This time my throw was perfect. The jar shattered between his calves, and the fire roared under his crotch and belly. Wally went up like a bonfire.
I couldn’t see Fidel, but I could hear his scuffling shoes nearby. A tiny black hole appeared in front of me, and just as I realized I was looking at a gun barrel, it went off.
I didn’t feel the bullet strike. Fidel did, though. He turned visible, not three feet away. There was blood on the front of his shirt, and his mouth fell open. His bullet had hit me over my heart, then ricocheted back through his breastbone.
He dropped the gun and collapsed onto the floor. I shouted his name and grabbed his shirt, hoisting him up again. His eyes grew dim, but he had enough life in him to look at me hopefully, as though I could save him somehow.
I lifted him as high as I could, his drape eating at the skin of my hands, then bum-rushed him between the cars toward the red circle. I bumped against something I couldn’t see, but it only took a moment to regain my balance and momentum.
Fidel sighed and his eyes closed just as I crossed the line with him. I dumped him onto the concrete—not gently, but he was already dead—and leaped back across the red line.
The drape carried him away and brought another huge swarm into our world. The red circle held them until they fled.
God, I was tired. I was drenched in sweat and had no energy left.
Ty stood by the grill of the Viper, Fidel’s gun in his hand. He bared his teeth at me. “I didn’t want this, Ray.”
“I know you didn’t.”
He walked across the front of the car toward the Lexus, circling me and scowling. He could lift that gun in a moment, but my ghost knife was in my pocket and Arne’s gun was back in my waistband. We weren’t going to have a quick draw.
I glanced at the others. Arne had turned invisible again—or he’d run. Wally was rolling in green slime, trying to extinguish the flames. It was working, too, a little. Summer stood in the middle of the room, a look of blank shock on her face. She’d gone as far as she could go. She was done.
I turned back to Ty just as he stepped across the edge of the red circle. I reached for my waistband, hungry for the chance to kill my friend.
Ty pointed Fidel’s gun at his head.
“I didn’t want this,” he said. “I had plans, Ray! I had plans!”
“We all give up our—” The gunshot cut me off. He didn’t hear me. He’d already pulled the trigger. I watched his drape carry him away.
I turned to the others. Wally was on his feet. A long black tentacle stretched across the room and pulled the watercooler tank off its base, then held it over his head. Stale water gushed over him, extinguishing most of the flames. His left hand burned like a torch at the end of his arm. He slapped at his shoulder with it, trying to put it out. He looked smaller.
Wally’s face was a horror of blackened flesh. “Dammit, Ray,” he said, his voice as clear as ever. “You really are a pain in the ass.”
I had no idea how he was talking with that scorched and ruined throat. Maybe his voice was a hallucination and had been since we met at the Sugar Shaker.
“Well, your ass is such a big target—”
“Shut up, dude. Seriously. I had to eat a whole family to heal the injuries your boss gave me. Now I’m going to have to do it again, and that’s on you.”
A tentacle suddenly shot out of his belly and wrapped around Summer’s neck. She squawked as Wally yanked her off her feet. Wally’s belly split open like a huge mouth, the roasted flesh tearing, and a green, puckered funnel that looked like a large flower petal pushed toward Summer. She tried to scream as the tentacle stuffed her into the funnel, but her neck snapped. More bones broke as Wally crammed her inside.
I backed away, goose bumps running over my whole body. It didn’t seem imaginable that Wally could stuff a hundred and thirty pounds of human being into himself, but I had just seen it. His flesh seemed to fill out, and some of the blackened skin began flaking off. No portal opened beneath him. It wasn’t just Summer he had killed and eaten; he’d gotten her drape, too.
“Better,” he said. He rolled his neck around once to loosen it up. More black flakes fell. “Better, but not enough.”
He took another step toward me.
I backed toward the Lexus, then around it to the work area. There were plenty of things there I could use as a weapon, but not against someone like him. I took out my ghost knife.
Wally laughed at it. From under his shirt, a half-dozen tendrils appeared, coiled like snakes. Would they catch my ghost knife or slap it away? I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
Wally floated upward as though he was being lifted off his feet. He looked pretty startled as he tumbled onto his side. At the same moment, Arne dropped his invisibility.
Wally fell inside the red circle. Arne fell on top of him.
I already had Arne’s gun in my hand. He turned toward me—maybe he wanted to say something, or maybe he wanted to meet my gaze one last time, the way friends do.
I didn’t give him the chance. I put a bullet into his head.
Skull and brain splashed out of the exit wound onto Wally’s ruined face. He laughed. “Oh, gross,” he said, “but it’s just what the doctor ordered,” then made as if to lick it.
He realized his error a moment too late. The floor vanished. Wally gasped as he fell into the upsurge of drapes. I could see his gaping expression of horror dropping away, distorted through a filmy screen of fast-moving predators.
Gone. Thank God.
Suddenly, a tentacle shot out of the swirling mass of drapes, crossed the red circle, and slammed down on the hood of the Lexus. The breeze it made as it zipped by my face ruffled my hair. I stumbled back, almost falling, as a second limb shot out of the dark and lodged itself on the undercarriage.
The Lexus lurched forward, knocking me onto the ground. One of the tentacles had punched through the underbody at just the right spot to grab the front axle. A third punched through the grill and secured itself against something inside.
I jumped to my feet and slashed the ghost knife through the nearest tentacle. It parted like smoke, then joined together again. A fourth tentacle snaked under the body, and all of them flexed, pulling themselves out of the Empty Spaces.
I ran to the passenger door just as the Lexus slid forward again, straining against its brakes. Damn if I wasn’t on the wrong side of the car, but there was no time to run around.
I yanked the door open and dove inside. I slammed the gearshift into neutral, then grabbed the parking-brake release.
I pressed the button and slammed it down; it let go and the Lexus wrenched forward. Metal under the hood strained and groaned. I scrambled backward, the idea of falling into the Empty Spaces in this ridiculous car giving me frantic speed. My feet hit the ground and my upper body spun as the SUV glided forward, the frame scraping across the concrete lip as the front wheels fell into the void.
Then I was out, on my hands and knees on the concrete, as the Lexus tipped into the opening and disappeared. The drapes retreated and the floor became concrete again.
Alone. I began to laugh.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
My laughter didn’t last long. It only took a few moments before a terrible lonely silence came over me. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling overhead. It would be full dark soon. Maybe I could shut my eyes and sleep on the concrete.
I stood and walked out into the center of the circle. My feet scuffed against the concrete. A sudden bout of vertigo made me stagger, as if one misstep would topple me into the void after my friends.
But of course that wasn’t going to happen. The hole had sealed over and they were gone. Arne, Ty, Robbie, Summer, Bud, and, oh God, Melly … They had all gone down into a grave as deep as the universe, into a darkness where I could never follow, and I was left standing there breathing parched air and squinting against the light of the setting sun. The ground beneath me was unyielding, and I was alone.