Shallow Veins (The Obscured Book 1) (23 page)

“Slim. The first thing we should concern ourselves with is luring them away from the church. I can’t tell you why, but it’s imperative.”

“If I call for backup I can have twenty-”

“We can’t trust anyone, I’m afraid. Not even your own men.”

Butcher’s face drops, the enormity of the situation hitting him on the jaw. Together they decide to make a run for the car and figure out the rest later.

The two men sidestep to the front door, both their guns trained where they need to be. Without turning their backs for a moment, without blinking, they open the door and back out of it, out of the church and into the daylight.

**

"Ahh, crap."

The front of the church is littered with car parts- spark plugs, fan belts, hunks of bent metal and lengths of stripped wire. In the middle of it sits the cruiser's hood, ripped off and tossed away like an old bandage.

"He gutted it like a damn pumpkin," Butcher says.

"Who?"

Shots ring out- gunfire from the trees. Butcher and the priest duck for cover. They run in the opposite direction of the gunshots, keeping their heads low, weaving between car wreckage. The shots come in steady succession like a machine on autopilot.

Plastic crunches, oil splashes under foot. Butcher takes up a position against the church and presses the old man to the wall with his arm.

He looks around, clearly troubled. "What's wrong," Father Curtis asks.

"The third woman.”

Father Curtis looks left, then right for the woman.

He looks up.

Faster than a scream, a pale length of muscle descends from the roof with a single, glistening fang at the tip. The serpent arm whips at the old man and strikes just below his shoulder. The sharpened bone becomes a needle that pierces through the skin and muscle, straight through the front of the man’s arm and out the back.

The priest lifts off the ground, pulled into the air by The Self. His body flails and he screams in pain.

Butcher knows if Father Curtis is dragged up onto the roof he's as good as dead, and he can't allow that; not this way; not any way. This old man may be the only thing standing between The Self and total, dark victory.

Butcher holsters his handgun and grabs the shotgun out of the man's hand. He steps away from the church into open ground where bullets still zip overhead. He ignores them and takes aim at the woman-thing crouched on the church roof, aiming high to make sure he doesn't hit the priest.

Through his sights her face is wild, teeth swimming in her mouth, eyes mad from the taste of the priest's blood.

One shot left in the shotgun, he figures. He knows he doesn't have many chances at this, and he knows what's at stake if he misses or worse. This town, the next town, every town could be lost to these things. The world could be lost, but worse than that, his son.

Butcher fires. The shotgun jumps in his hand, the force of the blast magnified the same way as before. The shot erupts from the muzzle like a volcano letting loose after years of built-up pressure. Like nothing Butcher has ever seen, the shotgun blast tears through the woman-creature. From the waist up she's obliterated; tissue, bone and sinew are lit on fire, turned glowing red before they blacken and crumble to black dust.

Father Curtis falls to the ground, flopping into the grass with a tangle of heavy, useless tentacles on him, followed by the dead thing's legs landing by his side with a wet scrunch and one, final twitch.

The old man doesn't move. His frail body is lifeless. Butcher has the horrifying realization that for all the fireworks he was too late to save the one man who might have offered a chance to understand just what was happening to him; his guide through a world infinitely larger than the one he knew.

But then the priest stirs, and Butcher breathes again.

Father Curtis pushes the dead arm-snake off his chest. He takes a look at the pile of legs next to him and says, "That's one way to take a girl's top off."

Butcher helps the man up, the Self-woman's arms and legs crumbling at their feet. "After we get out of this, we're going to have a little talk about your sense of humor.” He looks at his dead cruiser. “That's if we make it very far without wheels." He moves the old man's hand to cover the bloody hole in his arm, showing him how to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.

"We can take my car." Father Curtis motions to the small garage off to the side. Across the field, where the gunshots have stopped, Banks walks steadily toward them. His gun at his side, The Self in his eyes, there's no doubt what his intentions are.

“Yeah,” Butcher says, starting to walk backward, “let's do that.”

The church door swings open and the two remaining Self-women come barreling out all limbs and shrieks. Butcher and Father Curtis limp-run to the garage before the beasts have a chance to catch up and then, once inside, Father Curtis fumbles to lock the wooden door with an old padlock as fast as his hands can manage. He succeeds just as the two women slam into the door with the entire weight of their borrowed bodies, shaking the door in its frame.

“Back away from the door,” Butcher warns a moment before a black, fleshy blade jabs through the space between planks, missing Father Curtis by inches.

“I see what you mean.” He takes three steps away from the rattling door and into the darkness to find the light switch while the Self-women begin to beat on the door with unimaginable appendages.

With a loud clack and the sizzling buzz of electricity, light floods the old garage from a single spotlight hanging at the center. Dust falls from the rafters and into the light, settling over the shiny, black paint-job.

"That's your car," Butcher asks.

Father Curtis hobbles around to the passenger side and opens the door. "The key's under the visor."

**

With bone and claw and scissor mouths, the two Self-women rip and tear at the garage wall. The weathered but sturdy wood is the only thing that stands between them and their mission, and therefore it must be destroyed.

That's the one and only way when dealing with lesser creatures, they understand- do not negotiate. Do not talk. Do not hesitate to kill and absorb and take it all, the same as the humans level trees and exterminate vermin.

Already holes are forming in the wood, splintered holes they pull at with makeshift hooks and arterial winches. Victory is close.

They stop punching and scratching at the wood. A sound has caught their attention, something which sounds far off at first but they quickly realize is closer than first assumed, like the growl of something angry and old; a cornered and wounded animal lashing out with its final push.

It's very close. On the other side of the garage wall, in fact.

The wall explodes around them, releasing the tires and grill of a roaring, black hearse. The car plows through the women. One of them is sucked under the tires and spit out the back, chewed up and used, while the other takes a direct hit to the chest, pulling her head down at such velocity her head cracks off the hearse's hood. Her replicated skull splits open on the chrome hood ornament.

Butcher holds the wheel tight and drives the hearse over the bumpy terrain the Self-women have to offer. As wood and teeth bounce off the windshield, he can't help but enjoy it just the smallest bit.

He pulls the wheel to the left to avoid a collision with the church, and as he steers the hearse toward the road he spots his former partner, the delightful Officer Banks, standing on the church's doorstep. Butcher tries to steer the hearse back to the right and toward the man-thing, but Father Curtis stops him.

"You can't hit him without hitting the church," the priest warns.

"I'll buy you a new one."

"No!" Father Curtis grabs the wheel and jerks it back to the left. As they pass Banks, the man opens fire on them again, a rapid volley of gunshots which make a staggered line down the side of the hearse.

The car clears him, and Butcher steers it across the rest of the lot. "Don't ever take the wheel from me again," Butcher says. "Do you hear me?"

"The point wasn't to save the church- it was to save us."

Butcher pulls the hearse onto the street.

“I'm sorry your partner is dead,” Father Curtis says, his face paler than usual. With one black-blooded hand he keeps pressure on the puncture wound.

Butcher frowns into the rear-view mirror, where one of the mangled Self women is already by Banks' side. “It hasn't made him any less of an asshole,” Butcher says.

On the front of the hearse, buried in the grill, a Self hand grows legs and slips into the darkness of the inner workings.

**

Less than an hour later, with the sun already past its highest point in the sky, Franklin Butcher makes his way down the open-air corridor, past the dozen, bile-green doors of the Sweet Haven Motel to Room Fourteen, where he fishes the key from his pocket, looks over his shoulder and opens the cheap lock.

Father Curtis sits on the edge of the hard bed, his arm bandaged up with torn strips of bed-sheet. “Have you noticed yet,” the priest asks.

“Noticed what?”

“You haven't had a drink all day. You're fulfilling your purpose.”

“My only purpose right now is not dying.” Butcher peeks out the window to make sure he wasn't followed. “I don't think we have to worry about the kid at the front desk, he didn't look up from his phone long enough to see my face. As for the other guests, best I can tell there's only two, and one's checking out as we speak.”

He goes to Father Curtis' side and checks the bandage to make sure it's tight enough. “You did a decent job of this.”

“It's not my first, I'm afraid.” Next to him on the bed, the shotgun is reloaded with ammo from the hearse, more of it in boxes on the nightstand.

Butcher thinks back to the church, to the inexplicable power of the gunshots. Both weapons had surged in his hands, gone so hot he thought they would melt to his skin, but a moment later they were normal. “Did you see it,” he asks the priest.

“I did.”

Butcher moves away from Father Curtis. He curls his hands into and out of fists. “You know, you've done a real nice job of explaining things without actually telling me anything.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I think it's pretty obvious.”

“And yet you haven't asked. So, ask.”

Butcher throws the old man an annoyed look. “You tell me I have these gifts, you tell me there's creatures from other worlds, but you haven't told me what one has to do with the other.”

“To quote you, I think it's obvious.”

Butcher rubs his face. “So I'm like them?”

“Never think of yourself that way,” Father Curtis says, contempt in his voice. “Just because you share a blood link doesn't make you anything like them. You fight on the side of good while they seek only power and death.”

“When you say blood link, you mean one of my ancestors and one of those things got friendly in a naked way?”

Father Curtis clears his throat to hide a chuckle. “Let's just say there's more than one way to skin a cat, but yes, some are by consent. That doesn't mean you're linked to The Self, per se. There are other Obscured, and the effect of their blood mixed with ours can be unpredictable at best.”

“Like dog breeding,” Butcher says. “I’m a monster mutt.”

The priest nods. “You’re also a weapon. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking of yourself as a gift to mankind, and start acting like one.”

Butcher’s thoughts turn to Eileen and Jake. If not for them he might be inclined to step aside and let the monsters do as they wish. That’s how he knows he’s no hero- his reasons are too self-involved, his fight too selfish.

“Will you be alright alone,” he asks the priest.

“Where are you going?”

“The Robins house.”

Father Curtis shakes his head. ”That's not a good idea.”

“It's the only idea.”

“You don't know what you're dealing with. A hive always has its leader. The workers go out while the one that matters most stays at home, but if you think that makes it defenseless you're making a grave misjudgment. Somewhere in that house is a creature more dangerous than the ones you've met, and you barely escaped those with your life.”

Butcher draws his gun and checks it over.

“You're no good to us dead,” the priest says softly.

“Listen, father, I may not know about other worlds and the shit that crawls out of them, but I've dealt with my share of bees nests. And you know what I've learned?” He holsters his gun. “Take out the queen and the whole nest falls apart.”

Father Curtis sighs. “I was like you once, driven, foolish. I was hoping to guide you, to make you better than I was, but it's obvious there's no substitute for age.” He reaches up and pokes his own sternum with the tip of his finger. “They keep the heart-brain here, but that doesn't mean they can't move it. Destroy that and they can be killed.”