Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

What, thought Allie, could leave an awful bite mark like that?

Suddenly her attention was drawn to the single barrel in the center of the room.

Someone was inside it, pounding and screaming. She couldn’t make out the words but she recognized the voice. Just hearing it chilled her far more than the blizzard ever could.

“Johnnie-O! Over here!” she called.

With a chicken in each of his fists and grease dripping down his chin, Johnnie-O looked a bit more comical and less menacing than usual. Reluctantly he handed his chickens to Heimlich with a look that said, You eat them, you ‘re dead.

He came over to the barrel, and both he and Allie knelt down, putting their ears close to the wood.

“Who’s out there?” the voice inside said. “Let me out, let me out and I shall give you whatever you want!”

It was the Haunter.

Johnnie-O looked to Allie for direction. She had, after all, led them to the biggest feast of their afterlives, so she was now held in some sort of reverence.

“Let me out!”yelled the Haunter. “I demand you let me out!”

Allie spoke loudly enough to be heard through the wood and brine. “What happened here? Who did this to you?”

“Let me out!” screeched the Haunter. “Let me out and I shall rip food from the finest restaurants in the living world and lay it at your feet.”

But Allie ignored him. “Where are the other barrels?”

“They were taken.”

“By whom?” Allie demanded.

“By the McGill.”

Johnnie-O gasped, and his mouth dropped open in astonishment. His cigarette would have fallen out if it could. “The McGill?!”

“His ship’s in the bay, out past the Statue of Liberty,” the Haunter said. “Let me out and I will help you fight him.”

Allie considered it, but then she looked around. The strips of black cloth were squirming on the ground like snakes. Frantically they danced about, and Allie realized what the Haunter was doing. Even from within the barrel, the Haunter was trying to bring his air-warriors together to capture them. They tried to reassemble themselves, but it was useless. The McGill had shredded them far too well for even the Haunter to put them back together again.

Allie looked at the barrel and tried to find some compassion for this creature inside, who had so mercilessly imprisoned her friends. In the end she found her compassion did not reach that far.

“Leave him in there!” she said loudly enough for him to hear. “Let him stew in his own juices.”

“NO!” the Haunter screamed within the barrel, and around the room bones and bird carcasses began to fly like meteors, randomly tossed about by the Haunter’s rage.

Allie didn’t care. She turned to Johnnie-O. “Can you and the Altar Boys come with me?” she said. “I won’t be able to fight the McGill alone.”

But Johnnie-O backed away. “We got what we cane for,” he said. “Ain’t nothing anyone can say, living, dead, or otherwise that would get me to fight the McGill. You’re on your own.”

And then, almost as an apology, he reached down and grabbed a leg from the turkey that had been bitten by the McGill. He ripped the leg free and held it out to her, almost like a peace offering.

“Here, take it,” Johnme-O said. “You deserve to eat too.”

And so she did. She dug her teeth into the turkey and relished its flavor—the first flavor she had tasted in all her months here. It was like being in heaven.

Yet as good as it was, it couldn’t outweigh the hell she knew she would soon have to face once she tracked down the McGill.

She turned to leave, but before she could, Johnnie-O called to her. “You never told us your name,” he said, then tilted his Marlboro up with a grin. “I gots to know it if we’re gonna tell stories about how you went off to fight the McGill and all.”

Allie found herself oddly flattered. Johnnie-O had decided she was worth being turned into a legend.