And I could. I could just twist his head off and nobody would be the wiser. This was the Glass Menagerie and if he died, the cops would just think he got what was coming to him. Now there was an interesting thought.
A creature walked into the tent, moving on all fours. It used to be human, but all fat had been leeched off it, replaced by hard, knotted muscle and skin stretched so tight, it looked painted on. Its head was bald, like the rest of its repulsive frame and the two eyes, red and feverish with thirst, bore into me like two burning coals. Its oversized jaws protruded, and as it opened its mouth, I glimpsed two curved fangs.
A vampire. The revolting stink of undeath swirled around me, raising my hackles in instinctive disgust. Ew. Well, that explained the light security. They had an undead guarding them. And where there was a vampire, there was a navigator.
Infection by the Immortuus pathogen destroyed a human’s mind. No cognizance remained. Vampires were ruled only by instinct and that instinct screamed, “Feed!” They did not reproduce. They did not think. They hunted flesh. Anything with a pulse was fair game. Their blank minds made perfect vehicles for necromancers. Called navigators, or Masters of the Dead, if they had talent and education, necromancers piloted vampires, driving them around telepathically like remote-controlled cars. They saw through the vampire’s eyes, they heard through its ears, and when an undead opened its mouth, it was the navigator’s words that came out.
Most of the navigators worked for the People. The People and the Pack existed in a state of uneasy truce, hovering on the verge of full-out war. If the People were running security for this site, my life would get a lot more complicated.
A man followed the vampire. He wore ripped jeans, a black T-shirt that said MAKE MY DAY in bloody red letters, and sported a dozen rings in various parts of his facial features. He could’ve been one of the People’s journeymen, but it was highly unlikely. Strike one, he followed his vampire instead of sitting somewhere outside being inconspicuous, pulling the undead’s strings with his mind. Strike two, the People’s journeymen looked like they just emerged from arguing a case before the Supreme Court. They wore suits, had good shoes, and were impeccably groomed.
No, this knucklehead had to be a freelancer, which meant I could kill him without diplomatic consequences, if he didn’t kill me first.
“Where the hell have you been, Envy?” Kyle said.
I looked at him. “Envy?”
Ascanio chortled.
“Around,” Envy said.
“I want them gone,” Kyle said. “Do your f**king job.”
The vamp hissed. Envy smiled, showing bad teeth.
Ascanio gathered himself. “Can I shift now?”
“No.” I turned, stepping closer to the machete Tony had dropped on the ground and looked at the navigator. “You have a chance to walk away. Take it.”
“Can I kill them?” Envy asked.
“You can do whatever you want,” Kyle told him.
I had to do this fast. Getting into a hand-to-hand brawl with a vampire would end badly. I would’ve preferred to wrestle an enraged mama grizzly. “Walk away. Last chance.”
Envy grinned. “Pray, bitch.”
“Are you affiliated with the People?” I asked.
“Fuck, no.”
“Wrong answer.”
Outside, glass shattered. A scream tore through the quiet, the raw painful scream of a man experiencing sheer terror. Two more followed.
“What the hell now?” Kyle growled.
We piled out of the tent.
The rail car had split open at the top, like a can of bad beans, and creatures poured out, climbing onto its roof. Thick pale-gray hide covered their squat, barrel-chested bodies, supported by six muscled bearlike legs. Hand-paws tipped each limb, and their long dexterous fingers carried short but thick ivory claws. A narrow carapace ran along their backs and when one of the creatures reared, I saw an identical bony shield guarding its stomach and chest. The carapace terminated in a long, segmented tail with a scorpion stinger. They had large round heads with feline jaws and twin rows of tiny eyes, sitting deep in their sockets. The eyes stared to the front, not to the side. That usually meant a predator.
The beasts scuttled across the sleek surface, sticking to the glass as if they had glue on the pads of the paws. The largest of them was about six feet long and had to push three hundred pounds. The smallest was about the size of a large dog. That meant some of them were babies. Hungry, hungry babies.
The workers backed away, brandishing their tools. Only one exit led out of this glass bowl and it lay on the opposite side, almost directly behind the train car and the creatures.
The horde focused on the people, watching them with the intense attention of hungry predators who were trying to decide if something was food. The larger of the creatures raised its head. Its wide jaws parted, revealing a small forest of crooked fangs. Meat-eater. Of course.
The workers stopped moving.
The largest beast stared at the people below, turning left, right, left…Muscles bunched on his shoulders.
“Back away,” Kyle called out. “Don’t provoke it. Envy, get in there.”
“In a minute,” the navigator said.
The beast leaped, aiming for the center of the crowd. People scattered, splitting into two groups—the eight people closest to us ran toward the tent, while twice as many sprinted away in the opposite direction, toward the glass wall.
The beast chased after the farther, larger group. One of the guards, a large dark-skinned man, charged at it. The beast hooted, like a colossal owl, and snapped its teeth. The guard dodged, swung, and chopped at the beast’s neck. The machete cut bone and gristle like a meat cleaver.
The beast’s head drooped to the side, half severed. The scent of blood hit me, bitter and revolting. My predatory instincts backpedaled—whatever that thing was, it wasn’t good to eat.
The creature staggered and crashed down. Dark blood, thick and rust-brown, spilled onto the glass.
The horde broke out in alarmed hoots.
“Not so tough,” Felipe told Kyle, the relief plain in his voice.
The ground trembled. The walls of the railcar burst. A behemoth spilled out, huge, grotesquely muscled, its forelimbs like tree trunks. I’d once seen a dog as big as a house. This was larger. It was taller than the construction tent. How the hell did it even fit under there?
Kyle swore.
The beast sighted the dead offspring, opened its maw, and bellowed. She looked just like her babies, except for the bone carapace that sheathed most of her upper face as if someone had pulled her skull out and clamped it over her ugly mug. Her four eyes were barely the size of Ping-Pong balls. Trying to shoot them with an arrow would be a pain in the ass.