Nothing But Bones

29: Something Else

Boris straightens up and wipes the last bit of sludge from his mouth. What remains oozes into the creature towering over the both of them.

"Oh, that hurts. It takes time off my life to do this, you know."

"To throw up giant piles of shadows?" She tries to keep the delight out of her voice and her eyes off the thing in front of her, but fails miserably. Her voice comes out more breathless than intended. "Yeah, I bet. It's a shame I don't like you, because that's genuinely really cool."

"I'm a living flesh portal between here and the in-between. Now, Miss Sheridan, the time for games is over."

"Were we playing? You didn't tell me the rules."

Footfalls echo on the stairs beyond them. It's time to think, then.

It might be a good idea to not hold out her hand to the Other One like she wants to. Instead, she needs to find a weapon. On the counter behind her, there's a rolling pin; she snatches it from the tiles. Improv, right? You use what you have.

Elton races in from the other room with a Hellhound and a rattling bone man trailing behind him, and raises his mace like a flamethrower. He sprays it.

Tiff gestures to what's happening, even though she knows Boris can't see her. "See? The safety goggles were a good idea."

Boris ignores her. Eyes bloodshot and streaming tears to a contorted mouth, Boris lashes out with the knife in his left hand. Dingus leaps between them and takes the blade to his side. He doesn't cry out; he just clamps onto Boris's arm and bites down until the necromancer screams. The smell of burning skin and sound of crunching bones fills the kitchen the moment the aerosol stops spraying.

Standing on the ground, Tiff looks up at the thing on the table. It's unwise to replay last April in her head. It would be wiser to continue the assault on Boris Covington and study the portals within him later. It would be wiser not to do what she's going to do.

It's in the back of her head, though: shadows in the basement, shadows at the summer camp, shadows breaking off in her arm. There's a rolling pin in one of her hands and a writhing mass of something else on the kitchen table. It's a temptation she hasn't gotten over yet; it's a voice in the back of her head telling her to just get it over with.

There's a rolling pin in one of her hands. She reaches the other out to the jagged, inky thing on the kitchen table.

It turns its head to her. Small points of golden lights reflect off green irises, reflect off the beady black eyes next to her. Its inky approximation of a hand stretches toward her until their fingers almost touch, Adam and his Creator, love at first sight, something simple and cliche. Boris screams in the background, but she doesn't hear anything over the gently-buzzing static in her skull.

Elton crashes into her, breaking that hypnotized moment like a bowl on the floor or the counter she's pressed against. "What the fuck are you doing? Do you not see that thing, Tiff? You can't touch it."

"Yes, I fucking can." She tries to lean around him. When he stops her, she scowls. "Come on."

The creature hisses. It sounds like a body getting dragged along a gravel road.

Eyes wide, Elton turns around to face it down. "Fuck. I think it's pissed at me."

"Yeah, and so am I." She breaks away from the counter he pushed her into and slides around him. "I was doing it on purpose."

"How am I supposed to know that? I just acted, alright? There's a lot going on!"

Somewhere in the background, having freed his arm from Dingus, Boris scoots along the ground, backing up toward the basement door. Dingus may be restrained by skeletal arms animated with malintent, but Kepler and Fredereick are slapping them away and there's a slug trail of blood on the carpet.

Tiff lets it happen, focuses on what's in front of her— or, rather, next to her. "Can you just trust me? Please?"

"I can trust you, but this doesn't seem like—"

Taking advantage of the argument, the shadow lunges at Elton. The jagged points of its body stretch out toward him. He tries to jump back, but ends up at the same counter but is met with the same counter he just pushed Tiff into and nowhere to scramble.

Tiff steps between them, more certain than she has been all day. If this thing is gone— inside her, even— then it can't hurt Elton and it can't be under Boris's control. Didn't she want to know what it felt like? That same temptation surges; that same voice assures her it's a good idea.

The creature's blade plunges into her chest. It's a sickening crunch; it's a squelch; it's a length of blade that juts through the other side and ends inches away from Elton himself. He brings his hand to his mouth; the momentum takes both Tiff and the shadow into a cabinet below the counter, then the floor.

It crouches over her. The bitter cold of the shadow's blade seeps into her chest. It isn't enough to numb her. She feels everything— the broken ribs, the way it squeezes her heart like it's trying to sap every ounce of life from her body, the lungs that can't keep up with the sudden arrhythmia. When she spits at it (more blood than she intended), it wrenches the blade free and leaps off of her.

Her heart beats pathetically. She stays on the floor.