Jordan let out a breath and shoved the dead body away. She crawled out of her hiding spot and spied the shotgun’s barrel sticking out beneath another table. She retrieved the weapon and hurried after her mother, a wild idea sparking inside her as she examined the gun. She knew how the thing worked. Her only high school boyfriend had been into guns and had shared much of his knowledge with her. In truth, he’d been more into those guns than he’d been into her. Which was fine, because she wasn’t into him either, but a girl was supposed to have a boyfriend. When he’d kiss her, she’d close her eyes and pretend he was Laura Miller, her number-one crush at the time. But his stubble made the illusion a fragile one. Well, at least now maybe some good would come of that sham of a relationship.
Her plan was simple. She would sneak up on Lamia and blast her host body full of holes. And she would hope this would weaken the demon sufficiently to successfully engage her another way. It probably wouldn’t work, but there was nothing else she could do.
She stepped into the hallway and aimed the gun at Lamia’s back, acting quickly before the others could see her and give her away. She squeezed the trigger and the shotgun’s stock slammed against her shoulder, but she’d been taught how to absorb the weapon’s recoil and was able to keep it steady as she took aim again. Lamia started to turn toward her as the next shell took out the back of her skull and sent bone shards and bits of brain matter flying. The demon’s mouth opened and a sound like a thunderclap split the air.
Jordan chambered another round and fired again. The third shell took the demon full in the neck and nearly decapitated her. The head lolled sharply to one side, but the demon remained upright as she turned fully toward Jordan and began to stagger toward her. Jordan retreated down the hallway as she chambered yet another round. The next blast hit Lamia between the breasts. It staggered her for a moment, but she kept coming nonetheless. Any one of the blasts would have knocked a human woman off her feet, but Lamia was able to keep Bridget’s mortally wounded body erect and mobile. It was frustrating. And now there was another complication. The minions streamed past Jake and Kristen, past Kelsey, and Lamia herself.
Jordan tensed, expecting an attack. They were Lamia’s minions, after all. Instead they surrounded her and formed a barrier between herself and Lamia.
A few of the dogs even growled at Lamia.
Jordan heard Jake say, “Well, damn. Look at that.”
Jordan kept a wary eye on Lamia while directing a response at Jake. “I’ve got this. You guys get out of here.”
“Are you sure? Because-”
Jordan screamed and raised the gun again.
Jake frowned.
Now what?
In less than a heartbeat Jordan had gone from relatively calm to terrified, and he had no clue what had happened to cause the change. She raised the shotgun to fire again. The blast hit Lamia’s midsection again, but failed to even rock her. Then the demon’s host body began to convulse. She ripped at her bloody clothes, shredding them and pulling them free. Her flesh rippled and shifted as something moved beneath. Then her skin began to split in several places as something inside started to push its way out.
Kristen cringed and clung tighter to him. “What the hell’s going on?”
Kelsey aimed his Glock at Lamia’s blister-covered back and fired until the gun clicked empty. None of the wounds seemed to have any effect, except perhaps to accelerate the change occurring.
Kelsey looked at Jake. “Why won’t she fucking fall down?”
The shotgun boomed again. The shell hit Lamia’s neck again and now the head hung by a single thick strand of tissue. But now something else surged through the neck stump. Another head. This one green and triangular, with hard, pebbled flesh and rows of sharp, glistening teeth. The rest of Bridget’s dead flesh fell away and a reptilian creature the likes of which Jake had never seen stood hissing in the hallway. It had short, stubby arms, somewhat longer legs, and a long, thick tail. And it began to grow as they stared at it in awed, paralyzed terror. The body expanded to perhaps three times its original size in seconds, its head bowing to avoid scraping the ceiling. Its arms grew and long black talons appeared at the tips of its fingers. The minions whimpered and retreated as it reached for Jordan. A flick of its thrashing tail knocked Jake and the others off their feet. The back of Jake’s head smashed against the combination lock of a locker and a bright, flashing pain obliterated everything else for a moment. Then he rolled onto his back and lifted his head to get a look at what was going on.
And he felt a small flicker of hope.
Because now Jordan was changing, too, her body morphing, becoming something very similar to the reptilian demon without having to shed her skin. The creatures lunged at each other and clashed in the hallway, slamming each other from wall to wall. The auditorium door was knocked off its hinges. Lockers collapsed like crepe paper beneath the force of the body slams.
Jake realized what was about to happen an instant before it did.
There was no time to get out of the way.
He closed his eyes and hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.
Then the thing that had been Jordan crashed into him and the world went black.
The first thing he felt when he woke up was pain. Pain all over. He wondered for a moment whether he was paralyzed, but then realized he wouldn’t feel this all-over pain if he’d been paralyzed. He carefully tested his arms and legs, rolled his neck from one side to the other. It hurt like hell, but nothing seemed to be broken. A miracle. Now he’d just have to hope he hadn’t been hit quite hard enough to trigger some kind of internal bleeding.
He drew in a deep breath, braced his palms against the slick floor, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He held his breath as he surveyed the carnage around him. Kristen sat slumped against a bank of lockers, unconscious but breathing. She looked okay otherwise, with the exception of a bruised face and a bloody nose. Then he saw Kelsey and felt a pang at the center of his chest. The boy was facedown on the floor. His neck had been snapped during the monster melee. He wasn’t breathing. Jake considered a CPR attempt, but knew it would be useless. The floor was littered with pieces of Bridget Flanagan’s exploded body.
He frowned.
They were gone.
There was no sign of Jordan. No sign of the thing she’d become. No sign of Lamia in Godzilla mode. All the animals were gone, too.
What the fuck happened?
Kristen groaned and her eyes fluttered open. She blinked slowly and in a few moments was able to focus on Jake. “Jake…what…happened?”
He sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
He got to his feet and went to her. He took her outstretched hand and pulled her gingerly to her feet. They walked out of the school and she held tightly to him as they made their way to the Camry. He got her settled into the front passenger seat and said, “I have to go back inside for a minute.”
Some of the bleariness drained from her eyes then. “No. Jake…please…”
“I have to. I won’t be long, I promise. You stay here. I just have to check on something.”
He turned away from her and left without another word. Back inside the school, he moved quickly past the bodies in the hallway and stepped through the open door leading to the auditorium. In the backstage area, he stopped and stared for a moment at the bullet-riddled bodies of the adults. These were the people Lamia had recruited to assist her in arranging the Harvest. All dead. Good. Fuck them. He moved past them, found his way to the stage, and felt the strength drain from his body as he saw what had happened in the auditorium.