Eater of Lives(SPECTR #4) (11 page)

Sekhmet save us.

“Spread out,” Kaniyar ordered. People gave
the SPECTR vans parked in the street uneasy looks, and some
photographers started snapping pictures. If word spread too fast,
would the wendigo give them the slip again?

Nothing to do but go ahead and hope. “Sean,
Caleb, Tiffany, you’re with me,” John ordered.

“I’ll accompany you as well, agent,” Forsyth
said.

John hesitated. Forsyth outranked him, but
the man wasn’t a field operative. “Sir, with all due respect, this
is a dangerous situation. It might be best to leave to those of us
more experienced in this sort of thing.”

Forsyth held open his coat, displaying a
Glock in a shoulder holster. “Don’t worry, agent. I assure you,
it’s loaded with silver-jacketed ammunition.”

“Yes, sir.” John wasn’t exactly reassured,
but he couldn’t refuse Forsyth, either. “Let’s head in.”

He pulled out his badge and pushed his way
through the crowds, flashing it to clear the way. Murmurs began to
spread around them, competing with the music blaring out of the
tents. Goddess, there were so many people here. How were they going
to find the wendigo before it shattered whatever thread of control
its host might still have over it?

“John!” Caleb said urgently. “She came
through here.”

Thank the gods. “Find her!”

Caleb started off, his long strides carrying
him through the crowd, his head turning from one side to the next,
nostrils flared. He backtracked once, before breaking into a trot,
heading straight for one of the tents.

A man stood at the entrance, holding a
clipboard. When he spotted Caleb, he hurriedly put his arm out.
“Hey! Show’s already started—you can’t go in.”

“SPECTR business,” Sean began to say—and the
next instant, the tent inside erupted in panicked screams.

Mortals flood out of the tent, their mouths
and eyes wide with panic. They knock one another down in haste,
including the man with the clipboard. Gray braces himself; a few
collide with him, then start screaming again when they notice his
eyes and hair and teeth. It is absurd; he is no threat to them, and
they will hurt themselves, behaving in this manner.

But it does leave his path to the tent open,
so he strides in. A few mortals remain inside, cowering amidst
overturned folding chairs; he smells their fear-sweat and hears
their frantic breathing. They are of no interest to him.

The wendigo stands on the runway in the
center of the tent, fully manifested. Its body is tall, easily
seven feet, but ghastly thin, nothing more than skin stretched
across bones, hairless except for the lanugo of starvation. Teeth
like knives show behind its shriveled lips, and yellow nails tip
grossly elongated hands. The reek of spoiled meat, kept too long in
a freezer, floods the tent, and Gray’s mouth waters.

Blood coats the runway, staining tattered
remnants of cloth still hanging from its bony body. Ruby-red eyes,
like something albino, search the litter of overturned folding
chairs beside the catwalk for more prey. With a movement fast as a
striking snake, it thrusts a hand down, hauling up a struggling,
screaming mortal from his hiding place. The mortal’s long
dreadlocks and brown skin are annoyingly familiar.

Gray suppresses a sigh.
I suppose we must
save him.

“
I guess,”
Caleb agrees with a
singular lack of enthusiasm.

“Unhand the mortal,” Gray orders, and the
walls of the tent vibrate from the bass roll of his voice. The
wendigo’s misshapen head snaps toward him, and in that moment,
John’s gun roars.

The wendigo staggers under the punch of
silver-jacketed lead, its grip slackening. Will’s clothing tears,
and he falls free amidst blood and shredded cloth.

“Will! Get back!” John shouts, because he
cares about this stupid mortal in a way he can never care about
Gray.

Before Caleb, only the hunt mattered. So it
must be again.

He charges across the room, Caleb’s
telekinesis sending the scattered chairs flying out of their way.
The surface under the runway groans beneath his weight when he
leaps onto it, cheap wood cracking.

The wendigo drops into a crouch, snarling
like a wolverine. Frost coats the surface of the catwalk around it,
and there is a thin lace of frost even over its red eyes. Gray
advances, ready to grapple, to sink in claws and fangs, to
feed—

One boot slides in the melting layer of
frost, throwing him off balance.

The wendigo doesn’t let the opportunity
escape. It lunges forward, grabs Gray’s out flung arm, and bites
down hard.

The layers of elk hide and kevlar coat resist
its sharp teeth. With a screech of fury, the wendigo backhands Gray
with enough strength to snap his neck and send him flying off the
runway into the chairs.

* * *

Gray smashed into the chairs, and John’s
heart jerked at the sight of the unnatural angle of his neck.

Forsyth’s brows snapped down into a scowl.
“Damn it. That’s it for the drakul.”

No
. He’d seen Gray heal from six
bullets to the chest; a broken neck wouldn’t be enough to stop him.
To kill Caleb.

Would it?

The wendigo dropped to all fours, its
vertebrae visible through the thin hide of its back, nothing but a
skeleton hung together with ligament and skin. “Sean, Tiffany, fan
out and take it down!” John shouted.

He fired, but this time missed, the bullet
punching a hole in the tent, and please Goddess don’t let it hit
any innocents outside. The rest of the SPECTR agents must be
closing in on the screams and gunfire; they just needed to keep the
wendigo contained a few minutes…

Sean dropped to his knees, silver knife in
hand, and began to sketch a spirit ward to buy them some time. It
wasn’t a full ward, but it would at least slow the wendigo down if
it headed for the exit.

Right now, however, it seemed more interested
in feeding than escaping. The wendigo launched itself at Tiffany.
She dropped her Glock and brought up her other hand, fire blooming
around her fingers. The creature crashed into her, momentum
carrying them both to the floor, but a howling shriek announced
she’d scored a hit.

The wendigo jerked back, the imprint of her
hand on its face, across the nose and hateful little eyes. Steam
rose from its skin. It shied away from her, hissing and snapping
its teeth, then darted to one side, around her, before encountering
the spirit ward.

The ward slowed it, and John closed in, Glock
in one hand and athame in the other. So close, he sensed its
etheric energy, foul and cold. His breath steamed.

Its clawed hand shot out, and he slashed with
the athame, twisting on one foot to avoid its blow. It ripped
through his wool coat and suit beneath, the tips of its nails
leaving long scratches on his ribs. The silver edge of his athame
raked its upper arm, the thin skin peeling back and smoking , its
blood only oozing out sluggishly.

Sean shot it, and it snarled in pain and
fury. It feinted at him—then, faster than John would have thought
possible, it changed direction and headed for the open tent flap
and freedom.

Except Forsyth stood in its path.

“Get back!” John shouted, and brought up his
gun. But he couldn’t fire from this angle, not without fearing he’d
hit Tiffany or Sean, or even Forsyth.

Forsyth coolly pulled his gun and braced his
stance, as if he didn’t have a monster bearing down on him. Shots
rang out, one after the other, but the wendigo didn’t even slow.
Its jaws gaped; it would take a chunk out of Forsyth to fuel
itself, and be gone before they could stop it—

A dark shape slammed into the wendigo and
knocked it violently to the side.

* * *

Pain flares through their neck, broken bone
grinding back into place, wrenched muscles healing. Gray blinks; he
is lying on his back, shattered chairs under him. A cowering mortal
woman stares at him in wide-eyed terror, even as she points a cell
phone in his direction.

“
She’s fucking loading this to YouTube?
That’s it, I give up. The human species is doomed.”

I have often wondered how your kind has
survived for as long as you have. This does not give me
confidence.

Gunfire roars, painfully loud. Gray rolls off
the chairs and regains his feet, hunger and rage uncoiling in his
belly. This demon is becoming an annoyance.

The wendigo streaks across the tent, claws
ripping up the thin padding laid over the ground. It will likely
try to escape or feed, or both. Gray will not allow either.

He catches it mid-leap, and they both tumble,
bending and breaking chairs under them. Gray sinks claws deep, and
it tries to do the same. One of its hands is foiled by the coat,
but the other slides up beneath the buckles holding the leather
closed, long nails punching through skin, muscle, kidney, and
viscera.

It
hurts,
a blaze of agony, living
nerves screaming as the wendigo hooks deeper. It means to
eviscerate him, to yank out his organs eat them in front of his
eyes, using his body to fuel its terrible hunger.

They are locked together on the ground, with
him on the bottom. He snaps at its throat, hoping to catch hold
with his teeth, but it jerks out of his reach. Its breath steams,
icy cold, and its mouth gapes open, impossibly wide, its forest of
razor teeth poised to bite his skull in half.

His hand closes on one of the bent metal
chairs beside them, and he swings it with all his considerable
strength into the side of the wendigo’s head. Dead white skin
splits open, baring the skull just beneath, and several teeth fly
loose, one hitting him in the face.

It shrieks, claws ripping loose from his
battered flesh, blood washing hot across his belly. He grabs for it
as it lunges away from him, but the thin film of frost on its skin
makes it too slippery to hold, and none of his claws catch before
it can wrench free.

The mortal, Tiffany, tries to block its path,
fire blooming on her hands, and perhaps it would normally flee the
heat. Now, maddened and injured, desperate for anything to fuel its
healing, it grabs her by the throat.

Her eyes go wide, and she claws at its arm
with fiery fingers, leaving streaks of scorched, bubbling skin.
Even so, it yanks her to its gaping maw.

Gray tackles it from behind, shoulder plowing
into its lower back and sending it sprawling to the floor. He
doesn’t make the same mistake twice, claws latching into the
creature’s legs. Belly down, it digs its nails deep, trying to gain
enough purchase to wrench free, but it is too late. Gray pins it
under him, waiting for its thrashing to reveal the vein pulsing
under the skin of its throat.

There is it; he strikes.

It is a bit like Caleb’s memories of slushies
and milkshakes, the blood thick and full of ice and demonic energy.
It floods into him, so good, sustenance and pleasure, a moment of
perfection before it is gone, drained.

He sits back. Most of his injuries have
healed, but there is an ache somewhere behind his eyes.

“
Ice cream headache,”
Caleb says, and
laughs, on the edge of hysteria.

John drops down beside him, brilliant eyes
worried. “Are you all right?”

But it isn’t him John speaks to, or wishes to
speak to, but Caleb. He draws back inside, and curls up, and leaves
Caleb to be kissed.

* * *

Caleb walked into the office just as John
finished up the first round of paperwork.

They’d gotten incredibly lucky—other than the
poor woman the wendigo killed in the first moments of its
transformation, no more civilians died. As soon as they’d returned
to SPECTR-HQ, John set himself to writing up the report, while
Caleb went home to shower and change out of his blood-stiff
clothing, before returning.

Will had called during Caleb’s absence. “They
just let me out of the hospital,” he’d said, his voice sounding
shaky.

“Do you need me to come pick you up?”

“No. I’m okay. I just…I’m going to come by
later, pack up my luggage, and go home to Savannah. I don’t think
I’ll be back.”

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Me too.” There came a moment of hesitation,
before Will said, “Listen, I don’t know what the hell is going on
with Caleb, but I owe him my life. Tell him thanks for me. And if
he ever needs a good suit, I’ll set him up free of charge.”

John grinned at the thought. “I doubt he’ll
take you up on it, but I’ll let him know. Bye, Will.”

“Good bye, John.”

Now Caleb shut the door behind him and came
around the desk. Saving the first draft of his report with a click,
John rose to his feet and took Caleb in his arms. “You did good,
babe.”

“It was all Gray.”

“Then Gray did good.”

Caleb buried his face in John’s hair. They
held each other in silence a few minutes, just breathing. John
tried not to think about the moment when the wendigo snapped Caleb
and Gray’s neck.

Or how they’d shrugged it off like nothing
had happened.

“I promise,” John said, “from now on, I’m
going to spend every waking minute working on the exorcism. No more
distractions. I’m really close to a breakthrough, I’m sure of it.
We’ll come in this weekend and use one of the exorcism rooms, and
try everything which might give us a lead.”

Caleb let out a long sigh. “John, I…”

The desk phone chirped, and they jumped
guiltily apart, even though the door was shut. “Just a sec,” John
said, scooping it up. “Starkweather here.”

Kaniyar’s voice sounded oddly flat. “I need
you and Jansen to come to my office. Now.”

He hung up and offered Caleb a shrug.
“Kaniyar wants us for something.”

“Did she say what?”

“No. Maybe she wants to congratulate us.” But
she hadn’t sounded like a woman whose office just stopped a wendigo
with only one further casualty.