The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [101]
Travis frowned at Grace. “Congenial, isn’t she?”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.” A grin cut across Grace’s visage, thin but wry in the cast-off cityglow. “Then again, nice girls don’t kick hairy mutant ass like she does. I’m sticking with her.”
Travis couldn’t argue with that logic. He reached out, found Grace’s hand, and her fingers curled around his. Together they moved along the walkway, following the half-blurred shadow they knew to be Vani.
They caught up with her in the dim breezeway that cut from the front to the back of the motel. Something lumpy lay on the floor, half-blocking the passage. Only as Vani stepped lightly over the thing did he realize it was a man. His face was completely gone, but Travis recognized the blond crew cut, the big hands. Stewart.
He swore softly, too stunned to be sick. Grace tugged his hand. Together they edged around the corpse, trying not to slip in the slowly congealing blood.
They halted at the head of another staircase. It led down to a narrow parking area behind the motel, lit only by secondhand neon from the twenty-four-hour restaurant on the other side of the back fence. Vani halted, gazing with eyes that seemed to glow faintly in the darkness.
“What are we doing?” Travis croaked.
“We will move swiftly toward your Seeker’s vehicle. There, near the fence, do you see it? You must remain close to me at all moments.”
“Do you know the Seekers then?” Grace asked.
“I have watched them, yes.”
“And do they know about you?”
“I should think not.”
Again Travis frowned, studying their strange savior. She was a haughty one, that was certain. But if she was not a friend of the Seekers, then who was she allied with? Duratek?
No—he couldn’t say why, but he knew that wasn’t the case. She was perilous, yes. And she wasn’t telling them the whole truth. But she had said she was their only hope, and right now Travis believed it. He wished he could pull out his gunfighter’s spectacles and look at her. Sometimes with the spectacles on, if he squinted just right, he could see coronas of light around people: auras that reflected who and what they were.
There was no time. Vani had already started down the stairs. Keeping close, he and Grace descended.
They reached the parking lot; the night was still. Travis felt a frantic impulse to scream, swallowed it. He would almost have preferred it if the things just showed themselves. It was better to see death coming than to wait for it to leap out of the darkness, invisible and snarling.
Grace gasped, her eyes fluttering open. Travis had not seen her shut them.
“There are five of them,” she whispered. “They’re all around us, moving fast. I can’t get a fix on them. And there’s … something else. I couldn’t quite see it, but I felt it. A presence. Watching.”
Vani nodded. “I feel the other as well. That is why they are not so easily frightened—their master is here. This will not be as simple as I thought.”
Travis groaned. “So what do you propose we do?”
Vani turned toward him, then her face went hard. “Run. Run for the vehicle as fast as you can and get inside. Now!”
With that last word she pushed Travis and Grace. They stumbled in the direction of the car—
—just as a black streak screamed out of the night.
Travis felt hot talons graze the back of his neck. Then Vani was there, moving so swiftly her arms and legs seemed to blur. Blows rained on the creature; black spheres of blood spun and glittered on the air. Shrieking, the thing reached out, but Vani was gone. Then the air behind it warped, buckled. Vani leaped off the asphalt as easily as if climbing a staircase and kicked out with both boots. The creature flew forward, limbs flailing, into a wall. Cinder blocks cracked. The thing crumpled to the ground, motionless.
“Travis!”
The scream pierced the dull membrane shrouding his brain. Grace pulled his arm. He gripped her hand, and they careened across the parking lot toward the car.
The darkness boiled around them, but Travis kept his eyes focused on the car. From the corner of his vision