Chapter 11
11
T here was a lot of sweating, swearing, hand holding, and plenty of whispered kindnesses all the way to the north side of the city which was a lot further than Robert had said. It really wasn’t that far off what I thought labor would be like, minus the joyous birth at the end of it. I mean, I’d never given birth, so I was just guessing.
Unless of course I was about to spit out a writhing, screeching demon of a child, not exactly what I’d imagined when I’d considered having a baby. The thought was enough to make me laugh, but that laugh turned into a howl that had me arching my back and struggling to breathe.
My shadow is strong, yes? You are doing well, Sentinel. Better than I thought, actually.
“Ducking hell!” I snarled as the shadow took another stab at controlling me. So much for love being the best thing to hold it back. Love was good, and it helped, but the shadow was still strong.
Stavros had tried to warn me that what Toltza would ask of me was too much, and he hadn’t been kidding. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold it back. And then what? How would I get rid of it?
“We’re only minutes away,” Suzy said, her voice breaking through the haze of sweat and muscle cramps. “I can see the river and sense the swamp beyond it.”
I opened my eyes. We were near the head of the river that Suzy thought would be the best place to find the galloo and its friends based on their scent of brine.
But we didn’t have to find the galloo.
It found us.
It rushed toward us and slammed into the side of Corb’s car, the metal crumpling and screeching. I turned my head in time to see the four horns sticking out of the massive head that had busted through the side of the sports car, a flash of red scales. Then it was gone, and we were flipping high into the air, over and over. I counted three full revolutions, Damian and Corb tumbling as neither had put their seatbelts on, before the car landed on its roof.
Once the shadow sees the galloo, you will be in for the fight of your life. Toltza’s voice echoed through me. Let the shadow lead your body. This is where you must trust me.
Upside down, I hung in my seatbelt.
Wriggling about, I found the buckle and managed to unlatch it. I dropped to the roof of the car and crouched.
Suzy was out cold. Robert was still hanging onto me but had slid back to his skeletal appearance. “Robert, help them get out.”
“Friend,” he whispered. “Stay.”
“No, I can’t.” The ground rumbled with each footstep. The moment had distinct Jurassic Park vibes, and I wouldn't have been surprised if I’d popped my head out and found myself facing a T-rex.
On my hands and knees, I could see the feet of the galloo out of the left side of the car.
So out the right side I went.
The shadow that I was carrying was strangely quiet as I stood and turned to face the beast.
But there was only one of them. Toltza had said I needed to find them all.
“Oh, yeah,” I growled with a voice that was not mine. “If I’d known we’d actually be hunting galloos, I would have played nicer. Thought Toltzy was fibbing again.”
I touched my throat. “You’ll work with me then?”
“Hmmmm. Yes. For now.”
Yup, talking to myself in two different voices, that was a new one, and yet here I was, rolling with it. Go me.
“We need to get them all together.” I moved around the side of the car, the galloo tracking me with those great big cat eyes. Not dilating yet, but that would come. I knew it would.
“If you want a galloo to call its friends, you need to bleed a little.”
I grimaced but pulled the knife that Crash had made me. A blade that was as black as any night. I laid the blade against my upper arm and carefully pressed.
The edge of the blade was so sharp that the skin split without much pain or pressure. At least initially.
“Don’t!” Corb yelled from inside the car. “Don’t wound yourself!”
“Too late,” I yelled back.
“He doesn’t know. The siren has never fought a galloo before. This will be my fifth time.”
I stepped to the left and the galloo raised its head, sniffing the air, oversized nostrils flaring as it scented me and my fresh cut. “And what happened the other four times?”
“Oh, I killed the galloos. But they killed my host bodies. It’s just the way of the fight.” He shrugged with my shoulders as if the words meant nothing to him—or me.
I swallowed hard. “So no advice then?”
“Work together, move fast, kill faster. Maybe you’ll survive. I doubt it though.”
Maybe.
I had to survive. That was all there was to it. Crash and my friends were depending on me to take these monsters out. I had to deal with the galloo in order to save them. In order to put a stop to the killings.
I breathed slowly, trying to not freak out as the blood dripped down my arm into the leather bracer. I kept the car between me and the galloo, mostly because I didn’t want—
“Here!” Suzy scrambled out on my side of the car, a piece of glass in her hand. “If blood will call the others in, then let’s do it.” She slashed her forearm, her blood welling rapidly.
The galloo let out a low bellow, head whipping between me and Suzy, nostrils flaring more, its tongue slipping out between all those teeth like a snake, flicking through the air.
Kinkly wobbled as she flew, her forehead bleeding, her flight erratic. “Bree. You’re not doing this alone.”
I smiled, though my lips wobbled almost as much as her wings. “I never doubted.”
Corb and Damian slid out, one after the other, Robert pushing them.
“Ass,” Robert grumbled as he gave Corb an exceptionally hard push.
The galloo tipped its head from side to side and then straight back, a booming bellow rippling out of its throat and cutting through the early morning. The bellow was so deep it vibrated my bones and chest. My knee jerk reaction was to step back. This was a monster that was not meant to be trifled with.
And yet here I was, trifling away.
“Oh, come on, pretty boy.” The shadow in me spoke, then laughed as my friends looked at me. “You think that scares me? It’s just calling its beastie friends. You see, Damian over there is a feast all by himself. But me? They know me. They hate me.”
I rolled my shoulders, flexing.
“Is that why it’s waiting?” Corb sidestepped and the galloo moved with him.
I stepped in the other direction.
The galloo came back my way. “It wants to follow all of us. That will be our advantage,” I said. “Keep it confused.”
“Good call.” I nodded to myself.
Damian shook his head. “Why is it waiting? It attacked us at my place, without reservation.”
“This is a different one,” I said. “A slightly smaller galloo. No mark on its chest.”
It was a strange standoff by all accounts.
Having an audience only made it stranger.
On the river was the sound of a boat, and I dared a glance.
“You’ve got to be ducking kidding me,” I breathed out. Bramble and Louis sat in the boat, along with Missy and a cloaked person who was probably another member of the Dark Council. That was a guess.
Bramble waved. “Hello, cousin. I see you are well on your way to hell. Well done, by the way, carrying a demon this long. I knew you could do it.”
I waved back with a single finger but didn’t dare look away from the galloo that had crouched low. Submissive.
Shit.
I spun as the second, third, and fourth galloo erupted from behind the house closest to us. They were nearly twice the size of what I now considered the ‘little’ galloo, who attacked from the other side. The one marked on the chest was last to arrive and easily the biggest.
“Move!” I yelled. “They don’t know who to follow. Kink, go high!”
Kinkly shot into the air, but I realized quickly that the galloo were not actually all that distracted. They went straight for the only demon in the group.
Damian.
I grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the way, putting him behind me with a speed that had me gasping.
“Told you.” The shadow grumbled with deep satisfaction. “Get that knife ready. Throat and then heart. We need them to bleed out.”
“Oh, sure,” I spat back. “Simple.”
Simple would have been killing the two witches that had created the demons. But the reality was, Bramble was only one witch. Even if we managed to kill her, we’d still have to hunt down another witch. One of whom we had no knowledge of. This alternative was the only way, but it was far from simple.
The galloo were literally on all sides of us—me and Damian. They were ignoring my friends.
Mistake one.
I ducked under the reach of the galloo on my right, swept my blade up and caught it across the throat in a move I’d never been trained to do. The blade Crash had made me cut through the scales, sending them flying out like bits of shattered glass. The galloo gurgled and took a last swipe at me before it fell forward.
I leapt around, came up behind it and drove the blade through its back where the heart would be. Only there was no reason for me to know where the heart was on a beast I’d never known before this.
“I’m running things!” the shadow in me snapped. “Keep up, Sentinel! Move your ass!”
Damian screamed, and I spun to see the smallest of the galloo pinning him down between its two enormous sets of claws. It thrust its head down toward his head, tusks dragging through the concrete, breaking it up as Damian managed to pull free enough to dodge the blow.
I sprinted—yes, sprinted!—across the space and rolled under the third galloo, cutting its hamstrings as I slid past. Then I pushed up off my knees and launched my body at the smaller galloo that had Damian trapped.
I hit the beast in the side of the body, the armor as hard as if I had slammed into a concrete block, knocking the wind out of me. But the shadow sharing my body didn’t give a flying duck about my pain or lack of air. It just kept my limbs moving.
I tossed my blade over the head of the galloo, caught it in my left hand, and slammed it into the center of its back. Yanking the blade free, I spun to the right and swept the blade up and across the galloo’s throat.
“Oh, I’m on fire!” the shadow yelled. “Let’s kill these bitches!”
“Settle the duck down,” I gasped. “This is why your hosts die! You run them into the ground!”
Ribs, I was sure my ribs were broken. But I wasn’t fully in charge of my body…not in the least, actually.
“Watch out!” Suzy screamed and I spun as the second largest of the galloo rushed me, claws out, mouth open.
I was going to take a full-on hit, and I wasn’t sure I could survive it.
“Well, shit sticks,” the shadow muttered. And he left my body. The damn miserable little coward left me.
I stared up at the oncoming galloo, shaking, all the adrenaline gone, the power that the demon had been fueling me with, out like a match in the wind.
A wave swept out of the river and took the galloo out at the knees, slamming it into the ground at my feet. There was no time to guess whether attacking it was a smart idea or not.
I leapt onto its back and drove the blade straight through the center, then clumsily reached around to the front and pulled the blade across its throat.
“Three down.” I turned around to see the last galloo.
The biggest of the four, and it didn’t seem all that happy. The one with the mark on its chest. The one that had chased us from Damian’s house.
“Damian, Toltza’s shadow left me,” I breathed out. And then I looked at my blade, saw the glimmer of eyes skimming across it. Okay, he’d left my body but was still around. In the blade itself? I would have to hope it was enough to finish the job.
“He thought you were going to die so he jumped ship like a rat. Death would send him back to hell.” From the sound of his voice, Damian was to my left. “We can do this. We work together.”
I wasn’t sure we could. Every part of me was shaking. I had a demonic blade in my hand and a body that was being royally beaten up. I was going to need a lot of Advil after this. A lot of whiskey too.
The galloo though, that big bastard only had eyes for me. With a blowing snort, it dug its feet like a bull readying a charge. This was the one we’d seen in Damian’s house, the one who’d nearly caught us on Skeletor.
I held my blade to the side, feeling the demon’s energy through the handle.
“Come on then, let’s get this over with, I need a hot bath and a bottle of whiskey, and you are slowing up those good times.” I motioned at the beast with the tip of the blade.
The galloo screamed, rage and blood lust in every decibel that shook through my bones.
There was a moment where the world stilled, and then it rushed me, and the world kind of sped up.
I’d planned to drop and duck out of the beast’s way, catch its arm, and fling myself up onto its back, similar to what the demon’s shadow had helped me do with the first galloo. Slick as snot, that’s what the plan was.
That’s not what happened.
I was too slow. It felt like my feet were in mud, and maybe if I’d looked down it would have been mud. Or maybe it was a spell holding me there. That was possible too.
The claws of the galloo shot toward me, all four of them going straight for my middle, just before arms wrapped around me from behind to pull me out of range. I stared up at the galloo, raised my hand, and slashed at its throat.
The blade slid from my fingers, laughter rolling from it.
“I got the blade!” Damian yelled, and then the galloo stiffened and burbled out a last bellow that blew a long line of spittle over my face. The arms around me went lax, and we fell backward together.
I landed on a hard chest.
“Bree,” Corb breathed out my name, his mouth at my ear. “I wasn’t fast enough. Sorry.”
I tipped my head back to see his face, pale, blood trickling out of his lips.
“You tried. I’ll give you points for that,” I whispered, my own words thick with blood.
A flutter of autumn-colored wings drifted across my vision as Kinkly fell from the sky.
I tried to lift a hand to catch her but my fingers didn’t so much as flex. “Kink, no! Not you!”
Her body landed lightly on my chest, but I couldn’t even lift my arms to touch her.
You know, I’d walked a path before that led to death, but this was something else. This was real. I was dying. My fingers found the bracelet with the blue stones, I rubbed my thumb over it. Feeling some comfort that I was wearing it still.
Marge came into view, her blue skin and wild hair all I could see. Damn…I should have laid money on her being the one under the cloak in the boat. “Put the blade back in her hand. Quickly, she will need it. Homer, the sealing spell, on it now! Or Bramble won’t be able to finish this!”
I could hear screaming. Gran. Suzy. Damian. They were trying to stop what was happening, and all I could do was look up, my body going cold.
There was a grunt, and then Robert was crouched beside me, his skeletal hand wrapped around mine. “Bree. Dying.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I caught on to that.”
Beneath me, Corb was still. I thought I felt Kinkly shudder.
Flames erupted around us in a perfect circle, and Bramble’s voice cut through the chaos. “When the flames die, their souls will be trapped. Until then, they have a chance to find the blacksmith and return him and themselves to the land of the living.”
I turned my head to the side. The words on the wall of the Haven House— embrace death —suddenly had a bigger meaning. Bramble’s eyes met mine through the flames, and there were…tears in them. She gave me a tight nod. “Cousin. You have it in you. Get the job done.”
My eyes fluttered, heart stuttered, and I died there on a dead-end street.