Night of Endless Portals

“If the monsters have been flooding out of that portal since this morning, we might be seriously fucked.”

“Language!” Tia poked Alaric as he turned back from staring down the street in the direction of the monastery.

“Well, it might be profane, but I’m not wrong.”

I drummed my fingers on the wall to my back. The texture of the brick pressed itself into my skin and made me itch. No one had found clothes for me back at the Hospice. “Right or wrong, what do you see, Alaric?”

“Not a darned thing.” He turned back around the corner. “I mean, the burning cars are still there, the place still looks like a war zone. But I think I’d notice a massive fu… freaking giant waddling along the road.”

“Do giants even waddle?” Malia took up our flank and spoke as she checked over her shoulder.

“Who cares what they do besides smash people and use their bones to bake bread.” Alaric checked the opposite side of the street again and took steady breath. “I guess we should cross the road now.”

He didn’t move a muscle.

“Well?” I picked Tia up and held on. Though I was shorter and female, I felt stronger than I’d ever been as a boy. “Are we crossing?”

Alaric rolled his shoulders and nodded. “Yeah, stay close and be ready to haul it back here. If we get separated, meet up at the Hospice and if that doesn’t work…” He drifted off. Any place he might have mentioned could have been leveled by a dragon or turned into a dung pile by a passing wizard for all we knew. Alaric reached the same conclusion I had. “Just don’t get separated, okay?” His hands shook and he hissed, “go!” and darted out into the street.

Running crouched, he looked like some kind of weekend paintballer or one of those corporate guys who paid to play war-games on the company dime. I ran after him, but didn’t bother squishing my profile down. I was shorter than Alaric even when he bent his knees and hunched over like that.

He tore into a thick tangle of vines and weeds, ripping at them with his hands as they tried to slow him. I couldn’t say if this kudzu-like growth had been there this morning. For all I knew, the original landscapers laid these down here and let them grow wild.

Off to our left, toward the south, the technicolor pastels of the portal lands glowed despite the height of the sun.

Once we returned to cover, Alaric relaxed. “Maude said their group hadn’t been through this part of the block yet. After the giant, I can’t imagine they’d spend any time across the street.”

What I’d taken to be a short alley proved far longer and thicker than I’d originally guessed. A few feet into the tangled mass of vines and overgrowth, I couldn’t see the walls to either side of us anymore. No ivy or creepers ran up those walls. In fact, when I stopped to look, I found I could see a fair distance into the growth. More tall trees, vines and greenery spread out in both directions as far as I could see.

“Guys. This isn’t an alley…” As if the masses of flora had waited for me to speak, a great jungle cat, or Texas bobcat roared through the area and sent all four of us into utter silence.

After a long pause, Alaric turned his head to look at me. “What the fuck was that?” His voice hardly rose over a whisper.

Tia didn’t hassle him about is language. Most likely she was as afraid of drawing attention to ourselves as the rest of us. I shrugged at him and made a face as I scanned the area. If we were here for canned food from before the Collapse, we were screwed. There was no need to say that out loud.

A second howl, closer than the first made me jump. Malia put her hand to my back and Alaric nodded with a frown.

He pointed to a nearby tree and growled. “Get over there. Do it now.”

Waving his arms like a policeman directed traffic, our group scuttled forward. Once we left the path, roots and other bits of natural wonder rose up and tried to pull us down to the floor. Without Malia’s balance and occasional assist, I would have face planted after two steps. Walking when I’d lost a good foot of height was as dangerous as facing off with a mysterious jungle beast. At least I hoped so, I’d survived my height change so far.

We reached the trunk of a massive tree, too big for me to curl my whole adult body around, and Alaric spun. At the same time a massive beast crashed through the foliage. A sickeningly mottled leonine head bobbed over a scaled body with tufts of fur at the shoulders. Vestigial wings hung limp from the monster’s back as it stalked toward us.

“Manticore!” Alaric shouted as the manticore flicked its tail at us. I covered Tia’s body as a series of tiny missiles flew toward us too fast for me to react.

No burning sensation accompanied the impact of the darts. Instead, I’d summoned my blue shield. Tia and I were safe, but Alaric shouted in pain. Two of the small darts sprouted from his shoulder.

The manticore shuddered rhythmically at us, as if laughing in its triumph. I would have loved to argue with it, but it’s first volley had landed. Though I’d seen my barrier block bullets and other projectiles, I had no idea how of how effective it would be against the manticore’s bulk.

Beside me, Malia shriveled and lost mass as her clothes sucked into her form. A stream of sand edged away from Tia and me, flanking with Alaric, who’d gritted his teeth and fired off a pistol shot at the manticore, returning its missile volleys in kind.

It roared, loud enough for Tia and me to cover our ears. It’s breath waved over us with a caustic reek. I stumbled and the blue field protecting us faltered. At the same time, the manticore brought its spiny tail to bear, striking down at Alaric with incredible speed.

Several more darts flew toward Tia and me, but my barrier rose up and stopped them before they reached their target. Moving like a swarm of bees, Malia intercepted the tail and gave Alaric a chance to roll to the side as the manticore smashed through her substance.

She reformed and battered the manticore as it switched targets back to her. Due to her body, the manticore’s jaws failed to gain purchase and its stinger could only knock bits of sand aside. More darts flew out toward Alaric, keeping him at bay, while Malia focused the monster’s attention at her. It was smarter than I would have guessed, it kept Alaric, Tia, and me to it front, not letting Malia divert it from its meal. As for Malia, the manticore discovered that she could no more injure it than it her.

Now it flung continuous volleys of darts at our group almost non-stop while it kept its tail poised and ready to strike out at Alaric if he drew too near. But it also made constant progress toward Tia and me. If it couldn’t manage to capture the other two, it would make feasts of the others.

My mind whirled as I tried to think of a way to drive the thing off, a weapon I could turn against the monster. Aside from the blue shield I’d made, I couldn’t produce anything else. The lights inside my chest hovered just outside of reach, a well of power within my body that ignored my desperate attempts to call it forth.

Malia made a hammer of her body, slamming herself into the manticore’s side as it advanced. Tia screamed, her tiny voice doing little against the snarls of the manticore. Alaric danced and wove across the edge of the range of the manticore’s tail. One successful blow from the stinger on the end of that tail and I knew Alaric would be dead. With those oily spines in his shoulder, I wasn’t sure he would live much longer anyway.

Tia squeezed her eyes shut and clutched her hands to her ears as the manticore cleared the last bit of distance between us. I prayed to whatever gods might be listening now to save as as Malia crashed down on the manticore over and over. It ignored her entirely now as it raised a single reptilian claw over Malia and my head. Pulling her to me, my prayers for intervention transformed into prayers for a swift death.

And then nothing.

For a moment, I’d thought the gods had answered my latter prayers and my death had been quiet, pain-free, and swift. Then a massive crash shook the ground at my feet and threw debris up in every direction. I peeked to find Alaric clinging to a hilt jammed into the side of the manticore’s neck.

Its eyes rolled back up in its head as the tail snaked over its flank and jabbed Alaric in the side, as if the horrible beast had one last bit of life left in it. As terrible as the manticore’s roar had been, Alaric’s scream drove a sympathetic spike through my chest as he toppled forward.

Malia reverted to her human form in seconds, gathering her substance and regaining her humanoid shape.

I rushed to Alaric with Tia trailing after. My hands rushed to the sides of his face and I cradled him in my arms. “Alaric, no. Don’t… not like this man.” My voice was Yeshe Tsogyal’s, but my words belonged to Harlan. I shook my head, neither of those existed anymore. I was Harriet Yeshe.

Plucking at the red line running through the center of my being made power rush through me. At once I could see the course of toxins leaking their way through Alaric’s veins. And I knew that, though I couldn’t stop the poison entirely, I could slow it. Wielding the red line of my soul like a distaff, I pulled it forth from my body.

“Harriet, what are you doing…” Malia’s voice buzzed off to my left.

But Tia spoke next, “shh, let her concentrate.”

With that interruption out of the way, I could focus on the blazing red staff I held. Where it touched Alaric’s body, the processes slowed, crawling to a near-halt. I knew that left this way, the cure would be as bad for his body as the toxin. But neutralizing the poison was beyond my power. Or simply beyond my skill at the time.

My voice echoed with another’s, “remove the quills or they’ll keep injecting him.”

Necrosis followed those quills, my enhanced magical vision picked out that information instinctively, imaging the thick fluid from the quills as a nanovirus that converted his blood cells to ash. But the poison at the end of the manticore’s tail was a neurotoxin. The same vision showed the toxins hacking away at Alaric’s nerve channels with every inch they flowed through his body.

We had to move him, find a way to counteract the effects, though I had no idea what that would be.

Whinny.

Based on what I’d seen, she was an improved version of me. Either she’d achieved some kind of apotheosis in the month since the Collapse or whatever alien spirit inhabited her was bigger and more powerful than mine. It didn’t matter which.

“Okay, he’s stabilized. Pick him up. We need to bring him back to the hospice.” My voice lost the dual-echo, the second speech.

Malia shifted into her sand form and wrapped herself around Alaric. He moved along on a bed of sand that retreated behind his supine form as if he were a snail shell and Malia the soft body. Now I ran ahead of the group, no longer holding Tia in my arms. Whatever had protected me back at the fight might give Malia and Tia a chance to flee. I knew that the manticore would have shattered my shield with a single swipe, but I could not say where that particular bit of knowledge came from.

We found the smooth patch of land that brought us to his verdant jungle. Whether it led back to the city or not, we couldn’t know. I’d hoped that whatever connection Whinny might have made with me would stick, but it didn’t. I no more knew where she lay from my present location than I knew where on Earth this forest was.

A matted wall of vines blocked our path and hope surged through me. I tore at the vines and found the gaps we’d made so recently.

Back in the city, the sun had already gone down. After the temporal shenanigans that split the hospice off from the rest of Austin, I couldn’t even say how much time had elapsed. For all I knew, the hospice no longer stood.

Such knowledge did nothing to stop me. Malia and Tia followed with the same determination in their hearts. After he’s saved the three of us, we weren’t abandoning Alaric. Crossing the street took far less time in the absence of any caution.

Shrieks from monstrous throats and cries from all too human ones fell over us as if we’d already grown inured to them. I would have saved all of them if I could, but we had our own problems in the moment.

The door to the hospice lay open and my heart sank. It had been ripped from its hinge and the surrounding stone grooved as if a massive hand had pulled the metal away. The interior of the hospice left as many signs of a breach, though no pools of fresh or old blood to declare the deaths of Maude and her crew.

We reached an interior door, one of those past the glass front of the hospice to find it locked and barred. The sign and glass proclaiming this place’s name had been utterly destroyed as if a series of cars and trucks had repeatedly rammed themselves into the front.

Banging on the door, Tia and I begged for help from the rest of the people in the hospice. As our final vestiges of hope flagged, a rattle behind the door rang away the despair.

Malia shifted between Tia and the door. I stepped back as well, only then aware of the possibility that Maude and her people had already died. The door opened like a bow slammed against a violin, and Maude faced us.

Her skin had lightened and her wrinkles faded. Rather than the shock of white hair on her head, she had bright red curls bouncing from her crown. Missing an eye and aged in reverse, the look on her face was unmistakable. And George, her armed escort confirmed her identity. He didn’t look quite as young as she did, but the signs were there, scrawled over her face. “About damned time. What happened?”

“It’s been two months. When you didn’t return, we assumed…” Maude cracked her neck and didn’t complete her sentence. “Anyway, we found some other sources of food.” She pointed to the fire pits in the drained pool where large slabs of meat rolled on spits. Cooking food that way took forever, but would allow them to smoke and preserve some of the meat for later.

We’d brought Alaric into Whinny’s presence, who looked exactly the same now as she’d looked the firs time I met her. He was with her now. Every other member of the Hospice enclave looked as though they’d been aging in reverse for years, not months.

I relayed everything that happened to us since we left. “So it’s been, about four hours for us, maybe a little less?”

“Dung rolls.” Malia tilted her head at Maude’s words while I blinked in surprise. I’d understood her just then, and I’d recognized the language as Tibetan. I’d never learned Tibetan in my life. I wouldn’t even know the script if I’d been shown it.

“What? How did I understand that just now?” I blurted the words out without thinking about it.

Maude leaned forward, her eyes wide. “You speak Tibetan?”

She’d spoken Tibetan again when she asked. I shrugged and replied. “Does a yak shit in the snow?” The words rolled off my tongue unbidden. Apparently I spoke Tibetan now.

“How do you speak it?” This time I used English.

Maude pointed to Whinny’s office. “She insisted we all learn it. We hold classes and writing practice for the kids…” A dark expression passed over Maude’s face. There were fewer people now in their group. Where the group had tended toward the elderly before, it was now almost fifty percent children.

Some of them looked familiar, like the kids I’d seen the last time I was here. But a few of them looked less so, either newcomers or younger adults aged back to near-adolescence. “What’s happening to all of you?”

Maude snickered. “You’re about as subtle as stripper in church, huh?”

My face warmed and I rolled my shoulders. “Don’t see a point now, right?”

“Beats the shit out of me, kid.” Maude pointed to the younger kids watching the fire pit. “Seems to be a limit to how young we turn. But it’s happening to everyone.”

“Have you tried… leaving?”

This time she laughed with her head tilted back. “You’re kidding me. You stepped what… a hundred yards into an alley and vanished for months. People who stray too far from our usual haunts never return.”

“What are you eating?”

“Monster at this point. Centaurs have some real trouble running from bullets. And satyr meat’s delicious, like fattier, richer duck. Orc’s okay, you’d think it tastes like pork or boar, right, but it’s real gamey.” Maude hardly blinked an eye as she answered. There was not a hint of shame in her expression as she answered me.

Again, the words sprang from my mouth unbidden. “What does Whinny eat?”

Maude tapped her knee. “She said you’re like her. You don’t eat meat either, huh?”

“I… sure, I eat meat.”

Maude shrugged. “Whatever. Whinny doesn’t eat anything. Says she survives on a nectar produced from her saliva.”

“Really?”

“I’d let you ask her yourself, once your friend comes out of her room.” Maude jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You three want to sack out? Your old room is still available. No one else needed it.”

Based on the people remaining, fewer than twenty now, several rooms had opened up in the Hospice since we left.

Looking over at Malia, she shrugged. “I’m freaking exhausted. And I don’t care if I age back to an awkward teen. Those weren’t terrible years for me.”

I hadn’t known Malia for long, but in that instant, I knew she was lying, deliberately lying to cover up some secret foul enough to steal my breath and pull tears from my eyes. After two loose sessions of jabber, I managed to put a clamp on my tongue. “Sounds good to me.”

Malia changed into her underwear back in the room and situated herself on a dusty mattress. These rooms had not just been unused, they had’t been touched in months. She flopped onto her side and lay quiet while Tia curled up into my chest. After a minute, I heard Malia stir. “Harriet, mind if I sleep next to you?”

“Go for it, we could maybe pull two beds together.” The word “bed” was too generous for the thin mattresses. But I wasn’t going to correct myself. No one commented on it, but the three of us had no need for a lantern or the candles Maude provided to the other families. The soft glow from my skin lit up our room as surely as a fluorescent lamp.

Malia pulled herself into my back and I managed to get comfortable. The instant I relaxed, my glow faded, as if whatever drove my powers knew we’d sleep better with the lights out. I blinked my eyes for a moment and realized that the glow had not faded entirely. It had shifted spectra over to red, and from the shadows on the floor, I had a semi-sphere of red light around me. I suspected none of us would age down if we stayed here for a year. The same suspicion told me I should not stay here for more than a week.

I didn’t remember standing up. I also didn’t remember changing rooms in the Hospice. When I’d gone to sleep, the room had been barren and dusty. Now candles stood on hardwood surfaces, flickering yet casting no shadows. As I stared into the flame on those candles, each once writhed with the agony of a person trapped in their centers. I took a step back and ran into a soft object I hadn’t felt.

“You left, yet you returned.”

I recognized Whinny’s voice. When I turned toward her, a third faced smiled at me. Her clear blue eyes reminded me of my mother before the madness claimed her. Though the images of the dancers in the flames stuck with me and sent shivers through my spine, Whinny’s beatific face filled my mind with calm. “You know what’s happening to me.”

“Indeed. The same happened to me.”

“Am I going to die?”

Whinny’s face smiled at me and for a blink, as if she danced in her own flame, her legs transformed back into a three-sided dagger. “Yes. All things die. Even realities.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “No, will this change kill me?”

“Not unless you betray your true nature, your Kunzhe Namshe.”

The last two words unpacked into a volume of meaning in English. At once I understood them to mean, “fundamental enlightenment nature,” while also understanding that paltry descriptions like that meant nothing before the real concept, the experience of the ideal. “How do I avoid that?”

Whinny raised her hand and three hands rose with it, like afterimages in a strobe light. She cupped my cheek. “The best answer to is that you must grow and understand yourself. But then your next question will be how to understand yourself.” Her arms flashed through a circle in the air before me. “This is a river that feeds itself. Only when the water drains does the river know it has lost its course.”

“Ugh, this is too Zen for me.”

Throwing her head back and laughing with a great guffaw, Whinny’s head spun and the six-eyed weeping face looked upon me. “Perhaps you have found your own best answer, Harriet Yeshe.”

“Will Alaric live?”

The stream of tars from Whinny’s cheeks grew to a torrent. “You mean will he succumb to his wounds? No, you saved his life before I. Together we have insured he will remain to protect you and you him.”

“You cured the poison then?”

An ephemeral hand darted out and tapped me in the center of my chest. “This is the truth you must seek. In compassion, concern for others, you will discover the root of your power. I cannot tell you how to dismiss poison or survive on the Nectar of Enlightenment, but if you seek such boons with great compassion held in your heart, you will find yourself flung toward them like an arrow from a bow. You will not help but pierce the heart of the mystery you seek.”

“What’s happening here in the Hospice then? We shouldn’t stay, should we?”

Whinny shook her head. “An empty portal severs this place. Time and space have lost their anchor to your world. You must not stay.”

“When should we leave?”

“As soon as Alaric is capable of travel.”

“Is there any way to save the people here?”

Whinny’s hand cupped my cheek and she sighed. “There is always a path to walk, a solution to every problem beneath the blazing sun. The question you should ask is at what cost may the people here be saved? And to answer: too great for you or I to pay. When the time comes, no more than seven souls within these walls will survive the destruction of the Hospice. By that time you must be gone or risk losing half.” By then the tears had flowed down Whinny’s cheeks like great rivers. “Now you must wake up Harriet Yeshe. Awaken and lead your flock away from here. Be quick or sorrow shall stalk your footsteps.”

Whinny snapped at my ear, jolting me awake as my dream faded. At the core of my heart, where the rays light blended into gold, I knew I would not see the Bodhisattva again. I had a name for what she was now, at least.

Arms enfolded my midsection, pulling me tighter even than I held my sister. Lace rubbed against my back as Malia struggled in the thrall of some nightmare.

Tia sighed and twitched awake, rolling in my grip to face me. “Whinny says hurry, go and find Alaric before dawn.”

Pulling Malia’s arms away from my chest, she jerked awake and scrambled from my back at the same time as I braced for Malia to hit me. Her eyes widened and rolled about in their sockets while she oriented herself, but she didn’t attack. I couldn’t call it progress, but it beat the alternative.

“We need to move.” The one plus about my shawl, it stayed perfectly clean and took no time to don. No so with Tia and Malia. I turned away from Malia as she dressed, old habits guided my movements as much as my need to protect her privacy. I helped Tia put on her daytime clothes and we scurried out of our room like mice through the darkness.

None of the others stirred as we emerged into the flickering light of the pool area. My glow brightened and filled the corners and shadows of the room. Here and there, embers popped and sparked, but the spits had ceased their turning long ago. I hurried to the back where Whinny’s office stood.

Alaric lay right at the corner of the turn, a bandage around his entire chest blared klaxons of warning in my ears. Something looked off about his frame as I ran to him and realized that he was missing his left arm from the shoulder down. As I checked on him, I could tell that the surgeon, such as they were, had even cut away part of his upper chest during the operation.

“Oh gods.” I gasped at the sight and Malia swore under her breath.

Tia held her hands to her mouth at the same time as the door opened to Whinny’s suite. A man walked out, one of her ever-present guards. In his hand he held a bloody bone and chuck of meat. For two breaths we stared at each other. My mind balked at the bloody package in his hands while the man backed away as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar. My brain finally translated the sight as Malia sprang forward with a shout. It was a human hand.

He dropped his bloody meal at the same time as his hands dropped to the guns on his waist. Moving too quickly for him, Malia kicked the man’s hand and delivered a leaping punch to his face that slammed his head into the cinderblocks behind him.

She didn’t stop there. Blow after blow rained into the man, though I could tell he’d stopped breathing at the second strike. Tia pulled Malia away, who’s eyes had grown wild and filled with sclera. “Malia, we need to run, now!”

Tia pulled on Malia’s shirt. Though she’d gone berserk in her fury, she blinked at Tia and pushed the man away. “I’m sorry. After…”

“It doesn’t matter!” I brushed her aside and grabbed the gun belt from the man’s waist. “We need you to grab Alaric and we need to run. Now.”

Tia had said it first, but Malia heeded my orders. Her skin melted as her sands flowed around Alaric. At the same time a few people had appeared at the door to the pool, drawn in by the sounds of the battle.

Now that we’d caught them in the midst of their cannibalism, their faces took on sinister aspect. Several of them held knives caked with dried blood while others wielded other forms of improvised cutting weapons: saw blades, bits of glass wrapped with tape, and more.

Maude strode out from the center of the group and I groaned. She held a bit of arm in her left hand, it looked muscular and firm, like it might have belonged to Alaric. “It’s too bad you didn’t accept our offer last night. Would have made things a whole lot easier.”

“Why bandage him up if you were just gonna kill him?” I spoke while Malia crawled forward across the floor. In the flickering light against the stains and other messed on the floors, Malia was practically invisible.

Maude took a bite from the shoulder and bile rose to the back of my throat. “Keeps the meat fresher longer. ‘Sides, Whinny wouldn’t keep helping us if we killed him right away. She insisted.” Clucking her tongue, Maude handed the bloody bit of arm to someone behind her and produced a fresh white scalp with long stringy hair streaming down from it. “Took care of her first, hardly any meat there.”

I screamed then, rage pouring out of my mouth as the light in the center of my chest flared as bright as the sun. Whinny had died to protect us, I knew it despite the fact Maude had only referred to it obliquely. As the sun at the center of my chest grew to an impossible brilliance, Malia struck.

Though the light I produced was incredibly bright, I could see Malia’s sand form surge under Maude’s feet. Where she could hardly injure the manticore, she had not trouble flinging cannibals left and right. Several of them lost their footing and toppled into the bottom of the pool.

Shots rang out and my blue shield formed, deflecting them as if the shield had anticipated my needs. Maude slipped and hit her head against the wall, but after she pushed herself away and shook her head, she resumed her advance toward us.

Malia’s sands rattled in fury as she slammed herself into the crowd, trailing Alaric as she did. I plucked Tia up from the ground and cradled her in my arms. Where Alaric’s unconscious form slithered after Malia, I followed.

No bullet’s found purchased in either Tia or me, and as Malia fought on, fewer and fewer shots connected with targets. Sickened as I was, I never stopped to vomit or catch my breath. If I had, Tia might have been hurt and there was no way I would allow that to happen.

Most of Malia’s attacks were bludgeoning and non-lethal. While the crowd thinned, they barely thinned enough to let us pass. If not for the corridor Malia shaped with her sands, we would have been captured and eaten.

The Hospice residents howled and clambered after us like wild beasts after game. Once the way ahead cleared out, they committed to the chase. Fortunately, most of the remaining residents had ventured to the pool to find and consume us. Otherwise, we might have been blocked by the shear weight of bodies between us and the exit.

A few times, the cannibals rushed us and slipped close enough that I could see the black stains in their clothing. One of those times I raised my gun and tried to sight in. Nausea took control over my limbs and brought me to a halt. I could no more point my gun at the others than I could watch myself undergo surgery.

I holstered the gun and ran. When the gunshots faded, I was left with a ringing in my ears. The world had narrowed to a small circle in the center of my vision where I could make sense of my surroundings. Everything on the periphery faded into nothingness. Somehow I could still hear Tia’s weeping.

The door that had admitted us deep into the hospice most recently bore heavy chains on this side, wrapped about a broad grate and locked so that the door couldn’t be opened easily. I’d see the ads online where a decent pad lock stopped a heavy caliber pistol round. At the time, they looked legitimate. And I understood the danger of a ricochet enough to pause before I pointed my gun at the lock.

My sensibilities cared not for the integrity of the lock, so I pulled the trigger and shot it to pieces. I only needed three rounds to render the lock useless. Ripping it away from the barricade, I tore open the door and only belatedly realized the residents might have trapped the door.

No explosion blew the door from its hinges or fired poison arrows at us. Relief came swiftly on the back of my panic. Kicking the last of the barricade away, I watched the halls as Malia corralled the head of the cannibal packs. None of them dared breach the block Malia created in the mouth of the hallway, so I manage to shut the door before Malia completely left the Hospice. Her substance ran under the door as I jammed a piece of barricade into the gap as hard as I could manage with bare skin.

Bodies slammed against the other side of the door with a screaming fury. But the door held out as Malia streamed through the cracks.

“Don’t stop here!” a mouth appeared at her center to form the words and Alaric rose as if levitating in Malia’s substance.

I had a choice to make. Either we could continue through the halls and leave the way we’d come in or I could leave through the front. Neither route offered much in the way of hints, and as we’d been through the halls so often before, I led us to the front and out the broken glass entrance.

The air held a chill, as if winter clung to the last vestiges its power while spring settled over the world. Slipping across a carpet of shattered glass we escaped the Hospice before Maude’s people managed to clear the jam I’d left in the door.

Guilt settled over me as we ran. If that was the only exit from the Hospice, and they couldn’t clear the barricade, then I had a pretty good notion of what would happen in a few weeks. Even if they’d intended to eat us, no one deserved their fate.