On the way down the elevator, I opened the folder the demon had given us. A quick glance over the paperwork inside showed exactly what Holly had told me. The paper trail had money coming in from at least sixteen different companies overseas, each being transferred through a different path on their way to the States to be used as payment for the warehouse. Someone was certainly interested in keeping their hand unseen in the entire process. Finally, I turned to the final page in the folder. It wasn’t a legal document or bank record like the others but a simple letter asking permission to proceed. One look down at the signature at the bottom said everything I needed to know. I looked up at Mara.

“We need to get back to Thorne’s now.” I held the paper out so Mara could see the signature at the bottom… Claudia Barrow.

“I knew there was a reason I never got along with her.” She pulled out her phone and dialed the compound. “I’ll call ahead so maybe Stanton can begin damage control.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened up to the lobby once again. What few people had been here moments ago had vanished, leaving a stillness that unnerved me. The lights had dimmed, giving the entire area a shadowy gloom normally reserved for bad horror films. We stepped out of the elevator, every nerve I had sitting on edge waiting for the killer to jump out and attack with a machete. Mara followed behind us, finally connecting to Thorne.

“Stanton, it’s me, we found what we were looking for. Claudia is behind the warehouse. She’s-” Her phone jumped out of her hand, flying against the wall near the elevator doors. A smallish black needle pinning it to the plaster there. A chill ran down my spine as it suddenly felt like someone, or something passed right behind me. A second later I could tell Lisa and Mara felt the same thing.

“What the ‘ell was dat?” Lisa looked around frantically. All three of us reached instinctively for our weapons, which we found were not there. Whatever this thing was it had completely disarmed us without us so much as seeing it. Not a promising sign of first contact with an enemy.

“Well, Hunter, so far I can’t say I like our second date much better than our first.” She dropped into a fighting stance, eyes scanning the entire lobby. Her skin rippled briefly as if trembling in the cold. “Though at least despite whomever our new friend out there is I am not quite unarmed, unlike you two.”

“Speak fer yerself.” Lisa reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out a few marble-sized stones. She squeezed one, a cat’s eye I think, in her palm and her hand flashed. “Takes more than some shadow thingie to take me by surprise.” She glanced at me and I could see her eyes had changed. Her normal emerald green had been replaced by yellow-slitted eyes. With a sideways grin, she bounded off into the gloom. Mara on the other side of me finished changing with a growled challenge and took off in the other direction. Suddenly I was alone, and unarmed, facing who knows what? I grabbed a metal sign left out near the elevator and wielded it like a makeshift club.

I felt a small shift in the air off to my right and my entire arm exploded in pain. The barest sense of movement registered to me and another flash of pain tore through my side. Whatever this thing was it was playing games with me that was for sure. The wounds were certainly bloody enough but they weren’t deep. All of a sudden I had a realization… this thing was hunting me… and as such he was trying to pick off the weakest link of the group first. The thought of being considered the weakest of the three of us had me seeing red. I moved back into the elevator banks to get some sort of cover and think. Another shift and the back of both my knees collapsed, landing me face down on the floor. The sign I was clinging to skittered across the tile to the elevator doors. I was almost back in the relative safety of the elevators. A couple more feet and I would show this thing who was prey.

I got to the wall just inside the small corridor and got back up into a squat, my back pressed against the solid surface. I reached out to grab the sign from where it had landed and waited. My eyes closed and my breathing relaxed as I focused all my senses out into the gloom. I couldn’t wait to see the look on this thing’s face when I taught it the lesson it so desperately begged for. Then, there it was, the shift in the air I had been waiting for. I swung the sign horizontally in a wide arc around me. No way this thing was getting another blow in without paying for it a little.

The sign stopped midway through my swing with a satisfying thunk. I opened my eyes to see the damage and was met with a shock. A reptilian claw had caught the sign as if it were nothing. Connected to the claw was what looked to me like some mad scientist’s experiment gone bad. A long serpent-like body stood in front of me on four legs each ending in a set of lethal-looking claws. Two sets of arms sprung out from its torso where the entire body bent upwards. One of these arms slowly lifted the sign and by association me up into the air until I was face to face with a pair of insectoid eyes suspended above two dripping mandibles. The thing’s entire back seemed covered in short grey-colored spikes that were somewhat covered by a pair of enormous ears dropping off the back of its head. Suddenly, I understood what Arnold had gone through.

“What the fuck are you?”

“The last thing you’ll ever see in this world, gatekeeper.” The abomination spoke clear understandable English. I’m not sure if that or the moniker it had dubbed me shocked me more.

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“Wh-” I didn’t get the chance to even form the question before Mara, in full beast form leaped from the shadows in a flash. The thing couldn’t have seen her coming but still, its arms moved in sync towards her almost faster than she was. My view of Mara became obscured by crimson as one claw tore deep into her chest. She cried out in pain as another of the thing’s arms backhanded her with a sound like a gunshot across the room. Her body, limp and bloody, flew through the fountain in the center of the lobby and continued through the frosted glass barriers around the edge of the room. As she hit the far wall I released the signpost and dropped to the ground. Whatever this thing was, playtime was certainly over. I scrambled on the ground to get away from those claws before its attention turned back to me.

I could feel when the monster reoriented itself on me. Those eyes stared at me coldly as it lowered its head down to me. Those mandibles clicking open and shut.

“Now what are we going to do with you?”

“Hows about you suck tile?” Lisa screamed as she drove the beast’s head into the floor with a punch of such power I couldn’t believe it originated from her tiny form. The thing tried to lift its head, broken bits of flooring falling from it but Lisa pressed her advantage. She threw punch after punch into the lizard-spider-thing so fast that her fists seemed to begin glowing. For a moment I thought Lisa was simply dominating the creature but that feeling didn’t last very long. The eyesore caught first one first, then the other, and pulled them in opposite directions. Lisa screamed as her shoulders were yanked to their limits… then more. Lisa screamed in pain as one of her arms tore out of its socket, the beast’s claws crushing the bones in its grip.

I retrieved the now-forgotten signpost that had been twisted so much in the battle it now more resembled a piece of rebar. I ran at the atrocity holding Lisa and stabbed it with a broken end. It tried to catch the weapon but a quick change in angle drove it through the thing’s arm instead, getting stuck on a bone. The metal bar was sailing back towards my head in an instant, still embedded in the monstrosity’s flesh. I tried to get out of the way but wasn’t fast enough and was knocked into one of the closed elevator doors.

The beast released one of Lisa’s arms for just a second to pull the bar from its arm. She took the opportunity to go back on the attack. One stone dropped from her hand as she dug into her pouch again, coming up with something that looked like a fire agate. She pressed her palm against the things midsection and the entire area around her hand burst into flame. It screamed as the fire leaped up its body and bit down on Lisa’s shoulder. A loud crunch sounded in the small hallway and I knew some of the bones in there broke under the jaw pressure, definitely the collarbone if not her entire shoulder. Lisa screamed but kept up her attack.

The fire quickly consumed them both causing me to shield my eyes from the heat. Finally succumbing to the heat the snake-thing tossed Lisa aside, her neck and shoulder a fountain of blood as she crumbled like a puppet whose stings were cut. The stone Lisa had used to cause the fire dropped between them shooting arcs of flame in all directions We were only a few minutes away from finding out what the inside of a barbecue felt like. I crawled over to Lisa‘s still form to find she was still breathing. Her uninjured arm reached out to me, holding a piece of Jet.

“Burn it!” She struggled to get the words past her lips. “Serpents… hate…”

I nodded and hoped she wasn’t quite delirious yet as I chucked the hunk of rock at the monster staring at the both of us. It caught fire almost immediately, glowing like a hot coal. Smoke flowed from the stone and quickly enveloped the thing’s head. The reaction was almost immediate. One whiff of the smoke and the creature’s head reared back with a hiss. Every muscle in its body tensed as it looked at us for a long second before leaping to the ceiling and running on all eight limbs toward the way out. I returned my attention to Lisa.

“Thing was venomous, dammit.” She cursed, hopefully gaining some strength back. I could see some sort of viscous fluid seeping from the bit wound on her neck. “Black stone… leftmost pocket… put it on the wound.” I moved her arm being very careful of her wound. It moved boneless… I couldn’t tell if it was broken or dislocated but I knew she needed more medical help than my field experience could give her. I was about to reach into the pouch Lisa had indicated when it seemed like the color of the world returned. We were no longer alone, either. People still milling around in the lobby saw us in the corner. A woman screamed. Security ran over towards us. I snatched the stone Lisa wanted and pressed it gently to her neck. It sucked and latched on like a petrified version of a leech. The fire was gone, in fact, all the damage we had done to the lobby moments before had vanished with the thing’s escape. I figured it wouldn’t be wise to be found over a bleeding woman in a public place with my face all over the news, so I decided to make my own way out.

“Freeze!“ The security guard on the way over pointed at me. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do about what’s going on here.”

“Sorry, pal, I’m kinda late for an appointment anywhere but here.” I ran for the door, dodging the other guard on the way out. I knew when they saw my face on the cameras I would be blamed for the entire mess but I couldn’t fix anything from a jail cell. “Get her to a hospital while you’re at it!”

I made it to the street and ran back towards where we had left the car and nearly ran into Mara heading back into the building. I guessed once the fight was over, waking up in the once more crowded lobby naked from her shift might have been disconcerting. She must have booked it back to the car for a change of clothes.

“Lisa’s hurt. Make sure she gets to the hospital then warn Thorne about the traitor.”

She paused with an incredulous look. “You left her there? What were you thinking?”

“That security would want me to stay for more than just my good looks.” I could hear an ambulance from somewhere heading our way. Good, Lisa would have a better chance of making it with professional help.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. What are you going to be doing during all this?”

“I’m going to go have another talk with Ben.” I tossed her the keys to the car, which she caught neatly with barely a glance. “His warning about a new nasty out there was a little too conveniently timed for my taste. He knows more about what’s going on and I’m going to find out what before another one of us pays the price.”