Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (67 page)

Shcherbakov peeked around the pillar, looking for Pelletier.  The soda machine had fallen over, and was now floating away.  Pelletier had moved to new cover, but where?

There was a sudden and sharp pain his right arm.  He looked at it.  It looked perfectly normal.  Except maybe for the cut he’d received earlier that night—he’d almost forgotten about it, but at the Ruffa Docks, something had slashed out at his arm, cutting deeply into him.  It had stopped bleeding, but now…now it felt like something inside wanted out.

Zverev shrieked like a woman.  When Shcherbakov looked, he saw his cousin’s leg wrinkle and split open like
a hotdog weenie left cooking over a fire too long.  What poured out were angry-looking hunks of meat with jagged teeth and no eyes, flopping about like fish out of water.  Zverev screamed madly and swatted at them.  One of them grabbed at his fingers, bit down, and wouldn’t let go.  He reached for Shcherbakov, but the Grey Wolf had stepped away.  “
Help me, cousin!  Help meeeeeeeeeeee!
”

“I’m sorry,” he said, barely above a whisper.
  Some of the angry little meat-things came snapping at him, and Shcherbakov backed away from his cousin, away from the pillar, away from his only cover.  The last he saw of his cousin, the man was lost in a swarm.

A cry of a thousand dying children
, directly behind him.  Shcherbakov spun, aimed his gun at the giant worm, which was shedding a layer of skin and bashing its head against the floor repeatedly, as if hating the world for its growing pains.  When one of its terrible eyes spotted him the creature coiled, giving one of those hyena laughs.  He ran towards the front doors, firing at the creature behind his back.

But i
t leapt at him, one of its fangs grazing him as it swung by, and slammed into the front doors, blocking his escape.  He turned and ran back for the hall, even as the worm was recuperating.  He ran past the woman, which was still a connector between the worm’s front and back side.  She reached a hand out for him, but he jerked away.

A sudden, agonizing thrill went up his right arm.  A pain so searing and hot it took over his human experience, dominating all senses.  He looked at his arm—the forearm and hand were
tumescent, turning red.

A floating chair landed just beside him, but bounced off the floor and floated off someplace else.

Someone fired at him.  The bullet tore through his coat, but missed his flesh.  The pain still paramount in his mind, Shcherbakov somehow managed to keep running, moving back to the shattered desk.  He fired off several shots in random directions, having no time to think on it, and ran out of bullets as he slid for cover.  Shcherbakov reached for another clip, but dropped it because his hand had swollen too large to handle something that small.  The fingers peeled off, the flesh split, and black mucus came gushing out.

Shcherbakov’s world had become an acid trip, and of the worst sort.

What is happening?  What does all of this mean?

He
detected movement on the other side of the desk.  Still moving as if in a dream, on sheer instinct, Shcherbakov stood and ran.  An instant later, Pelletier came leaping over the top of the desk and tackled him.  When they collided, they hit the ground and slid.  It was at this point that Shcherbakov’s forearm burst completely, and from it came a long, dark tendril, growing perhaps twelve feet long and dripping with a clear, viscous substance.  Flacid at first, it just slapped against the floor.  Then, it suddenly jerked to life.  The tentacle whipped out at Pelletier reflexively, knocking him to one side while Shcherbakov clambered to his feet.

Behind him, the door to the stairwell burst open, and the many-tentacled creature with the black girl attached to it came crashing through into the lobby.  There came a loud scream, like
more children dying.  The giant worm had spotted the many-tentacled thing, and the two of them darted towards one another, two titans circling and coiling for a few seconds, before they finally leapt at one another.  It was a tangled mess of twisting pieces, incomprehensible to follow.

Shcherbakov turned back to Pelletier, who was obviously out of bullets and places to run.  So was Shcherbakov.  However, the Grey Wolf had
something hanging from the stump of his right elbow, fifteen feet long and still growing, and, for the time being, it seemed to obey him.

The part that convinced him he was still in a dream, though, was not the tentacle
in place of his arm.  Nor was it the feuding monsters just behind Pelletier.  No, it was the fact that Spencer Pelletier was smiling at him.  No human being on earth could or would be able to smile so casually during something like this.  Thus, a dream.

“Lemme guess,” said Pelletier.  “Not how you were expectin’ the night to end, right?”

Definitely a dream.  So smug, so arrogant, and exactly how Shcherbakov had come to think of his quarry.  This infuriatingly elusive man, he now had a place in the Grey Wolf’s dreams.  And, like the Grey Wolf of mythology, Shcherbakov had learned to change shape.  The tentacle was likely another extension of his subconscious coming to believe that.  But even in a dream, he would still try to kill Pelletier.  Because even in our dreams, we still have our priorities.

There was a brief pause between them, and then, Shcherbakov launched himself at his
greatest adversary.

Spencer grinned as he dashed forward.  He had a shard of broken glass from the chandelier, which had fallen next to him after he’d run out of ammo.  Spencer clenched it in his fist and was set to jam it in his enemy’s jugular, but he only managed to grab hold of the man’s throat before the tentacle snapped forward and grabbed his wrist, wrenching it free.

“I’m a Wolf!” cried his enemy madly.  “
The hunter in the forest!  I am a Wolf and you are a mutt!  Do you think you can kill a Wolf?!”

The tentacle had a crushing grip, and Spencer thought his arm would pop off…

Spencer was laughing.  “Ever hear the story of the fox who tricked the wolf?”  His enemy grinned insanely back at him.

That’s when
Spencer, impossibly, hopped onto his enemy’s back and drove a broken broom handle into his the Wolf’s back.

One of his selves, hiding behind the pillar to his left, had been watching the whole thing.  It was strange, having
these multiple perspectives, not knowing which of these versions he was, or if he
was
any of them. 
But hey
, he/they thought,
when life hands you lemons
…

His Second Version
wrapped an arm around his enemy’s throat, even as his First Version fought to get his hand free.  Then, Spencer brought his Third Version out of hiding.  From the other side of the desk, the Third Version appeared and dove for his enemy’s legs.  He tackled the Wolf, and the four of them spilled onto the floor.  The Wolf thrashed with hand and tentacle, wrapping Third Version Spencer in his grip and squeezing, even as the Second Version Spencer smashed his face repeatedly until his hand was swollen.

The Wolf flung the Third Version around, slapping the other two away.  He rose to his full height and flung the Third Version to the ground repeatedly.  Spencer felt his bones breaking, and finally his head was smashed enough that his brains came leaking out. 
Spencer felt himself receding, dying—
It’s very peaceful
, he thought—and now it was only the First and Second Versions left.

It
was a maelstrom of perspective-shifting for Spencer, exactly like entering into a dream where nothing needed to make sense and the world was replete with known impossibilities.  The walls are melting?  Of course they are.  Walls do that.  The floor is shifting?  Of course it is.  Floors do that.  Furniture was immune to gravity?  Well, naturally it is.  On and on the impossibilities went, completely and utterly accepted by Spencer, by everyone.  They were all temporal and spatial rogues now, standing on the borders of fixed and unfixed.  All was in flux, including their perception of that flux.

The lobby, the entire building, had become a womb of madness, where every strange thought was entertained and incubated, where every truth was malleable.  Spencer couldn’t understand the next events, he wasn’t even sure he was living them, but he never let that wipe the grin from his face(s).

The Wolf flung the corpse of Spencer’s Third Version at him/them, and only First Version got out of the way.  The Wolf reached out with his whip-hand and snatched him by his arm, pulled him close, and head-butted him before whipping his long tentacle, sending First Version flying through the air and onto the floor.  A floating couch came down out of nowhere, and he rolled clear of it before it smashed him.

Second Version
Spencer felt something slap against the back of his head.  A random tentacle from the Shannon Monster, now in mortal combat with…
Whatever the fuck that is
, he thought as both versions turned his/their attention back to his/their enemy.  The whip slashed out at Second Version, and he ducked.  The end of the tentacle slashed the side of the Great Worm, and First Version ducked behind the other side of the large circular desk, half of which was now pulverized.

The walls had collapsed on one side of the lobby, and gale-force winds trespassed from outside.  The blizzard now lived in here.  Indeed, it seemed grateful to have been let in, like it had been waiting all night for this.

The Wolf came at the Spencers, using his tentacle to reach behind and pull the broom handle out of his back, where Third Version had left it.  He stabbed down and plunged the shard of wood straight through First Version’s chest with no problem, killing him.  For the second time tonight, Spencer felt himself die.  Now there was only Second Version.  The
final
version of him.

Spencer stood alone against the Wolf
, and moved around the remains of the front desk.  Behind them, the Great Worm and the Shannon Monster were ruining the other side of the lobby.  The two titans coiled around one another and made one large, undulating mass with random limbs slapping out against the rest of the lobby, searching for purchase.  Amid the insanity, Spencer found it interesting that the two creatures were fighting.  This meant something.  The Prisoner had made a deal with him to kill Shannon Dupré, and now the two things were fighting. 
He got what he wanted, now it’s time to discard her
.  It’s what Spencer would have done.
  Now she’s a liability
. 
She gives Kaley strength
. 
She has to die, so Kaley can die
.

A massive black member smashed into the desk
, shattering his thoughts.  The wood was hewn in half, as if by an axe, and Spencer dove away.  The Wolf leapt over the desk and coiled his whip-hand around himself.  Spencer was running for cover behind one of the pillars when he heard gunshots.  He ducked reflexively.  Off to his right, he spotted Leon Hulsey, emerging from the hall with the elevators, clutching a hand to his bleeding eye and firing at something following him.

The gunfire got the attention of
the Wolf, too, who spun and whipped his limb at Hulsey.  The detective saw it coming, ducked, and the tentacle smashed pictures off the wall behind him.  Hulsey fired two shots at the Wolf before the tentacle returned.  Hulsey took it across the face and landed hard on the floor, smacking his head on the marble, either dead or unconscious.

Spencer had almost made it to the pillar when his enemy spun back around, and flung his whip-hand at him.  T
he slithering blackness wrapped around Spencer’s neck and squeezed.  Virtually all blood flow to his brain ceased.  It was the squeeze of a python.  He kicked and flailed, grinning, his eyes wide with hate and the audacity of it all.  Very soon, his head would pop off.  The intense anger filled him—he hadn’t gotten to Dmitry’s family, he hadn’t gotten to make good on his promise to kill Kaley Dupré, and, worst of all, this Russian fucker had won!  He had
won
!

With his last bit of consciousness, Spencer had an inkling of
inspiration.  One last rebellious notion.  A last ditch effort.  He focused the thought, and aimed it at the Shannon Monster. 
Your sister is lost and alone in that other world
. 
She can’t survive without me
. 
She won’t
. 
You know it
. 
Only I could save you that night, and only I can save your sister now
.

The tentacle squeezed tighter. 
Spencer felt the world fade away.  Stars filled his vision.  Just as his eyes closed, though, he suddenly felt the tentacle loosen, then rip away from his throat.  He fell face down, and took in a gulp of air.  At first, he choked, and passed out.  For a moment, he was back on the couch as a kid, eating Fruit Loops and watching Saturday morning cartoons (“Sufferin’ succotash,” said Sylvester the Cat).

Still unconscious, h
e blinked, dreaming of another time.  His older brother Collin, and his oldest brother Brian, were standing over him.  Collin held Spencer down while Brian sat on his face and farted.  Then, Brian held him down while Collin did the same.  When it was over, Brian said, “Just remember,
we
did this to you.  Don’t go tell Mom or Dad, or we’ll do it again.”  Weeks later, they would know Spencer could do things, too.  “Remember,” Spencer would tell them.  “I did this to you! 
I did!
  Bet me I won’t fucking do it again!  Bet me!”  Brian, with a tooth missing, wouldn’t be able to admit to his parents that their little angel Spencer had beaten him to a bloody pulp with a led pipe.  A story would emerge of three boys jumping him after school.  Brian and Collin would leave him alone after that, and would go off to become a lawyer and a nightclub owner, respectively.