No, Kayah thought, feeling the night around them and fearing they had risked all of this for nothing.
The city air had gone still. Even the breath in her lungs seemed to stop moving as she and Hope held either side of the blanket and Quinney jumped down from the truck to take hold of the fabric with both hands, almost cradling Naira’s head. Kayah’s mother hung down like a child in a sling, but they had no choice now—no better way. Delmar stayed in the truck, behind the wheel, and Tynan ran for the emergency room doors, the soles of his shoes scuffing the pavement.
“Oh shit . . . ,” Priya whispered.
Kayah had been hustling along, arms straight down, trying to glide her mother as smoothly through the parking lot as possible. Trying not to breathe even as she wondered if her mother had stopped. Now she whipped her head up and stared at Priya . . . saw where the other girl was looking, and felt herself deflate. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“No,” she said.
Quinney shot her a glance meant to silence her.
Sorrow and anger boiled up inside her as the first tears slid down her face.
“No!” she repeated, louder now.
The emergency room entrance had already been shuttered. At dusk, metal doors and grates would be lowered into place on structures all over the city, but hospital emergency rooms were supposed to remain open at least thirty minutes after nightfall, with armed guards at the doors.
Not tonight. The plate glass windows that looked out on the parking lot were shielded, and the doors were closed up tight.
“Tynan,” Quinney rasped, “see if you can get them to open up. Be quick, but be damn quiet.”
He glanced up. Kayah didn’t dare. They were like ghosts out there in the moonlight, all of them pale and unearthly and easily spotted from above.
Tynan slapped an open palm against the metal doors. Kayah could hear him hissing quietly, talking low in hopes that whoever was on the other side would open up. She could barely make out the words, but the phrase “dying woman” floated out across the lot as though they had been spoken right into her ear. In the cab of the truck, Delmar swore. Kayah and Priya and Quinney shuffled toward the blocked ER entrance with Naira hammocked in the blanket between them, but there seemed little point.
“This is damn stupid,” Delmar said in a low voice. “We’re dead out here, man. Get in the truck.”
Kayah shot him a murderous look. His eyes were wide with fear so complete he didn’t even seem to see her. Something broke inside her.
“Quinney,” she said as they reached the metal doors blocking the ER. “You guys should go.”
Tynan jumped back from the doors, nodding with a kind of manic energy, his arms flailing in a kind of pantomime. “That’s what I’m saying. We shouldn’t be out here to begin with.”
Kayah nodded to Priya. A chilly breeze whistled past them, rustling the bushes off to the right of the ER entrance as the two girls gently lowered the blanket to the ground. Quinney had no choice but to do the same or risk dumping Naira onto the ground.
Kayah crouched by her mother’s side, afraid that all of this had been for nothing, but then she saw the shallow rise and fall of Naira’s chest and knew they still had a chance. Kayah kissed her mother’s cheek and then jumped up and turned toward the metal doors. She slapped a palm against them, the blow echoing across the parking lot and into the night.
“Don’t do that,” Tynan said.
Kayah put her mouth to the gap between the metal doors. “Please?” she begged. “My mother’s had a heart attack. Please!”
“Damn it, shut your—” Tynan began.
“Go,” she said. “Just go. I understand.”
“We’re not leaving you here,” he said.
“Maybe you’re not,” Priya replied.
Quinney snapped his head around to stare at her.
Priya sighed, bouncing nervously from foot to foot. “We gotta go, Q. You know it.”
“Not if the hospital lets us in.”
Kayah touched his hand, and he froze at the contact. Lifted his gaze slowly and stared at her.
“Thank you,” she said. “But they’re right.”
Quinney hesitated again. “We had a deal.”
For half a second she didn’t remember. Then she stared at him. “You’re crazy.”
He gave her a sad, hopeless sort of smile, and for the first time Kayah understood that Quinney had not come with her for a kiss or to save her mother or out of some manic courage. He had helped her because he had grown tired of being afraid all the time.
“Count to ten and decide if you want to put your mom back in the truck,” he said. “We’re leaving. You stay, it won’t just be her heart that stops tonight.”
He started to walk away.
“Quinney,” Kayah said softly, and when he turned, she rushed over and kissed him softly on the cheek. Then she shoved him backward. “Go.”
The others urged him on. Delmar started up the truck, and it growled loudly to life, the noise rumbling across the lot. Kayah pounded on the ER door four times in rapid succession and called out for someone to let her in.
Over the truck’s engine she could barely hear the voice from inside telling her to go away.
“Not a chance!” she snapped. “Let me in or you’re killing me and my mother both!”
Behind her, Priya called to Quinney.
Once. Then a second time, and the second time her voice was full of despair, almost a moan. Tynan swore and Quinney snapped at them all to get into the truck, hissed at Delmar to roll up the driver’s window.
Kayah turned and saw them running for the back of the truck. Tynan had his gun out, and now she saw Priya flip up the back of her jacket and slip her own nine millimeter from a thin holster clipped to her belt. Quinney glanced up at the sky as he ran. A shadow passed through the moonlight, and then, even over the rumble of the truck’s engine, Kayah heard the sound, like the unfurling of a heavy canvas flag.
She looked up.
The Cloaks circled above, leather wings outstretched and long necks extended. Kayah had seen them from inside, cruising the night skies as if flying itself was enough of a pleasure to keep them contented. They sailed in the moonlight, and for a moment the wind gusted and the updraft off the face of the hospital pushed them higher. But she knew they would not stay aloft.
She twisted around and lifted a hand, ready to pound on the metal doors. Her hand never fell. Whoever stood on the other side had not been willing to open the door before—they would never do it now that the Cloaks had arrived.
Kayah knelt by her mother’s side again and took her hand. In the moonlight Naira’s eyes were open and gleaming, staring up at her.
“Momma?” Kayah said.
Naira couldn’t speak. Pale and sweating, brow furrowed with pain, she couldn’t manage a word, but she was alive.
In her eyes, Kayah could see the reflection of the Cloaks circling overhead.
She saw the first one dive toward the ground.
Delmar put the truck into grinding gear, and it lurched and began to roar away. Kayah closed her eyes.
“Damn it, girl, fight!” Quinney shouted as he lunged past her and slammed into the metal barrier. He banged on the ER door once, twice, a third time.
The first of the Cloaks arced down toward them, leathery wings fluttering. Kayah covered her mother’s body with her own. Quinney swore again, and she glanced up in time to see him turn, take aim with his gun, and shoot the Cloak in the head.
It screamed—the sound spiking through her brain—and crashed into the pavement only feet away. For several heartbeats it lay still, but then she heard the wet sounds of the creature peeling itself from the ground, and it began to push itself up on hands and feet that were dry, black leather, but somehow almost human.
“They left you,” Kayah said, numb inside. You’re in shock, she thought. But still the idea that the others had let Quinney get out of the truck, let him fight to save her, astonished her.
“Or I
left them,” he said, stepping up and firing at the grounded Cloak again before he turned to her. “Now we’re going.”
Quinney grabbed her wrist and yanked her away from her mother. Her feet were moving before she even realized it. Thirty yards away, the truck bumped to a stop, and the back door rolled up. Tynan and Priya stood in the open back of the liquor truck, outlined in the moonlight, firing at the Cloaks that began to descend as if they had a hope in hell of doing anything but slowing the things down. Bullets weren’t enough. They had to take the monster’s heads and set them on fire.
Fire, she thought, a sliver of hope rising in her. The liquor would burn all too well. In that moment, she allowed herself to rush toward the truck with Quinney, who continued to yank her along as he fired at two Cloaks who slid down through the moonlight toward them, long hands out and mouths gaping, silver teeth gleaming.
They darted away, avoiding the gunfire, and in that moment Kayah realized her mistake.
“Shoot them!” she screamed, grabbing Quinney’s gun hand and trying to force it around.
He did, but too late. Her hands opened and closed emptily and then she grabbed for his gun, tried to wrest it away from him so that she could do the shooting herself. So that she could do something.
The Cloaks alighted around her mother. One of them ripped the blanket away with those long, black talons, so like human fingers. Naira flipped onto the ground between them as a third Cloak landed next to the other two and grabbed hold of her mother.
“Come on!” Tynan shouted from the back of the truck.
Gunshots cracked the air, bullets slicing upward toward the Cloaks who dove at the truck. Tynan and Priya were protecting themselves. Kayah fought with Quinney over his gun, and finally he just let her take it.
She screamed as she marched toward the creatures crouched around her mother. Tears slid down her face as she pulled the trigger, emptying the magazine. Two of the Cloaks went down, but in the space between breaths they were stirring again.
Quinney shouted her name, but she figured he was running for the truck.
Like Kayah should have been.
Like her mother would have wanted her to.
The last Cloak turned to sneer at her.
A burst of blinding light made her cry out and shield her eyes. The Cloaks began to scream, and she heard the ripple of their leathery wings as they jerked backward. They turned their backs to the enormous battery of solar lamps that shone down from above the ER entrance, and smoke rose from their flesh. The Cloaks stood up straight, wings wrapped around them as they padded away, unable to fly as long as they needed the wings to shield them. Wings furled, they looked like darkly hooded men, sinister figures in cloaks, lurking in the dark corners of human nightmare.
Just beyond the reach of the lights, the Cloaks began to shriek at the nighttime sky and spread their wings once more, leaping up into the darkness.
Kayah aimed Quinney’s gun at the moon, hoping to shoot them, before remembering that she had run out of bullets.
The truck began to roar in reverse, Delmar coming back for them. Or at least for Quinney.
With a loud clanking, the metal doors in front of the ER began to roll upward.
Kayah and Quinney spun to see a scowling, white haired man step out into the glare of the solar lamps with a pair of women in security uniforms behind him. The guards carried assault rifles and hustled out, trying to cover Kayah and Quinney and the rumbling truck and the perilous night sky all at the same time.
“Idiot kids,” the scowling man said. “Get inside. You’ve got about thirty more seconds of this light. We don’t have the power to keep the lamps on for longer—that’s why the damn doors were closed!”
The skids were already running from the truck, lured by the promise of the open door. They would be safe in the hospital until morning came, and they could go back to their lives.
Quinney gave Kayah a push and she started moving too.
“My mother—” she began, and the two of them turned together. They would take Naira inside, and the doctors would see to her.
Except that her mother had begun to writhe on the ground. Smoke rose from her face and seeped out from inside her clothes. Kayah couldn’t move. The breath froze in her lungs, and the tears dried on her cheeks.
Beside her, Quinney spoke her name, oh so gently. That made it worse. His tenderness made it real.
On the pavement between Kayah and Quinney and the open doors of the ER, Naira began to howl in anguish. The armed guards and the white haired man jerked backward, ducking back inside. Beyond them, in the darkened corridor of the ER, Delmar and Tynan reappeared, trying to get a glimpse of what transpired outside.
Naira’s scream cut off.
She bucked against the ground, more smoke rising from her flesh, and then she began to crawl. Kayah moved then, reaching for her, whimpering a word that might have been “momma.” Quinney slammed into her, wrapped his arms around her, and yanked her out of the way as Naira scrabbled and slithered past them, dragging herself out beyond the reach of the sunlamps.
The sunlamps, whose battery life was ticking down to nothing.
The doctor and the security guards shouted at them to get inside, but Kayah felt as if they spoke to her from some other world, from beyond the wall between day and night. Hollowed out inside, she watched her mother rise from the pavement, there in the shadows at the edge of the pool of light.
Naira rose, shuddering, and the sound was like tearing leather.
The wings ripped out of her back and spread wide, then wrapped around her in a healing cocoon. A shroud. A cloak.
Quinney grabbed her face, turned her toward him. “Kayah!”
She fought him off, watching as her mother took flight, slipping up into the night sky as if she had been born to the moonlight. Almost beautiful.
“Come on!” Quinney shouted in her ear.
Kayah looked at him, met his gaze, and saw his regret.
“They bled her,” he said. “You did everything you could, but they’re gonna come back, Kai. We’ve gotta go inside!”
Voices were shouting from the ER. She glanced over and realized that she had been hearing a grinding noise for several seconds—the sound of the metal barriers rattling back down in their frames. The sunlamps flickered and began to dim, leaving bright afterimages in her eyes.
“Come inside!” Quinney insisted.
Kayah breathed. She stared at him. “You know I can’t.”
“Kai—”
“You know where she’s going.”
Quinney swore. He pressed his eyes shut for a second and then turned to stare out at the black silhouettes of the city at night, the buildings in the distance and all the open space in between.
They both knew where Naira would be flying. When the Cloaks bled someone, when they reproduced like that, the newborn monstrosity rose into the dark with only one objective—to return home and kill everyone they found there.
Joli, Kayah thought.
“Quinney,” she said, taking his face in her hands. Turning him toward her, just as he had done a moment ago. “She’s all I have left.”
The truck still idled, engine growling, not thirty yards away.
Kayah and Quinney stood face-to-face as the metal doors of the ER rattled all the way down and locked into place and the sunlamps flickered out, leaving them in darkness.
They began to run.
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind, Dead Ringers, Tin Men, and many other novels for adults and teens. With Mike Mignola, he cocreated the comic book series Baltimore and Joe Golem: Occult Detective. His books are available in more than fourteen languages around the world. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family.
Website: christophergolden.com
Twitter: @ChristophGolden
Facebook: facebook.com/christophergoldenauthor
* * *
Chlorine-Damaged Hair, and Other Pool Hazards
br /> KENDARE BLAKE
* * *
He’d called her a mermaid, but he was the only one who did. She moved through water like she was made for it, he said. Like she had fins. Gills. She supposed it was a strange compliment. But it was nicer than the things that other people said. Things like Darla the Doberman. Darla the Dog. They barked at her when she took her mark. They barked again when she won her race. Even her teammates—and over time the insult had become almost a cheer, as if she really were Darla the Dog, their amazing swimming mascot, who jumped in to fetch floating balls and shook herself dry upon leaving the pool.
Darla never grew to like the names. She never accepted the role they cast her in, though sometimes it was hard. People liked dogs, after all, and after she won her breaststroke event they liked her plenty. They rubbed her head, and she almost let them. Being the Dog was degrading, but it was still an improvement over the things she’d been called before she made the swim team. Ugly Darla. Fugly Darla. Butterface. As in, sure, she’s got a nice body . . . but HER FACE!
And then Jason Fahle called her the Mermaid. Right out in the open. Right in front of everybody. And what Jason Fahle said, nobody thought to question.
Darla sat at a table near the windows of Tom’s Anchor and looked out at the quiet docks of the marina after sundown. No one out there now besides a few hunched fishermen, working under swinging lamps. The rich folks had gone home to their stationary houses on green hills, and their boats and daysailers would float quietly, untouched until the weekend. Darla liked the ocean at night. The ocean in the day was a bimbo with a broad smile, distracted and dumb. But at night what waves there were lapped restlessly at the sand and the wood, as if trying to puzzle them out. At night the ocean cared more about watching than being watched, and staring into the dark water felt to Darla almost like company.
She often came to Tom’s Anchor at night, after her shift ended down the street at the Bay Club, the fancy restaurant where she’d worked for the last year, part-time during school and full-time in the summer. The manager who hired her had said she’d be out of the kitchen and waiting tables in three months. Almost a year later she was still in the back, washing dishes. They only let her out to bus after closing. A face like hers didn’t belong around people trying to eat a meal. No one had said so to her directly, of course, but she knew what they were thinking.