“Yes. When we’re in there, please stay behind me at all times. Let me take the lead. If unusual things occur, I’ll need you to step to the closest wall and stay there no matter what you see. Don’t try to help me and, above all, don’t run.”
“Okay.”
“Do I have your promise?”
“Yes.”
Augustine opened the car door and stepped out. She did as well. They walked to the building side by side, Augustine’s red-soled Louboutin pumps making soft clicking noises on the pavement.
Diana felt naked without her dog. She’d gotten used to an animal companion. They were a welcome buffer between her and violence. They were an effective deterrent—the fear of being bitten was a deeply ingrained human instinct.
The doors whispered open at their approach. They stepped into a simple vestibule with the polished golden oak floor and walked to the counter, where a lone receptionist sat in front of a computer screen. The place was sparsely furnished. Generic chairs, upholstered in fake leather, waited in a row by the windows between depressingly plastic trees. It could’ve been a doctor’s office.
“How may I help you?”
“Helena Lopez,” Augustine said. “We are expected.”
The receptionist checked her screen. “Just a moment.”
They waited. Unusual things… How interesting.
A door on the right side swung open, and a man in a cheap suit nodded to them. Augustine headed for the door, and she followed him into a short hallway. The air stank of carpet cleaner fighting with the musty odor of an old rug. They went up a flight of stairs and were ushered into a large room with no windows, a desk of polished, shiny wood, and two chairs.
A man sat behind the desk. He was in his early forties, with good bone structure, wavy dark hair, a short beard, and light grey eyes, which were complemented by his dark blue suit.
Behind him, two men stood in identical dark polo shirts and khaki cargo pants. Both were fit and muscular, with the kinds of shoulders and biceps that testified to regular hours spent at the gym. Both wore guns in the holsters on their hips. Another man, in the same business casual uniform, waited to the side.
The man who had escorted them shut the door and stood in front of it, barring their exit. Four guards, one directly to their left, one behind them, and two by the desk. With Hester, that made five against two.
Quinn Hester leaned forward and frowned. His eyebrows came together. His mouth opened. “Kill hi?—”
The walls sprouted massive blisters, three feet across and swelling like fresh burns. The one directly across from Diana ballooned, turning translucent like the membrane of some horrific amniotic sack stretched too thin, and she glimpsed something tightly coiled and moving within it. Fear slapped her, born of a deep, animal instinct.
Augustine blurred and smashed into the man to his left.
The blisters burst, releasing swirls of tentacles with suckers the size of dinner bowls. They whipped into the room, glistening, wet, contracting, and her mind shrieked at her to get away. The floor bulged, moving, as if the wood had turned into a choppy sea. Panic squirmed through her in an electric rush.
She focused on the blurry figure and took six small steps to the side.
Her shoulder hit the wall. Diana pressed her back against it.
The human blur swept to the left, leaving a limp body in his wake. He dashed by her, and she caught the faintest hint of Augustine within it, like an afterimage that instantly faded.
The blur collided with the guard by the door. Bones cracked, a guttural scream tore out, choked off in mid-note, and Augustine faded out of existence, merging with the tentacles slapping against the walls with sickening, wet thumps. The guard sprawled on the floor, unmoving.
A blister popped to her left, just inches from her head. Tentacles erupted into the room, and between them a thin tendril slithered out, a bulb on its end. The bulb turned to her and opened to reveal an eye ringed with teeth instead of eyelashes.
The guard by the door collapsed. Quinn was down to the two men by his desk. They had drawn their guns, spinning around, aiming at the revolting horrors slithering through the walls.
“Shoot!” Quinn howled and pawed at his desk.
One of the guards behind him jerked his weapon up and fired into the ceiling, where a nightmarish mouth squeezed through the fissure. It bit the air with steak-knife teeth. The other guard frantically spun around, looking around the room, trying to find Augustine among the writhing clusters of Lovecraftian flesh.
The monstrous eye continued to hover by her, watching her. Sweat drenched Diana’s face, cold and sticky, as if she was sweating out her panic. This was a nightmare. Either that or she was going insane, trapped in a hallucination.
There was no scent. These terrifying things, they should have emitted an odor, and yet there was nothing except the usual smell of human bodies. She tried to hold on to that knowledge, but her mind was flailing in revulsion.
The blur popped into existence feet away from the gun-waving guard, vaulted over the desk, and slammed into him. The weapon went flying. The man folded in half, and the blur kicked out, catching the other guard in the head. The man flew into the wall and collapsed.
