Bryce rushed between Jesse and the devourer. He fired the shotgun into the center mass of the creature.
Another shot went off behind him, but it didn’t go into the creature. Jesse swore and Bryce could hear a struggle going on behind him.
He had more to deal with in front of him.
The devourer flinched after the first round. Bryce unloaded another into the creature, and it snarled and hissed an awful sound. White and gray mottled blood dripped out of the dozens of holes in it. Two of its tentacles reached out. One grabbed the shotgun, the other wrapped around Bryce’s waist. He struggled to keep hold of the shotgun, but the tentacle around his waist hurt. The shotgun was crumbling, so he let it go.
Another shot rang out and white, messy fluid leaked from a hole in its head. The creature collapsed, and the tentacle around Bryce’s waist dropped.
Jesse panted, and he had a triumphant, half-mad grin as he glanced Bryce’s way. “Fuck, yes. They go down.”
And they stayed down, as far as Bryce could tell.
One of the chanters screamed a sound full of rage and broke the circle formation. Bryce pulled his handgun, but Jesse surged forward and tackled the cultist.
That finally ended the ceremony. Chaos erupted. Jesse struggled with the suspect he had on the floor. Another cultist came at him, but Bryce interceded. He knocked the cultist down with one blow and readied himself for the next one to join the fight.
At least they didn’t seem to have weapons.
The shadows in the center of the arch stopped forming, and as wrong as the room still felt, Bryce could breathe easier.
The cultists stopped their chant in unison. The speakers continued making their awful, even more distorted sounds. Jesse finally pinned the cultist under him.
The cultists glanced between each other, no doubt making the same calculations Bryce was making. There were more of them, but Jesse and Bryce were armed. They didn’t seem to be, and even if they were, they all risked getting shot. For a group worshipping the idea of death and their devouring menaces, they didn’t seem keen for more immediate, non-devoured deaths.
“Get down on the ground,” Bryce said sternly.
Only one of the cultists obeyed that order—the one Bryce had been fighting with. The other four took off for the staircase. Bryce ran after them, and knocked his knee into a hidden protrusion. Jesse’s cultist was still trying to fight him. There was no way they could catch them all.
Bryce took out his phone, but that far underground he didn’t have a signal. “Let’s get moving.”
Jesse pulled a zip-tie from his back pocket and used it to secure the cultist he’d captured. When he was done, he took out another and tied it around the wrists of the cultist Bryce had his weapon trained on.
That was more time than they could afford. Bryce ran through the room, dodging and stumbling his way to the hallway and then made his way up the stairs, Jesse directly behind him. He could make out shadowy forms making their way up the staircase. There wasn’t much in the way of light, and at least one of the cultists tripped.
But they had a head start, and when they reached the top of the staircases, they shut the secret door. Bryce and Jesse panted as they searched for another switch on the inside. Eventually, Bryce found it in a corner next to the door, and he barely stepped out of the way before the door could knock him down the steps.
The sunlight was getting weaker, but it wasn’t quite full twilight. Bryce pushed away thoughts of what might have happened in the basement if they had been too late. He pulled out his phone and called David, but it went straight to voicemail. With a growl, he called Bonnell instead.
Jesse got ahead of him. He sprinted across the lobby and cleared the front doors with little hesitation. For a moment, he was still close enough for Bryce to see, but then he was taking off across the parking lot.
Bryce ended the call with Bonnell just as she picked up. He could call her back. Jesse had run headlong toward a danger Bryce couldn’t see. While Jesse could handle himself, Bryce didn’t like that he’d felt the need to run. Alex, Celia, and David should have been able to handle the cultists who came out, hopefully.
He burst through the building doors and scanned the parking lot. Only one car was there, when there should have been two. Had Celia and David never gotten there? Jesse was close to their car, and he went around the side. Shouting, but too far away for Bryce to make out the words.
Something wasn’t right.
Bryce ran as hard as he could.
David was on the ground, and Jesse was over him, keeping his hands on the wound. Blood pooled out between his fingers.
“Yes. Yes, we’re doing that,” Celia said into her phone. “How long until someone gets here? On the way isn’t good enough. He’s bleeding a lot.”
“How can I help?” Bryce asked.
“Do we have anything in the car better than my hands to staunch blood flow?” Jesse said.
Bryce raced to his trunk and popped it open. He had a first aid kit, though it wasn’t much more than a standard set of smaller bandages. As he took it to Jesse, he said, “What happened? Where’s Alex?”
“We thought they were surrendering. We had two of them.” Celia pressed a hand to her head and winced. Blood was on her hand, and Bryce wasn’t sure if it was hers or David’s. “Renee Valless and some older man. Alex shouted a warning, but the man grabbed David’s gun and the woman hit me. He shot David.”
Bryce ripped open packages of gauze and handed them over to Jesse. “And Alex?Where is he?”
Celia had a pained expression. “They took him.”
