The Devil Next Door

54

Painted for battle, the hunters came out of the back of the store. Another rushed right through the front door. And the most amazing thing was, he held a spear in his hands. And from the barbed point to nearly a foot down the shaft it was stained red.

The girl dug her teeth into the man.

This was the one. The one the Huntress wanted. She must not let go of him, she must hold him tight until the hunters could take him down. But he was wild, enraged. He did not shrink with fear as she’d hoped. He tore at her back, digging welts into her skin. He beat at her. He pounded her. Then, gun in hand, he banged the butt off the back of her skull until she pulled her teeth away and cried out. He hit her with the gun again and something went in her skull with a sickly popping noise. Inside the girl’s head, things went dark, then sank into mist and she… she could… not… hold on…

The man whirled around in a circle, yanking her free with a handful of bloody hair and throwing her as he did so. His locomotion propelled her through the air. She crashed into a case of movie collectibles, her face shattering the plate glass window. A shard of glass went right into her throat and she died kicking in a pool of her own blood.

The hunters saw it as they charged.

But they were too late to stop it, nor would they have considered it worth their time: not all members of the clan survived the hunt, the few must perish so the many could survive.

A spear barely missed Louis as he turned and fired at the three coming out of the back. His first shot was wild his hand shook so badly. But his second and third were right on target. He put a round through a guy whose entire body was blackened with what looked like ash or charcoal. The bullet caught him right in the sternum and threw him backwards in a drunken semi-circle. Blood fountained from his wound and he pitched over face-first, gyrating on the floor, screeching with a high, piercing noise that scarcely sounded human. The second round caught another hunter in the throat, in the Adam’s Apple, and the effect was instantaneous: his throat was blown apart in a spray of bloody mucilage and his head slumped forward. His legs went to rubber, but forward momentum carried him right past Louis. He stumbled right into a wall of DVDs and took them down with him in a clatter of plastic clamshells.

The third hunter did not hesitate, did not slow.

He didn’t even throw his spear. When he got close enough, he brought it up over his head and leaped with it, going airborne and bringing it to bear on Louis. Louis pulled the trigger as the man jumped. The bullet was wild, but it caught him in the ribs, glancing off them, spiraling into his body cavity and chewing its way through his stomach like a drillbit.

But again, forward motion carried him, and he hit Louis. The spear gouged Louis’ right shoulder, but it was off-balance, undirected. They went down in a heap. And gutshot or not, the naked man was not ready to die. He kicked, he scratched, he clawed. He got his hands around Louis’ throat and squeezed with unbelievable strength, making black dots pop before Louis’ eyes as his air was completely shut off by those gnarled, blood-crusted hands.

He forced Louis down, never breaking his grip and pounded his head off the floor which, thankfully, was carpeted.

Louis knew he was done.

He could not fight the maniacal strength of his attacker.

Blood spilling all over him from the guy’s wound, Louis took the last of his strength and pounded the guy in the face, then he jabbed his thumbs into his eyes. The grip was broken immediately. The man made a squealing sound like a stepped upon dog. Rubbing his eyes, blinded, he launched himself at Louis who was still gasping for air. The guy hit him with his bleeding, loose bulk and they went over together. The guy somehow got his hands on Louis’ head and smashed his face into the floor again and again… but not with as much power as before as his blood spilled out in a steady gushing flow.

Louis let out an enraged battle cry and brought his elbow back, catching the wild man in the ribs. Once, twice, three times. The man weakened, grunting and squealing. Then Louis reached his hand back between the naked loins of his attacker and grabbed his balls in his fist, savagely twisting them and then squeezing them with a ferocity he did not know he possessed. The man doubled-over, howling with agony.

Louis wrenched and crushed what was in his fist until it went to a moist pulp.

Doris’ battle was no easier.

About the time Louis’s third attacker leaped, the painted man who came through the door threw his spear with a fine, powerful agility and grace. Doris fired, but her aim was off. Buckshot peppered her attacker’s thighs, but by then his spear was already in flight: it sank into the meat just beneath her collarbone. It punctured through fat and muscle, buried in her a good three inches. A couple more and it would have went out her back.

She screamed with fear, with pain, with everything inside her that had boiled black by that point.

Then the man hit her.

She felt the shotgun slide from her hands.

He hit her, forcing the spear in deeper and she cried out, clawing at him with rage. The buckshot that hit him was basically scattershot. The real blast took out a cardboard standee of Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie. The scatter that hit him peppered his thighs and belly, but did not penetrate deep enough to do any real damage. Regardless, by the time he hit her, he was wet with blood. Her fingers could get no real purchase on him, they scraped over his bloody belly and his chest and face that were painted up with earthen reds and browns in a thick grease. He grabbed the spear shaft and yanked it to pull it free, but it was wedged along the inside of her scapula, the barbed tip caught on a slat of bone. When he yanked it, she came with it. He threw her to the floor, then pulled her back up again and bounced her off display cases, the wound below her collarbone ripped wide open and spouting blood by this point.

With a growling animal cry, he put all his weight behind the shaft and slammed her up against the counter, the spear point scraping over bone and puncturing out her back. He withdrew it and Doris went down in a shuddering heap, barely conscious.

She looked up through blood-glazed eyes, seeing him above her with the spear raised to strike.

Standing over her, he brought it down again and again, sinking it into her belly and thighs, hip and breasts. Then he brought it down into the original wound. He put his bare foot on her throat and yanked with everything he had. There was a wet snapping and the barbed point came free, snapping out a shattered section of collarbone in the process that broke through the skin in a bloody shard. Then the spear came down again—right into her open screaming mouth. It sheered her tongue in two and went through the back of her throat, punching into her cervical vertebrae—

She was dying and nothing could help her.

The hunter brought up the spear and let out a wild yelping cry of victory.

Then there was thundering sound and his left eye blew out of its socket in a spray of tissue with most of the socket itself. He fell over straight as a board, his upper jaw catching the sharp edge of the counter with a violent thudding, teeth scattered over its surface. He folded up, already dead.

Doris, through a mask of blood and a haze of pain, saw Louis standing over the thrashing body of one of the savages. He had the 9mm in his hands. His eyes were wild, his mouth hooked into a manic sneer…