Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

It took a little while to get Shondra up and dressed. She was still very weak, not only from being attacked by the thing in the basement but also from the pneumonia that landed her in this hospital in the first place. In spite of the extra sleep, being lost in that nightmarish dream state hadn’t sped up her recovery time.

Eric stood guard outside the door and kept watch for more monsters while the others helped her into her clothes.

This still seemed like a bad idea to him. With the thing in the basement dead, wouldn’t the hospital be the best place for her to recover? But Charlotte was adamant that these two still needed her, and who was he to argue with the instincts of a witch?

Finally, Holly stepped out into the hallway with him and looked around. “It got quiet out here,” she observed.

Eric nodded. He’d been thinking the same thing. The yelling from beyond the doors at the end of the hall had ceased. No one had made any rounds. Everything was eerily still.

“Something’s not right,” agreed Charlotte as she joined them. She stared down the hallway, her eyes fixed on those doors. “I don’t like this.”

“The van’s right outside the main entrance,” recalled Eric.

Charlotte continued to stare toward the end of the hallway, her eyebrows scrunched together in a look of deep concern. “Not that easy…” she murmured.

Eric glanced at Holly. She was biting her nails again, her eyes wide with concern.

“What is it?” asked Alicia. “What do you feel?”

But Charlotte merely shook her head. “Not sure…”

Now Eric’s heart was racing. He hated moments like these, when he knew something was going to happen to mess up his day even more than it already was, but he had no idea what.

“I don’t understand,” said Shondra. She was standing behind them, clinging to her daughter. “What’s going on?”

“It’s a long story,” said Alicia. “We’ll tell you all about it once we’re safely out of here.”

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t it be safe? This is a hospital, isn’t it?”

“There are monsters here,” said Siena.

Everyone looked at the girl, surprised. She looked embarrassed by the sudden attention, but she didn’t shrink away.

“It’s true.” She fixed her eyes on Charlotte. “Isn’t it?”

Charlotte glanced up at her sisters, then met Eric’s eyes. He gave her a shrug. They hadn’t exactly been discrete when they first came into the room. She’d heard them say that there was something evil in the hospital, something that was hurting her mom. He didn’t think it would take much for a young girl to jump to the conclusion that they were dealing with monsters.

And yet, there was something about the certainty with which she spoke, almost as if she simply knew what was going on.

“We’ll talk about it once we’re out of here,” Charlotte promised.

If we make it out of here, Eric thought but didn’t dare say. And he thought Charlotte’s eyes said the same.

He turned and fixed his attention on the doors. “Let’s get moving.

The six of them started down the hall. Eric led the way, wishing with each step that he had Delphinium’s dagger.

He reached the end of the corridor and pushed open the door.

Nothing nasty was waiting to ambush him. No super imps leapt out at him with their claws slashing. No ogre grabbed him and tore him in half. In fact, this part of the hospital was completely empty. The receptionist’s station was deserted. No one was around at all.

“This isn’t right,” said Charlotte. “Somebody should be here.”

Every muscle in Eric’s body was tense. That bad feeling in his gut was worse than ever. His morbid imagination went straight to work, manufacturing horrible scenarios to explain where everyone had gone. He saw entire hallways smeared with blood, mutilated bodies littering the floors, patients slain in their beds, nurses disemboweled in the elevators.

He could almost believe that they were the only ones left alive, and that they had no chance of making it out of here.

Then a door opened and a small, skinny woman in her sixties appeared. She wasn’t running. She wasn’t bloodied. She wasn’t even screaming her head off. She only looked surprised to see them all standing there, staring back at her.

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking them over.

“What’s going on?” Charlotte demanded. “Where is everybody?”

“Some sort of disturbance in the emergency room,” the woman replied shortly. “Nothing to be concerned about. What are you doing? Who are all these people?”

This wasn’t the same woman who’d been manning the desk when they arrived. That had been a much younger woman who had obviously been one of Charlotte’s friends. She’d let them go through without any questions. But the suspicious way this woman eyed them told Eric that she might be a problem.

“We’re just leaving,” replied Charlotte.

But the woman’s eyes fixed on Shondra and Siena, who stood huddled together behind Charlotte. She obviously recognized them, but she seemed to be having trouble placing them. Clearly, she didn’t make a habit of getting to know the patients.

This was going to be a problem. Eric had been expecting a monster attack, but this woman wasn’t quite what he anticipated. Although she did exude a sort of monstrous presence, he was fairly sure she wasn’t about to sprout fangs and claws and try to devour their livers. She might, however, have them all arrested.

He wasn’t sure if they’d actually broken any laws, but they’d probably violated a number of hospital rules. And she looked like exactly the sort of humorless person who would have no tolerance for crazy stories about mutant super imps and witchcraft.

But as it turned out, the woman wasn’t their biggest problem.

Someone screamed. The nurse who’d been manning the desk when they arrived burst from the doorway behind the woman, her eyes wide with terror.

“What the hell is going on?” demanded the older woman. But before anyone could give her an answer, the door burst open again and in pounced another super imp. She staggered backward, screaming.

Shondra and Siena screamed, too.

The younger nurse ran past them and out the front entrance, vanishing into the parking lot.

The super imp forgot about the nurse and bounded straight at Charlotte and the Lowes, snarling viciously.

And then Holly let out a shout and the monster’s head vanished in a spray of smoking, black gore.

She was getting quite good at aiming those spells. Unfortunately, she was also expending her energy far too quickly. She dropped to her knees, exhausted, as the headless imp staggered around the room, slashing blindly at the air.

Alicia knelt beside her, concerned, but Holly assured her she was okay.

Eric thought it probably didn’t help that she’d been up all night, trying to save her sisters and running for her life at almost every stop along the way.

“What is that thing?” shrieked Shondra, her voice shrill with fear. She was watching the headless body as it slashed pointlessly at the wall with its claws and then tumbled over and flopped on the tile floor as if throwing a temper tantrum.

“Something that travels in packs,” said Eric as he helped Holly to her feet. “We need to get to the van.”

The older nurse had been cowering against the wall, watching the headless super imp. Now she jumped to her feet and fled through the nearest doorway, probably going to fetch security.

Vaguely, Eric wondered if the disturbance in the emergency room that she’d mentioned had anything to do with someone claiming to have seen a monster.

“That one was different,” Holly observed, eying the thrashing monstrosity. “Some kind of goblin or something?”

“An imp,” he informed her. “We killed one when we were downstairs. We saw it transform.”

“I’ve never heard of them transforming,” said Alicia. “Grandpa never said anything about that.”

“Grandpa also thought it was almost impossible to summon one,” Eric reminded her, but we’ve lost count of them now.”

“This is crazy,” said Shondra.

“We’ll explain everything,” Charlotte promised. “But we have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

Eric slipped his arm around Holly and let her lean on him. “Stick together,” he said. “We’re parked right outside.

But they had only just begun to move toward the exit when they heard another shout.

All of them looked back nervously.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then two different sets of doors flew open and a swarm of imps poured out of each.

“The van!” shouted Eric.

Alicia bolted through the door ahead of them, running straight for the side door of the minivan.

Eric had enough optimism to notice that these imps were all un-mutated, meaning that each one of them would be a handful, but at least reasonably easy to kill on its own. Unfortunately, there appeared to be about a hundred of the little sharp-toothed bastards. And each one of them apparently had the potential to morph into a six-foot-tall killing machine with razor-sharp claws, six-inch teeth and an unfairly high pain tolerance.

He had to remind himself that he was in the company of ladies and should probably not speak the very bad word he was thinking aloud.

Behind them, the automatic doors began to slide shut between them and the monsters. Maybe they’d be too short to trigger the sensor.

And maybe they’d all just get sleepy and take a nap. (That optimism was fading fast, it seemed.)

Alicia slid open the side door and shouted at them to hurry, as if they really needed the extra encouragement.

Eric didn’t think they were going to make it. Even though he’d parked as near to the entrance as possible, it was still a fair distance between the vehicle and the building. If Holly had expended any more energy casting that last spell, he was sure they wouldn’t have made it. Though she was still shaky, the fear of the pursuing mob had given her enough of a second wind to allow her to carry her own weight.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw the hospital doors slide promptly open for the little horde.

In his pocket, his cell phone began ringing.

I’m sorry, he thought. I’m not able to come to the phone right now. I’m about to be eaten by monsters. Please leave a message after the screams.

Holly reached the van and climbed inside.

Eric paused and ushered Charlotte, Shondra and Siena ahead of him.

There wasn’t enough time. They were right there.

“Get inside!” he shouted at Alicia. “Close the door! I’ll hold them back!”

Somewhere deep inside, he wondered why the hell that was his first instinct. Was there something wrong with the part of his brain that was supposed to tell him to save his own ass? Was that why Delphinium’s spell chose him? Because he was the only one in a thousand mile radius stupid enough to say, “I’ll hold them back?”

But he didn’t have time to consider it. Alicia didn’t jump into the van, as he’d instructed. Instead, she rushed to a nearby tree and laid her hand on the trunk. A loud crack split the air and something like a lightning bolt shot from that tree to the next and then ricocheted to a third and fourth, creating an electric spider-web-like thing that caught the front of the imp swarm and missed Eric by mere inches. He even felt the static crackling in the air around him, making the hair on his arms and legs stand up.

Several dozen imps dropped to the ground and began smoking. The ones behind them tripped and fell over the carcasses, causing a chain reaction that forced the mob into a bottleneck, buying them a few more seconds.

But the effort left Alicia helpless. She dropped to the ground, almost completely exhausted, her eyes fluttering.

Keenly aware that the imp horde was almost upon them, Eric rushed to her side and scooped her up into his arms.

“Oh!” she sighed in a very small voice, looking up at him in a daze. “Hi…”

He would’ve liked to have said later that he’d been gentle when he put her in the van, like any self-respecting hero carrying the distressed damsel to safety, but if he were to tell the truth, he’d practically tossed the poor girl in on her skinny butt. Not that anyone would have blamed him. Even as he scrambled in after her and began sliding the door closed, several taloned hands reached in after him, slashing at his legs and arms. He crushed them in the door, effectively keeping them from climbing in, but now it wouldn’t close. Too many imp claws were wedged between it and the frame. They squealed in pain, but still refused to withdraw. The few that did snatch their mangled hands back were immediately replaced by others.

Outside, more imps crowded the door, prying at it, trying to force it open.

Charlotte and Holly both joined him, trying to help him hold it closed.

Everyone was screaming.

“What’s happening out there?” shouted Shondra.

Eric managed to lift his head and look out at the swarming mob outside. They were surrounded. They clawed at every door and climbed up onto the hood and the roof. But this wasn’t what Shondra was talking about. Amid the crowd of creepy creatures, several had collapsed to the ground and begun writhing. Smoke poured off their bodies as their arms and legs stretched and swelled, growing longer and stronger. The other imps were moving away from them, giving them room, as if afraid.

He caught Charlotte’s eye and saw his own dread mirrored there. “We have to get out of here!” she said.

“I can’t let go!” he cried. “Someone needs to get behind the wheel!”

But Alicia and Shondra were both still weak. (Shondra looked too terrified to move even if she wasn’t still drained from her ordeal in the hospital.) Seeing no other option, Siena took it upon herself to climb into the driver’s seat.

“God, I hate these things!” Eric grunted.

The engine roared to life and the van lurched forward, jumping up over the curb and bouncing over the other side. Imps squealed and shrieked as the tires rolled over them, crushing their fragile bodies against the asphalt.

Eric, Holly and Charlotte held on with all their strength. Once they were out of the parking lot, well away from the rest of the swarm and picking up speed, they’d be able to deal with these stowaways, but if they let the door open now, they would be overrun in seconds.

Then large, dagger-like claws appeared in the opening, wriggling past the smaller hands of the imps.

“Eric!” shrieked Holly.

“I see it!”

“Hold on!” cried Charlotte.

But even with all three of them pushing against it, the door was jerked open a few inches. Most of the smaller imps vanished as they tumbled to the ground, some of them perishing beneath the rear wheel as the van pushed forward through the swarm.

Eric set his feet against the base of the seat and leaned into the door with all his strength. “I got this! Get the dagger! It’s under the driver’s seat!”

Holly let go of the door and dropped to the floor to look for it.

A second set of claws appeared in the crack and the door slid open a little more. The smaller hands wriggled in farther, reaching for him, clutching at his shirt, tearing it.

“Hurry!”

Charlotte wedged herself against the front of the seat, straddling Eric’s legs, and added her strength to his, buying Holly more time.

Another super imp leapt onto the hood of the van, knocking the smaller monsters out of its way, and threw itself into the windshield. Its vicious claws clattered against the glass.

Siena screamed and jerked the wheel. The van swerved, mowing down imps and glancing off a parked Lexus, but the mutant beast dug its claws into the hood and held fast.

Holly struggled to pull the knife out from under the seat. There was less room to reach in from behind than from the front and it didn’t quite want to fit. She had to wriggle it out very carefully. (Plus, she knew better than to risk cutting herself.)

“I can’t hold it much longer!” Eric warned.

“Me either!” added Charlotte.

“I’m trying!” cried Holly.

Something big and ugly slammed into the side window on the other side of the car and bounced off, wrenching a terrified scream from Shondra.

Alicia managed to rise to her knees and peer out the window. “There’s so many!”

Finally, Holly pulled the dagger free and rose to her knees. She slid the blade carefully into the top of the crack between the door and the frame and then began hacking downward with it, chopping at the stubborn imps’ hands and claws.

The super imp tried to resist the dagger’s bite, but eventually it let go. When it did, the door slammed against the blade and Eric and Charlotte nearly fell.

The van jumped another curb as it cut across the parking lot toward the drive and the door bounced open. Holly withdrew the blade and Eric slammed it shut again.

But as Siena stomped on the brakes and veered toward the drive, the front passenger’s window exploded and another super imp began clawing its way into the vehicle.

Siena screamed and swerved, this time throwing off the one that had been clinging to the hood.

Eric took the dagger from Holly and threw himself between the seats, thrusting it at the monster. His aim was surprisingly true and the blade sank into the creature’s eye. It shrieked with pain and fell back, vanishing from the broken window.

Siena cut the wheels hard, knocking Eric off balance, and accelerated onto the highway, the tires screaming in protest as they made the sharp turn.

Eric rose again and looked back out the rear window. Hundreds of imps were swarming onto the highway in the darkness, pursuing them. Fortunately, they weren’t fast enough to keep up with a speeding Dodge minivan.

“Is everyone okay?” he asked. “Alicia?”

Alicia nodded. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thanks to you.” She was staring at him in that funny way that made him uncomfortable again.

He turned and looked forward. The road was clear in front of them. No imps remained on the hood. They seemed to have again escaped with their lives.

He looked down at Siena in the driver’s seat. “You don’t look old enough to drive,” he told her.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “I’m not.”

“I didn’t think so…”