Adamina Mustain was proper pissed. She’d even sparked a spliff minutes before rolling up to this shithole warehouse.
She’d rather have some prick balls-deep in her than stand here in the open, smashing down Sherrel’s bloody door, but the blonde had ghosted her calls and the group Adamina sent to drag her back. Only one came back, babbling about monsters in the shadows.
She’d had the tosser pumped full of the nightmare special (pure bad-trip juice) and then dumped into the bay. Who the fuck did he think she was? Adamina couldn’t give a toss about some coward crawling back with monster hallucinations after botching a simple pickup. Junkies like him were a dime a dozen in the Bay, and his spot was already taken by the next desperate prick chasing a cheaper fix.
BANG… BANG… Adamina’s eye twitched with every impact from Mush’s trash golem. The aluminium door now sported a shallow dent, yet it held, defying every ounce of logic that said it should have crumpled already. The assembled trash and ass-lickers waited in twitchy silence, flinching at each strike and growing antsier by the second. Adamina hated admitting it, but she was right there with them. She yelled at Mush without the megaphone, her shrill voice cutting through the racket. “Mush! What the fuck is the bloody hold-up?!”
The lumbering golem paused. Its head swiveled toward her, even though Mush didn’t need the theatrics. His voice rang out clear and nasally from somewhere inside the trash heap. “I-I dunno, Boss! Feels like the door’s braced with rubber or somethin’. Keeps bouncin’ my hits!” Adamina yanked her gat free and levelled it at the door. She squeezed off three shots. The recoil jerked the barrel left with each bang, nearly clipping one of the scum-lickers she’d dragged along.
The gunshots cracked through the street. A few minions jumped; some even landed flat on their asses. Pathetic. The 9mm rounds punched neat holes in the aluminium, but nothing else happened. No yells of surprise, no light spilling from inside. Adamina jabbed her gat toward the holes. “Use those to tear the fucking thing off. If you can’t bludgeon it, yank it, you halfwit!” The golem’s head dipped in a sheepish nod as Mush mumbled, “Yes, boss.” Adamina pressed the still-warm barrel to her temple, scratching her scalp with it. She muttered under her breath. “Why do I have to be the smartest bloody wanker in this shithole city?”
Brockton Bay beat Birmingham, but Adamina knew that was hardly a high bar. She figured even Lyon was better than Birmingham, and that place was an irradiated hellhole thanks to Behemoth. And French! She watched Mush hook trash claws through the bullet holes and start ripping the aluminium with an ear-splitting screech that set her grinding her teeth. The pressure on her rotting cavities only made it worse. Mush finally tore free a jagged section and flicked it behind him like rubbish. The idiot sent it spinning straight at her head. Only her wedge of boosters, set up ahead of time, deflected it in time to save her neck. One junkie wasn’t so lucky. The sheet sliced deep into his thigh with a wet squelch. The poor sod crumpled, screaming, “My leg!”
She spared the wound a glance. It was a proper bleeder. She didn’t lift a finger. Her attention snapped instead to what Mush had exposed. A grey, silicone-like membrane bulged outward toward the road, as though the interior were pressurized. One brow arched in confusion as she tried to puzzle it out, the bullet holes she made in it were gone. Distracted, she missed Mush winding up another haymaker. Distracted, she barely registered the small indents blooming across the swollen surface. Distracted, she realised too late what was about to happen. “Wait! STOP!” Too late. The golem’s jagged fist slammed home and popped the membrane like an overripe zit.
The golem’s fist ripped free at the shoulder, hurled backward as a brief fireball burst from the ragged hole. Adamina instinctively raised her megaphone to shield her face from the blast. Steel ball bearings pinged off her boosters, ricocheting into the crowd and carving fresh wounds across her raiders. Then came the screech of tearing metal, followed by a cacophony of hissing shrieks.
She looked up and saw them pouring from the ragged hole like a tide of glossy black chitin.
Adamina’s drug-fogged memory stirred. One of her benders, half-watching the news about some massive creature that could’ve been the next Endbringer. These were smaller, sleeker. No shield-like skull; instead, a smooth dome shaped vaguely like a cock. And though they were dwarfed by the monster on TV, they were still bigger than any human. Bigger than her, very much angry, and very much fast.
Adamina aimed her gat and started firing into the black horde, screaming at her gang. “Start shooting, you fuckers! Kill these freaks!” A few followers bolted like the rats they were, but the ones too cornered or too doped to run raised their own guns and opened fire. Some shots landed true, Adamina saw green blood spray from a handful of creatures, but most went wild, the shooters too injured or fried to hit the broad side of a warehouse. She backed up slowly, ears ringing from the barrage, emptying her magazine as she went. “Fucking useless shits,” she muttered, eyes narrowing at how little damage they were doing. She spotted Mush retreating too, the golem’s severed arm still missing.
Then she saw the creatures reach her people. Blood sprayed in bright arcs. The black-carapaced monsters pounced like tigers on gazelles. The injured went down first. Ripped open, guts spilling, chunks devoured in frantic bites as they were fed upon while still breathing. But what made the hairs on her neck stand was the ones still whole. They were disarmed in seconds, then hauled off in a twisted bucket line, kicking and screaming bloody murder, back into the dark pit the hellspawn had poured from.
“Fuck this shit! Mush, get your ass over here! We’re bailing!” Adamina yelled the order, knowing it was the final straw. The rest of her merry band of fuckers were already routing, and this fight was a lost cause. Sherrel was either eaten or… whatever the fuck those things did to the humans they dragged off alive. One freak slammed into her boosters and bounced back. She gave it a few bursts from her 9mm. Green blood sprayed, sizzling like acid from those old cape shows, eating a fresh pothole into the crumbling street.
Adamina sneered and hurled her megaphone through one of her boosters. It rocketed forward, smashing into another freak. The impact shattered the megaphone and cracked the creature’s chitin with a sharp snap. She dropped low, planted one foot on its heel, and slapped a small booster field onto the sole. Then, with the shaky grace of someone who’d spent years high as a kite rather than trained, she slapped one on the other foot without toppling over and getting snatched by this Nilbog-level nightmare.
Adamina glided across the concrete as if it were ice, picking up speed with every push away from the slaughter behind her. The gunfire was growing more and more sporadic as the ones resisting were dealt with and the runners scattered in all directions. She heard Mush lumbering after her, his massive strides closing the gap his normal speed never could.
The distance to the chasing monsters widened. She was almost home free.
Adamina spun back toward the swarm and screamed at the top of her lungs. “I’m gonna fecking get you cunts for this! Nobody fucks with Skidmark and gets away with-” A massive set of claws ripped the hole wider with a tortured shriek of metal. Out from the warehouse depths strode the towering bitch from the news reels. Adamina’s glare shattered. Her eyes widened in raw terror. The Black Queen loped toward her and Mush, and all Adamina could think of was that scene from Jurassic Park. The Queen roared. “MUSTAIN!” The name hit like a physical blow. Adamina nearly tripped, boots skidding on her own boosters. The thing knew her name. She had to get the fuck out. “MUSTAIN!” the Queen bellowed again, charging faster. “GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE!”
“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit! Skidmark, that thing’s gaining on us! What do we do?!” Mush whined from beside her. “Just fucking run, you dumbass! Stop looking back and fucking RUN!” Adamina snapped, survival instinct drowning out every last shred of patience.
Adamina pushed harder, sweat stinging her eyes despite the cold wind whipping past. Her legs trembled with every stride, and Mush’s heavy thumps right behind her only made it worse. Her lungs burned. She fought to hold the pace, but The Queen was gaining fast while she and Mush flagged. Their lifestyles hadn’t prepared them for a marathon, let alone a hundred-meter sprint.
For a moment, all Adamina heard was her heart thundering in her ears and Mush’s heavy stomps. Then she realised the Queen’s footsteps had vanished. Hope flickered in her chest, warm and fragile. She risked a glance back, ready to confirm the bitch had given up. Her heart soared. No Jurassic monster in sight. No bowel-shaking roars. No more running. Adamina eased off her boosters, slowing to a glide. A massive shadow swallowed the New England sun.
The Queen could fly. She could fly faster than she could run on the ground, and she chose that moment to crush every scrap of hope Adamina had left. Adamina’s knees buckled. Any chance of escape died with them. She tripped and slammed face-first into the rough concrete. Her momentum scraped layers of skin from her nose and cheek.
Her nerves were so shot she barely felt the heat and sting of the scrape. But Adamina knew the drill: when one big scary motherfucker came knocking for a pence, you paid up.
Adamina groveled the best she could, her broken jaw throbbing like fire, but she begged like a desperate whore anyway. “I’M SO SORRY! Please, I beg you, don’t kill me! I’m a single mother—if I die, who’s gonna feed my babes?!” A complete lie. She’d always been religious about birth control, and when that failed, nothing fixed a slip-up like an abortion. Mush, the fucking dunce, finally caught on and joined the rat act. The slimy bastard slithered out of his trash golem, chunks clattering to the ground around him. “Oh please have mercy on me, shiny one! I got a wife and kids who need me to put food on the table!”
The Queen loomed over them like a dark avenging angel, her long tail lashing like a whip. Sunlight gleamed off her black chitin and turned the towering headcrest into a mocking halo. The jagged spines along her back flared wide, a twisted alien parody of wings.
Of course Adamina spotted the third leg. Its size was something she’d never imagined possible outside of Nat-Geo specials. That cock, the massive tits, and the lower face were the only human-looking parts on the monster. The Ω branded around one thick nipple finally clicked for her: this thing was a Case 53, one of those freaks she’d seen on the news.
Adamina forced a strained smile, desperate to de-escalate. “H-hey, keep that bitch Squealer. She was useless to me anyway. Her goddamned voice always made me want to claw my own ears out, and her rides looked like absolute shit.” She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone bone-dry. “J-just let us go and it’ll all be water under the bridge. You can even keep those wankers you nabbed. Great fucking deal, innit?”
Adamina barely noticed it at first. Her eyes were locked on the monster’s face, brain still fogged by the drugs pumping through her veins. But she noticed. The massive taloned hand clenched into a fist. In that instant she knew she’d fucked up. Something she’d said had landed as insult, not diplomacy. The Queen’s full, glossy grey lips curved into a cruel smile. She looked down at the two grovelling capes. “Oh? That is a wonderful, truly wonderful, idea. How about a slight correction, though?” The malice in her voice sent cold sweat trickling down Adamina’s back. She couldn’t tell if it was withdrawal or raw terror boring into her soul. The Queen went on. “I’m keeping the ones I took. Then I’ll scour the Bay for every last Merchant. And finally, I’ll take you two disgusting pieces of shit and use you to grow my hive.” She let out a soft, dark chuckle. “Great fucking deal, innit?”
She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t run. And she doubted she could hide. Adamina Mustain knew, without a shadow of doubt, that she had lost. She would die far sooner than she’d ever hoped.
A/N
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