Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

I watched the large Hybrid moved through the door horrified.

For half a second, that froze me worse than any Starakian trick had.

Then the lean Hybrid came at me again.

I jerked my head back just in time to avoid its hand and shoved myself fully upright, boots slipping in blood and torn carpet while I dragged air into my lungs. The room looked wrecked now, chairs overturned, plaster dust hanging low, the broken wall still spitting little bits of debris onto the floor, Zakthar’s room door hanging half open behind us. Somewhere outside, beyond the hall and farther down in the hotel, gunfire kept hammering through the building in short violent bursts reaching my enhanced hearing. Marlon’s people were still fighting. Christopher and the others were somewhere below. Sydney and Lucy were now in the corridor with an unconscious alien and a Hybrid coming after them.

And I was alone with the fast one.

All these thoughts crumbled in my head in a mess.

The creature crouched a few feet away from me, head angled, long arms flexing as if it was deciding whether to rip out my throat first or break my legs and leave me crawling. Blood ran down one side of its body where my earlier attacks had cut into it, but not nearly enough. Not nearly deep enough.

I clutched my bleeding side for half a second and shot another look toward the open doorway.

I had to get to Sydney and Lucy.

That large Hybrid was dangerous. Sydney was strong, sure, stronger than any normal human had a right to be thanks to Dullahan, but that didn’t mean she was built for fighting something like that head-on. I had seen enough Hybrids by now to know the difference. Raw strength alone wasn’t enough, and her power had never been meant for direct combat.

And Lucy was with her too.

I forced myself to look back at the thing in front of me and stop thinking about the other one for a second, because if I got reckless with this bastard, I was dead before I ever reached the corridor.

This Hybrid was wrong.

I had fought plenty of them before, enough to know the usual types, the big brutes, the faster ones, the ones that just threw themselves at you like rabid animals. This one was different. Not stronger than the monster at the radio station in Jackson Township. Not even close.

But it was smarter.

That made it worse.

It stayed where it was, crouched a few feet from me with its long arms bent and ready, its lipless mouth hanging open to show rows of rotten teeth slick with drool. Its eyes stayed fixed on me the whole time, ugly and and hatefully. It looked almost amused.

I locked eyes with it and moved first.

My Beretta came up fast as I broke to the side.

The Hybrid exploded after me immediately.

"Fuck—"

It was fast. Stupidly fast.

I nearly tripped over a broken chair leg, caught myself, twisted, and fired on instinct. I aimed for the head, but I was moving too hard and too hurried, and the shot punched through its upper torso instead. It barely even cared. The impact jerked its body a little and that was it.

Useless.

I cursed under my breath and threw myself into a roll over the carpet just as one of its arms smashed down where I had been a second earlier. The floor cracked under the blow, deep enough to break the tile and send dust and chips flying into my face.

I came out of the roll on one knee and snapped the Beretta up again.

This time I had its head lined up.

Then its other hand whipped across my vision holding a chair.

It hurled the thing straight at my arm.

The chair smashed into me before I could fire. Pain shot through my wrist and fingers, and the Beretta flew from my hand, spinning away across the floor with a metallic clatter.

I didn’t stop to look where it landed.

The Hybrid was already on me again.

I jumped backward, boots skidding over broken glass and torn carpet, and felt that ugly surge of frustration finally tip over into anger.

It was getting on my nerves now.

I had wanted to hold back. I had wanted to save strength in case I had to face the bigger Hybrid next, or in the worst case Gaspar decided to show his rotten face in the middle of all this.

That was over.

I clenched my right fist hard enough to feel the tendons strain, and the wind blades built around my arm at once, faster and harsher than before, spinning with a shrill tearing sound that scraped at my ears.

Then I punched.

The gust blasted out of me in a savage rush.

The force hit the Hybrid square in the chest and tore into it with the blades mixed inside, and the nearby windows shattered at the same time, all of them bursting outward in a spray of glittering fragments. The creature threw its arms up to shield itself, but the attack still caught it full and launched it backward across the room.

I didn’t waste that opening.

I drove forward after it and reached for the hand axe still strapped at my side. My fingers closed around the grip and I ripped it free in one motion. Wind curled around the blade immediately as I drew my arm back and hurled it with everything I had.

It flew fast.

Too fast.

I put too much behind it, too much force, and the throw went wider than I meant. Instead of burying itself in the thing’s skull, the axe slammed deep into its shoulder. It bit in ugly, almost taking the arm off but not quite. The whole right side of its body jerked from the impact, and for a second the arm just hung there wrong, barely attached.

The Hybrid snarled.

Then it grabbed the axe.

My stomach dropped.

"Shit."

It yanked the weapon out of its own shoulder and threw it back at me.

For one blinding instant I saw exactly how I died.

I grabbed the nearest sofa and hauled it up in front of me like a shield. It was heavy, awkward, and nowhere near enough—

The axe punched straight through the sofa, slicing through padding and frame like they were paper, then carried on through the shattered window behind me and disappeared out onto the terrace.

I barely had time to register that before the Hybrid hit the sofa itself.

The entire thing slammed into me and drove me backward through the broken window frame. Glass scratched across my arms and shoulders as I went out, and then I was on the terrace floor hard, boots scraping over wet concrete as I forced myself upright.

Cold night air hit me all at once.

The terrace stretched wide and open around the upper floor, littered with broken tables, torn umbrellas, dead planters, and glass shining across the ground under the weak spill of indoor light behind us. Wind came hard from the marina side up here, sharp with salt and carrying distant gunfire from below in ugly bursts.

The Hybrid came through the window after me without slowing.

I grabbed the wrecked sofa with both hands and kicked it toward the thing, sending it skidding and tumbling across the terrace. It just sprang over it, using the height of the broken furniture to launch itself higher, both long arms spread as it came down at me.

I moved out of the way at the last possible second.

It hit where I had been and slid, claws gouging pale lines in the concrete.

My right arm burned.

I ignored it.

I clenched my fist again and dragged more wind into it, feeling the muscles from shoulder to wrist start to protest now from how many times I had forced the power through them in such a short span.

The Hybrid turned its head toward me.

I punched.

The blast caught it from the side this time and hurled it across the terrace into a low concrete divider. The impact cracked the divider and dropped the creature to one knee for the first time since the fight started. One arm was nearly useless now. Its chest and side were cut open in strips. The shoulder where my axe had gone in looked half ruined.

Still it did not stay down.

I was already moving anyway.

I sprinted across the terrace before it could recover fully, closed the distance, and drove my boot straight into its face. The kick snapped its head to the side and knocked it onto its back, but it caught my ankle with its good hand before I could pull away.

It yanked.

I crashed onto the concrete so hard my back lit up with pain again and my breath vanished. The Hybrid rolled on top of me immediately, rotten teeth bared inches from my face, saliva hitting my cheek as its clawed hand came down for my throat.

I jammed my left forearm under its neck and held with everything I had.

"Fuck it!!"

Its weight was obscene. Its smell was worse, rot and blood and old wet meat. I felt its claws scraping across my chest, searching for a better grip while its ruined shoulder dripped onto me.

My right arm was pinned awkwardly between us.

No room to punch properly.

No room for distance.

I snarled and drove my forehead into its face.

The crack stunned it for a second.

I tore my right arm free, forced the wind blades around it in a tight spiral instead of a blast, and rammed my forearm up under its jaw at point-blank range.

The blades chewed through flesh.

The Hybrid jerked violently, half its throat opening under the pressure, and I shoved it off me hard enough to roll it onto its side. I scrambled to my feet before it could recover, grabbed a jagged shard of broken terrace glass from the ground, and slammed it down into the ruined side of its neck.

Blood burst out hot across my hand and wrist.

But I didn’t care.

I kept it pinned down and started stabbing again. No hesitation anymore. No holding back. Just full focus, full anger, every strike coming down harder than the last while the glass edge crunched through torn flesh and cartilage. The creature thrashed under me so violently the whole body shook the broken glass scattered around us, but I stayed on top of it and kept plunging the shard down into the same mangled side of the neck over and over until the wound opened wider and darker.

It clawed at my arm.

I felt those filthy nails scraping over my sleeve and skin, trying to pull me off, trying to rip something open before it died. I shifted fast, planted both knees harder into its chest and upper arm, and pinned its limbs down with my weight before it could get any real leverage. My breathing came ragged through my teeth. My back burned. My side was wet. My cheek was sticky with drying blood.

Still I kept going.

The shard bit deeper.

The Hybrid’s movements were losing shape now, less controlled, more like violent spasms than actual attempts to fight back. Its mouth snapped open and shut soundlessly, rotten teeth flashing while blood pumped out around the glass in fast bursts. I grabbed a fistful of what remained of its hair with my left hand, rough and damp and half coming away in my fingers, and yanked its head back to expose more of the ruined throat.

Then I drove the glass in deeper.

A growl tore out of me before I even realized I was making it.

I leaned harder into the cut, forcing the shard through the last resistance I could feel. Flesh split. Something harder gave under the pressure. The neck opened farther and the Hybrid’s body slammed once against the concrete hard enough to shake both of us.

I didn’t stop.

I sawed deeper with the broken glass and pulled harder on its head, using brute force where precision had long since stopped mattering. Blood ran over both my hands, slicking my grip, soaking my sleeves, splashing across my shirt and face every time the Hybrid’s body convulsed under me.

It was still alive.

Barely.

That only made me more upset.

So I gave one more savage plunge with the shard, buried it to the base, and hauled back with my other hand at the same time.

The neck tore the rest of the way open.

The head came free in an awful jerk.

The body twitched once under me, then again, smaller this time, its hands flexing uselessly against the terrace floor before the whole thing finally gave out and stayed still.

"Haa... ha..."

I sat there over it for another second, gasping for breath, the severed head hanging from my blood-slick hand while I stared at the headless body to make sure it was done. The cold wind off the night hit me again then, cutting through all the heat of the fight and making the blood on my skin feel sticky and wrong.

After a moment, I confirmed that the the Hybrid was truly done.

I pushed myself upright awkwardly, every part of me protesting now that the fight had stopped for even a breath. My right arm felt overused and unsteady from forcing the wind blades again and again. My back was a strip of burning pain. Blood had soaked down my side and into my waistband. My whole front was drenched in foul black-red filth from the Hybrid, thick enough that it clung when I moved.

I looked down at the head in my hand.

Its mouth still hung half open, lipless and rotten, one dead eye turned wrong in its socket, strands of torn flesh dangling from the neck. Even dead, it still looked hateful.

I flung it away.

The head bounced once across the terrace, rolled through scattered glass, and disappeared into the dark beyond a broken table.