Kyla
They had bigger problems.
“No surprise,” Tabitha said.
If not for the strange silver light glowing in the upstairs window, she might have forgotten the house was there at all.
Ethan followed her gaze. He said, “There’s something important over there.”
“Do you remember what?”
“No. But it’s waiting for us.”
They followed Tabitha down the front porch, the lights of the motel guttering like candles in a strong wind.
Speaking of wind, the gale that had hammered the motel near midnight had died, but in its place was an awful stillness, a tension like a wire between Kyla’s ears.
She could feel those creatures out there, moving through the night.
She remembered the shape of them from yesterday.
She remembered their feathers and their scales and their terrible strength.
She remembered the way the one locked up in the office had torn Tabitha’s head from her body and heaved it against the window as Kyla ran for her life.
Kyla remembered everything, not that it explained very much. Her headache might have been gone, but her mind was still a blur.
Tabitha stopped outside room 1, the next door down from the office, and dug a hand into her pocket.
Kyla remembered that she and Ethan had come to this room last night in their search for clues and found this door locked.
As Tabitha slid a key into the bolt and swung open the door, Kyla saw that inside was a simple room like all the others, only this one had clearly been lived in for some time.
The two twin beds were unmade. The open wardrobe was hung with clothes.
An unframed photograph was propped against the lamp on the nightstand: Thomas and Tabitha and a thin, severe, black-haired man who could only be their father.
The three stood in some desert, all three of them dressed in jeans and boots, each holding a spade in one hand and a brush in the other. Only Tabitha was smiling.
Tabitha herself was hurrying down the room. From the other side of the long dresser, she produced a series of heavy metal cans.
The first two were blue metal. “Can someone carry these? I believe the motel is out of water.”
“Thank God,” Ryan said. “I’ve been thirsty for an hour.”
Tabitha dragged out another metal canister, this one painted red.
“Gasoline,” she said.
“Music to my ears,” Kyla said. With a nod, Ethan hefted the can.
Lastly, Tabitha’s fingers hesitated over a piece of folded paper waiting atop the dresser. After a long moment’s deliberation, she plucked it up and tucked it in her pocket.
“Let’s take the back porch,” she said. “It’ll save a few seconds.”
They stepped out of room 1’s back door. A lamp died over Kyla’s head as they made their way down the side of the motel.
The ring of light that surrounded them was flickering, growing weaker and weaker.
The edge of the light had drawn so close, Kyla could have reached out her hand and brushed its edge.
Probably lost a finger in the process. A SHRIEK came from mere feet away.
That got them running.
At the far end of the motel, they found a massive metal engine, Army green, rumbling on concrete blocks.
The generator. Tabitha unscrewed a cap in the engine’s side.
As Ethan emptied the sloshing can of gas into its guts, a smile came over Tabitha.
It looked like the most profound relief Kyla had ever seen.
“We didn’t get the chance to do this the first night,” she said. “And so we’ve never done it since.”
Kyla would wonder about this later. “How long will that fuel last?”
The generator weakened, then surged back to life, the lights around the motel shining so bright everyone had to cover their eyes. The engine practically purred with gratitude.
Ethan didn’t seem as happy as the rest of them. “That wasn’t much fuel, considering how much power this place is pulling.”
Tabitha opened a door set into the wall nearby. “This way. I’ll explain as quickly as I can.”
As Kyla followed Tabitha inside, her eye caught the old house behind the motel. A single silver light was glowing in the window upstairs. Kyla murmured to Ethan, “Something’s waiting for us in that house.”
“If we can just find a way to get there,” he said.
The door led into the motel’s kitchen. Filthy cookware was piled in the sink, scattered over long gas ranges. Kyla found it almost as disturbing as the violence of the past two nights: after an aimless decade of working waitstaff, a dirty kitchen was one of her greatest anxieties.
But of course they had bigger problems. Even with Jack Allen dead and the lights back to full strength, she knew this was only a reprieve. Another moan from the mountain shook the motel. Whatever was making that sound, she doubted a shotgun and a few stolen pistols would do them much good.
Speaking of the shotgun, it was practically as tall as Kyla herself.
Its weight was starting to drag on her. When they came around the corner of the cafe’s hall, she settled the gun on the bar, something that appeared to give Tabitha even more relief.
The woman was clearly eager to talk, even without the threat of getting her head taken off.
“You should get some food. All of you,” Tabitha said. “I make it every night and it’s never been eaten. I would like that to change.”
“I’m not exactly hungry,” Kyla said.
“You might as well get up your strength. This will take a few minutes to explain. If our father’s to be believed, what’s happening tonight has been going on for centuries.”