Wild Side (Dark Side Series: Book 2)

Twelve

Pressed for time, the path from my parents' graves seemed to stretch on endlessly. Caelan and I could not run fast enough to escape from what had risen along the path ahead. In the pale shadow of the mausoleum the man stopped, huffing and puffing. His pupils eclipsed the familiar golden hue of his irises. He spat a tooth into the dirt and handed me his gun.  'All yours," he panted, fidgeting with his coat.  "Give me one —"  Blood  streaked the cement wall as he fell to his knees, braced by one hand on the smooth surface as bones broke and flesh reknit from a human mold into something beastly.

I snatched the flashlight fallen beside him and directed the yellow glow toward what gathered in the eddying, rotten wind. The corpses moved slowly, in jerky motions that followed the air currents as if they hadn't yet been filled with the eerie cognizance a demon like Zakar breathed into them. The vast majority did not seem to be aware of their limbs and how to use them as they crawled out of the earth and onto their feet. If it weren't for sheer numbers I thought we might make it clear of the iron gates. Beyond that, I didn't know.

Glass shattered from above. Tiny shards dropped into my hair and pinged off the groaning man behind me.

A parched screech formed in the throat of a chalky monstrosity to my right. About fifteen feet away from the flashlight's range a partially mummified corpse pushed past the others. Pendants dangled from its wrinkled neck as it ran: a thin, grey humanoid tattooed in hieroglyphics and adorned in several handsome pieces of jewelry. There were only sunken pits where eyes should be, and yet it ran full tilt at me. Four long claws lifted into the air. It swiped toward my chest.

I fired. The thing collapsed backward into the growing mass, but I didn't see where it landed, didn't see if it was dead. A  small, chattering animal with a forked tail dropped onto my shoulder, followed by another, and another. Claws scrabbled against my coat, scratching through my scarf, searching for my eyes. They moved so fast I couldn't see more than gnashing, miniature teeth and sharp horns that sought to tear every exposed inch of skin I had. Pressing the barrel into one's belly, I fired again and again, but the furious tiny hellions kept coming, until I stumbled back, swatting left and right and struggling to stay balanced. My back dropped against a hairy flank and I was down in the muddy grass.

I caught a glimpse of leering red eyes as one of the tiny imps froze, and then Caelan's jaws snapped shut around its pot belly. With a violent shake the werewolf dispatched the wicked creature. Squealing, the rest abandoned me. Caelan dropped the first body into the mud beside me and halved it between his paws.

The black and gray wolf shoveled his snout underneath my shoulder to nose me up. Over his bristled fur my eyes caught the flex of a thin, membranous wing.

A young woman pulled herself onto the glistening remnants of the mausoleum roof. She stood  entirely naked, her lower legs covered in soft golden fur in the shape and texture of a satyr. Gaunt wings stretched wide behind her as she drew a deep breath and giggled, truly more alive than anything we'd witnessed so far. Her bright red hair was pulled into a Grecian bun. Tiny wisps of embers flaked from stray ends and dappled her supple figure in ash, as if this hooved succubus had emerged from the ruins of Pompeii.

A hiss of warning echoed the snarl I felt against my chest. Above the looming dead, Zakar perched on a marble angel's shoulder, ears flat, eyes flashing through the snow and steam soil. Watch yourself!

The ashen mummy, presently sporting a bullet hole through its skull, lunged toward us, jewelry clanking. Caelan knocked it down as the first lumbering line of dead came within arm's reach. I shoved them back where I could, trying to position myself to climb onto Caelan's back as his paws and teeth reduced the mummy to papery strips and jerky. We weren't going to win; we had to get out.