"Give me drink."
Goodfellow had been about to move down another step. He stopped, set his mouth tensely, and held up a hand before I could open my mouth. I turned my head and looked up past the spiraling box pattern of stairs, then down past the same. There was nothing to see or hear other than a faint dripping sound and the flicker and buzz of elderly lightbulbs.
The words were raspy as sandpaper against rock and utterly devoid of humanity. And then there was a clicking sound…nails against concrete. A slow, patient tapping, silence, then the clicking again.
A rustling started…scales or feathers, I couldn't tell.
"Give me drink."
"Go." Robin grabbed a handful of my jacket and hurled us both toward the landing door. I didn't stop to protest or ask who was so damn thirsty. If Goodfellow said go, then going was a damn good idea. I slammed into the door and flung it open.
It was waiting for us.
It was a bird. Gray as ash, round black eyes, and the size of a half-grown German shepherd. It used jet claws to score the dirty tile, sending chunks of it tumbling aside. The black beak, sharp as a sword, gaped to show an inner maw the plague yellow of jaundiced flesh. "Give me—"
"Drink," grated the one behind us.
Identical to the other, it came up the stairs toward the door propped open by Robin. It didn't waddle like you would expect from a bird. It stalked with the smooth gait of a creature used to running its prey into the ground. The flattened head cocked to one side. There was red on this one's beak and staining the feathers of its chest black. Now I knew what it had a hankering for, and it wasn't lemonade. I turned. The one in the hall had snaked closer, one clawed foot held in the air like the weapon it was. The talons were four inches long and, if they were capable of punching through the floor, they were capable of punching through flesh.
"Bad?" I said over my shoulder.
"Bad," Robin affirmed tightly.
That was all I needed. I raised my gun and fired at the one in the hall. The gray head exploded, feathers filling the air. Some, coated with black blood, stuck to the wall and floor and me. The body poised motionless for a second, then fell sideways, talons still extended in either a last-gasp pursuit of prey or from postmortem pissiness. Take your pick.
I heard the scrape of metal against scabbard as Goodfellow pulled his sword. Following that was a gurgle of someone not getting the drink they so desperately wanted. I turned just in time to see the feathered head bounce down the stairs. "Bad," I commented, "but not that bad."
"Wrong." He started down the stairs at a run. I was starting to follow when I saw something stirring in the pool of blood that had spread from the neck of the bird I'd killed. No, it wasn't something in the blood; it was the blood itself. Thick and viscous, it crept along the floor, curled up into a ball, and began shifting from red to gray. Began to sprout feathers…began to grow and grow damn fast.
"Give…me…drink."
The faintest of whispers, a garbled croak from incomplete vocal cords, but I didn't wait around to hear it improve. I vaulted the other dead one on the landing and clattered down the stairs after the puck. "What the fuck?" I yelled as he sprinted ahead, hit the next landing, then disappeared around the turn. Robin was one helluva fighter, but when it came to running for your life, he had absolutely no equal. I sped up, trying not to tumble my way into a broken neck. I did manage to shorten the distance between us … slightly. "What are those things?"
"Hameh. The story goes they arise from the blood of a murdered man and take revenge by drinking the blood of the killer. Blah, blah. Idiotic tale." The bastard wasn't even breathing hard as he bolted, taking three and four stairs at a time. "They actually arise from their own blood and attack whoever their master chooses. And as staying dead isn't a particular hobby of theirs, they're very difficult to escape."
"Give me drink," echoed from above us, full-voiced and implacable.
"We should've stayed at the orgy," Robin groaned as he hit yet another landing. "Bacchus would never get himself in this situation. He'd still be face-deep in topographical mounds and I don't mean the Seven Hills of Rome either."
Above us the cry came again and it didn't come alone. A weight hit me hard, taking me down. I hit the stairs and rolled but caught myself before I went down farther than three steps. I ignored the pain of banged elbows and ribs and raised the gun, but the Hameh was gone. It didn't want me. I'd just been in its way. I twisted my head to see it dive-bomb Goodfellow. Talons were spread and a razor beak was aimed at Robin's throat. Where better to drink? Where better to start the flow of blood?
I opened my mouth to warn him, but he didn't need it. He whirled at the sound of air rushing through feathers and speared the Hameh through the chest. It didn't squawk; didn't screech. It screamed— a human scream. A child's scream. That's what it sounded like, as if a child had been run through with Robin's blade. It was disconcerting as hell and I unconsciously tightened my grip on the Glock. And it didn't stop. The screaming went on and on as the Hameh thrashed, sending blood splattering.
"Christ, make it stop," I hissed. We could scream our guts out all day long and no one would poke their head into the stairwell, but a kid screaming? Someone was going to show up, and that someone might get a beak jammed through their eye. Not much of a reward for being a Good Samaritan.
"Stop? But I'm enjoying it so much," Robin snarled as he whipped another blade from his brown leather duster and slashed the throat of the bird. The blow was forceful enough that the head was almost completely severed. The good news was that it stopped the screaming. The bad news was that it didn't do a damn thing about the other Hameh stooping on us like a falcon on a mouse. I shot, missed, and shot again. This time I nailed it. It veered, hit a wall, and plummeted onto the stairs above us. In the seconds that took, the blood of the first was already twisting in on itself and changing colors.
"This is annoying as hell." This time I took the lead, moving past him as he took the time to extract his sword. "I've seen Hitchcock movies. I don't want to live in one."
"Did you know he wore women's—"
"I don't want to know!" I growled, cutting him off. I kept going until I reached the door to the first floor and threw it open. Only it wasn't the first floor and it wasn't the lobby. It was the basement. We'd overshot by one when racing downward and ended up in precisely the sort of box I avoided in elevators. It wasn't an empty box either.
"Give me drink. "Give me drink. Give me drink. Give me drinkgivemedrinkgivemegivemedrinkgivemedrinkgivemedrinkgivemedrink."
It was utterly black except for the soft reddish blue glow of eyes…ten, no, twenty eyes. I didn't hesitate. I emptied the rest of my clip blindly into the room, slammed the door, and headed back up, meeting Goodfellow on his way down. "You don't want to go this way. There's some seriously thirsty pigeons down there."
"Give me drink," from above answered the question to what lay in that direction as well. And in case I missed the point, let's hit it one more time—"Give me drink."
"Shut up, you flying shit-heads," I spat as I slapped another clip home. "Just shut the hell up."
"Yes, I'm sure that will clear the matter right up. In the diplomacy of predator and prey, you dominate the field. You are without peer. A veritable Kissinger of the circle of life."
"You know what? Take the flying part out and it applies to you too, Loman." I shot the next Hameh that came spiraling through the air. It somersaulted past me and, in a mass of blood, ruined flesh, and feathers, landed on Robin. Mortally wounded, it stabbed repeatedly at Goodfellow's neck with its black beak. I grabbed it from behind before it did anything worse than superficial damage and threw it to our feet, where it was impaled by Robin's bloody sword.