Enter the Janitor (The Cleaners) (Volume 1)

by Josh Vogt

  Stone walls and columns jutted up around their feet. One Ascendant took the brunt of a sprouting pillar and flew through the air with a shout, while the others jumped over or dodged the extrusions. She tore the ground into a chasm. Two fell into this and vanished.

  She swirled her hands and, on their next step, the final three Ascendants plunged hip-deep into black quicksand. They grappled with each other for support as they tried to pull or push each other free.

  She planted her feet as she prepared a scouring blast of wind and rock. She could do this. She could stop t—

  A blow from behind sent her to her knees. Her vision blurred, and the spell sustaining the winds and churning earth wavered.

  Another hit planted her face-first in the dirt. Someone grabbed her arm and rolled her over. Francis crouched above her. One hand gripped her throat with bruising strength while the other reached into his jacket. He came out holding zip-ties and a garbage bag.

  “I am sorry it’s come to this,” he said.

  She spat in his eye.

  Carl struck true. Francis screamed as the living water burrowed into his socket. He clawed at his face and rolled away, writhing in agony.

  Dani sucked in a breath as she sat up. Her head and heart pounded in opposing tempos that made it difficult to concentrate. Wetness trickled down the back of her skull and dripped along her neck.

  She looked around at the situation. Sydney remained bound and bagged. While no Ascendants remained to block her, part of the chasm she’d opened had ripped the earth between her and the hybrid. It’d take a mighty leap to cross the distance.

  The Chairman had already done so and headed for the hybrid. All the while, his calm had never broken. With so much of her strength invested in the storm, Dani barely had enough to keep herself upright. How could she get to the Chairman in time? How could she face his power?

  Ben stirred beside her. “Dani?”

  “Ben! What do I do? What do I do?”

  His smile had lost several teeth, and the others were rotted in the gums, but his eyes shone with determination. “Free him. The hybrid. Help him get to me.”

  “To you? Why?”

  He hacked and spat into the dirt. “We … brought it here with my energy. I can still offer that.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  He gripped her hand. “Trust me. You ain’t gonna … stop Destin alone … but the boy …” Another tremor shook him. “Give him a chance. Let him use … my power.”

  “But Ben—”

  “Finish … the job, princess.”

  As his eye fluttered closed, he mouthed the words once more.

  Free. Him.

  Dani screamed in frustration and helplessness as she cast about desperately for a solution. Free the hybrid. How? Stewart had created the spell that contained the hybrid, and it was fueled by the circle keeping the bubble and portal intact—which the Ascendants now controlled. If Sydney couldn’t break it down, how could she?

  Then it came to her. She just had to think like a janitor. And what would a janitor do with a messy problem?

  Wipe it away.

  She reached up to the sky and visualized herself holding the world’s largest floor polisher. She slammed her fists into the ground. The tornado drove all of its might down onto the glyphed ring sustaining the bubble. The etchings resisted being worn away, but she applied several hundred years’ worth of wind erosion in seconds. No matter the power invested in them, the glyphs couldn’t last forever.

  The bubble popped, but the portal remained. When the barrier ceased to be, so did the trap that had restrained the hybrid boy. He somersaulted backward and landed on his feet, hands raised like claws.

  Destin hesitated a few paces away. With a running start, the hybrid leapt over him. The Chairman shouted and reached up in an attempt to drag him down. His fingers brushed a trailing sneaker. With another bound, the hybrid crossed the chasm and thumped into the dirt beside Dani.

  He sniffed at her, nostrils flared. Shaking like a wet dog, he flung himself at Ben. The janitor had woken again and stared up at the half-human teen with feverish expectation.

  “Do it,” he said.

  Dani watched in horror as the hybrid reared back. Fangs and tusks lengthened along his jaws as he chomped the janitor’s neck.

  ***

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Dani’s shock broke her connection with the last fragments of her spell. The swirling rocks rained down with a clatter, leaving the survivors in an empty circle surrounded by obsidian hills.

  She stared as Ben accepted the hybrid’s bite without resistance. His distant smile remained fixed as the teen gnawed him like an old bone.

  “That’s it,” Ben said. To her surprise, his voice sounded stronger, with the brusque of his former self. “Drink on up.”

  The hybrid moaned and pressed against the janitor. Dani realized he was feeding on whatever energies Filth had invested Ben with.

  Ben’s satisfaction faded and twinges of pain rippled over his face. “A’ight. Enough.”

  The hybrid hugged him tighter. The extended jaw clenched, and Ben started shaking and gagging.

  “That’s enough. Enough!”

  He bucked against the bite, but the kid held on. Dani finally got her feet under her as Ben’s skin paled and turned paper-thin. Something was wrong. The light that had returned to his eyes dwindled and extinguished. His limbs went listless.

  Refusing to watch him get eaten alive, she ran to wrestle the hybrid away. The hybrid’s mule-kick caught her in the sternum. With a croak, she dropped to her knees, lungs seizing. Her vision tunneled until she could only see the teen leeching off her mentor. Her friend.

  Something bulled her aside. She wheezed as she fell over. Where was chivalry these days?

  Destin rushed by, kicking up black earth in his haste. With a furious cry, he grabbed the hybrid’s shoulders and tore him off Ben. As the hybrid released the janitor, Ben’s body slumped lifeless. Drained of all color and vitality, he looked like a husk dropped in the dirt.

  In contrast, the hybrid was flushed and restored. His gold-shot black pupils flickered in a dozen directions until he focused on Destin. The Chairman’s aura burned hot, but the teen didn’t so much as blink in the glare.

  They circled each other like boxers. Destin feinted right. When the hybrid shifted that way, Destin darted to the left and caught the hybrid’s throat in the crook of his arm. He drove him to the ground, then knelt and got his hands around the hybrid’s throat. The boy choked and his face purpled as he clawed up at the Chairman’s face.

  As the two grappled, Dani crawled to Ben, inch by inch. She searched for any sign of life, but he might as well have been a wax figure. When she got close enough to touch, she confirmed her worst fear. Wooden skin. No breath. No pulse. Not a flutter of power left.

  She collapsed alongside him, feeling too weary to mourn. She’d failed him. He’d trusted her to protect him in the end, and she’d let him die. She’d let the hybrid kill him, just like she’d let the gnash kill Patty. It didn’t matter that he’d told her to do it—she should’ve been strong enough, smart enough to figure out another way.

  Meaty thumps drew her attention back to the fight. The hybrid had rolled Destin onto his back and now laid into him with savage punches. One fist glowed white, the other a knot of darkness. Each strike snapped the Chairman’s head from one side to the other. Blood streamed from Destin’s eyes, nose, and mouth.

  All at once, his aura vanished.

  With a triumphant howl, the hybrid stood and grabbed Destin by his jacket and pants. Thin muscles straining with inhuman strength, he raised Destin over his head and threw him at the chasm.

  Destin shouted and flailed as he soared over the abyss. He struck the opposite edge and barely grabbed hold in time to keep himself from dropping in. He clung there, struggling to keep his grip, much less pull himself back up.

  With him out of the way, the hybrid spun and snarled at Dani. She sat motionless
as he approached. Ben’s death had stolen the last of her strength. Whatever happened, she hoped it would be quick and painless.

  But the teen stopped a yard away, shoulders heaving, eyes wild. Slowly, the manic energy receded, leaving him looking like a normal boy once more. Kneeling, he raised his arms to the sky and bellowed. The power of his first words rocked Dani.

  “MAMA! PAPA!”

  The echoes raced into the distance, and Dani sensed the call searching for its targets.

  A purple-and-green crack split the air, and something stepped through it. Dani got an instant’s impression of a void coiled upon itself like a serpent, with grinding teeth along the edges and a puckered, sucking mouth in the center which opened into churning depths.

  It resolved into a bag lady in desperate need of a makeover. The woman’s hideous appearance had been uselessly covered by chintzy leopard print pants, bead necklaces, sloppy makeup, and a purple hat with a peacock feather stuck in the brim. She pranced along with the air of a catwalk queen. Greasy hair dripped as she flipped it back from her eyes.

  “Hello, dearies,” she called. “Mommy’s here.”

  The hybrid clapped in delight and ran to her. She stroked the teen’s hair and pressed his head to her chest. Her eyes glittered as she looked over at Dani.

  “You’re Filth,” Dani said. “The Corrupt Petty.”

  Filth fluttered a crack-nailed hand before her mouth as if embarrassed by the recognition. The barbed-wire rings and bracelet gouged trickles of blood. “And you’re Dani, the Catalyst. I’ve heard so much about you, lovey. We really must have coffee sometime and catch up.”

  Dani tried to summon rage. She tried to feel sorrow. Anything to shake her stupor. She surveyed the ruin around her, the Ascendants, most of them unconscious or bleeding out. What had been the point of this? It had seemed so clear just a bit ago, but now she found it impossible to grasp why this all had been necessary.

  “Something wrong, lovey? You look a tad pale.”

  When she turned back, she yelped in surprise, for Filth stood inches away, the hybrid still at her side.

  “I warned Benny this would end in tears,” Filth said, “but all in all, I think you both did a marvelous job. Don’t you?”

  Dani started to shout to this woman … this thing … that Ben was dead. That her son had killed him.

  “Shh.” Filth laid a finger to Dani’s lips. It smelled of sulfur and dung, and the skin rippled against her mouth as something undulated beneath it. She didn’t even have the energy to pull away.

  Filth made a popping noise with her mouth and looked past Dani to Ben’s body. “Now, Benny,” she called. “Don’t be pretending. T’isn’t kind to play possum.”

  A tearing sound spun Dani around. Something bumped within the shell of Ben’s body. The white skin buckled, cracked, and flaked away into powder. Another figure became visible as it wriggled loose from the husk that contained it.

  A young man’s head shook free and shed the old face like a paper mask. The left arm ripped free. A firm hand gripped the earth and dug in as he sat upright. Blue eyes opened, and Dani’s disbelief kept her from recognizing him for ten long heartbeats.

  “Ben?”

  It was, but the Ben he should have been if the Ravishing had never touched his body. His skin and muscles were toned, his long hair gone black, and not a wrinkle to be seen except for the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth.

  He sat up and spread his arms to catch his balance, but fell over onto his right side. Where his Ravished right arm had been was nothing but a fleshy stub.

  After floundering upright, Ben stared at the absent limb. He licked his lips.

  “Huh. That’s a surprise.”

  “Ben!” She flung herself at him.

  He laughed as he caught her in a one-arm hug. “Careful, princess. I’m still a might bit achy.”

  She held him out to stare at his young face. The large nose, the hooded eyes, and broad forehead. A bit of stubble about the chin and jaw. “What happened to you? How is this possible?”

  “He fed my child,” Filth said, tousling the teen’s hair. “Gave my boy the strength to defend himself.”

  Ben looked himself over. “The kid sucked the Corruption right outta me. I thought it was gonna kill me, but I guess I’m just more of a wuss than I figured. The pain made me panic a bit.”

  “But … you’re young!”

  He grinned, revealing white teeth. “The Ravishing smothers your power, shovin’ your true self aside until it takes over completely—but it don’t destroy what’s already there. With it gone, my Pure energies put in overtime and managed to undo the damage.” He glanced at his missing appendage again. “Though … not quite all of it, looks like.”

  He took her arm as she helped him stand. He tottered and regained his balance before nodding to the Petty.

  “Filth.”

  “Janitor.”

  He wiggled the stub. “I kinda remember you sayin’ you couldn’t fix it.”

  “I couldn’t, and I still cannot,” she said. “Nor did I expect my son to. His powers seem to be in flux as he matures. I truly don’t know what he’ll end up being capable of.”

  “Gotcha. Then I ain’t gonna bother thankin’ you.”

  Filth perked up. “Ah-ah. I see you trying to sneak away, my love.”

  Two dark forms flashed out of the portal she’d emerged from. They blurred through the air and landed on top of Destin, driving him to the ground. He’d managed to scramble back onto solid ground and had been making a dash for the portal out of this realm.

  The creatures Filth had summoned appeared to be enormous black cats, but with human faces plastered over their skulls. They growled as they squatted on Destin, and their tails whipped in his face.

  “Monster,” he cried. “Release me!” His frantic attempts to free himself weakened after a minute, and his aura buffeted the oversized cats without avail.

  “Well, hello to you too.” Filth sauntered toward the lip of the ravine. “Miss me? You never call anymore.”

  “What’s going on?” Dani whispered to Ben.

  “Didn’tcha hear? He,” Ben nodded at the hybrid, “called for his parents. And now they’re both here.”

  Dani frowned. Then her eyes widened. “What? Him? Mr. Perfect?”

  Ben laughed again, a strong, clear sound that lifted her heart from the muddy pit it had wallowed in for far too long.

  “We all got our vices, eh?” he said. “I never woulda guessed how deep or dark his ran. Or that he coulda hid it so well.”

  “You don’t understand,” Destin cried. “You have no idea what it’s like to be in my position. The responsibilities. The people I send to their deaths every day. The constant pressure from the Board.” His officious attitude vanished as a whine entered his voice. “No one person should shoulder such a burden. It can’t be done.”

  “He came to me to escape,” Filth said. “So lonely. Needing a gentle hand.” Lips curled in a clown’s smile. “He can be such a dirty boy.”

  “He was trying to kill his own kid,” Dani said wonderingly. “Once he figured out what the hybrid was, he knew it was only a matter of time before someone found out where it came from. All this just to save his reputation.”

  Destin managed to raise his head beneath one of the cat’s rumps. “That thing is not my child!”

  “Au contraire,” Filth said, raising a mud-caked finger. “Considering Disease and I have not had a good romp for at least ten years, I doubt it’d be anyone else’s.”

  Dani tensed as the teen padded over from Filth to her, but his broad smile elicited a grin of her own. He took her hand and shook it twice in large, pumping motions. Then he squatted in the dirt and started drawing intricate designs with his pinky.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” Dani asked.

  “Mm?” Filth turned from staring at Destin. “Oh. Not my concern. I leave him for you to care for.”

  “What?” Ben started, still leaning on Dani. “But w
eren’tcha worried about him?”

  “Was I? Your memory must’ve been enfeebled by that doddering body. No. I only cared that he not be abused before he had the chance to fend for himself. With the strength you’ve transferred to him, he’ll soon come into his own. He must carve out a realm for himself, as I’ll not share mine with the little bastard.” Her eyes flashed black as she glared at the hybrid. “A warning, from mother to son. Do not think to call upon me again, or I shall stew the flesh off your bones and feed it to my pets.”

  She flipped back into a sweet smile. Blowing a kiss to Ben and Dani, she turned and flounced toward the portal, bead necklaces jangling.

  “Come along, kittens.”

  Her feline pets jumped off Destin. One snagged his jacket in its maw and tossed him in the air. He landed and rolled up to Filth’s feet. She grabbed his arm and yanked him up into a hard, long kiss. When he wrenched away, lipstick smeared his pale face, and terror gleamed in his eyes.

  “Ben! Dani! Help me! Don’t let her t—”

  Filth smacked him back down into the dirt. As he sobbed, she ground a foot onto the back of his neck.

  “Do you remember our games?” she asked. “I’ve thought up some new ones. Have you ever tried Dress Up? Tea Party? No? We’ll have to fix that, won’t we?”

  “Hold your horses,” Ben said. “Destin ain’t your property. We gotta bring him back with us.”

  “Are you kidding?” Dani asked. “Let her take him.”

  “Naw.” Ben straightened and rolled his shoulders. “Destin might’ve dished some pretty nasty muck about, but he’s still gotta face the Board and explain things. That’s the way things work in the Cleaners.”

  “A pity I’m not on your employee roster,” Filth said. “Your rules bore me, lovey.”

  “Take him and we’re gonna have to come after,” Ben said. “You’re gonna be dealin’ with every Ascendant we can throw your way. Think it over. You ain’t wantin’ that kinda trouble.”

  Filth’s expression went flat, and Dani glimpsed the creature hiding behind the mask of flesh.

  “My kittens and I will be waiting to welcome you,” she said.