Monster Exchange Program

by Mark Albany

  “Ah,” I grunted and ran my tongue over my right tusk. “So, the idea is to expose humans to it.”

  “Right,” she whispered, stepping closer. “With its propensity for triggering the latent genes hidden in human DNA, turning them, if you will, into the monsters that they mistrust so much. Not all of them, of course. Monsters have been part of humans for a long time, even if they haven’t known about it, but not all of them. The pure ones. I hate that term, but he makes us use it. Makes me sick just thinking about it. That’s why I do like mongrels like you. Again, his term, not mine, but again, we have to use it. We’re a part of his plan, now. Anyway, the idea is to have all these perfect little students turn into monsters. It’s the ideal distraction, as well as the most delicious of cherries on top of the cake.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, hand checking the supplies stashed under my belt. Knowing what was coming, the salt would especially come in handy. Like I’d told the chief, the moment that I started pushing into my abilities, the moment that I started to rely on them, was when I reached the point where I couldn’t stop. There were stories about some of the monsters out in China, Russia, and South Africa where they’d used their powers and went too far, to their detriment, and became the monsters that humans feared us to be. I didn’t like that very much and certainly didn’t want to become one.

  “It’s a damn good plan,” I whispered, my eyes unfocused and my mind pinned on what was inside me. I reached into the cells, right down to atom-level, and found the electrons and protons. I felt the electricity in them and excited them until I felt the static charge growing, then brought them out, inch by inch, into my fingertips. Demon Pearl was still talking and it was a little distracting, but now that I had the electricity in my hands, I didn’t need much focus to start pushing it out. Electricity liked jumping from one point to another. I wasn’t sure why I was thinking this way, but if there was ever a way to get out of all this…

  I blinked. Demon Pearl realized that my mind wasn’t on what I was sure was a very fascinating monologue, and tried to figure out why I wasn’t an attentive captive audience.

  Demon Pearl realized what I was trying to do, or at least, she realized that she was in danger as I rolled my shoulders and let my hands take my weight again. A bolt of electricity arced from my fingertips and flew toward three of the mines that were spread across the room. A soft click was all I heard before the entire room was pelted with Dead Sea salt being sent across the room at painful speeds.

  I gathered myself and curled my body upward through core strength, roaring as pain spread through my limbs. I pushed past it, fighting to bring myself upside down, and gripped the chains as my feet met the ceiling. The chains themselves wouldn’t break, but the old pipes they were anchored to groaned and finally snapped as I pushed harder and harder, which dropped me to the floor.

  Pain spread as I landed, salt pouch apparently broken, as salt spread out around me. I grunted, feeling a tweak in my shoulder as I pushed myself to my feet, fists raised. My weapons were in the dorm, for obvious reasons. I was comfortable with using my fists, especially with all the Dead Sea salt still in the air as well as the vibration emitters still in place, weakening the three demons in the room, making the fight a little more even. I swept up some of the salt that was splattered across the floor, gripped it in my fist and charged forward. A single hit was enough to knock one of the demons wearing a human to the floor, but a good tearing of skin and salt-rubbing did the deed. The smoke-like stuff that leaked out of them came out in a rush. The second realized his danger and tried to cut his losses and run.

  “Get over here,” I snarled in a voice that I thought was reminiscent of a video game. I grabbed him by the collar and tossed him into the wall, knocking him about as I saw Pearl push herself up. She was apparently still a little stunned from all of the explosions.

  As I made my way toward her, the demon that I’d knocked onto the floor came up again. He roared as he charged into my side, knocked me off of my feet, and powered me to the floor, knocking the breath out of my lungs. I turned over and lashed at the side of his head with my elbow. It connected hard enough to be painful for both of us. The kid that would wake up once the demon was gone would probably have a headache, maybe a concussion, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. It was all I could do not to blast my way through their literal meat shields.

  The demon fell away. I quickly scraped up a little more salt from the floor, letting out a roar of frustration as I watched Pearl stagger toward the door while I was busy with this motherfucker. I pushed the salt into the creature’s face and, still gathering my breath, got to my feet, and went after Pearl.

  Her eyebrows shot up as I caught and tripped her. She fell, and I followed her down. I pushed her onto her back and quickly straddled her chest. There wasn’t much salt in that spot for me to gather but I pressed my slightly-damp palms into what there was, hoping enough would adhere to be effective. She opened her mouth, either to scream or talk or…something. It didn’t really matter. I pushed one hand against her mouth while forcing it open with the other. Between what was on my hands and the salt-speckled chains which also contacted her skin, it was enough. Her eyes bulged as the black smoke seeped from her pores. Then, she suddenly went slack under me.

  I paused long enough to make sure she wouldn’t get back up before crawling off her, breathing deeply before I rolled over. I was still naked since she’d drugged and kidnapped me right from the shower. I needed to find clothes, hopefully without having to hike through the campus.

  “Gods fucking damn it,” I mumbled, brushing away the bits of salt that had crusted on me. “I need another shower.”

  15

  All of the dark shit that was happening aside, I had to admit that it was an impressive feat and not something that could be underestimated.

  I found clothes in some of the rooms upstairs, left behind by the building’s former inhabitants. Even more impressive was finding clothes that fit me, although it became less impressive when I realized that the building was used for housing some of the local football teams. The clothes had apparently belonged to a linebacker since there was lot more space around the waist than I needed, but at this point, not being completely naked was a win. While I was taller than most football players, my waist was on the trim side. I walked out wearing a large jersey with the number sixty-two on it, a pair of jeans that I needed to hold up with a belt, and some heavy boots that I didn’t have socks for.

  My first instinct was to head back to the dorm where I could hopefully still find my pack and weapons untouched, but Pearl was still downstairs. Whether or not she was a demon when I first encountered her, she was my responsibility as much as the four girls that I’d broken out of here hours before.

  “Fucking hells,” I whispered to myself, shaking my head and jogging down the steps to the basement. The fact that there weren’t any additional demons coming in was a little worrying, but I would cross that particular bridge when I got there.

  As I reached the basement, I saw that my dazed and groggy friends down there were getting themselves back together after what had to be a rough ride from both being demon-inhabited and what I’d ended up doing to them. All I could really hope was that they weren’t able to remember what happened. They wouldn’t know what it was to have a demon inside them, although they would know what it felt like to have a half-troll attack them.

  Best to keep things on the safe side with these characters, I thought as I looked around the basement. I was curious about what it was like to be possessed, even if I wasn’t willing to try it.

  There was something different about them. Their scents were the first change I noticed, but there were rapid physical changes too. Pearl, in particular, I realized. She was having difficulty getting up, and I saw a prehensile tail peeking out from under her skirt. She saw it, and her eyes widened.

  “What… what the fuck is happening to me?” she asked and locked her narrowed eyes on me, ready to cast blame. For a momen
t, I couldn’t explain what was happening. Then I remembered what Pearl said while she was still a demon. That she was only now starting to change was probably due to her having been possessed.

  “Long or short term?” I asked, moving closer and trying to comfort her. I couldn’t think of anything quite as confusing as what she was going through. Nothing that I had ever experienced, anyway. “You were possessed by a demon. I’m not sure how long.”

  “I wasn’t possessed by anything last night,” she said softly, appearing to know what I was thinking. I scowled, hating the fact that she was going through what looked like the trauma of a lifetime. “I’m not sure about this morning. I actually thought that I just had a really bad trip. I didn’t try anything out of the ordinary, but you hear stories about people spiking pot with all kinds of crap these days.”

  “Long term,” I continued, “the demons spiked the water supply with hazel mistletoe. It’s the name of a chemical that tends to wake up all sorts of nasty crap inside human DNA. I’m not sure about the actual science, but I think we can both agree that it works.”

  Pearl looked back down at her still-growing tail. In all honesty, I thought she’d react a lot worse than this. I knew would.

  On the other hand… I had half-human DNA. Which meant that since I had been exposed, something might change in me, as well.

  I shook my head. “Do you think you can help me? We need to find Jennifer and Kelly, make sure they’re all right. They are okay…right?”

  She nodded slightly while rubbing her temples. “Yes. I think? Hope? It was weird, like watching myself sleepwalking, without any ability to stop. I’m not sure if anything I did during that time was real.”

  “Well, we’d better check, right?” I asked, and she nodded, still rubbing her temples.

  We climbed out of the basement. The other two students joined us. As soon as I stepped outside, though, I realized that something wasn’t right. There were no signs of the usual campus bustle. I scanned the area quickly, my enhanced senses picking up on activity, lots of it, but not a kind that filled my heart with hope. There was panic in the air.

  I gritted my teeth and looked at Pearl.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, trying to discern my expression.

  “There’s trouble,” I grumbled. “Looks like whatever’s affecting you got into the rest of the school. Nothing to… Well, nothing that we need to worry about.”

  That was a lie. The fact that the school’s previously mostly-harmless students were turning into something a lot less harmless would become a problem, and the fact that I lacked any kind of weapons to defend us meant that I really hoped she wound up with more out of exposure to the chemicals than merely a tail.

  Then again, prehensile tails were useful—when you knew how to use them. Pearl was learning how to control a whole new set of muscles, though, and had the coordination of a child. Nothing I could do about that, now.

  Smoke rose from some of the buildings. I rolled my neck, stretching it. I felt the encroaching exhaustion in my body. Even for trolls, going full days without some rest that wasn’t caused by dangerous drugs was a problem, and I was running on fumes at this point.

  “Hey!”

  I snapped out of my train of thought and spun around to see who’d called to us. Someone was approaching. Thankfully, I recognized Ruby as she jogged over. The other two students had disappeared, probably to find family, loved ones, or friends to learn what was happening. I couldn’t take the time to track them down, not now.

  “Ruby,” I said. “Do you know what’s happening out there?”

  “Walk and talk, big guy,” Ruby growled, then smiled at Pearl. “Hey, gorgeous. How do you feel?”

  “Like I’m going to be sick,” Pearl replied, annoyed. “And like I just grew a tail out from my spine.”

  “Oh, you should be fine,” Ruby said, moving behind her and lightly touching the new appendage. “Yeah, tails are very useful once you’ve figured out how to use them. I can show you how to deal with it once we’re done with all this.”

  “How?” Pearl sounded confused.

  “Oh, did I forget to mention? I have one, too,” Ruby chirped, and in that second and a half, her appearance shifted like we saw behind the curtain for the first time. Well, not the first time for me, but Pearl’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her skull. I didn’t blame her. Horns curled up and around from Ruby’s skull, along with long pointed ears. And, as she’d said, an elongated, prehensile tail jutted out from under her short skirt. “Like I said, I can teach you how to handle it when we have the time. Right now, things have gone to shit in the most spectacular fashion, and I need Nate’s help. Yours too, Pearl, if you feel up to it.”

  I needed a moment to respond. As a human, Ruby had been already been attractive as hell, but now there was something about her that riled the primal part of me. I needed a moment to gather my thoughts. There was some mention of a particular type of demon that had that kind of effect on other races. Succubi, they were called, if my memory wasn’t failing me.

  “Can you teach me to do that?” Pearl asked as we moved through the campus. “Hide my tail if I need to?”

  “That, and a horde of other interesting tricks,” Ruby said with a grin, her suddenly bright red eyes gleaming with glee. “From what I can tell about you right now, darling, the world is very much your oyster.”

  “I don’t like oysters,” Pearl grumbled.

  “The world is whatever your preferred seafood is, then.” Ruby rolled her eyes. She was about to keep on talking when I caught sight of Jen and Kelly wandering through the campus, looking terrified and thoroughly confused by the pandemonium that I assumed they had woken to.

  I could relate to the feeling. When they saw me, Pearl, and Ruby, they ran toward us although Ruby’s and Pearl’s altered appearances were enough to give them pause. I rushed over to hug them, Kelly first and then Jen.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see the two of you all right,” I said, grinning like an idiot. They smiled too, although they were still looking at Ruby and Pearl, waiting for an explanation.

  “Do the two of you have tails?” Jen asked, breaking away from me to hug Pearl and tenderly kiss her on the lips. “Or is that some kind of party thing that no one told me about?”

  “I wish,” Pearl hissed.

  Ruby laughed. “Long story short, some nasty shit was put in the water supply, and it’s turning average kids into monsters. Kind of like Nate, over here, but without the self-control and sexy smolder.”

  “Thanks,” I growled. “But that does beg the question of why the two of you haven’t been affected yet.”

  “Well, it only affects humans that have the latent genetic potential in them,” Ruby pointed out. “So, unless the two of you are the purest of the pure of humanity, or…”

  “Well, if it’s in the water, that might explain why I haven’t been affected,” Kelly said, looking around. “I haven’t been able to keep anything down all day.”

  “Right,” I said, looking at Jen, who shrugged.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said, fright showing in her eyes. “I’ve been drinking water and coffee all day, so that doesn’t apply to my particular case.”

  “Interesting,” Ruby said. “So, I think we can state with something like a certainty that what’s happening is the result of demon intervention, right?”

  I nodded. “When Pearl was possessed, she said that the demons were planning something and the hazel mistletoe was just a distraction. She also mentioned that someone was running this and that they had to obey him.”

  “I think I might know who it is,” Ruby said, rubbing idly one of her horns in a way that indicated she was thinking about something uncomfortable. “I just don’t know where he might be holed up for this.”

  “I might be able to help with that part,” I said. “When I was running around investigating, I discovered that one of the lecture halls is covered in protective sigils, the kindsomehow hidden from
the naked eye. If I were a betting troll, I’d put my money on that being where anything big goes down.”

  “Half-troll,” Kelly corrected me with a small smile, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder.

  “Excellent, we have someplace to start,” Ruby said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” I said, looking around. “I need my pack. And my service weapon, if we’re going to be fighting anything like what we’ve faced, lately.”

  “I thought you might need it,” Jen said and tossed something over to me.

  I caught it deftly, grinning when I saw that it was my pack. “Appreciate it.” I chuckled, pulled out my pistol, and made sure that it was loaded. “Now we can go.”

  16

  We headed toward the main lecture hall, the building where I’d noted all the sigils. I had no idea what Chief Ryko was up to, but the news had to be blowing up about all this, and if not the news, then at least social media. The kind of panic I saw around us worked in our favor for the moment since the affected students—which was most, if not all of them—were trying to identify what they were. That would last for a little while, meaning that we had a brief window to figure out what was happening before we were forced to deal with them, too. I wasn’t looking forward to that, but then again, there wasn’t much about this that I did look forward to.

  I tucked the pistol into my belt as I started working on the devices still inside my pack. I’d left the vibration devices back in the basement of the frat house, but I had a couple in reserve, and the materials I needed to build more if I had to. Ruby was coming with me since she seemed to be more than capable of handling herself in a fight. I noticed that Jen, Pearl, and Kelly were behind us as we made our way through the campus, avoiding the more densely populated areas until we reached the building in question.

  “Do you mind telling me why you followed us when you should be hiding somewhere safe until all of this blows over?” I asked, directing my question at the three. Ruby chuckled.