End of Days (Penryn & the End of Days 3)

‘We wouldn’t have agreed if we’d known your mom was there.’

‘Pain in the ass, let me tell ya.’

‘You don’t need to tell me,’ I say. ‘I know all about what a pain she can be.’

Dee laughs. ‘She’s like a weapons-grade pain in the ass. We figured out to sic her on the bad guys, and she became a huge asset.’

‘Freaked out the human guards there until we came.’

‘Did you know she can be truly frightening?’

I nod. ‘Oh, yeah. I know that.’

‘Most of us had no idea. Totally blindsided us all.’

‘She’s one of our captains now.’

‘What?’ It’s hard to imagine my mother being in charge of anything.

‘Yeah. For real. What kind of a scary world is that?’

I blink a couple of times, letting that settle in. I admit that if there’s one thing I can expect from her, it’s the unexpected.

‘Your mom totally rocks.’ The twins nod like little bobblehead dolls.

‘Do you know where she is?’ I ask.

‘Yup,’ says Dee. ‘We should be able to find her for you.’

‘Thanks. That would be great.’

We step onto El Camino Real, getting ready to hop from car to car when someone yells into the night. It sounds like a fight coming from the grove on the other side of the street.

Paige is in that grove.

I break into a sprint, running as fast as I can into the woods.

19

We race into the grove, chasing the noise. We’re not the only ones running through the trees. But I can’t see details, and everything looks like shifting shadows in the deepening night.

There are angry voices. I’m pretty sure hellions don’t talk, at least, not in human voices. I hope this is not the day that I find out otherwise.

Beneath the canopy of trees, a group of shadows raise and drop their fists, kick, and yell at someone curled on the dirt. As we near, I catch a glimpse of the dried skins of the locust victims. Some of them are wearing ripped clothes covered in dirt as if they recently crawled out of graves.

Fists fly and pound into the victim, who is simply taking it, grunting with each impact.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask as I run up. No one seems to hear me.

‘Hey!’ shouts Dee.

‘What’s going on?’ asks Dum in a hushed but demanding voice.

Several of the locust stung glance at us. They don’t stop their kicks, but one of them says, ‘It’s that bastard from Alcatraz. He did this to us. Created the monsters and fed us to them.’ He viciously kicks at the man on the ground. I can’t see any details, but it’s obvious they’re talking about Doc.

The twins must have reached the same conclusion. They jump into the crowd with their arms up. ‘That’s enough!’

‘The council has already said to leave him alone,’ says Dee, pulling a guy off Doc.

‘The Resistance council has no power over us. We’re not part of your camp, remember?’

‘Yeah,’ says another guy whose face is as withered as dried salami skin. ‘You’ve all rejected us. And it’s because of him.’ Another vicious kick.

‘The next person who kicks or hits him gets banned from all betting. You will be blackballed for the rest of your shriveled lives. Now back off.’

Amazingly, they all back off.

Everyone else might reject the locust victims, but I guess the twins don’t discriminate in their betting pools.

Dee looks just as surprised as I am. He glances over at his brother. ‘Dude, we’re the new HBO.’ He flashes a grin.

Dum reaches down and pulls up a man who I barely recognize as Doc. He holds his arm awkwardly. His face, which was already bruised, is so swollen that he can barely open his eyes.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’

‘They stomped all over it. They have no idea what they’ve done.’

‘Is it broken?’ It’s starting to dawn on me what it means to have a surgeon with a broken arm.

‘I don’t know.’ His conscious brain might not know, but his body sure thinks his arm’s broken by the way he’s cradling it. ‘It’s people like this that make me wonder why I bother to try to save them.’

Doc looks furious as he brushes past me. He only takes a couple of steps before he has to lean against a tree and take a break. Dum holds Doc to make sure he can walk steadily.

‘We have another doctor,’ says Dee to me. ‘We’ll see what she can do for him.’

‘I’ll go with you.’ I see the locust stung with new eyes. Their shriveled chests and shoulders still heave with their anger and frustration. Several of them are crying with pent-up emotions that go far deeper than the ones stirred up by the fight.

I follow the twins as they help Doc across the street.

20

I lean against the wall in a room full of patients waiting to see the camp’s doctor. Doc got high priority because he’s the only other doctor in camp. They let one of the twins into the back with him while the other took off on an errand. I was told to wait with the others in the waiting room.

There is only one candle for the entire room even though the windows are blocked off by blankets. There’s something particularly unnerving about being in a room that’s more shadow than light and hearing people around you coughing and whispering.

The door opens, and Dee’s bottle-blond head peeks in.

‘What’s the verdict?’ I ask. ‘Is it broken?’

‘Badly,’ says Dee as he walks in. ‘It’ll probably be six weeks before he can start to use his arm again.’

Six weeks. My stomach feels like I swallowed lead weights. ‘Could he instruct the other doctor during surgery? You know, to work as his hands?’

‘She’s not a surgeon. Besides, no one wants to be known as Doc’s minion. Bad for your health, you know.’

‘Yeah, I noticed.’ I chew on my lip as I think. I can’t come up with anything to do except go back with the bad news. What are we going to do now? Doc was our one shining hope for both Paige and Raffe.

The entrance door opens, and Dum walks in. ‘Hey, I saw your mom. Told her your sister was in the grove and that you’d be going there in a minute too.’

‘Thanks. Does she seem all right?’

‘She was pretty excited. Gave me a hug and a kiss,’ says Dum.

‘Really?’ I ask. ‘Do you know how long it’s been since she’s given me a hug and a kiss?’

‘Well, yeah, a lot of women find that they can’t resist my charms. They’re all over me for any excuse they can find.’ He takes a swig of pee-green Gatorade as if he thought that was sexy.

I walk to the door, trying to figure out if there’s anything I can do other than head back to the grove with the bad news. When I put my hand on the doorknob, something strange happens that makes me pause.

The skin on the back of my neck prickles before my conscious mind knows that anything is wrong.

Running footsteps pound past the other side of the door.

Then the people in the waiting room huddle together like scared sheep, looking up with frightened eyes.

Someone screams outside.

‘What now?’ asks Dee. His voice is ful

l of dread, like something is telling him to huddle up and hide too.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to open the door, but the twins pull it open to see what’s going on.

Outside, everything looks quiet and still. Junk is all over the place – overturned desks, chairs every which way, clothes, blankets.

As my eyes adjust to the dark, though, I realize the piles of clothes strewn about the lawn are actually people. It’s hard to tell with the bits missing.

Not bits as in bite marks, bits as in limbs. Some are missing heads too.

A woman runs from a car. A shadowy figure the size of a wolf chases her.

A couple standing in the shadows on a walkway jump and yelp in surprise as something else – or more accurately, several something elses – slink out of the darkness from the overhang above them and grab their hair.

Then, as if a signal has been given, shadows leap out of the night throughout the campus.

I catch a glimpse of one of them as someone lights it with a flashlight beam. It’s a hellion.

They’re smaller than the ones from the Pit, but still terrifying. Bat-faced, bat-winged, creepy little fiends with skeletal limbs and emaciated bodies.

Screams fill the school as hellions boil out of the night from all directions.

Two of them are especially large – spotted and beefy with red eyes. Cords of muscle flex along their elongated bones, making the other hellions look stunted. They’re the two who chased me from Beliel’s memory of hell.

They know I’m here. And they brought friends.

One of them lifts his mouth into the air and makes that same hyena call that I heard on Angel Island. If this is anything like the last time, we can expect a whole lot of company.

A guy jumps out of the shadows, writhing and screaming, with two hellions on his back. In his panic, he runs into a crowded building, bringing the two hellions with him.

A gunshot rings inside that building. I hope they shot the hellions and not the guy.

The hellions are after me, not them. I brought them here.

So it’s up to me to lead them away.