Home Base (Harbingers Book 14) Page 6
It slashed my forehead with with a horizontal swipe of its hand, and I felt cuts open from ear to ear. Blood spilled over my eyebrows and into my eyes.
“Help!” I called, feeling wretched and ashamed of my weakness. How had I—I—been reduced to this? And since I was that low, I might as well go lower. “Please,” I begged, “please. What do you want? I’ll do anything.” This was how I was going to end, useless and begging.
The ghast grabbed me by the waistband of my pants and dragged me into the open space in front of the desk. I struggled and kicked its torso and rolled against its grip, but all that did was shake sweat from its dangling locks and make it narrow those white eyes.
It sank its claws into my upper arms and lifted me off my feet. I had a mental image of it simply biting my head off and spitting it out to go bouncing on the pretty parquet floor.
As it brought my face up to its mouth level, time seemed to slow. I saw a memory of Stephie receiving the creatures from my soul and thrashing with their evil. I saw her run away toward the highway. I saw what was left of her on the road.
I saw the things Brenda had somehow gotten access to from my past, all the humiliations and rejection. The slit of light under the closet door that was my only illumination for what seemed like my entire childhood.
I couldn’t even remember the first time he’d hit me. Probably because it had started so early. But I could remember the time he’d done so when I’d brought him a hand-drawn Father’s Day card but had apparently chosen an important moment in the TV show to show it to him.
And suddenly this ghast wasn’t a jungle boy anymore. It wasn’t even a monster from the Gate anymore. It was William Jackson Thorton. My father, the devourer god.
Please…help…me.
The thought shocked me, even in that moment on the doorstep to death. It wasn’t a psychic command or even a plea to someone nearby to come to my rescue. It was…
It was a prayer.
The ghast seemed confused. It cocked its head at me and furrowed its brow. Then it seemed to shake it off, and it squeezed its claws into my flesh, ripping the skin and piercing to the bone.
I shouted in pain and surrender to the end.
That was when Mystery, Inc. burst in.
The ghast turned in surprise and tried to drop me, but its claws were stuck in the bloodied muscles of my arms. I came off one of its hands and dangled diagonally from the other, fighting to pull its claws out of me.
A wave of some sort of power washed over me. What I felt was Brenda’s spiritual anger, but what I saw was a tank of a man wrapped in hastily applied bandages and with dried blood on his face running forward like a subway train. He swung a metal table leg at the ghast and connected with the head. I went down with it.
“First the arm!” Sweet Cheeks yelled. “The arm, Tank.”
Tank body-slammed the creature’s head on the ground and wrested its free arm behind its back. It shrieked and sputtered, and I was able to use my legs now to pull loose from its other hand. It tore a chunk from my triceps, but I was free.
“Now move!” Andi commanded.
Tank scooted down the creature’s body and leaned away from its head. Brenda sidestepped to have a clear view. She reluctantly urged Daniel forward.
Daniel held before him an invisible weapon I knew only too well, though it was strange to not be able to see it.
“In the name of Jesus,” Tank said—needlessly, I would’ve argued, except for my own recent petition of the universe—“be gone!” He nodded to the kid.
Daniel brought the unseen blade down in a mighty chop, and somehow that nevertheless cut into the creature’s flesh. Its head came partially off its neck, and Daniel put his foot on its shoulder and chopped again, severing the head entirely.
Just like that, it was over.
The beast’s body went utterly still. Cowboy stood and touched his forearms gingerly, and I could see blood seeping through the bandages. His neck wound, too, was bleeding a bit. Daniel opened his hands and I knew he’d extinguished the sword. Brenda brought him into a big hug and pulled him protectively from the thing on the carpet.
Andi knelt in front of me. “You’re hurt. Forehead and both arms.” She looked me over. “Anywhere else?”
I just stared at them all. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
The troll crouched beside Andi and snapped his fingers in front of my face. He kept doing it until I flinched and turned away. He reached his hands to the wounds on my arms.
“You guys came,” I said, hating how dazed and stupid I sounded. I blinked blood out of my right eye.
Andi wiped it away with her finger and then with a napkin Daniel brought her. “Of course we came, Chad. We’re a team, aren’t we?”
Normally I would have had some smart riposte, but my brain felt like Jell-O. “I knew you guys were, you’re a team, but…” I shrugged.
Tank put his hand on my forehead. “That means you too, dummy.”
I looked at Smartmouth and asked you too? with my expression. She rolled her eyes and smiled.
Daniel gave me a fist bump.
I realized that my forehead didn’t sting anymore. I brought my hands up and found smooth skin, not the flayed shoe leather I was expecting. My arms stopped hurting too. I looked at Tank. “Did you…?”
“I didn’t,” he said, then pointed upward. “But someone did.”
“Right.” I checked my arms and moved them about. “Thank you. All of you. Thanks for coming when I called.”
Epilogue
“What a day!” I said.
The others laughed grimly, like veterans of a military campaign. We lounged in the rooftop saline pool atop the DFW Grand Hyatt, sipping adult beverages—except for Daniel, of course—and watching jets take off into the night sky.
I finished my frozen strawberry margarita and set it on Ashley’s tray, which she’d just put in front of me to bring me another of the pink delights.
She swept my hair with her fingers and winked, and I wished she was already off duty. “I’m glad you’re going to be with us for a long time.”
“Me too, Ash.”
Ashley went around to the rest of our group, collecting glasses and handing out fresh ones, then she headed for the elevator. There were a couple of other swimmers here, but she paid them no mind.
Tank sat with his legs in the pool, keeping his arm bandages dry. Apparently, his healing gift didn’t work on himself very often. He sat next to Andi, and I cursed the fact that I’d not been able to keep them apart in swimsuits. Still, what was a guy to do? Especially since it had been my idea to have us all live together. It was bound to happen. But curse his sculpted abs!
Brenda hadn’t taken her bathrobe off. She sat in a chaise she’d pulled close to where the rest of us sat. Daniel was doing handstands underwater and coming up occasionally for a drink of Sierra Mist.
“I guess that’s true?” Brenda said.
I looked at her over my shoulder. “What’s true?”
“We’re going to be here a long time.”
I shrugged. “Unless something better presents itself.”
“I don’t know,” Andi said, swishing her legs in the blue-lit water. “Are you going to be able to live in that suite, after what happened? I don’t think I could, no matter how many times they scrub the floor, you know?”
“Yeah,” Brenda said, “I keep seeing that thing’s neck half chopped through.” She shuddered.
I shrugged again. “It’s not a problem. And we’ll be installing a security system and bringing in specially trained guards ASAP. Anyway, I’ve seen lots worse than that. You have too, if the stories of your other ‘adventures’ are even half true. Here, at least we’re together, which means safer.”
Tank smiled mischievously. “Did you like how we came into your room that time? Just like you’d said: me first, then Daniel, then Brenda, then Andi. Brenda’s angry eyes, my muscles, Andi’s brain, and Daniel’s Masters of the Universe sword. Hoo-boy, that was go
od. And it worked just like you’d said, that was the crazy part.”
I chuckled with the rest of them. “Yes, sometimes even I have a good idea.”
We fell silent. Planes landed and planes took off. Daniel came up for air and went back under. The other swimmers left.
“So this is us,” Andi said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Us. This is our team now, us five. And here.”
I didn’t answer this time. My spidey-sense told me to shut up for once.
Brenda sat forward in her chaise. “It’s kinda like we’re rich.”
They smiled and nodded.
“Livin’ like queens and kings,” she said. “Havin’ people wait on us. Orderin’ up room service all day, y’all. A girl could get used to it.”
“And,” Tank said, lifting a finger in the air, “the Cowboys’ stadium is right here!”
We laughed.
Daniel surfaced and slurped the entire refilled glass of Sierra Mist, chased by a belch. “Brenda…I mean, ‘Mom.’”
“Whoo,” Brenda said. “Still gotta get used to that one. What is it, sugah?”
“What if I don’t like the tutor they’re getting for me? I like learning from you.”
“Then I’ll teach you. But some things yo mamma don’t know how to teach. Aw, you’ll be okay, baby.”
Andi pulled her legs from the water. “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had about as much fun as I can stand today.” She stood and wrapped herself in a giant white towel. “I’m going to go test out that king-sized mattress in my suite. Good night.”
The rest of them departed with her, leaving me to wait another half hour for Ashley to get off work and join me for a swim…et cetera. I’d been moved to the other presidential suite for a day so they could clean my real one. I wondered what they would do with the bodies of the ghasts.
I leaned back in the corner of the pool and nestled my head in the nook. The stars above were dimmed by the airport lights and the glow of the surrounding city, but I could still find the Big Dipper.
Well, Big Fella, I guess I should say thanks. I didn’t know how I was going to get them here, but that sort of got taken care of. And when that thing was about to finish me off…
Anyway, yeah. Thanks. And…I guess I’ll talk to you later.
Afterword
Don’t miss the other books in the Harbingers series which can be purchased separately or in collections:
CYCLE ONE: INVITATION
The Call
The House
The Sentinels
The Girl
CYCLE TWO: MOSAIC
The Revealing
Infestation
Infiltration
The Fog
CYCLE THREE: The Probing
Leviathan
The Mind Pirates
Hybrids
The Village
OTHER BOOKS BY Jeff Gerke
NOVELS
Virtually Eliminated
Terminal Logic
Fatal Defect
Operation Firebrand—Origin
Operation Firebrand—Crusade
Operation Firebrand—Deliverance
FICTION HOW-TO BOOKS
Plot Versus Character
The First 50 Pages
Write Your Novel in a Month
The Irresistible Novel
For more information about Jeff, visit JeffGerke.com