Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,84

you can’t do anything about it. You couldn’t do anything about it then, either. If you’d been stronger.” He yanked my jeans down. “If you’d been smarter.” He yanked my underwear down. “If you hadn’t been so fucking selfish.”

They were my own words. I’d been hearing them since that night.

Richard pressed against me; he was naked and hard.

And then I heard Dag talking about college: Should have, would have, could have. Nothing good at the end of that road.

My hand swept out across the tile, closed over the handle of the corkscrew, and I brought it up and back. I felt it connect and sink into something soft that gave with a slight pop.

Richard screamed.

I kept pushing. He was flopped off me, trying to get away, but I rolled with him, driving the corkscrew with all the strength I had. We tumbled around until I was on top of him, shoving the corkscrew into the socket of his ruined eye, punching it into his brain. His hands raked at me, long claws that weren’t quite human, and I realized he was trying to shift his shape—or perhaps had simply lost control. I was beyond pain, beyond everything. Bone crunched, and then the handle of the corkscrew caught up against his forehead and wouldn’t go any deeper.

I scrambled back and watched him, his back arching, his half-transformed claws scratching the tile. He flopped in the wine like a fish. And then I realized he couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t die, but he couldn’t change, couldn’t control his body anymore. He’d stay like that until I ripped the corkscrew loose.

Or until I burned the motherfucker to ash.

A shriek made me turn, and too late I remembered Muriel. She ripped her claws out of Dag, freeing him from the floor, and reared back. Then she charged toward me.

DAG (8)

One moment I was lying on the ground, pinned there by the hashok’s claws, being tortured—sliced to pieces, listening to Elien scream. The next moment, I was free. The hashok shrieked, rearing back, its claw coming free from my shoulder. My first instinct was to curl up into a ball, but I forced myself to lie there. Play possum. The hashok was still screeching. Whatever had just happened, it had pissed off Muriel fiercely. I could hear Elien struggling behind me, and I realized that somehow, impossibly, Elien had gotten free.

Muriel leaped over me.

I reacted without thinking, reaching up and catching her by one pale, elongated leg. She crashed into the tile; the house shook from the impact. She kicked at me, and she swiped back, trying to get loose. But Muriel and Richard had been dealing with prey too long. It had made them sloppy, and sloppy had made them careless. She must have expected that I’d pull back, trying to avoid her claws, and maybe let her loose. Instead, I dragged her closer, climbing up her body, knocking the claws away.

Shock was on my side; the dark, oily eyes were full of it, as though she couldn’t believe anyone—anything—would dare to fight back. She was so shocked that she let me knock her claws aside, let me move closer. She probably couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Then the moment of advantage ended, and she surged back toward me. Her lipless mouth gaped open; rows of razor-sharp teeth moved toward my face. Her breath stank of rotten meat and fetid waters that had stood still too long.

During all that torture, she’d never cut up my chest, never sliced open my shirt. I yanked out the hidden hunting knife and lunged to meet her. Surprise again. At the last instant before we connected, a hint of doubt showed on that monstrous face, the possibility that she had made a mistake. Then the fixed blade of the knife was shearing through the soft palate at the back of her mouth, and I drove it up into her brain.

She dropped back, her long, pale limbs kicking and jerking like she’d grabbed an electric line. I stared at her as she did that helpless dance across the tile. Spasms twisted Richard around in the same way. Elien had driven a corkscrew into his eye. He had lost most of his hair, and his face was lipless and too long; Elien had caught him in the middle of a transformation.

Elien stood with his back to the refrigerator, a chef’s knife in one hand, the blade trembling. Blood soaked the front of him, and I could see bite marks,