Hellraisers by Alexander Gordon Smith

fear, his blood.
    He sucked on the inhaler, pressing randomly, nothing. Lifting it, he saw that it was a shotgun shell, and his heart seemed to give up alongside his lungs. He wheezed, not even enough air for a cough, his hand slapping down to the floor. At least the asthma would get him first. Better to suffocate than to be torn to pieces by … by whatever the hell those things were.
    They prowled toward him, almost lazily, their eyeless faces somehow burning right into the very core of his soul. Close enough now that he could see the way the metal bent like plastic when they moved, concrete as malleable as Play-Doh but still hard enough to crush his bones to powder. The rock-like one reared up, that vast maw opening.
    â€œThought you’d finished with me, did you?” said a voice.
    There was a soft twang and a metal bolt plowed into the neck stump of the truck beast. There was a blazing wave of light and a booming explosion, like a concussion grenade, and the creature was reduced to a mound of rubble. What stood behind it was surely impossible. The girl’s chest was caved in, firelight visible through the gaping hole where her heart should have been. Even now, though, the wound seemed to be closing, flesh knitting back together. The ugly tears on her arms and neck and face were sealing, too, as if time were going backward, white smoke drifting up from her skin. She was gritting her teeth against it, the pain etched into every line of her face, every jutting tendon in her neck.
    The concrete creature saw her and uttered a noise that could have been a building collapsing, a feral, industrial roar. It bounded past, running right for her. And over the thunder of its feet he heard the girl say, “I’m whole. End the contract.”
    The beast pounced, so heavy that Marlow felt the tremor as it left the ground. The girl just stood there, empty crossbow by her side, those dark eyes never blinking. Then, like it had hit some kind of invisible wall, the creature dropped, landing with a crunch, exploding into dust. It twitched once, then lay still. The truck thing simply froze. There was another metallic bang from the other side of the garage, Marlow squinting to see a figure formed from a fire door and a section of wall fall over like a felled tree. Then there was silence, other than the subdued whisper of the flames and Marlow’s desperate, choking breaths.
    He almost had time to feel relieved before he remembered he was still dying.
    He clutched at his throat with one hand, slapping his empty pockets with the other, his back arching. The girl scanned the lot, a look of bored contempt on her perfect face. Only then did she look at Marlow, not a trace of gratitude or kindness in those perfect features. Her injuries had stopped healing, some of the nicks and scrapes still dripping blood. But there was no sign of the puncture wound in her chest other than a thick, leathery scar. Her uniform, though, had been unable to repair itself. It flapped open, revealing a black bra underneath.
    Not such a bad way to go, his brain told him, and for once in his life he had to agree.
    The girl noticed where he was looking, but made no effort to cover up, just opened her mouth and spoke.
    â€œDone?”
    Marlow couldn’t have answered even if he’d known what she was asking. His lungs were completely empty. There may as well have been a tank parked on top of him. He tried to shape his mouth around the word inhaler , tried to jab a finger at his throat, screaming inside his head, Please, find it for me, get help.
    â€œYou cut that one too close, Ostheim,” she said, and he realized she was talking to somebody else. “We lost Forrest, and Herc.”
    â€œNot quite,” said another voice. Marlow saw the man he’d been fighting alongside earlier, walking over, barely an inch of skin not drenched in blood and smeared with filth. He stood stooped next to the girl, panting, but she didn’t