“Hmph… perhaps it wasn’t widespread knowledge before that little power play Dryer pulled in Sucre last week. But you can bet your hat that everyone whose existence relies on dark matter is talking about it now. Perhaps my people are more sensitive to the news than others might be, but you can be sure we started the process of changing our names as soon as we heard.”
Which just left me blinking at the bunny, as my brain tried to put all of that together.
“My dear, I’m a demon; I can be summoned by anyone who knows my true name, and, if they’ve drawn a powerful enough circle, I can be held and made to do as they wish. Surely you’ve heard of this?”
“You mean outside of paranormal romance books and horror movies?” I asked, not sure what the bunny expected me to say. It blinked at me in a way that was decidedly unbunnylike. Then again, he was also a giant dark-matter-eating clam/squid of doom that could talk, and that shouldn’t have been on the list of bunny-approved activities either.
“It might be worth mentioning that, until a few weeks ago, I didn’t really know that magic was a thing,” I added, just in case.
“Ah, well, I suppose I will have to forgive your ignorance, then, but suffice it to say that even those of my kind who had never visited Earth began the arduous task of legally altering their names here in the realms. Unfortunately, the process takes days, even under normal conditions, and every demon in the realm applying at once is hardly normal conditions. My own paperwork hasn’t gone through yet, and some clown at MOME must have had a file on me, because the next thing I know, I’m being summoned into the midst of a battle where some heathen has unleashed dragon fire into the ranks and—”
I tried to cover up my rising embarrassment by interrupting.
“Do you have a way of purging the Technetium from your system?” I asked. “This canyon isn’t the best place to hang out long term.”
The bunny eyed me again as if I were slow, but then seemed to relent.
“I do not need to purge it. It will leave my system in due time, just as any other substance would. My body clears such things the way that your own clears alcohol, or any other toxin that doesn’t kill you first.”
“Oh?” I asked.
The blue bunny nodded.
“I don’t mean to be indelicate, but the substance will pass through me with the rest of my food. I must say, I’m glad I was able to feast so nicely just before you brought me here, as it will, ah…. it will help move things along, if you take my meaning.”
Right. Cool. The bunny-demon was going to poop out some Technetium in…however long it took bunny demons to digest such things.
Well, fine, that was actually awesome, because, yeah. I didn’t want the bunny demon to die, just because of my hasty fire breathing in MOME’s general direction.
“Look, it has been very educational meeting you, and thanks for not killing me earlier, but I need to head back to that damned battle.”
I stood as I spoke, and the bunny nodded again.
“Thank you for your assistance, Miss…”
“Vic. You can call me Vic,” I said.
“Indeed, Vic. It was a pleasure. Thank you for saving my life. I hope to see you again in better circumstances.”
I laughed, and the bunny looked taken aback.
“Sorry. It’s just that my life seems to be one disaster after another, lately. I would love to see anyone again in better circumstances.”
“Ah, yes. Well, best of luck, and do keep an eye out for the one who summoned me.”
“Who summoned you?” I asked, even as I felt around for the seam in front of me.
“If I knew the chap’s name, I dare say I wouldn’t have let him order me about. He’d never have had a chance to…” The bunny seemed to realize he was mumbling, but quickly refocused. “Tall gentleman, older, white beard, white hair, long nose.”
“Shit,” I breathed, just as I stepped through the seam and back into the dungeons at MOME.
AS I RAN up the dank stone stairs, pulling in lungful after lungful of stale air laced with moss, old urine, and traces of even worse refuse, I desperately hoped that Albert hadn’t betrayed us. After all, summoning a demon to clean up a mess of dragon fire wasn’t necessarily an evil act. Thanatos had seemed all too happy to eat up a bunch of dark matter, and it had only seemed mildly ruffled at having to be emergency shifted to the demon realm to poop out some Technetium. So it wasn’t unthinkable that Albert had summoned it, and then some MOME assholes had done their usual trick of ruining everything by trying to blow people up. That was just MOME being MOME, really.
But Blue Bunny had seemed pretty convinced that whoever had summoned him was someone to keep an eye on. That didn’t bode well. Of course, it would be easy enough to mistake the jerk who summoned you from the hell realms as someone who worked for the corrupt government that was trying to kill everyone. Alternatively, it could be that there was another tall, white-bearded, white-haired mage summoning demons at this battle. I really hoped it was the latter. Because if Albert had somehow turned on us…
I didn’t want to think about that one, and I didn’t have time to, as I finally noticed that I’d already burst into the hideous, fluorescent-lit hallways of MOME’s upper levels and was quickly sprinting towards the exit, somehow ignoring the burning aches that still permeated my arms and sides. I reached the glass doors that showed me the parking lot, and ground to a halt once more. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. As far as I knew, I’d only left a handful of allies behind to battle the remains of MOME’s forces, but maybe something in me had somehow expected Renata, Torrence, Rhelia, and Az to miraculously overcome that whole force with just the four of them. Or maybe I’d just expected the reinforcements to arrive, and for the dragons to be kicking the ever-loving crap out of everyone else.
And maybe something like that had happened. There were more of my allies outside than I’d expected to find. A lot more, actually. I barely had time to register them all, but they ranged from the usual suspects—Seamus, Sol, Trev, Rhelia, Renata, Torrence, and Az—to folks I had never really expected to see again like Mr. Topaz and Ms. Rebuke from Flagstaff High, a surprisingly large portion of the Unterberg council, Sylvestra and Cronk, Seamus’ Moms, Sol’s Abuelita—accompanied by a half dozen giant panthers, and last but not least, my Mom and Dad.
Yet the tableau before me was anything but hopeful. For one thing, the sky above it wasn’t full of raging dragons, and it really should have been by now, since we’d clearly gotten everyone out of the MOME building. Where the fuck was General Aira? For another thing, just outside the building, on the too-hot pavement baking in the September sun, surrounded by an absolutely still ring of mages, mind control victims, and the surreal roll call of all the people I had met in the past few weeks, stood Albert, with one arm wrapped rigidly around Trevor. All eyes were focused on the two of them, and filled with varying degrees of terror.
Their posture could easily have been mistaken for a casual one-armed hug, if it hadn’t been for how limp Trev’s form was, and how Albert’s normally easygoing face was transformed by a severely locked jaw, and a wild gaze that looked anything but sane.
It was an expression I’d seen before somewhere, but I didn’t have time to try to place it, because Albert was in the process of raising a syringe in his free hand, all while shouting something I couldn’t hear through the quadruple-paned glass doors.
Until suddenly I could hear it—though I didn’t have time to make out what it was—because I’d shifted myself outside, right in front of them, so close that my momentum carried me between them, almost knocking Trev out of Albert’s grip, even as I felt the prick of a needle at the base of my neck.
I didn’t wait for the tingling sensation that accompanies a liquid being injected into the bloodstream before I pulled on the seam that was becoming as familiar to me as the curtains in my old bedroom. And I didn’t wait until I’d pulled that seam open by hand, either. I just pictured the one place that I knew could save me, made
sure I had a firm hold on Trev, and shifted.
~~~
“Fuck. This is getting old,” I muttered, as my legs decided they couldn’t hold me up anymore. At least I’m not fainting, I thought, as I sank to my knees. I was tempted to go all the way down; to let my head rest against the rocks and take in the orange sky with its purple sun, inhale a few lungfuls of disgusting sulphur-tinged air and relax for a minute, but a small part of my brain reminded me that now wasn’t the time. I was going to have to enjoy the view and wonder why I kept ending up here some other time.
Trev had collapsed right along with me, not stopping at his knees as I had. Probably because he’d been unconscious before I’d even arrived on the scene. He was breathing normally, so I wasn’t too concerned, for the moment.
Which is why I felt I had time to turn and look at the bastard I’d started to consider a friend, or at least an eccentric and somewhat flakey ally, and who was now shouting obscenities at me as though I’d killed one of his beloved pet iguanas and was wearing its skin as a hat.
“RUINED EVERYTHING. AGAIN!! WHY WON’T YOU JUST DIE, AS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO!? THANATOS SHOULD HAVE DEVOURED YOU, ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE! THE SEAM SHOULD BE RIPPED OPEN BY NOW! I SHOULD BE KNEE DEEP IN BODIES, WITH THE INVASION IN FULL SWING!!! HOW DO YOU KEEP SURVIVING?!?”
With all the yelling getting shriller by the second, until it seemed that Albert might start to levitate by dint of sound waves alone, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised when he launched himself at me, while I was still on my knees, crushing me into the dirt right next to where Trev had gone down. I probably should have been even less surprised that he started to try to strangle me and repeatedly bash my head into the ground. I say try because, well, regardless of what had possessed Albert to start acting like an angry teenager who’d never really learned how to fight, I was a teenager who had learned how to fight and, exhausted or not, I was not about to let someone mush my head into the dirt.
So I rolled out from Albert’s trembling grasp and pinned him beneath me, slapping him, because part of me was really struggling with the whole “your mentor-type-person has betrayed you and lost their mind, maybe you should consider knocking them out” thing, and I thought maybe a few reminders of why he couldn’t take me in hand to hand combat (which was his only option, since we were in everyone’s favorite dark-matter-suppressing hell canyon) were in order.
“How do you do it?” Albert asked, after I’d slapped him a second time, then stood up to place myself between him and Trev. I didn’t think there was much he could do to Trev in this place, but I also hadn’t thought he would try to inject Trev with Technetium and wind up injecting me with it instead, so what the fuck did I know?
“How do I do what, Albert?”
“How do you survive? How do you keep refusing to die, no matter how many times you should be killed? How do you always manage to stop me from turning this abomination into the weapon he was meant to be?”
He gestured towards Trev as he said it, and a chill went down my spine as I watched him get up from the red dirt of the canyon floor. There was something off about the way he did it. It was clumsy, like he was drunk, or like everything about his body wasn’t quite where he’d expected it to be.
I was distracted from assessing the movement, though, as a different movement caught my eye in the shadows behind Albert, a brief flash of blue—so quick I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it—in between the puddles of darkness.
I locked my eyes back onto Albert, now warier than ever.
“What do you mean, Albert? As far as I’m aware, this is the first time you’ve tried to blow Trev up. And I’m a little shocked that you decided to do it in person, since that would have killed you, along with everyone else in the greater Phoenix area, not to mention, you know, maybe the universe.”
“Ha! You ridiculous human! Don’t you know anything? Do you really think your precious Albert would try to harm you monsters? The bitch would adopt every magical misfit in the world given half a chance. ‘Albert’ isn’t here, and can’t stop me!”
Then whatever it was, which sure as fuck looked like Albert, but apparently wasn’t, launched itself at me and resumed trying to strangle me, and for just a moment I was so startled that I let it.
“Did you really think a bullet would stop me, you pathetic, backwater mistake? I am the daughter of two of the most powerful mages to ever grace MOME’s training grounds. I am the backbone of a centuries old organization meant to protect magical people from the idiocy of humans and the taint of mixed-breeds like you. I am more powerful than you can even imagine, and I. Will. End. You.”
That last sentence was punctuated with the fervent shaking of my neck, which got old real fast, shock or no shock.
I brought my hands down in a move I’d practiced thousands of times over the years, forcing Albert’s arms down and breaking the stranglehold. Then I headbutted him, with a silent apology to the real Albert as I heard the nose break.
“Damn it, Rebecca,” I wheezed, as Albert’s body stumbled back. “Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”
Rebecca Dryer, or whatever form of her was here looking like Albert, didn’t reply, perhaps finally having learned the value of not monologuing in the middle of a fight. Instead she used Albert’s body to charge me again.
And, look, Rebecca Dryer might have been a powerful mage—I wasn’t sure how those things were measured, and I’d never had to fight her with magic, since she’d always sent other people to do her dirty work for her— but she sure as shit wasn’t any good in a fight without her magic, and especially not in a borrowed body. I still had zero clue how she’d done it, and whatever it was, the fact that it still worked even with dark matter suppressed was terrifying. But she’d clearly managed to take over Albert’s body sometime after he’d shot her. And yeah, three weeks ago that would have been mind-bogglingly creepy, but now it was basically just Thursday.
I had no trouble sweeping Albert’s legs out from under him when Rebecca forced his body to charge me, but that left me in a predicament. I knew a ton of ways to put Albert down permanently, but I didn’t want Albert to die—assuming that Rebecca forcing her spirit into his body hadn’t killed him already, that is. I didn’t really know how this worked, but I was pretty sure that fucking Albert up physically wasn’t going to do much to Rebecca’s spirit in any permanent sense. It would probably seriously mess up Albert, though. Which meant that Rebecca would be more than happy for me to fight him.
“Fuck,” I muttered, hesitating to follow up my leg sweep with anything more damaging, while Rebecca got Albert’s body to its feet and then grinned with a creeptastically manic facial expression.
“You’ve realized you don’t want to hurt your precious mentor, haven’t you?” she asked, sneering at me. “Well, you’re about to lea—”
I never got to hear what I was about to learn, because Albert’s body collapsed then, limp and lifeless, to the ground.
A large belch sounded from behind Albert, as a small blue fur ball hopped over his prone form.
“Thanatos?” I asked, unsure if I should be glad to see the tiny (in this realm) demon.
“I did not like that woman,” Thanatos said in an aggrieved tone, “but she was very tasty.”
“Uh… how did you… uhmmm, I mean, don’t you usually eat dark matter?”
“Me? Oh certainly. I’d rather feast on the stuff. But there’s no dark matter here in the canyon, you know.”
“Ummm… yeah. I know that. The rock suppresses it.”
“Indeed! Well, I was growing rather peckish, and this form isn’t an ideal one for scaling cliffs to seek out food.”
“Right… but what did you eat just now?” I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to know the answer, but I figured it might be important.
“Why, that mage’s shadow, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. Because, yeah sure. Why not? But what did that even mean?
I must have said some part of that last bit a
loud, because Thanatos answered me.
“Surely you’ve been here enough times to know that shadows in this realm are the souls of those who cast them?”
“They are?”
“Of course. Why else would yours be part dragon, part snow leopard, and part… that other thing?”
I turned my head slightly, trying to actually focus on my shadow, and then promptly looked away. It was kind of nauseating to see that many different creatures trying to take up the same space. Then, out of morbid curiosity, I glanced at Thanatos’ shadow, and looked away even faster. The clam-Cthulhu hybrid was not a fun thing to see, even as a two dimensional shape, and it looked especially strange melded with something like a winged human.
“Ok,” I sighed, deciding that I shouldn’t even try looking at Trev’s shadow, all things considered. “So does that mean you ate Albert’s soul, as well?”
Thanatos shrugged his tiny blue bunny shoulders. A strange motion on a rabbit, but whatever. He wasn’t really a rabbit, when it came down to it.
“I only tasted one…flavor, if you will. So I don’t think he was in there. Not that that helps, mind you. If he’s not in there, then you may not have any luck returning him to his body before it dies completely.”
“I… what?”
“I would recommend getting that body back to earth as quickly as you can. If your friend is still able to reclaim the body, you have very little time for him to do it. It may already be too late.”
WHICH IS WHY, a few seconds later, I was slapping Trev awake (or trying to) in the middle of MOME’s dank Phoenix dungeons, ignoring how many times I kept repeating the same damned loop in favor of more pressing issues.
Unlike a dark matter suppressed Gwen, Albert was a full grown man who didn’t seem to be any lighter thanks to the dungeon’s special properties. I was gonna need help carrying him.
“Gwendamnit,” I cried, slapping Trev again, and really starting to worry.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 61
