on the reek of old death as ribbons and tatters of flesh billowed around it.
A bundle of arms whipped out, razor-claws spearing Artemis as she unloaded both pistols into it. Blood sprayed as it punched through her chest and stomach, nailing her to the wall. Fisher methodically emptied his pistol into its center-of-mass from the other side and started reloading.
I screamed Jacky’s name and finally unfroze, throwing myself at the nightmare. Stinking flesh wrapped around me and I gagged, retching. I broke bundles of arms like rotten twigs, trying to grip it and pull it off my friend, but I couldn’t find its center, it seemed to go in forever, and I couldn’t breathe the putrid air, the miasma of sulfur and decay as claws ripped at my costume, grasped, sliced and drew blood as I struggled with rising panic. I couldn’t grapple it, couldn’t pull back, couldn’t fight…
And then Mr. Jones spoke.
One word, and I heard it in my bones, a golden sound like the deepest chord of a cosmically amped base guitar, like a planet had just sung a note. The foul thing screamed, the horror of its ululating voice distant and faint beneath the world-filling sound of the Word.
Then the room was empty, of infinity, of the nightmare, and I lay retching on the floor. I felt something wet and, reaching up, found that my ears were bleeding. Along with lots of other parts of me. Climbing to my knees, I looked to see Artemis, slumped to the floor still holding her pistols. Jones and Fisher crouched over Orb. Blood covered her from coiffed head to Jimmy Choos, and she wasn’t breathing. Fisher started CPR, but each push brought more blood, soaking the new carpet.
No. Oh no. I began to shake.
“Fisher,” I whispered, pulling myself up. I could fly her to the hospital.
He looked up and shook his head. Jones made a sound, like an animal caught in a trap. Then he spoke again, another word too big for the world. Infinity roared back, deeper than seas, to blow through me again with the rush of a million wings and the heady smell of clean spring rain. Giddy, I laughed without knowing why, and as the Word faded out of memory I heard them: two more beating hearts. Orb breathed and laughed as even Fisher smiled wide enough to crack his face. But I ignored them, because sitting against the wall Jacky laughed and cried, the holes in her closed, gone, and I could hear her heart beating, racing as blood filled warming cheeks. She was alive.
Episode Two: Pursuit
Chapter Twelve
I like kitties in trees. They’re easy.
Astra, Notes From a Life
* * *
“You’re alive,” Dr. Beth said with a broad smile.
Finally finished, he snapped off his gloves and sat down, patting Artemis’ knee absent-mindedly as he gave her the news.
“How?” she asked.
“No idea,” he said cheerfully. “You’re still a vampire. No surprise there since you misted home, something mere mortals don’t do. And of course,” he tapped his left canine illustratively, “you’ve still got the signature dentition. But,” he chuckled happily and waved at the screens behind him, “all metabolic processes formerly in abeyance are now functioning. You’re breathing, and not just for air to talk with. You have a healthy heartbeat, measurable brain activity, your sweat glands are working, tissue samples show living cells, I could go on. You’re a living, healthy young lady.”
I could have told him most of that. When we went out tonight she’d been room-temperature, an animated corpse; now her heartbeat was one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard, a faint echo of that second, already forgotten Word, and she glowed in my infrared vision with a warm and yellow living light. I could hardly take my eyes off of her.
Taking stock at the apartment, we’d found we were all good, but the poor building super nearly died of shock—this time the attack left the carpet soaked in blood and a big hole where the thing pinned Artemis. I’d never left an incident scene so fast; Fisher hustled us out, taking Orb and Mr. Jones with him. Officially, he’d contacted both of them and asked them to come out and look at the scene, and Artemis and I had agreed to come along as backup. I guess he thought it was better to lie like a rug than let Chief Garfield know that my request had guided the investigation to tonight’s encounter. It didn’t feel right, but he knew his boss