The others stood behind him, terrified. They would die if she didn’t beat Ktana Leyak, if Megan didn’t manage to get the relic before she did. At that moment exhaustion weighed so heavily on Megan’s body that she almost didn’t care if she survived or not. It would be so easy to sit down, to rest, to wait for it all to end.
Greyson still hadn’t appeared…
“Hurry!”
Maleficarum scooped her up from the floor, and they ran down the hall to the other staircase.
Chapter 27
“I finally managed to get Krantus and Rentoran to join up with me and they brought Varigon and Aberas, and we came straight here,” Roc managed, panting, as they raced past more empty rooms. The next floor up was the fifth; the next floor up was where the showdown would happen. Megan was trying as hard as she could to care. Roc helped with that. So did Maleficarum’s strong arms holding her up. They would want her, need her, if Greyson was dead, she knew they would. She couldn’t die, she had too many fucking responsibilities.
“I think we can get the others,” he continued. “Once they see you’re winning they’ll come back, and when they bring their power back to you—”
“They won’t come back unless I’m winning?”
“Would you really expect them to?”
Right. Stupid question.
They were halfway up the stairs when Megan felt it. Her demon heart leaped, really leaped, and starting dancing in her chest, throbbing.
“I feel it, Megan,” Nick said. “It’s here, it must be in your room.”
They paused at the doorway to the hall. What would it be this time? More zombies? Blood? Hellhounds? Rabid townies with guns and knives?
But only silence greeted them, silence and the sense of something vibrating, waiting. It seemed to sigh when their feet hit the dirty tile floor.
Maleficarum put Megan down. Her legs jiggled for a minute before steadying, and she took Nick’s hand to help her stay that way. If she needed more energy she could have it, especially when Roc clambered up onto her shoulder and the others hovered behind her.
The graffiti on the walls here was worse, more vicious, more plentiful. The entire hospital was a vermin-ridden shambles, but it seemed the particular listless rage of trespassers had been reserved for this floor—or perhaps this floor had attracted the worst of the worst.
She glanced to her left, scanning an absolutely revolting sketch of an eviscerated naked woman, and caught a glimpse of the sky through the window of one of the empty rooms. She’d forgotten it was snowing, forgotten Christmas lights still glowed, forgotten that from this side of the building the town square was visible. It was so beautiful, even with everything she knew, everything that was happening. Her throat closed up and for a moment she just stood there staring.
Then she heard something rustle at the end of the hall and knew Ktana Leyak waited for her in room 526, Ktana Leyak and the last piece of the Accuser that still lived outside Megan’s body.
“Let’s go,” she said, and headed for the door.
Bad as the graffiti was by the elevators, it got worse the farther down the hall she went, hate and pain vomited all over the walls. It was like walking into a museum of misogynistic racism, with some crazy thrown in for spice.
The demon inside her leaped and twitched, a sort of inner Geiger counter, but she didn’t need it. The sense of unease, of wrongness, coming through her shields would have alerted her without it, just as it had that day at the diner.
The door frame of room 526 had been ripped out, leaving a jagged, gaping hole. Megan stopped in front of it, took a deep breath, and walked in.
A streetlight glowed on the corner, not far from the empty window, making this room the brightest she’d been in since entering the hospital what felt like hours ago, months ago. Even with that light it took her a second to see Ktana Leyak, and that second cost her.
Ktana vaulted away from her hiding spot on the ceiling with her arms outstretched, her face curled into a vicious snarl. Too late, Megan ducked, avoiding having her jugular severed by Ktana’s sharp claws but not sparing her left cheek. Her tears ran rivulets down her face and stung in the sharply painful grooves.
Blindly she swung back, using her still-aching right hand. It hurt, oh how it hurt, but she managed to land a solid blow to Ktana’s chin as she swung upward.
Malleus and Maleficarum crowded into the room, shoving Ktana, trying to force her down, but Megan already knew it wouldn’t do any good. Stuffed with power from Megan’s demons and the chaos they’d caused in Grant Falls this night, she was too strong for them. As Nick had said, the boys weren’t psyche demons. They had all the physical strength they needed, but they couldn’t draw power the way she could.
Still they gave Megan a short respite and for that she was grateful. Somewhere in this room that last relic hid, and she needed to find it immediately if Ktana hadn’t already.
Ktana freed herself from the boys and rushed Megan again, this time stopped by Nick, who managed to get in a vicious slash with his sword. Ktana stumbled back, looking up at him with almost comical shock before attacking him, screaming, her arms windmilling while blood pumped slowly from the gaping wound across her chest.
That was Megan’s chance, shitty as it was. She dared to close her eyes for a second, trying to feel the exact location of the relic, but with so many demons and so much violence in the room, she couldn’t seem to identify it. She hadn’t a doubt it was there—and she had some vague sense of why it was there, some half-formed idea that it had stayed here with her, that it was left here the night Harlan Trooper died, waiting for the Accuser to come back and claim it—but where?
The metal bed bolted to the floor looked like a good place to start, even if it did mean making herself completely vulnerable while she looked under it. Why Ktana hadn’t checked there already she didn’t know, or again, maybe she had, but Megan had to try, didn’t she?
She heard Nick’s sword ring against something metal, chunk into plaster. Meaty sounds of fists on skin and cries of pain might have horrified her, but they at least told her that Ktana was still being kept busy.
The rodent droppings and filth under this bed were even worse than the basement, piled high. Something with little claws skittered across her arms, and her scream turned into a sneeze. Here were dead things, foul things, and just before her hand closed over it she knew here was the relic of the Accuser as well.
Hard hands grabbed her ankles and yanked, pulling her out from under the bed like a cruel child pulls the legs off a spider. Ktana’s foot slammed into the back of Megan’s head, driving her face into the hard floor with a terrible crunch and a bolt of white-hot pain. She didn’t need to feel it to know blood was pouring from her nose, that it was broken.
She tried to get up, but the foot forced her back down. This time she turned her head at the last second, managing to avoid having her face smashed into the floor again.
She stayed down. She had only seconds to decide what to do next, maybe not even that long before the fatal blow—if there was to be one—fell. Megan took a chance. She opened the door inside her, as wide as she could, praying she was right.
Power flared through her. Her demons, sated on the town’s misery, had fed Ktana all she needed; she didn’t seem to notice when Megan sent a shivery little feeler down the line connecting her to them and took some of it for herself. Not to mention what Rocturnus and his accomplices had for her. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to flip her over and send Ktana Leyak flying against the gaping window.
Megan struggled to get up. In her hand she clutched something soft and revoltingly warm, something that could have been the body of a mouse if it hadn’t been slick instead of furry. If she hadn’t been so far in the thrall of the demon it would have made her notoriously weak stomach lurch but, as it was, she felt only a terrible, weary resolve. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but she would do it.