Page 62 of Devoured
The door shuddered behind me. They were trying to force it open. I threw all my weight against it, bracing with everything I had. For once, being heavy was an advantage. I planted my feet and leaned hard, becoming a human barricade.
I looked around, wild with desperation. There had to be something, some kind of weapon, some way to fight. My eyes landed on a metal rod, bent and rusted, that looked like it had once held an IV bag.
The door shuddered again, harder this time. My strength was failing, sweat making my grip slip on the handle.
I made a choice.
I lunged for the rod and grabbed it just as the door burst open. I hefted it in both hands. It was heavier than it looked, solid steel with a sharp point at one end. When they came through, I was ready.
The first creature stumbled in, its ruined face splitting into a grin. “Found you,”it gurgled. “Found the wandering—”
I drove the rod through its chest with every ounce of strength I had. Black fluid erupted from the wound, spraying across my face and arms. The creature looked down at the metal jutting from its body with genuine surprise.
“Interesting,”it wheezed.
Then it crumpled.
The others surged forward, but the narrow doorway bottlenecked them. I swung the rod with all my strength, catching the second one across the temple. Its head caved in with a wet crunch, and it dropped without a sound.
The third one slipped past my guard. Its waterlogged fingers closed around my throat. I gagged on the stench of stagnant water and rot, but managed to drive my knee into what I hoped was its groin. It doubled over, and I brought the rod down hard on the back of its skull.
For a moment, I stood there gasping, covered in black fluid. Outside, the wasteland beyond stretched endlessly in all directions, empty now, but somehow more threatening in its silence.
That’s when the sirens started.
Air raid sirens, like the ones they tested in tornado country. But these were wrong, distorted, playing at frequencies that made my teeth ache and my vision blur. The sound came from everywhere at once. The sky, the ground, inside my own skull.
I slammed the door shut and leaned against it, shaking. The sirens continued, muffled now but still audible through the walls. I’d triggered something. An alarm. A warning.
And now they were coming for me.
I needed to get back to the Executioner’s chamber, back to safety, such as it was. But which way? The corridors all looked different now. Older. Darker. Like the false sunlight had been just another lie.
I chose a direction and ran. My bare feet were silent on floors that had changed from linoleum to something that felt like raw meat, bloody and pulsing. The sheet had come completely loose. I clutched it against my chest, trying to stay covered as I moved.
Behind me, the sirens wailed their impossible song.
I turned a corner and stopped cold.
She stood at the end of the hallway, perfectly still in a way that made me shiver with dread. Average height, unremarkable build. But something about her posture was wrong. Too straight. Too symmetrical. Like someone pretending to be human and almost getting it right.
Then she started walking toward me. Each step was identical. Exact length, exact speed. Mechanical. Inhuman.
When she got close enough, I saw her face.
Or where her face should have been.
Her jaw was shattered, broken into a crown of mirror shards that reflected my own terrified expression back at me in a dozen fractured pieces. Above that, smooth skin stretched where her eyes and nose should’ve been.
“Oh, here you are. The Judge wants you so bad,”she cooed in my voice.
How was that even possible?
“Who... what are you?”I asked.
She tilted her head, mirror shards catching light from nowhere.
“Helena Wolfe. Though names matter less here than what we become.”Her voice was still mine, but hearing it from her mouth made my skin crawl.
