Hounded [Wild Hunt Series: 2]

2: Wondering

The plague of batrachian descendants scaled the walls with eerie, silent ease, tiny paws and suctioning fingers finding purchase on the rain-soaked walls. They entered in through open windows, through unguarded archways and unlocked doors, ran amok in swarming numbers until their screams—and demon's delighted shouts—echoed down the cavernous stone walls. The clever ones climbed into dark corners, pressed behind dressers and leered down balefully from the high ceilings, throats pulsing with amphibian patience, waiting for their opportunity. The stupid ones, upon breaching, made no attempt to hide neither themselves nor their intentions.

Dakota picked the lock to get into the first room, where the screams rang high and human. The door slammed and swung wildly behind us. Dark hair thrashed against cotton sheets soaked with the presence of a dozen swampy fiends. We could hardly see anything but a floundering arm and shoulder, marked by trail of tattooed periods. The creatures must've been stronger than they looked to hold her down so easily. Dot, ripped out from underneath the blanket she'd been sleeping in, had been pinned, jerking, twitching, never enough to break free.

As I rushed forward a soggy weight smacked down against my shoulder. Pain was a needlelike bite on my neck. Dakota was on her knees beside me, reaching through her mess of blonde hair to try and rip off a second scrabbling creature before it could stab her eye with a tiny blade. 

Dot wheezed and shrieked. One of the creatures, sporting a bulging belly and of a larger size than the rest, gripped her gnashing jaw in one hand, its other pinching her nose, and pried Dot's  mouth open.

My fingers sunk into the porous body at my throat. With a cry of pain I tore it off. Fragile, airy bones snapped underneath my hand with remarkably little resistance. Before I'd come within a foot of the bed, the bulging, pale belly of the creature heaved.

It bent its wide mouth over Dot's face and clogged her scream with a thick stream of jellied eggs.

We killed them all, whatever they were, one caudate creation after the next, moving from room to room in a fast sweep, gathering up the woman or women inside and heading to the next, until we'd stamped out the life of the last one. And then in that tight bedroom, pressed against dressers with one or two women like Dot caught in a cycle of dry-heaves and drinking, a silence came over us. It was all of us, back together like we'd been a few weeks ago. But we weren't scared this time, not truly. We had grown together in a way I couldn't rightly say. And apart from it raining frogs, they were protected for the time being. Maybe that was it. There's something about four walls and a roof, something about your own room, that pushed the darkness a little further away.

Most of the girls were armed; it'd made every room after Dot's an easier job. Not everyone was, however. It amazed me, the way some people can go through a literal hell like this and refuse to pick up a knife. For some of them, it was religious. Others had personal reasons they preferred not to disclose. Myself, I wasn't sure what to believe. There had to be something, to get us here, to do this to us.

And yet ...

I knew what a knife could do. I trusted the forged metal that I wiped clean on a proffered nightshirt.

Dakota pried back on lipless mouth with the edge of her boot. Tiny, needle-like teeth crowded the front of its mouth, a near perfect match for the scabbing red ring on my neck. "Wish I had one of these when I was piercing my ears," she said. I glanced over at her, curious. She tugged one currently unadorned lobe. "Gave myself an uneven job with a blunt needle after my daddy told me I had to wait 'til I was fifteen. Bled like hell, hurt even worse afterward."

Whatever somber spell had gripped us broke then. A few girls laughed. One of them started talking about when she'd gotten her ears pierced. We started to clean up, hauling creatures into the haul like this was the new normal, even as the sounds and screeches carried on down the halls. Those people, Chiro had told me over and over again until my ears hurt, weren't my responsibility. Bad etiquette, apparently, go after someone else's sex slaves. If I broke whatever code of conduct they'd established, it'd free up attacks on these women.