by Devon Monk
“Vortex?” I asked. We were all jogging now, pressing through the crowd. I shouted in my Police Voice for people to step aside, but the crowd was mesmerized by the light.
They thought it was part of the show.
Or maybe it was actually hypnotizing them.
Than stepped in front of me and extended his hand, long fingers relaxed, palm forward.
“To one side,” he instructed. “This is your police.”
And just like that, every person took a unified, jerky step to one side, leaving a perfect, narrow passageway.
“Creepy,” I said. “But good.”
I turned the jog into a run, Bathin and Than keeping pace.
The crowd was still talking, not worried, not afraid. Not even aware that they had all done half a hokey-pokey for the god of Death.
They were excited about the day, the event, the light in the sky.
I swung my bag across my body and it bumped against my hip as I ran. I wanted it at the ready as soon as we reached the vortex. Not that I knew what to do or how to close it.
“Myra?” Jean’s voice came through my shoulder radio loud and clear.
“Copy. Where are you?”
“South side of the river, just hit the parking lot. Headed to the beach.”
“I’m north side, almost to the river. It’s a vortex.”
“I know.”
“I have Bathin with me. And Than.”
“Good.”
There were no more questions because there wasn’t any time left. I burst out of the crowd and into the soft sand. The river was one of the smallest in the world, running from the freshwater lake just four hundred yards away until it spilled into the ocean.
Between the river and the ocean, about three hundred yards away, stood the vortex.
“Holy shit.” That was the last thing I spared a breath to say. I needed all the oxygen I could get to fuel my headlong sprint down to the mammoth gate.
The vortex was a huge, gothic doorway carved out of twisted iron and polished silver, simultaneously sucking in all light, and reflecting it back in painful, eye-stabbing shafts of light.
It was vertical, a doorway, a gate, tall enough I could drive a semi-truck through it if I wanted, wide enough, two city buses could rumble through side by side.
It was positioned so I should be able to see the ocean behind it, but instead all I saw was swirling darkness sparking with gold and shattered-green lightning.
Bathin’s long legs outpaced mine, and just like the frog situation, he was going to reach the gate before me.
Dammit.
I put on all the speed I had, soft sand slowing me, kicking out from under my boots, rocks and bits of broken driftwood littering the way, hard sand making a crust that only slowed me more before it became harder and wetter so I could run faster, surer.
I dug in and got it going. Jean plowed across the knee-deep water of the river to my left, splashing out on my side of the river in quick order. She had something clutched in her left hand, not a gun, but something that looked like a long knife.
I didn’t know why all the people just stood back there near the river and weren’t coming toward the gate. The other two gates, both much smaller, had drawn people in like bees to buttercups.
This one was bigger, more powerful. It radiated energy like a storm ready to break.
It wasn’t fear that held the crowd back, though it should have been. It was more like thrall.
They weren’t rushing the vortex because they were waiting.
Waiting for whatever was on the other side to show itself.
“Oh, shit!” Jean shouted.
The swirling mass of lightning and fire inside the vortex drew together, funneling into something solid and tall. Much taller than Bathin who had come to a stop just feet away from the vortex, every line of his body poised to fight, to strike, to attack.
“Myra, stop!” Jean lunged for me, caught my arm, and had enough momentum to knock me sideways and slow my pace. She collided into my side, spinning to get her shoulder in front of mine.
“What are you—” I said, but I saw her eyes. Wide. Panicked.
“Doom twinge! Doom twinge! This is bad. Big bad. We need to back the fuck up. Now.”
She didn’t wait for my response. She tightened her grip and muscled me back several steps before my brain kicked into gear and I dug in my heels. Literally.
“Talk,” I instructed.
“We need to get back, more back, way back.” She was pushing again, and even my dug in heels weren’t stopping her.
“Out of the blast zone?”
“Dead zone.” She was breathing too hard. She was in shape, we all were. Being a police officer in this town meant we kept in shape. It wasn’t the run that had knocked her lungs out of whack, it was fear.
I stopped fighting her, and we ran.
Than was strolling our way, having decided not to run toward the danger on the edge of the waves.
I stopped in front of him, and Jean didn’t push me to move. “How are we going to shut that down from here?”
Than glanced at the vortex. “I don’t believe that is possible.
The gold and green in the vortex had become a man shape, ten feet tall, condensing, thickening, sharpening into a body as if that gold and darkness were being pressed into an empty body mold.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A demon?” Jean said.
“A demon knight,” Than clarified. “Bathin’s uncle.”
My chest was tight, but it wasn’t fear. It was need. Everything in me was screaming that I needed to leave here and be there, now, now, now.
Right there at the gate, right there beside Bathin, right there facing that demon knight.
“Stay here,” I told Jean.
“No.”
“Yes. I have to be there with him. I think I know how to shut it down.”
“Think?” She was angry. She was scared. “You expect me to let you run up there with a think-you-have-a-solution?”
“Will I die?” I asked.
That was unfair, asking that of Jean. She shook her head. “That’s a shitty question.”
Yeah, it was. So I decided to ask someone else.
“Will I die?” I asked Than.
He raised his eyebrows as if surprised by being consulted.
“Everyone dies, Myra Reed.”
I rolled my eyes so hard, I thought I pulled a muscle. “Out there. In front of that. Stopping that.” I pointed.
Than shrugged. “That is yet to be seen.”
If that wasn’t the least helpful thing he’d said among all the least helpful things he’d ever said, I didn’t know what was.
“Keep the crowd back.” I dug in my bag, in the little terra cotta teapot, fingers brushing a very rare dried flower. A flower that could kill a demon.
I took a step. Jean grabbed my elbow, stopping me.
“Don’t—”
I pulled out the velvet bag with the scissors. “I have a plan.”
“You can’t use those.”
“That’s what they all say, but I don’t think they’re right.” I held the bag up toward her. “You get any doom twinges off these?”
“All I get off those is evil stank.”
“But no bad feelings.”
“Yes. Bad feelings. Bad evil stank feelings. ”
“How bad? Honestly, Jean. How bad?”
She scowled. “Not…not as bad as whatever is in that damn vortex.”
“Good enough.”
“No,” she said.
I put my hand over hers. “Trust me. I really do have a plan.” She was going to say no again. I could see it all over her.
But then the vortex exploded.
Chapter 24
It was the lack of sound that worried me. The world was fine one second, I could hear the ocean hushing and churning. I could hear the mutterings and other conversations of the crowd behind me. I could hear traffic on the highway, the lap of river water, the
call of seagulls and crows.
Then there was a blast—strident and painful like ground zero in a head-on collision—horns blaring, voices screaming, metal grinding.
And silence.
Jean still held my arm. Hadn’t budged an inch. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t moving at all. My heart clenched, fear so sharp I gasped. Then the details of the world around me pressed through that fear, parting it like fingers in Venetian blinds.
Jean wasn’t moving because no one was moving. The entire world had frozen.
For a heartbeat, I wondered if all of Ordinary had been transported into a bubble, into a stone where time, and all living things, stopped.
Correction. All living things that belonged in Ordinary.
Things, other things—including the thing coming through the vortex—were moving into Ordinary and moving fast.
I pulled my arm away from Jean. She was still frozen in place. I glanced at Than, who nodded once, his eyebrow rising.
I supposed I should have expected a god—even a vacationing god—wouldn’t be affected by whatever was happening. Good. That meant I had back up.
“With me,” I said. My mouth felt numb, slow. No sound came out of it.
Than nodded once again. Maybe he could understand me. Maybe he was just planning on following my lead like we were in the middle of an on-the-job training simulation and it didn’t matter if I were actually speaking words.
I ran toward the vortex. Or at least I tried to. Instead, the tug in my chest flared hot at my first step, and a mind-blurring rush of there dropped me in front of the vortex, right next to Bathin.
Than was not with me. I glanced back, and he was walking this way, but with every step, the world seemed to pull away backward, as if he were trying to walk up a down escalator. He was making progress, but it was slow. Very, very slow.
Bathin was braced in a stance that made it look like he was holding up an invisible wall with his palms. One leg locked behind him, one leg bent, every muscle in his heavy, strong body straining, sweat slicking his thick, black hair, running down his face.
“Run,” he said. I heard it, in my head, clearly, and with my ears as a buzzy, distant thing. “He…he’ll kill you, Myra. He’ll kill everyone.”
I wasn’t going to run. But I did look into that vortex.
And immediately wished I hadn’t.
The man—no, creature—in that swirling mass of blackness was now easily twelve feet tall. Made of whips of gold lighting and squirming flesh, he was in human form, but warped, stretched, and burning. Screaming mouths opened and closed, bubbling up to the surface of his flesh before drowning in flames. Hands reached out of his chest, his arms, fingers eaten down to bare bone scrabbling against the fleshy prison.
It would have been horrifying, I supposed, to someone who hadn’t grown up in Ordinary and teethed on bedtime stories read out of Necronomicons.
I’d seen all sorts of horrors in my life, and some of them even made pretty good neighbors.
What was on the outside did not always match what was on the inside. Ordinary had taught me that young. But this thing, this demon creature, was either showing me his true form, or was just trying to scare me.
“I will chew your bones and burn your soul on a spit,” the uncle demon intoned.
Yawn.
“This is god-chosen land,” I said, planting myself right beside Bathin, one hand on my hip, the other in my bag. If this plan was going to work, Bathin couldn’t see it coming. Couldn’t guess I would have brought the scissors here. Now. “You will not enter.”
I was close enough to stab the scissors in Bathin’s back, close enough to release Delaney’s soul.
Than wouldn’t let Delaney’s soul be taken by another demon, I was betting on that. Banking on it. He might act cool and removed, but he had a thing for my sister.
He wasn’t going to let her soul get sucked into the vortex. He wouldn’t allow her soul to be destroyed.
As soon as I released her soul, I’d shove Bathin through that vortex. A snap of my fingers while crumbling one very rare flower, would finish the job.
With any luck, it would blow up the vortex. And everything in it.
“You are not welcome here, demon.” I drew the scissors out of my bag, and held them in my palm, a knife ready for stabbing. “Leave. Now.”
“Myra,” Bathin shouted. “Run! I can’t hold him back for long.”
The demon tipped his horned head toward me. Two yellow eyes stared back, caught like hooks in my brain.
“Your weapon is useless,” he rumbled.
That was when Bathin noticed what was in my hands. His eyes widened and he straightened, drawing his palms away from whatever invisible force he had been fighting.
I braced for something to explode now that he had stepped back, but if anything, the vortex appeared less violent.
“You dare—” the demon inside the vortex said.
Bathin held his hand over his shoulder. Dismissive. Nonchalant. Except I knew him. He was tight under all that swagger. A wire stretched and thin. A trigger squeezed tight.
“Hold,” he commanded.
Uncle demon crossed his massive arms over his chest, the screaming mouths nothing more than black-hearted flames now. “This Reed sister? Really? She is…”
“Fire,” Bathin agreed. “Myra, what are you doing with those scissors?”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, my mouth dry, my heart pounding, but my words steady. “An awful lot of people have told me I can’t use them to free Delaney’s soul. All of those people have been demons.”
“Who else would know the truth of it?” He was watching my hand, or really, he was watching the scissors.
“No one. So I think there is only one way to find out if the scissors have been the solution to our problem all along.”
I held up the scissors.
The demon in the vortex made a sound that was so close to laughter, it almost broke my concentration. “Yes! Kill him!” the demon bellowed.
But it was Bathin’s voice that caught me. His one, gasped, “No,” so quiet I almost didn’t hear it.
He moved. Fast. His hands, massive, warm, strong, closing over mine. “Don’t do this, Myra. Don’t do this. The price—”
“Mine to pay. Say good-bye to my sister’s soul, Bathin.” I shifted my weight, not forward like he might expect, but backward, breaking his hold on my hands and the scissors.
I pivoted, faster than humanly possible, as quick as a thought, demon laughter pummeling the air around me.
“Love…” Bathin reached for me again, his hands on mine raised in an arc meant to bury the scissors square in his chest. His fingers tightened, inhumanly strong as he twisted the scissors out of my grip.
“No!” I yelled, battling for the weapon. Knowing it was the only chance to save Delaney. To close the vortex. To keep Ordinary safe.
“…you,” Bathin breathed. He plunged the scissors into his chest.
We were bound in some way. His mother had made sure of that. Right then. Right—
—there—
—I could feel it, the pain that lashed through him, the fire that spread out from the deep, brutal puncture, burning like a poison through his body.
Like a flame held against a spider’s web.
He was standing there, both hands around the scissors buried to the hilt in his chest.
Then he flew into a thousand thousand burning embers, specks of dust gone star-hot, a volcanic eruption that flashed into ashy-white snow and was carried away on the salted wind.
Something in me broke too. A soft, thump deep in my chest.
The world roared back. Colors, sound, movement clashed and crashed, rose in a huge wave bent on destruction, too big, too strong, to survive. I yelled, one hand over my eyes, the other over my heart.
Bathin was gone.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
The churning gears of time and reality collided, cogs smashing to rubble.
I was lost.
“Myra,” Jean’s voice, clear and strong. “You’re okay. You’re okay. What did you do? Myra, what did you do?”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe.
A hand fell on my shoulder, heavy and so very cold. “Myra Reed.”
Than’s voice, his touch, settled the world, organized reality, and my place in it.
“Hey, there you are,” Jean smiled.
I was sitting on the sand. She was crouched in front of me, the ocean behind her.
I glanced around wildly.
No vortex. No demons. There was just a beach filled with pirates, Jean in front of me, and Than standing at our side, staring pensively off to the north. His hand was closed, and tucked in his pocket. I’d never seen him stand like that before.
“The vortex?” I asked.
“Whoa, cowboy,” Jean pressed harder on my shoulder to stop me from getting up. Probably a good idea. I was a little dizzy from just trying. “You are going to sit here until we have the paramedics check you out.” She glanced up. “Look at that, they’re almost here.”
I did look, and saw Mykal and Steven trotting over with a stretcher and a medical case.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I have business to attend,” Than said. He turned abruptly and strode away down the sand toward the north, toward the hospital.
I watched him go. Even though there was a crowd of happy pirates who didn’t appear to think anything was amiss, he sort of blended right into the bunch of them and was gone.
“What part do you remember?” Jean asked.
“The vortex, the demon…Bathin. Holy shit. He stabbed himself.”
Jean shook her head slightly. “No, I’m pretty sure you did that.”
“Did you see it? Were you close enough to see whose hand was on the scissors?”
“No. You disappeared so fast, I couldn’t track anything.”
“Fast?”
“You were next to me, then popped up by Bathin. Before I could even yell, there was a flash of fire, and he was gone and you were here. Kneeling in the sand. ”
“The vortex?”
“It disappeared with Bathin. I’m pretty sure no one even remembers it.”
