Available Darkness Season 2

sleeves. He tightened his grip and walked faster, quickly closing the distance between them and Skinner.
    “That corner,” Skinner pointed toward the end of the hallway. “The elevators wait around it.”
    Great. Let’s hope I can make it that long.
    John felt a flicker of swelling strength as they neared the corner, and dared to hope for recovery. His eyes were on Skinner’s back as the German neared the corner and suddenly screamed, stopping dead in his tracks.
    John fell an involuntary step back, clutching Hope tighter against him, before he rounded the corner and saw the source of Skinner’s cry.
    A monstrosity charged at them, a monster unlike any John had ever seen, though the déjà vu humming in his head suggested otherwise. The monster wasn’t tall, though its hulking bulk gave that impression. It was 5 feet high, thick, like a giant tree with thick dark skin to match, tiny legs, and long arms which ended in sharp, black pincers that looked like they could shear metal.
    In the center of its mass were what appeared to be dozens of eyes, some blinking and each ringed with a wet dark circle. The eyes which were blinking opened to a softly glowing amber. Beneath the eyes, a wide open maw filled with hundreds of teeth which jutted in every direction like porcupine quills.
    The monster paused its charge and seemed to study them, its hesitance saving their lives. John was weak, Hope still in his arms, and Skinner was frozen, staring at the creature as if hypnotized.
    John pulled strength from somewhere and set Hope down against the wall and ran toward the monster and Skinner, not knowing what the hell he’d do until he got there.
    Skinner drew his gun but the beast batted it from his fist with a blur, which seemed fast for the creature’s mass.
    The monster leapt toward Skinner, but John was faster, throwing himself between Skinner and the creature. John thrust his hand up at the creature’s face, expecting to pull the soul from inside it.
    Nothing happened.
    John felt the creature’s soul calling to him, which meant it should have been his for the taking, but its bark-like body was like a protective armor. Momentarily dazed, John stood rooted to his feet with a weakness in his body wanting to force him to the floor.
    It did, and the monster fell on top of him. Its dozen or so eyes were all open, staring at John as it opened its maw and readied to feast.
    Six deafening shots rang through the hallway as the monster’s body grew suddenly still and heavier on John’s.
    “Thanks,” John said, looking up at Skinner as he ran to them and pulled the monster off of John, and rolled it aside, black ooze pouring from its wounds.
    Skinner nodded, reloading his clip. He pointed to the elevators. “Let’s go.”
    John scooped Hope up from the wall and into his arms. Just as they were within 20 feet of the elevator, the wall exploded beside them, another of the tree-like creatures barreling into the hallway. This one seemed the same size, but that was an illusion given that it was hunched over.
    It then stood, and revealed itself to be at least 7 feet tall and almost twice as wide as its dead brother.
    Shit.
    Skinner fired two shots, then three before the creature swung at him, sending him flying back, almost hitting John. The creature shrieked, a loud, bird-like shrill which sounded almost metallic in tone.
    John set Hope down on the ground, and looked up just in time to see the monster running toward him.
    In a flash, John saw that one of the monster’s eyes seemed larger than the others, with a deeper amber bleeding from behind its barely open lid. The larger eye made John think of something he should have thought of before.
    He brought his fingers together in a point, as a makeshift shiv, and ran straight at the beast, shoving his hand into the monster’s barely open eye.
    The creature shrieked, screaming with something that sounded like a train scraping off the side of the rail as everything it ever was or would be shot inside of John.
    Its memories were raw, animalistic, a life of brutality and carnal lust, with nary an intelligible thought other than its primal urges. But its power was immense, coursing through John, recharging him more than any human ever could. He let go of the beast and stared down at his hands, shaking with energy he longed to spend on Jacob’s destruction.
    Hope stirred on the floor, softly moaning as she looked like she was about to come to. However, when he went to pick her up,