another one of its ribs and came for me.
The fight became a blur of movement and sound.
The corvathos swung its rib-blades in flurries, snapping more out whenever one splintered against a table or the bar top.
I kept moving, slashing when I could, dodging when I had no other option.
I’d thrown two more knives—one missed, the other punctured its thigh.
But the creature still wouldn’t go down, and I had to ration the blades I had left.
For a moment, I thought I had it. I’d flipped a table and used it as a shield, driving the demon back toward the bar’s door.
I made a quick calculation and decided to risk one more throw.
I launched a knife straight for where the creature’s heart should have been.
It lodged against the corvathos’s spine, and when the demon bent to pull the knife free, I dropped the table and launched myself at the thing.