The Hearts We Sold(79)

All the other voids had been terrifying, but it was because they were voids. Places of screaming wind and emptiness, where her own memories were dragged out of her, as if the void needed them in order to crystallize. But this—this void was not empty.

A battle took place before them.

There were alien creatures with too many legs, some resembling underwater animals, while others looked vaguely insectoid. They were enormous, straight out of a nightmare. And the homunculi—slow-moving but determined—were using their massive, ill-formed hands to slam the creatures out of their paths.

“Do we hang behind?” shouted Dee over the screaming of the wind. Beside these massive beings, she was small and insignificant. The void tugged at her mind, and she could feel the beginnings of a memory, a sickening twist—

She was young and too small and helpless—

And then James’s hand was on her cheek. His fingers were cold. “Dee, stay with me.”

She blinked several times. Focus, she thought. Focus.

Gazing into James’s face, she saw the same struggle in his eyes. The push and pull of then versus now. He swallowed, shivered, and she wondered what memories the void tried make him relive.

Dee’s hand raised to cover his. A moment of understanding passed between them, an acknowledgment. “We can’t rely on the other demons,” said James, speaking above the wind. He was scanning the area, and Dee could see the thoughts working behind his eyes. “We need to move farther in, get the explosives in place.”

She nodded. “We should try to keep to the edges,” she said. “Out of sight—”

A clawed leg emerged from one of the half-formed booths. James cried out, leaping backward, but then a burrower was scuttling toward them. It had no eyes—but a wide mouth, snapping at James’s leg.

But whatever these creatures were, they were not prepared for Gremma’s homemade Molotov cocktails.

Dee’s shaking fingers took two tries to set the wick alight and then she threw. The glass shattered upon the burrower’s armored hide. The flame caught and her eyes watered, blinded by the sudden glare of light.

Did such a thing as fire exist in this creature’s world? Had it ever felt the heat of a flame, the searing agony of a burn?

Probably not, judging by its reaction.

The burrower screamed. It sounded like no creature she had ever heard, no animal cry. It was the screech of metal being rent apart.

Dee reached for the fallen duffel bag and sprinted off, James at her side. They scrambled away, left the creature to burn.

“That was badass,” James shouted above the din.

They darted around a homunculus; it was staggering, one of its legs chewed off at the knee. It was trying to haul itself forward by the strength of its enormous arms, its mismatched eyes on a burrower.

The burrowers were devastatingly quick, all swiftness and grace, but the homunculi were slow, steady, and refused to give ground.

One of the homunculus’s arms nearly clipped Dee. She felt the air rush past her, the whisper of almost-touch, and then James had her by the arm and yanked her to one side, a snarled curse caught between his teeth. A burrower fell upon the fallen homunculus, sinking its claws in again and again, like a scorpion stinging its prey.

There was no time to think. Dee’s fingers gripped another jar, the lighter in her other hand. One of the burrowers seemed to sense their presence—it circled them at a distance, its legs skittering across the floor.

The burrower kept the tables between itself and the teenagers. Warier or smarter than those who had attacked before. She tried to keep her eyes on it at all times, frightened that the moment she looked away would be the moment it struck.

A crack split the air. Dee’s head jerked around, and she saw three of the creatures on one of the homunculi—biting and clawing. The homunculus fell, and its enormous body slammed into the floor. Cracks spun out, as if this fragile half reality could not bear the weight of such a blow.

Panic seared through Dee; she had been watching the homunculi, and not the—

The burrower fell upon her and James with the force of a charging bull. The strap of the duffel bag slipped from her hand.

She felt it slam into her, and she fell, staggering as she hit one of the tables. Her head clipped the edge and stars burned through her eyes. She tried to kick, to writhe like she had been taught in all her self-defense classes—but the lesson on what to do if she was pinned became a lot more complicated when the attacker had eight legs.

She screamed, heard someone else screaming, too, and she struggled to get her arm up, to ward its claws away from her face. She was dimly aware of James trying to pummel the creature with his fists, but it seemed to be doing little good.

She kicked again and again, and she must have gotten lucky, because suddenly her shoe punched through something. A joint, perhaps, or a weakness in the burrower’s armor. It paused, staggered, and that was all the time Dee needed. She threw the backpack beneath the creature, lit the cocktail in her hand, and threw it down into the backpack. She crawled backward, clumsy with haste.

The backpack lit—and the rest of the cocktails went up in one fiery burst.

The creature burned. Dee felt the heat of the flames on her face, but James’s hands were on her shoulders, dragging her upright. She tried to catch her breath, but sand stung her lungs and her face was too hot, as if she’d been sunburned.

And then Dee saw it—the center of the void. It was where things seemed most solid, where the metal scent was harshest. Her eyes stung with grit and she tried to blink the world back into focus.