Chapter 48

The Nekura lurched through the door and jumped in the air. It landed on top of Charley and knocked her to the floor.

Henry hadn’t seen this kind of Nekura before—the one Charley had described from the science building. It was hideous with a bulbous head and oily, molting skin. His heart pounded in his chest, beating out of control. Fear immobilized him.

Charley screamed and thrashed, but it was like fighting the air. She couldn’t make contact. When she did, she only grabbed the creature’s peeling skin that came off in flakes.

The Nekura savored the moment. It indulged in Charley’s overwhelming panic as she fought against it. The Nekura opened its mouth garishly wide, dislocating its jaw like a snake. The inside of its mouth was cavernous.

Charley hit critical mass. She tried to get up, to move, to do anything other than scream but she was completely impuissant.

The Nekura bent to bite.

The creature suddenly burst in a concussion of blue light above her, rupturing open with smoke and ash. The slick secretions of the Nekura coated her skin and the falling ash clung to her and stuck.

Thom stood in the back of the room holding the blunderbuss. The whole event took only a matter of seconds but that was nearly all the Nekura needed.

Charley lay on the ground and screamed. The Nekura was gone now, and she thrashed freely. Fear had given way to protest.

Henry rushed over to her. She lay on her back, kicking and punching the air wildly.

She looked like she had been tarred and feathered by the darkness.

“Charley, it’s okay, it’s gone,” he tried to soothe.

She refused to stop. She took a large breath and screamed again.

Thom frowned at the back of the room. He tucked the pistol in the small of his back and reached for his sweater. He put it on as he shook his head.

“Filthy Shades,” he said. Disgust filled his voice. He zipped up his sweater.

Henry looked back at him. “Shades?”

“They’re shape-shifters. Deceivers. They’re some of the most difficult to deal with.”

The thought settled in Henry’s mind. Shades. Shape-shifters. The Blue Vest at school, at the science lab—it was the same one. Or was it?

Thom walked over to Charley and knelt.

“Charley. Hey . . . hey . . . hey,” he said, drawing out each word. He placed his hands on her wild arms. “It’s gone. You’re alright. Try to calm yourself.” He reassured her to the point that she stopped screaming. She put her arms down to her sides. She stared at the ceiling, transfixed. Suddenly, she got up without saying a word and stormed into the small bathroom and slammed the door.

The shower turned on.

Thom sat down in the chair again by the doorway. “I shouldn’t have spoken so freely about all of it,” he said. “Not here at least. Even the walls have ears.”

They sat and waited while listening to the rhythmic fall of the shower.

After five minutes, Thom got up and spoke through the door of the bathroom. “Charley, we have to get going.”

Agitated, her voice came back through the door. “I can’t get this oil off my skin!”

He sat back down.

Ten minutes.

“Charley, we need to go!” Thom called through the door. She didn’t bother to respond.

Fifteen minutes.

Thom got up and walked to the door. He opened it without knocking. He reached his arm into the shower and turned off the water.

“Hey!” she cried.

Taking care not to betray her modesty, he reached out and grabbed the edges of the shower curtain. With a step forward, he wrapped the edges around Charley like the curtain was a giant blanket. Thom tugged on the curtain and it ripped down from the shower rings. With Charley wrapped up in the curtain, he picked her up and lifted her out of the shower.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

He set her down in the center of the bathroom.

“I told you I don’t make promises lightly. We have to leave. Now!” Thom reached back and grabbed a couple towels and shoved them at her chest, and she grabbed them through the shower curtain. “For your safety—for all of us—we need to leave. They know where we are and this is not a safe place. They will come after us. We leave now.”

“But I can’t get this oil off! I don’t have any clothes! And I—”

It was going nowhere. She was trying to scrub away the indelible imprint on her soul rather than the oil on her skin.

Thom threw on his coat and grabbed his other pistol. He took a small wad of cash out of his wallet and threw it on the table. Then he walked back to Charley and scooped her up in his arms, still wrapped in the shower curtain like a cocoon.

They sped out of the room and down the hall to the stairwell. They descended the stairs and with a quick glance around, they hurried to the truck. Thom lifted Charley and placed her inside. She sat in the backseat of the truck in her shower-curtain swaddle, hair sopping wet, colicky as a newborn baby.