Night Terrors (Sarah Beauhall Book 4) (40 page)

“Why?” Bub asked, moving to the second door and looking up at the female dragon carved there. She lowered her head to be level with Bub and a puff of steam rose from her nostrils.

“Let me,” Skella said. She opened her pack and took out a flaming torch.

“Nice,” I said. “That burning the whole time it was in your pack?”

“More magic.” Bub said, leaning forward and examining the dragon on the door in front of him.

“Of course,” Skella said, smiling. “Unun gave me a few items. Seems maybe she’d done some exploring in her youth. She’s a sly one, very secretive.”

Skella stepped forward and bowed.

“We would like to pass,” she said, smiling.

The male dragon turned away, saying nothing. His door did not move.

Skella turned to face the female. “And you, majestic one?”

She lifted her scaled head and shook it sideways.

“That’s a no,” Bub said.

“You try,” I suggested, squatting down next to him. “You are kin, are you not?”

Bub looked at me, tilting his head from one side to the other, thinking.

“Kith, not kin,” he said. “But I believe you hold the key here.” He pointed to the book.

I patted him on the shoulder and stood, holding the book high. The light pulsed when I held it near the door, and the dragon blinked at me twice before stepping back.

The door swung open revealing a chamber crisscrossed with glowing ribbons of light.

Let the book guide you
, a voice said inside my head.

I stepped forward, pausing to look back and make sure the others followed. Bub grabbed the back of my chain shirt. I smiled at that. He had a look of sheer amazement on his little round face. It was cute how expressive he could be with all those scales.

Skella came next, followed by Jimmy. Once we were all inside, the door closed with a quiet click, and the room lit up like a discotheque.

“It’s the books,” Jimmy said, stepping up next to me.

We stood on a marble staircase going down to a grand cathedral of shelved books. The place was a palace.

“This is the dreaming place,” Skella said. “Where minds are opened and worlds created.”

We descended the marble staircase and crept across the thickly carpeted chamber. In the distance we could hear children laughing.

“Echos,” Skella said, urging us forward.

Bub paused at one point, falling behind. The lights were dazzling.

I walked back and put my hand on his shoulder. “Come on, big guy.”

“I thought I heard Jai Li,” he said, looking around.

“She’s at home,” I promised him. “Julie, Mary, and Edith are watching her.”

He looked at me, blinking for a moment and nodded. “There is much here to explore. I think I could become lost here.”

I took his hand. “Come on, I won’t let you get lost.”

We made our way after that with no interruptions.

“How do we know Katie isn’t here?” Bub asked as we climbed the stairs on the other side of the expansive hall.

“She’s not,” Jimmy said, pointing to his left arm.

I looked at him as he turned halfway to show us. The teddy bear he’d strapped to his arm was reaching toward the door to the rest of the school.

“Well, that seems clear enough,” I said. I led them to the huge doors and pushed the metal bar that opened them. Just like the doors in the rest of the school. The Sideways was a funny place.

Once the doors closed behind us, we saw immediately a glow coming from down one hall.

Bub pulled away from me, scrambling down the hall. “She is here,” he said, looking back with a grin. “Can you not feel her?”

“Bub, wait,” Skella called, reaching out with one hand.

But it was too late. Shots rang out from one of the side passages. Three bullets smashed into Bub, and he fell back, a bloody ragdoll.

“No!” I shouted, running forward. This could not be happening. Not here. Not the soldiers.

Fifty-nine

Out of two hallways came a scattering of the monster men. On the right a scrum of burly men with the heads of bulls roared forward swinging clubs and axes. On the right, two smaller men with the heads of cats held rifles, while a half a dozen more poured out of the other corridors with swords, axes, and clubs.

Skella ran to Bub and slid to her knees at his side. I turned and rushed the men with rifles, screaming. Jimmy’s own cry reached me as I smashed into them.

One of them got off a shot as I slammed Gram down, severing both arms, and cutting the rifle in half. I staggered as the bullet thumped into my chest, knocking me back a step. I’d feel that later. I assumed the chain stopped it since I didn’t fall over.

The armless guy fell back screaming, the stumps of his arms flailing, spraying me with black blood.

His partner stepped forward and swung his rifle around, catching me in the shoulder, causing me to lurch to the left and nearly go down in the slick blood. I careened against the wall, caught my balance, and juked to the side as he stabbed the bayonet forward, missing me by a hair’s-breadth. The steel rang as it sparked off the cinder block wall and the blade snapped.

I smashed my right hand forward, catching the bastard in the face with the book. He dropped his rifle and brought his hands to his smoking face. I stepped back as his head caved in on one side, melted by a flare of purple light that exploded from the book.

In the flash of light, I saw the Bowler Hat Man back in the deep shadows. These were the shock troops. He’d enter the fray after they’d won or fallen.

I backed out of the hall, glancing around to see how the others were faring. Skella had Bub’s head in her lap and his wounds were a glowing swath of light casting her face in awkward shadows. He was breathing, but she did not look pleased.

Jimmy had taken down three of the other fighters, but was having a hard time keeping the rest from either bringing him down or getting past him to Skella and Bub.

I launched myself into the flank of the oncoming baddies, smashing one with the book, causing another explosion of energy—this one green. The light slashed through several of them like shrapnel causing two to drop and a third to fall back holding his face. I dropped him with a quick thrust of Gram, kicked a second to the side and engaged the final man in that hall.

“About time,” Jimmy grunted as he parried a poorly aimed strike with a short spear and swept the tip of his blade across the monster man’s eyes. The ugly fell back with a cry as two more stepped forward to take his place.

Skella screamed.

“Skella,” I shouted, dancing with my own enemy.

I glanced over, and she was dodging a blow from the Bowler Hat Man. He had come forward too quietly for me to notice, what with all the battle going on. He wielded twin axes, dancing an intricate web of flashing steel and verbal derision.

I made out a few words my mother would blanch at. Skella had no place to go and had just missed getting hit with one of the axes when Bub lurched forward and swiped the inside of the man’s thigh with his claws.

The man roared like a banshee, which thankfully he wasn’t, and I put down my last bad guy. Jimmy was being hard pressed by four of the burly men with clubs. “Hold the fort, Jim,” I called as I swung around toward Skella. The Bowler Hat Man smashed an axe down, catching Bub in the shoulder. He crumpled, lifeless and broken.

“Fuck you,” I cried, leaping over Bub’s body. My vision started to blur as the berserker finally kicked in. Skella fell to the side as she caught a glancing blow from one of the axes, but I dove over her, catching the man in the chest and knocking him back into the hallway he’d come down. We landed hard, my shoulder in his chest, and he grunted, dropping the axes. I scrambled back, looking around. I’d dropped the book, but managed to keep my hands on Gram.

I was on one knee, debating standing or just fighting the guy on the ground, when something very pointy stabbed me in the back. The world sloughed sideways, the walls running like melted cheese. My body seized up, poison flowed into me, pumping from the bulbous poison sacs of a huge millipede that had dropped from the ceiling.

That’s gonna leave a mark
, I thought as my vision blurred.

I lurched to the side, trying to bring Gram around to stab the damn thing, but I couldn’t lift my hand. The Bowler Hat Man had his knee on my wrist and was trying to wrench the blade free.

I was rightly fucked. I punched upward, striking the millipede with my right fist, but I was growing too weak to make much of a difference. Then it bent itself back, extracting its stinger and screaming. Skella stood there, blood running down her face, with her torch thrust into the great thrashing creature.

The Bowler Hat Man stumbled back, giving up on getting Gram and picked up one of his fallen axes. I rolled to the side, vomited once, and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees.

Skella pushed the millipede thing away with the torch, and it curled up in a ball, smoking and writhing, the screaming rising in pitch. The sound pierced my head with such pain that I vomited again. I gripped Gram with both hands and forced myself up onto my knees, then let gravity help me smash the sword down on the beast, severing it in two.

The screaming stopped, and I fell back against the wall on my backside, Gram in one hand and my other on Skella’s leg. She stood over me, waving the torch, keeping the Bowler Hat Man from advancing.

“Tut, tut,” he clucked, a grin spreading across his face. “You are already dead, my pretty. I’d prefer to play with you a bit before you fade away, but I think you’ll be entertaining even after you’re dead.”

“Try me now,” I said, almost too weak to talk. “Give me your best shot. See how you like it.”

My vision faded in and out as he laughed at me, standing there, just out of reach with one axe in his hand, and his hair a disheveled mess. Funny, I’d assumed he was bald the way he kept that damn hat on all the time.

I could hear battle coming from the main hall. Jimmy was still fighting. I just wish I could stand up.

Skella waved the torch in front of us, and the man laughed, his voice like a nightmare.

“Don’t you worry, missy. I’ll be having a go with you as well. It’s just this bitch that’s been haunting me. Her I want to hurt. You I’ll take my time with, let you linger a while. I bet you’ll be delicious.”

I looked to one side, then the other, looking for the book.

The man followed my gaze, stepped to my side, and knelt down next to the book. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked. “I want to thank you for bringing it to me, after all these years, it’s finally mine once more.”

“Don’t touch it,” I said, half hoping he would. Maybe it would burn him up. But there was something about him, something older and fouler than the other denizens of this fucked up dimension. I had a feeling that if he touched it, he’d turn it, corrupt it.

Wait. Did he say the book was his?

“I saw what you did to some of my boys with that little book,” he said, keeping a fair distance away. “I think I’ll let it sit for now.”

He stood, stepped over the book and walked past us toward the mouth of the hallway.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see to my great grandson.”

“Warn Jimmy,” I said, but the world slid sideways and I fell over.
Grandson? Jimmy?

Screams filled the corridor, and a roar like a grizzly echoed down the hallway. I truly hoped it was on our side.

Sixty

I woke up with Skella’s face inches from my own.

“Wake up,” she said, smacking me again. She was pouring something over my shoulder out of a small glass phial, but I couldn’t tell what it was. It smelled heavily of urine and roses. Not the most pleasant combination.

“Take the book,” she said, pointing to my left. “I can’t touch it.”

I glanced down at her as my head began to clear. I definitely wasn’t one hundred percent, but I wasn’t going to fall over again. Not yet, anyhow.

She pulled my shoulder and cried out as she did it. I glanced down and saw that her hands were burned badly.

“Book doesn’t like me,” she said, wincing.

“Doesn’t like anyone,” I grunted, forcing myself to my hands and knees, aware of the sound of carnage in the main hall. I had to get up, had to get the book and Gram. I didn’t want to face whatever was making that noise, but I couldn’t leave Bub and Jimmy out there alone.

The second I touched the book, flame rushed over me and through me, entering my mouth, nose, eyes, and every single wound on my body from the slightest scratch to the gaping hole in my back from the millipede.

I lost conscious for a while, not sure how long, but I battered myself pretty good as the power surged through me. I think the only thing that stopped it was Skella slid Gram toward me, shoving her against my outstretched hand.

As soon as the sword made contact with my hand, I grasped it convulsively, and the power overload dialed it back several notches. My hair hurt, the soles of my feet hurt, hell, my fingernails hurt, but I was alive and the power of the book had burned the worst of the poison out of me.

Unfortunately, it also burned off all my body hair. At least what I could feel and smell without disrobing. Things were uncomfortable everywhere. I didn’t want to check anywhere else. But I had a bad feeling.

I sat there smoking, trying to get my mouth to work when a giant of a man came barreling down the hall toward us. Skella screamed and flung herself aside, but the bull-headed man didn’t even try to accost us. One of his huge horns had been ripped off, and there were long gouges down his left side. He whimpered as he passed us, limping into the shadows.

The eaters would finish him. They didn’t take sides, really.

Skella helped me up and I leaned against the wall, getting my sea legs.

“What about you?” I asked. “Any healing potions in that kit for you?”

She shook her head. “No healing potions, period. This isn’t a game.”

“So, what did you do to me, then?”

She looked at me and shrugged. “Think of it as smelling salts for your spirit.”

That wasn’t strange.

Another roar echoed out of the main hall, so I started shuffling my way forward, Gram held tight in my left hand and the book in my right.