Valentine's Rising by E.E. Knight

startled out of sleep readies all four feet for flight. The sound brought him awake in a flash. A pair of alarmed whinnies cut the night air.
    Ahn-Kha came awake, nostrils flared and batlike ears up and alert.
    â€œArms! Quietly now, arms!” Valentine said to the sleeping men, huddled against the walls in the warm room where they had enjoyed dinner. He snatched up his pistol and worked the slide.
    Ahn-Kha followed. How so much mass moved with such speed and stealth—
    â€œWhat is it, my David?” Ahn-Kha breathed, his rubbery lips barely forming the words.
    â€œSomething is spooking the horses. Watch the front of the house. Post,” Valentine said to his lieutenant, who had appeared in his trousers and boots, pulling on a jacket. “Get the Smalls and M’Daw into the cellar, please. Stay down there with them.”
    Valentine waved to the wagon sentry, Jefferson, but the man’s eyes searched elsewhere. Jefferson had his rifle up and ready. Two of the horses reared, and he stood to see over them.
    Three Reapers hurtled out of the snow, black-edged mouths open, bounding on spring-steel legs. Three! He and all his people would be dead inside two minutes.
    â€œReapers!” Valentine bellowed, bringing up his pistol in a two-handed grip. As he centered the front sight on one he noticed it was naked, but so dirt-covered that it looked clothed. A torn cloth collar was all that remained of whatever it had been wearing. He fired three times; the .45 barked deafeningly in the enclosed space.
    At the sound of the shots his men moved even faster. Two marines scrambled to the window and stuck their rifles out of the loophole-sized slats in the shutters.
    A Reaper leapt toward Jefferson, whose gun snapped impotently, and Valentine reached for his machete as he braced himself for the sight of the Texan’s bloody disassembly. Perhaps he could get it in the back as it killed Jefferson. But it didn’t land on the sentry. The naked avatar came down on top of a horse; on the balls of its feet, like a circus rider. It reached for the animal’s neck, got a good grip—Valentine almost heard the snap as the horse suddenly toppled. The Reaper’s snake-hinged jaw opened wide as it straddled the fallen animal to feed.
    The other two, robeless like the first and running naked in the snowstorm, also ignored Jefferson, chasing the horses instead. The Jamaicans’ rifles fired in unison when one came around the cart and into the open, but the only effect Valentine saw was a bullet striking into a mount’s rump. The horse dropped sideways with a Reaper on top of it. Some instinct made the wounded animal roll its heavy body across the spider-thin form and came to its feet, kicking. As the Reaper reached for the tail a pair of hooves caught it across the back, sending it flying against the cart. It lurched off into the darkness, clutching its chest and making a wheezing sound.
    The third disappeared into the snowstorm, chasing a terrified bay.
    â€œStay with the others,” he said to Ahn-Kha, who stood ready with a Quickwood spear point. He threw open the door—and held up his hands when Jefferson whirled and pointed the rifle at him, muzzle seemingly aimed right between his eyes. The gun snapped again.
    Valentine almost flew to the feeding Reaper. It heard him and raised its head from the horse, the syringelike tongue still connected to the twitching animal. It lashed out. Valentine slipped away from the raking claw. The momentum of the Reaper’s strike turned its shoulder, and Valentine buried his knife in its neck, forcing it facedown in the snow as the tongue retracted, flinging hot liquid like a bloody sprinkler. He ground the bowie into the Reaper, hearing its feet scrabble for purchase on the snowy ground. It tried to shrug him off. Valentine brought up a knee, pressed on the blade . . .
    The Reaper twitched as nerve tissue parted. In five seconds it was limp.
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