Page 16 of Fortress
When he caught sight of a flicker along the top of the neighbor’s fence, he twisted in his seat, expecting it to benothing more than another tree waving in the wind. Instead, a pile of black rags disappeared into the bushes below. It appeared a second later, creeping toward the window with something between animalistic grace and haphazard wind catcher movements, its spidery fingers caressing the window joints.
“Jake!” Tobias hissed.
Jake was already reaching for his door handle as the window eased open, and in another breath the figure had folded itself inside.
“Yeah, I see it. On three,” Jake said as they tensed to spring out. “One—”
Something crashed in the house, a child began to scream but was abruptly cut off, and both Hawthornes bolted out of the car and across the street before Jake could even draw breath fortwo.
They ran full out, Tobias pulling ahead of Jake and making the leap through the half-open window a full stride ahead of him.
He ducked and rolled, the window frame clipping his shoulder, but he came to his feet with the shotgun braced to his shoulder.
The striga had already disengaged from the child. It was an ugly creature: twisted, sickly pale features framed by a cloak that reeked of ozone and moldering leaves. Its hands were as long and thin as the shoots of a strangling vine.
The expression on its face as it gazed at Tobias was something close to a smile. It closed its mouth, pale blue glow vanishing, a second before he pulled the trigger.
The shotgun blast hit the striga full in the chest. It jerked at the impact but shrugged it off and then skittered for the window.
Jake was there to meet it. The next two blessed rounds emptied into its body didn’t do much but move it closer toward the door, away from the child, pale and coughing on his bed.
“Jake, it has to—” That was as far as Tobias got before the monster wheeled, grabbed him by the throat, and opened its mouth to reveal the pale glow within.
Tobias clawed at the striga’s hand around his throat, but the brittle-looking fingers were surprisingly strong. The edges of the world went blue, his strength seeping out of him as surely as when he’d hung from a hook in FREACS. He wondered, distantly, if Jake could get enough blessed rounds off before the striga completely drained his life force.
Then the bedroom door burst open with a blaze of light, a man’s high-pitched swearing, a woman screaming, and Ernest Krueger, an American flag bandana tied over his grizzled hair and a muzzle-loading rifle in his hand, strode into the room.
“I told you!” he shouted. “I told you they were coming for your children, but did you listen? Bet you’ll listen now, Sanchez.” He pointed the barrel at the striga and bellowed, “Go back home, you commie bastard!”
Tobias had long enough to wonder whether even the ASC made blessed ammo for a weapon that ancient before Mr. Krueger slammed the gun straight into the striga’s head.
Reeling back—more in surprise than pain—the monster gave a breathy roar, dropped Tobias, and wheeled around to face the new threat. With one sweep of its arm, the striga threw Mr. Krueger into the wall hard enough to knock down several mounted soccer trophies, and Tobias, wheezing and dizzy, dashed forward to get the old man up and out of the room.
Then the monster had its bony hand around his throat again. It lifted and turned Tobias until he could barely make out the beady eyes within the ragged hood, see the burgeoning glow from the mouth, feel his chest tighten as the air was sucked from his lungs.
Jake slammed into Tobias’s side, firing twice in quick succession into the striga’s glowing maw, and the striga caved down in a pile of ash and ragged black cloth.
Tobias crumpled with it, but Jake caught him, hauling him back and against him. “Shit, Toby, are you okay?”
He coughed hard, even as air and energy rushed back into his lungs. Finally he croaked, “I’m okay. What about Mr. Krueger?”
The old man groaned in the corner, and Tobias stumbled toward him. Blood shone on the side of Mr. Krueger’s head, but his pulse was steady when Tobias put his fingers on his throat.
“Commies, my ass,” Jake muttered. He already had his phone to his ear to call an ambulance, just as the frantic parents pushed past to take their trembling child into their arms.
Fordyce General Hospital wasn’t very busy that time of night, and Mr. Krueger received immediate care from the harried ER staff, who replaced the bloody American flag bandana with bandages. The old man was as pale as the freak he’d helped take down, but it still took two medics to pry his old muzzleloader out of his hands.
Toby had been so anxious about him that Jake drove after the ambulance, and they loitered in the hospital entryway, Jake keeping an eye on the news scrolling across the corner TV. It had been a good hunt (okay, the damned thing had gone pear-shaped in the end, but they’d killed the bastard, and everyone, especially Toby, was alive, so that covered everything that really mattered), but he didn’t want to be anywhere close by when the ASC arrived. And those bastards would. There had been too many witnesses, too much fuss, 911 called, and a civvy hurt in the line of fire.
The nurses were tight-lipped with the old man’s personal medical information no matter how hard Jake insisted they were Uncle Ernest’s family. Jake was just about to do something stupid (the pinched look in Toby’s face had been getting more and more worried) when an elderly woman strode through the automatic doors and up to the desk. A brown leather handbag swung from her elbow, and her fur-lined cream coat showed some wear around the shoulders and elbows. Her oversized, dark-rimmed glasses made her eyes twice as large, and her swollen fingers showed a golden band with a modest diamond.
“Excuse me, I’m Catherine Krueger.” She spoke a shade too loudly with precise enunciation, like someone used to dealing with the hard-of-hearing. “I need to see my husband, Ernest Krueger.”
“I’ll be happy to give you a room number once I see some ID,” the nurse said, more cordially. “Your nephews have been pretty anxious about Mr. Krueger’s condition as well.”
Mrs. Krueger looked at them in surprise, and Jake coughed and said, “Well, we’re like family. I’m Jake, and this is Tobias. We were with your husband at the, uh, attack. Just wanted to make sure he pulled through okay.”
Mrs. Krueger’s eyes moved over the pair of them. “I’ve already spoken to the paramedics and George Sanchez. I take it you’re the boys responsible for saving Ernest from the freak that’s been sickening those children.”
