Junior (A Wyrdos Tale Book 3)

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  “Hello.”

  The buffalo-monster tilted his head a fraction. Junior almost looked away at a tiny guffaw from Lee. But then the creature spoke to Diejuste. He asked her a question. The monster’s tone rose on the last word. None of the words except that last word were English or any language Junior recognized. But the last word was familiar to all seven supernaturals in Diejuste’s new family. Yaksha.

  The monster was looking for Yaksha Morioka.

  Junior hadn’t been able to spot her when this all began. But with the heightened senses of imminent death he saw a second set of legs where Morton stood stock still on the far side of the massive shaggy thighs. Diejuste explained that they couldn’t understand the man. She tried a few languages on him but the monster wasn’t really listening.

  A sustained chord from the vibes ended Moonglow and there was just a heartbeat of silence before a horn bounced into Irving Berlin’s Cheek to Cheek.

  Junior’s attention was drawn to Morton when he felt a spike of fear. Her mouth hung open as if she’d forgotten to breathe.

  He ducked. The great monster reached one impossibly long arm over Junior to snatch Beth away from her jukebox.

  Several people cried out at this but their voices were overshadowed by the beast braying and issuing demands in a language nobody in the room could possibly understand. He held Beth high, scraping her between the ceiling and his horns.

  Despite the guilt and shame in his heart, Junior’s muscles trapped him in place. He didn’t want to watch but he couldn’t look away. He tried to turn his mind from the sight of this demon casually torturing the poor insane lady. He tried to focus on her music instead. The dichotomy turned his guts.

  Fred Astaire’s smooth, unconcerned voice crooned forced rhymes while the monster drank Beth’s blood. Fred’s voice wobbled but the jukebox didn’t so much as skip when Beth’s broken body slammed into it. Junior didn’t hear much at all after that because Beth’s murder forced everyone in the bar to believe that what they were seeing really was happening and the surge of fear hit Junior like a tetherball. It hit him and bounced off.

  He looked up to see Diejuste pulling the fear from him, from everyone in the room. She gathered it all to her breast, struggling with the mighty effort. Beyond her Detective Morton arched like a hook had suddenly yanked her ribcage up. Head thrown back, mouth stretched wide, she keened a piercing cry to the heavens. Her blunt cut red curls grew out straight and white and flowing long behind her as a violent wind whipped through the room. Lights flickered. Muffled claps of thunder drew his attention to a storm brewing up in the corners of the ceiling.

  Junior huddled with his bloody hands clamped over his ears as the lights blazed and glass broke around him raining liquor all over the bar. He risked glancing up when he felt an unnatural heat coming from the monster. The buffalo held a swirling fireball in one tri-fingered hand. It grew even as he wound up to throw the fire at the keening detective. Junior cried out as the sparking ball flew from the monster’s grasp.

  12

  Dad

  Junior couldn’t stop the fireball anymore than he could have kept Jane’s heart from failing. His Jane, the woman who should have been his wife, she died and there was nothing he could have done about it. But at that moment, in that minute when he watched her choke on her engagement ring, survive, laugh, clutch her chest, and die Junior changed. He wanted nothing for himself. He wanted only that Jane should live. He went into the closet, digging into his coat pocket for the phone, with his father’s genetic gifts swirling to the surface at last. The door clicked shut behind him.

  I wish I had never been born.

  The thought rang over and over in his head as he wrapped himself in the smell of her. Surrounded by the weight of their clothes and coats and games and childhood toys and all the bits of their life that lived in there, out of sight, he let the desire overtake him. His senses shut out her smell, the feel of her dresses. Darkness took care of sight. Feeling nothing, feeling numb, Junior crumpled to the ground not noticing that their shoes were gone. Sobbing over his knees until the hiccups stopped him.

  He had to push himself past the grief, the horror, the words. He had to breathe. He had to focus on the phone and call 911. Raw anguish bricked up his chest again as he hit and held emergency.

  It took several moments for him to realize the call didn’t connect. He stared down at the no service message. After another moment, he pushed to his feet as he unlocked the screen. He pushed the door open, noticing only peripherally that it wasn’t latched and the lights had gone out. He swiped to the phone keypad. The screen blurred up at him but the nine was easy to find. He kept his thumb pressed to the screen as he looked away, blinking to clear his vision.

  The first thing he noticed was that instead of a white-washed cement block wall to his right, he was looking over the kind of pink four-poster bed he’d imagined were only found in little girls’ picture books. Plush pink carpet swallowed his bare feet. A cracked unicorn nightlight leant a blue glow to the room that was not his basement studio.

  The wall opposite him featured a dozen pictures around a poster of a child with Mickey, Goofy, and two adults. Junior walked across the room, drawn to the photos. The pictures were shots of teenage girls pulling goofy faces at the camera. Every picture featured one particular blond haired, hazel-eyed girl. Even as a teen, his mother’s style was immaculate, not a hair out of place. It was strange. For eighteen years he’d lived with her in a one-room studio. She tried for perfection but never achieved it. She’d have almost smoothed her hair into a ponytail when Junior would wake up or make a mess or just demand her attention. And she’d give it to him. He was more important than perfection to her.

  Junior leaned in close to the Mickey Mouse poster. The two adults smiling at their daughter rather than the camera must be his grandparents. He’d never seen them before. Their names were Delia and Ray. They’d met at his law firm when she was just an intern, fresh out of college. She had Kathryn’s ice blond hair. Ray had her hazel eyes and dimples. Both of them had the sharp features that had skipped over his mother and landed with force on Junior.

  The room’s door burst open and light flooded in. Teenage Kathryn slammed the door shut behind her, tossing her backpack onto the floor. Junior plastered himself against the poster of his family. She didn’t take any notice of him. Her focus was glued to a silver medal hanging from a ribbon in her hand. She polished it with a sleeve as she made her way across the room, instinctively avoiding the piles of clothes and schoolbooks crushing the plush carpet. With all the care of a Pulitzer winner, she draped the ribbon over the post of a standing mirror. She admired it, adjusting the ribbon so the medal lay just so against the frame. The back of her shirt featured a blue horse rearing and some words Junior couldn’t make out.

  Kathryn pulled the button-down team shirt over her head and carefully laid it out with the horse centered and the long sleeves spreading the length of her dressing table. She spent another several seconds admiring her medal and shirt. Then she dropped onto the bed to peel off her jeans and yank a white camisole over her head. She rolled over the bed to throw the clothes into her closet, followed by her bra.

  Without looking around her room, without noticing the strange pale man in the corner, Kathryn Leo wriggled under the covers, grabbed a stuffed rabbit from under one pillow, and curled up around it with a sleepy giggle. “We won, Hooper. We won.”

  Minutes passed before Junior could move again. He didn’t. His tears for Jane crusted around his eyes as he stared the figure on the bed. His mind reeled. This was his mother’s room. That was his mother. It was impossible. It was unreal.

  It was unreal that she could sleep so silently, so peacefully. He watched her, waiting for the nightmares to come.

  As a child lying beside her in their single bed Junior had felt her tremors night after night. Even when they acquired a futon couch for him, he heard her moans, her cries of fear. She hated going to bed. She longed for insomnia. But no one can s
tay awake forever. Nearly every night of his childhood, Junior had woken at some point to hear his mother reliving the night of his creation. He knew he hadn’t been planned. He knew he wasn’t born of love. He knew, he’d always known, that his inception was her ruin.

  But this Kathryn Leo lay still. Her even breaths filled the room with calm. Junior watched in awe.

  As he stood there his eyes adjusted to the darkness as they never had before. He picked up the dying glow of ten-year-old star stickers arranged in a triangle on her ceiling. A reflection of the unicorn nightlight lit up the white eyes of a teddy bear. He was entranced by the heat signature pulsing off of her newt in its cage on the window box. His ears acclimated too and he found he could hear her heart beat slowing as she drifted deeper into sleep. He heard the mechanical hand of her clock ticking over the seconds.

  A subtle shift in air pressure drew his eyes away from the bed. But they shot back as the tiniest of noises came from the closet. His mother couldn’t have heard it but he felt a wave of emotion sail out from the bed. A great circle of denial and hope pulsed from her so clear Junior imagined he could see it bounce off the walls of the room, building as it rebounded back toward the bed. He could see her fear. The unidentified noise sounded again, infinitesimally quiet. Another pulse of fear, stronger this time, spread out from the sleeping figure. A smaller pulse followed. He saw waves compounding as they hit the returning cycles. Unbearable fear washed over him repeatedly in time with the pounding of her heartbeat in his ears.

  A third time the little noise came. But it was followed by a sound Junior knew. The closet hinges squeaked. A shadow inside the dark closet had his hand on the door and was pushing it slowly open.

  Junior didn’t stop to consider the strange situation he was in. He didn’t weigh the factors or take his grief into account. He just followed his feet back across the ridiculous carpet and laid his hand on the closet door. Two thin panels of wood and pocket of air separated one hand from the other, father from son.

  The boogeyman pushed. Junior resisted. He felt a tiny ribbon of fear woven through his father’s surprise. It took only a little effort to push the boogeyman back into his darkness. Junior leaned forward and the door shut.

  snick

  To his newly enhanced hearing, the click of the latch on the strike plate seemed to echo through the room. But a sense of rightness spread through him. It was as if an icicle had encased his heart all his life and now it melted, letting his true self spread through his veins at long last. He rested his forehead on the door, his tears renewed by this overwhelming sense of relief.

  It was only a second’s respite though because while the click hadn’t been as loud as he imagined, it had been loud enough to wake his mother. Kathryn Leo sat straight up in bed. She jerked to her left and stared at him, her hazel eyes connecting with his. Her face was suffused with a fearful anticipation and she seemed to glow. Then her eyes registered him. She’d been expecting someone else. First disappointment colored her expression and then her eyes widened and a spike of fear shot between mother and son and he felt himself, for the first time, wink out of sight.

  13

  The Survivors

  Junior couldn’t save Jane from her heart. He couldn’t save Diejuste or Morton from the buffalo monster’s fireball. But he had stopped his father from hurting his mother. He had stood against that evil and he would stand against this one.

  He cried out as the fireball left the monster’s hand. Diejuste didn’t duck. Morton never even noticed the attack. Junior searched for help. Lee stood where she had been, eyes glued to her brother. Bailey crawled on his knees, searching the floor by the tables beside Orin. The brownie knelt by Bailey but his head was up, calm green eyes focused on the fireball. He lifted one hand, his thumb and middle finger squeezed against each other.

  Junior darted a look to Lucio on his stool and Amal in the archway. Each held up a hand, fingers squeezed tighter and tighter until one digit slipped off the other and slapped against their palms all at once.

  Snap

  The fireball fizzled. Before the missile reached Diejuste’s blue eyes or Detective Morton’s aching, arching body the flame sputtered into nothing. Morton keened on as ash and embers rained harmlessly to the glass strewn ground. Junior’s cry died in his throat. Fear peaked in the room at the sight of the monster’s power negated and Junior fought against the terror that shot his way.

  “Brudda!” Diejuste cut through his thoughts.

  He looked to her and saw the ocean of fear that weighed him down. The heaviest fears radiated from the monster. Seeing his fire extinguished as if it were a parlor trick had lowered the monster’s guard enough that Diejuste was able to pull her little trick and force the creature to feel everybody else’s fears.

  Junior crawled out of his cave of stools and stood.

  Diejuste smiled. “Your turn.”

  He blew on his painful palms one more time. Then he wrapped himself in invisibility for the demon’s sake. The others could see him clearly as he walked safely around the trunk-thick thighs. He searched the ground under the bar while the buffalo ranted on, snorting every other word. The box had skidded to rest against a leg of Lucio’s stool. Junior folded his lanky self down, picked it up, and smiled at the brownie. Then he turned to consider the monster.

  Every eye in the bar was on Junior. The demon swung his head, looking from face to face and back to the empty space they were all watching. He stretched out his enormous pink tongue to swipe at the fluid dripping from one nostril. It gave his speech a strange cadence. The creature’s black on black eyes glowed more fiercely as his pupils enlarged. Junior could hear a heart beating out of control. He wondered idly if buffalo demons had a naturally higher pulse rate or if this was all his fear. He chose to believe it was the fear.

  For the first time, Junior was glad to see someone so frightened. He looked at the monster, listened to Beth’s music, and knew what he needed to do.

  The boogeyman’s bastard strode forward until he stood directly in front of the nine-foot tall buffalo man. Then he made himself visible. The monster looked like wanted to scream. Junior had come to know the expression well in the eight years since he’d prevented his own birth and inherited his father’s powers. That expression was always a frozen one. A still from a horror movie. Like every other boring non-monster human, the sight of the boogeyman paralyzed the buffalo. The creature could only move his eyes.

  Junior looked around at the people Diejuste had called her family and assured them, “It’s okay.”

  Lee was already clambering over the bar to Seb’s side. Orin whooshed over to the bar to give Lee a boost. A moment later, a small fawn dog bounded over the bar, slid something down the pocked surface on her way over, then bounced off a stool and raced over to help Bailey. The detective, her hair short and red again, reached over to catch the tiny padlock as it flew right off the bar.

  Morioka, pushed Morton aside. “Go.”

  Morton stumbled into Junior. Diejuste joined them, involuntarily obeying the captain’s command. “Get behind Onioka.”

  Junior said, “It has a name?” But nobody heard him.

  Morton didn’t want to leave Morioka but she obeyed, herding the others behind the monster.

  Junior expected a speech. He expected Yaksha Morioka to lecture this Onioka. But she didn’t speak except to chant so quietly he couldn’t make out words. Her chant clashed with the strings that had taken over the melody of “Cheek to Cheek.” Orin whooshed to Junior’s side, holding the tiny carved key.

  Morioka grew as she chanted. Her coat split when her shoulders grew too wide and sharp scale-covered ridges sprouted from her arms. Four-fingered claws formed from her hands. Her face grew a long muzzle with a double row of razor sharp teeth. But the last and greatest change was when leather wings sprang from her back. They spread and scraped the ceiling, pouring more plaster over the frozen buffalo man.

  At Junior’s side, Diejuste took up the chant, joining Morioka until the dr
agon opened her wide mouth and breathed fire at the monster who had killed Beth. Flames washed over Onioka, shrinking him down. Morton keened her storm down on the monster’s shrinking head. Diejuste chanted, Morioka flamed, and Junior held the box ready.

  Soon the monster was small enough that Orin and Junior could grab at his arms. Amal and Lucio leapt to his shoulders and pushed. When they fell off, they whooshed to his horns and his feet and his chest. The boys shoved whatever bits would fit into the box in any way they could.

  The inside of the box was lined with a maze carved out of the wood. Any flesh that touched the walls of this maze stuck. The curse of the maze pulled as the mythical humans pushed.

  They’d managed to get only a quarter of the way in when the buffalo demon’s anger overcame his fear. He screamed and fought but a new power flew across the bar and squeezed him down into the maze. Junior’s feet slipped as the power hit and Orin went down with him. If Diejuste hadn’t been there, steadying the box from beneath, they would have lost the battle. But with all of their powers together, her little family squeezed Onioka entirely into the master crafted labyrinth-in-a-box.

  The dragon breathed one more burst of flame then transformed her face back to human to yell, “Clear!”

  Junior and the brownies dove aside, leaving the quaking box in little Diejuste’s hands. She and Morioka chanted, Morton released her storm and reached in to help flip the lid closed. They struggled but there was no room for any of the men to get a hand in to help. Junior fell backwards as the blond girl pushed off him. She leaped between the women and landed on the lid in the form of a ten-pound terrier. Still the lid fought back. Smoke rose from the box. Morton waited with the padlock ready, Orin at her side with the key.

  Junior crawled back into the fray. He would risk burning the rest of the skin from his hands if it would keep the demon in the box. Before he could reach in though, the dog transformed back into a blond teenage girl and her sudden weight on the box slammed it still for the second the detective needed to slip the padlock through the rings. Diejuste’s tiny fingers squeezed the lock shut and Orin slipped the key in as easily as he had ten minutes earlier.