Love Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  Dang those cherubs and their arrows!

  I took a careful step to the side, the purse clutched in my left hand. It wasn’t optimal since I was right-handed. But if I tried to shift it to the other side, Ralph would be in the way.

  I realized in a moment of pure terror that I’d brought a purse to a knife fight. The one benefit of my weapon was that nobody looked twice at it. Everyone just thought it was my purse.

  The man’s hostile glare spun my way. “You stay back now. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  I nodded toward his sweatshirt. “Too late for that, eh?”

  He blinked, looking down at himself in surprise. The man shook his head. “That’s my blood. I’ve just been trying to protect her.” His tone was angry, determined. “I can’t believe this. I must be paying for the sins of my youth.”

  “Please help,” the woman said, her face a pale oval from the shadows behind the bench.

  The knife-wielding man whipped around as he shushed her. “I need to think, honey. They’re going to be back.”

  She nodded, her pretty face stark with fear. The woman was clutching the side of the bench with one hand, and I took note of the deep scratches in her flesh.

  I jerked my head toward her. “How did she get those scratches?”

  The man straightened his shoulders in a jerky motion. Then he ran a hand over his face, wiping a gloss of sweat away as his eyes jerked around the space. “I told you. It was those demons.”

  “Where’d they go?” I asked. When his gaze wrenched to mine, I clarified. “The demons?”

  He swung the arm with the knife around the space, his eyes wide. “They’re everywhere. They tried to take Nina. I can’t let them take her.”

  The woman sobbed again, shifting around behind the bench until I saw her belly. “She’s pregnant?” I exclaimed without thinking.

  The man tensed, his gaze turning shrewd. “You’re not touching that baby.”

  I held the purse in front of me because it was all I had. “No. I…”

  “We came to help,” Ralph squeaked out. “I’m the manager, and she’s…” He frowned. “She’s with the police.”

  The man’s expression cleared. “Police?”

  Nina’s head slid out of the shadows. “Honey, maybe she knows Grym.”

  Well, I’ll be a slug’s auntie.

  “You know Grym?” I said, stepping closer before I realized what I was doing.

  The man’s knife hand lowered a few inches. “I work for him.”

  “You’re one of Grym’s guys?” I smiled, lowering the purse with relief. My arm had been shaking from the effort of holding it up.

  “Detective Devin Sampson. That’s my wife, Nina.”

  Behind him, Nina nodded enthusiastically. “Are you a cop too?”

  “No.” I hesitated, then asked. “Are you part of Grym’s special squad?”

  Devin’s eyes turned gold, and the hand he held at his side grew pale gray fur and black claws.

  That would be a yes. If I had to guess from the shape of the transformed hand…er…paw...Devin Sampson was a Wolf shifter.

  Standing on the cop’s other side, Ralph was oblivious to the change. “What’s a special squad?”

  Devin let the illusion fall. He relaxed visibly. “We handle the weird stuff.”

  It was as good an explanation as any. The truth of the matter was that all of Grym’s special squad guys were supernormals. I’d met a few of them but had never met Devin. I offered him my hand. “Naida Griffith.”

  I let him roll my name over in his mind a moment, watching the moment he recognized it. “Ah. It’s nice to meet you, Keeper.”

  I nodded.

  “Keeper?” Ralph asked, growing increasingly confused. “Keeper of what?”

  I shrugged. “Think of me as a mini-museum. I store and protect rare artifacts.”

  Ralph nodded. “Cool.”

  “Have you tried using your…” He glanced at Ralph and frowned. “Look, Keeper, there’s no way we can hide all this from the norms. We’ll need to bring in help afterward to clean this up.”

  He meant that Grym would need to bring in some witches to wipe everybody’s memories.

  I grimaced. I knew he was right. But I just hated the thought of messing with people’s minds. “I know. In answer to your question, I haven’t. Not yet. I wasn’t sure what we were dealing with.” That was a lie—a small one. I knew what we were dealing with, but it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be magical artifacts in a place like a mall. However, just like the weight I’d found in an athletic clothing store, people used lots of different items for display purposes. “I’ll do that now.” I looked around, noticing that all of the closest shops already had their security doors closed. “Why haven’t you moved to a more protected spot?”

  Devin tensed for a moment, a frown finding his face. “Every time we try to move, they attack. We actually started way down on that end of the mall. It’s taken us over an hour to get here.”

  We all looked toward the hallway where Ralph and I had just been. “You need to get to the elevator.”

  He nodded. “If you can provide any kind of cover, I’d appreciate it.” He glanced at Nina and stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I know what these things are. They want the baby. They’re not getting her or that baby as long as I’m breathing.”

  I thought about the story Osvald had told me and couldn’t help wondering if Desiree might be playing a special kind of game. “Let me do my thing.” I jerked my head toward Ralph. “Keep an eye on him for a minute?”

  Devin nodded.

  I moved away from the group, tucking myself into an alcove between two stores, and pulled as much energy as I could muster into my fingertips. I sent the magic into the universe, giving it an extra boost that I hoped would find any artifacts available in the enormous mall.

  Maybe even something useful.

  There was a distant ping. And then another. And another.

  My eyes went wide. I would never have guessed there could be three magical artifacts inside the mall. The air above us thickened and roiled. I felt the sting of deadly magic a beat before the cherubs emerged from thin air.

  Four of them.

  All armed with jagged teeth and poisonous arrows.

  Devin dove toward Ralph as the first nasty cherub nocked an arrow and aimed. He shoved the man behind a large potted palm, leaping into the air and punching the cupid in the face before it could fire the arrow. The thing tumbled tail over teakettle and slammed into the wall above my head.

  “Oy!” I screamed as the demon slid down the bricks and slammed into me.

  A whistling sound had me flinging up a hand just in time to catch an ancient-looking metal lantern. As my fingers touched it, flame flared to life inside the scratched and cloudy glass. The demon on my back had drawn back its chubby arm and was ready to stick me with a poisoned arrow. The lantern light flared brightly, transposing a squat skeleton over the fleshy demon before my eyes.

  The cherub screamed, a terrified, high-pitched shriek of fear and pain that made my teeth hurt. It flew backward off me in an attempt to escape the illumination and slammed into the ground, writhing in agony as the light turned the spectral vision of a skeleton into reality.

  Within the space of three screams, the cherub had been reduced to nothing but ash.

  The fire in the lantern went out.

  Ralph screamed as another cherub dove from the sky and landed on top of him behind the big pot.

  Nina had somehow gotten her hands on my weighted purse and was pummeling another cherub with the fashionable leather weapon.

  Devin had a big hand around the throat of one cherub and was stabbing the knife at the other, continually missing as the thing dodged easily from side to side.

  As I shoved to my feet, my horrified gaze spotted another cherub speeding through the air in Devin’s direction.

  I threw up my right hand, my brain automatically registering the soughing sound of air being displaced
by a flying artifact. A stiff width of felt met my palm, and I looked down at a wide-brimmed felt hat with a hard brim.

  Devin went down under three cupids, his husky cries turning my blood cold. His form became indistinct, wavering in the light, and started to grow. Dense gray fur sprouted along his arms.

  He was shifting.

  The cop dropped the knife and punched a suddenly massive fist into one of the cherub’s faces. The nasty demon flew backward directly at me. I yelped and flung my hands up, not even thinking about the hat I was still clutching. To my surprise, the brim of the hat made a deep slice across the creature’s back.

  The cherub screamed and hit the floor near my feet. It promptly turned black and disappeared in a burst of gray dust.

  I sneezed as the dust assailed my nostrils.

  Devin’s hands had turned to paws and he swung a thick, furred arm at another cherub, raking the nasty bug in four, deep furrows across its chest.

  The cherub shot skyward, shrieking in pain, and then plummeted toward the half-shifted cop again. Acting on pure instinct, I threw the hat at the thing like a frisbee. The brim caught the cherub in its middle and the creature slammed into a thick pillar near the stairs and popped into dust.

  The hat flew back my way. I threw up a hand and caught it, running at the cupid that was still attacking Nina. It had managed to yank her from behind the bench and was lifting her off the ground, its tiny wings moving as fast as a hummingbird’s. Before I could reach her, a second demon had joined the first and they’d managed to get her a few inches off the floor.

  I flew at them, smashing the brim into the first one and then, without thinking, slamming the hat down over the second cherub’s head.

  It disintegrated in a puff of dust.

  Sebille buzzed past me, and green light filled the air above our heads. When I glanced up, I saw with horror that the air was thick with the ugly little things.

  Heavy footsteps announced Grym’s arrival, probably in gargoyle form by the sound of the footfalls.

  My left hand shot into the air. A bottle slammed into my palm.

  I threw the hat at two cupids diving toward Ralph, hitting first one and then the other. They disintegrated with a satisfying pop.

  The hat came soaring back, and I caught it again.

  I glanced at the bottle in my hand. “Super Pop. A sugary delight!” the label read.

  “Great,” I mumbled. “Soda pop. Not very useful.”

  “Behind you!” Nina yelled.

  I reacted without thinking, swinging the hat at the demons. Before the artifact could connect, another cherub slammed into me and the hat hit the floor. I fell on top of it, and the cherub attacked, wings humming as its razor-sharp teeth snapped at my throat.

  All I had left to fight with was the sugary pop.

  I jammed the bottle between the deadly teeth and it broke, spilling the sugary liquid into the cupid’s snapping jaws.

  The demon went very still, its black eyes going wide, and with a sound like a balloon inflating, it suddenly expanded and started to float away. It was as if somebody had put an air hose into the thing’s mouth and blown it up.

  The cherub floated out of my grip and, tiny arms and legs flailing, sailed away like an ugly dirigible.

  “Awesome sauce!” I said.

  Another scream pierced the air. My shoulders sagged. I looked around for the culprit and found Nina fighting off three cherubs. With a sigh, I stood, one hand clutching the hat and the other holding the bottom of the broken soda bottle.

  With a weary sigh, I trudged toward the battling woman with my strange weapons.

  12

  Spots to be A-Voided

  Nina, Sebille, and I sat on the dust-covered bench where Nina had been hiding. The dusty remains of the cupids would have been off-putting, except that I couldn’t find any part of my person that wasn’t already covered in the stuff. What was a little more cherub dust on my weary butt?

  Nina’s hair stood straight up at the top, the fine strands glued together with battle gore. Her eyes were white spheres in a sea of gray grime. She stared straight ahead, one hand rubbing her copious baby bump, and said nothing for long moments.

  Devin had been over several times to make sure she was okay. She’d nod each time, give him a weary smile, and then insist she was fine and that he should go back to work.

  I wasn’t sure if she was a strong woman or just so freaked out by what had happened to her that she’d gone to that special place in her mind.

  Beside me, the sprite looked fairly unaffected by the great battle of the demonic cherubs. She was inspecting the split hairs on the end of one of her long, red braids when I glanced her way. “What took you guys so long?” I asked, flinching at the accusatory tone of my question.

  Sebille fixed me with a haughty look.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a little grumpy.”

  Sebille rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t a walk in the mall down there, you know. We kicked some serious cherub butt before we came up here.” She grimaced. “Grym’s cleaners are going to need a lot of vacuum bags.”

  I nodded. “It could be worse. At least the little guys pouffed into dust instead of entrails.”

  Sebille’s gaze rose slowly upward to the glass dome at the center of the mall. “Except for those guys.”

  Half a dozen cherub balloons were stuck to the glass of the ceiling, tiny arms and legs flailing. I grinned. “As Lea would say, blizzardy!”

  My friend Lea was a great BFF and a talented witch. But her grasp of modern slang left something to be desired.

  Sebille snorted out a laugh. “I’m not sure how they’re going to get them down.”

  “Pop them,” said a soft voice beside me. Sebille and I turned to find Nina grinning. “That’s what I’d suggest.”

  We all laughed, the sound turning slightly hysterical before we managed to rein it in.

  “Unh,” said Ralph, who’d placed himself on the bench across from us and was looking a little green around the gills. Nobody had asked the mall manager how he felt because we were afraid he’d tell us.

  He was a non-magic human. He’d watched what had to have been close to a hundred demonic cupids try to kill or abduct a bunch of his customers. He’d seen one man turn into a wolf. Yeah, Devin had finally gone all the way to furry. It had been stupendous.

  Plus, Ralph had seen a dragonfly-sized Sebille shoot green energy at the nasty cherubs. He’d watched Grym pound them into literal dust with his rock hands. And he’d witnessed me slicing them with a sombrero and inflating them with sugar.

  Busy day.

  It was no wonder the man was currently mumbling to himself and twitching as if he’d swallowed a live wire.

  I jerked my chin in his direction. “Should somebody go and…I don’t know…hold his hand or something?”

  Grym came up the stairs from the first floor, his human form firmly back in place. His gaze searched the area until it found me. He smiled.

  My tummy warmed from that smile, and my world stopped threatening to topple.

  I stood as he headed our way and met him at the end of the crosswalk. “How’s it going down there?”

  He rubbed a hand over his weary face, the day’s whiskers making a crackling sound against his hand. “The witches are here. They’ve managed to remove the poison from most of the affected and are working on wiping everybody’s memories.”

  I nodded, rubbing my hands over my arms. “Ralph needs some attention.” I gave Grym a meaningful look. “I’m starting to worry he’ll never recover.”

  We both glanced toward the bedazzled manager. The man was smacking the air in front of his face as if he was being attacked by gnats.

  Grym winced. “I’ll have someone come up and take care of him.”

  A long, feral shriek sounded from the other end of the mall. I jumped and bumped into Grym. He steadied me, pulling me into his warmth. I wanted to pull away. To show him I could stand on my own two feet, but his warmth felt way too good to pu
sh away.

  I sighed. “That will be Daisy. We locked her into the athletic attire store so she wouldn’t kill me for looking at Ralph.”

  Grym made a non-committal grunting sound. “I’ll send the witches there after they finish with Ralph. Did you ever locate the rest of his staff?”

  I shook my head. “I checked after the worst was over. The office was empty. They must have flown the coup.”

  He held me for a long moment, until I found the strength to pull away. We stood in awkward silence for a beat.

  Then Grym pointed toward the domed ceiling. “Is that your handiwork?”

  I looked up and barked out a laugh. “Guilty.”

  He shook his head. “It’s never boring around you.”

  “I do try.” I gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Are you over the whole caveman thing?”

  He frowned. “Caveman thing?”

  I formed my voice into what I assumed a caveman might sound like, though I had no way to know for sure since we hadn’t run into any when we’d visited the Jurassic era. I wish we had. It would have been icy. “I man. You woman. I kill any man who touches woman.”

  Grym winced. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I kicked that off pretty quickly after you left. I’m surprised it even affected me. Poison usually doesn’t.”

  “Maybe because you were still in your human form?” Grym’s gargoyle form was, not too surprisingly, hard and impermeable. Not much got through it. And his system was attuned to that form. But although most poisonous things didn’t have their full effect on him, occasionally something slipped past his defenses. “I’m glad it’s gone. I kind of like you the way you are.”

  His eyes sparkled. “Ditto.”

  We stared at the flailing beachballs for a minute. Then I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask. “How are you going to get them down?”

  Grym’s lips curved in a slow smile. “Well, there’s only one way to get a balloon to descend.”

  I grinned too. I couldn’t help it. “Pop them?”

  He nodded. Light filled his gaze as he refocused it on the inflated cherubs.

  “How are you going to do it?”

  He bent down and pulled something shiny off the floor, holding a tiny arrow up for me to see. “It just so happens I have access to a whole bunch of sharp projectiles. I’m guessing there are a few discarded bows around here somewhere.”