by Sam Cheever
I dived into the crowd, using my bubble as a battering ram against the rabid rioters in the street. People cried out in anger and surprise behind me as my pursuers pushed them ruthlessly aside to get to me.
I made it to the other side of the street, turned right and walked several steps, and then headed back into the crowd, just behind where I’d crossed over. I stopped moving in the middle of a tight knot of people who were screaming obscenities at no one in particular and watched my pursuers pass by with violence on their faces and in their flailing arms.
When they were gone, I quickly searched the area where I’d seen the woman go down but didn’t find her. Hopefully someone had helped her up and gotten her out of there.
Feeling like prey in the middle of a predator picnic, I started moving again, heading for the hoverpark where I’d left the ugly, dented, air booger. Placing my palm over the door sensor, I ducked into the hoverpark before anyone noticed the door had opened.
I hurried down the ramp to the underground garage where my neighbors and I parked our vehicles. I looked around as I approached the booger, not to assess my safety but to make sure nobody I knew saw me climbing into the butt-ugly thing.
The air booger opened as I approached, probably grateful anybody would want to climb into it. I hopped in, immediately punching buttons on the directional panel since audio command didn’t work.
The booger surged straight up to a spot ten feet above the ground and flipped to the right, heading toward the front of the hoverpark at top speed. I knew I’d have to use surprise to get past the rioters and keep them from surging into the building when the gate opened to let the booger out.
The booger and I headed for the slowly opening gate, with me chewing my lip. Through the rusted black iron I could see hundreds of human bodies, some of which were starting to recognize that the gate was opening.
I punched in additional speed and sat back with sweaty palms. It would be tight and my timing had to be impeccable. Just as I decided the pathetic booger was going to crash into the retreating edges of the gate we hit the opening, riding low to the ground and blowing the surging crowd back and down in fear for their lives. I winced as the gate’s edges scraped down both sides of the ugly booger, slowing our exit just enough to make my pulse spike. I punched up the speed and, after a tense couple of beats filled with the sound of metal screeching against metal, we were finally free. I immediately swung the booger in an arc that took me back past the gate, riding the air just above the street to keep the humans from jumping back up and storming the gate.
When the gate was far enough closed that I was sure they couldn’t squeeze through I punched in my destination and left the rioting humans behind.
I jabbed in the number for the PCD and watched as Cheets’s exhausted face swam into view. “Hey, Phelps.” She appeared to be standing in a cloud. Apparently, in some parts of the city the mist had begun to drop.
“I need the name of someone in the NMPD.”
Cheets winced. “It won’t do you any good. Their phones are so clogged with calls you’ll never get through.”
“What the hell is going on, Cheets?”
She shrugged, “I was hoping you could use your...connections to find that out, Phelps.”
I sighed, “I’ve got a request in for a meeting with a Prophet.”
Cheets’ face flushed and she frowned, “Holy shit! Astra, you think this is a matter of prophecy?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think anything yet, Cheets. I’m just covering all my bases.”
Cheets watched me carefully for a few beats and then nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know what you find out. I’ve got my hands full just managing the attacks from paranormals. I can’t deal with the non-magical problem. I’m afraid if we keep going like we are we’ll have another war.”
I nodded, “You’re not the first one to say that to me, Cheets. I don’t disagree.”
An inhuman shrieking broke out somewhere out of televisual range and Cheets looked over her shoulder. “I gotta go. Keep me posted, Astra.”
I disconnected and sat back in the hard, fake leather seat. Something was pricking my right butt cheek and I slid a hand under my butt to find the culprit. Wincing as the seat sliced into my finger, I shoved the edges of a large crack inward so it didn’t poke me anymore. When I looked back up I swore, jerking the directional stick of the booger to the right and taking it into a panicked corkscrew.
As if playing a game, the dragon spiraled with us, its eyes staring through my view port with what looked more like curiosity than aggression. I fought with the stick to get the booger upright again and then hovered in the air, watching the dragon.
My hand tightened on the stick as my mind raced. If I had to go into evasive maneuvers in the ugly booger I was dead. If I had to try to outrun the dragon in the booger I was dead. In fact, if the dragon even blew snot on the stupid booger I was probably dead.
“Déjà vu all over again,” I murmured. My first thought was that I hoped it didn’t wreck my vehicle, then I scanned a look over the sad excuse for a vehicle and smiled, “Bring it, baby.”
Unfortunately, the dragon appeared to have good taste. It finally decided neither the booger nor I were interesting enough to keep its attention and the big reptile lifted its wings, sailing away to disappear into the thickening mist.
Watching it go, I shook my head. Very strange. Not that the red dragon didn’t attack me. Red dragons were generally not aggressive. But given the fact that whatever was in the air was making almost everybody crazy, I was surprised the red hadn’t been affected by it too. I decided to research that when I had a chance.
The air in the booger changed and I looked over to see Flick slumped in the other seat. “You don’t look any better.”
He slowly turned to look at me. His entire face was that unhealthy gray color, where before it had just been his lips. He was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. I knew it was bad if he was sweating. Angels only sweat under the most extreme circumstances.
“I told you the paperwork would kill me.”
I grinned, “And yet, here you are, still whining, so I know you’re alive.”
He scowled. “Your appointment is tonight at midnight.”
I nodded, “Good work. How will I find him?”
“Her. Don’t be sexist.”
I shrugged.
“I’m supposed to take you to her. With everything that’s going on she refuses to leave the Big House.”
“Can’t say I blame her.”
Flick bent suddenly from the waist and, for a second I thought he was gonna hurl. “Not in here!” I shouted, before realizing I wasn’t in the Viper anymore so it didn’t really matter. There would actually be a certain rightness to returning the piece of shit booger with vomit on the floorboards.
Flick managed to retain his fluids and turned to look at me. “Astra your compassion is underwhelming.”
I shrugged. “What can I say, practical to a fault. And I’m practically sure I wouldn’t like cleaning up a puddle of puke.”
He fake laughed at me and started to shimmer but then he groaned and regained his solidity. “I almost forgot. I was supposed to take you to the site of a demon attack.”
I sighed, “Okay, lead on.”
~SC~
We shimmered into a hot, auditorily-enhanced, chlorine drenched place filled with screaming. Looking around, I quickly determined that we were at an indoor swimming pool. Turning to ask Flick what hell he’d shimmered me into I saw him sliding down the wall to land in a gray, moist lump on the rough concrete floor.
Shrugging, I headed toward the pool.
The screaming was coming from the far end, where a young woman was throwing everything she could find into the water and shrieking for someone to help her baby.
I looked in the pool and saw, among a surprising amount of floating debris, the biggest fish I’ve ever seen.
Actually, it looked like a fish. But I realized it wasn’t a fish.
It was a saltwater demon.
What it was currently doing in a chemically dense freshwater pool that was probably heated to a temperature which was about thirty degrees higher than the demon was generally used to, I couldn’t begin to guess.
The thing didn’t look all that good. It was floating kind of sideways in the pool, its huge body looking slightly yellow where it should have been white and moldy gray where it should have been black. As I watched, its huge mouth opened and closed in a frantic attempt to work through the thick cocktail of chemicals in the pool and cool itself.
Its huge eyes looked as if they were covered by a thick film of grease and they were unblinking.
The demon was dying.
Unfortunately, when it did it would combust at about a thousand degrees, turning the entire pool to steam. If there weren’t a small child floating in the water by its nasty, pointed head, that would solve everybody’s problems.
The floating kid, who looked basically unharmed but was shrieking as if he was being ripped slowly into pieces, was stuck on one of the demon’s huge, snapping teeth by one of his floaty devices and he couldn’t get loose.
If he didn’t get incinerated by the demon’s death, every second the kid stayed in that water increased the danger that he would be pulled into the demon’s snapping maw and get shredded for real.
I tried talking to the kid from the side of the pool. But his mother’s hysteria was making him almost incoherent with fear and he didn’t even hear my voice.
To make things worse, the acoustics in the pool magnified every noise and bounced the hysterical shrieking around the room unmercifully, giving me an almost instant headache.
Sighing in resignation, I trotted around the pool to the mother.
I smiled at her as I approached.
Her eyes were wild when she looked at me. “Oh my god, please help my baby. That thing’s going to eat h...”
I reached out and popped her on the chin with my fist. She dropped like a rock, unconscious. I caught her under the arms, dragging her to the side of the pool.
Are you kidding me, Astra? Flick’s voice in my head sounded both weak and disgusted.
What do you want me to do? She was freaking the kid out. I need him to calm down so I can help him.
Flick groaned in my head. Just hurry up will you?
I looked around and saw that everybody else had vacated the pool. They were lined up inside the glass viewing area on one end. Several faces looked angry and at least one man was heading toward the door, presumably to come get me.
He came through the door, his face clearly showing how much he hadn’t liked me popping the hysterical mommy. I held up a hand and shook my head. He stopped just outside the viewing room door, obviously unwilling to get too close to the demon.
“I had to stop her from screaming. She’s scaring the kid. It’s okay. I want you to stay back.”
“Did you have to hit her?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. After a moment he nodded. But he stayed in the pool area. Presumably to keep an eye on me.
I couldn’t really blame him.
I turned to the kid. He looked to be about eight years old and had bright red hair and freckles. “What’s your name?”
He was still screaming but the volume had dropped to the point that I thought he could hear me. Fortunately he was so wrapped up in his own predicament that he hadn’t even noticed when I’d popped his mom.
The resulting drop in noise level after having popped her was so much better that I was having trouble convincing myself I’d done it strictly for the kid’s welfare.
I tried again. “KID! What’s your name?”
He glanced toward me, his little face whiter than white and filled with terror. “Please, lady, can you get me out of here?” Tears ran freely down his face, dropping into the water on his chest to disappear into the murky pool water.
I nodded. “I’m gonna get you out as soon as you tell me your name.”
“Johnny.”
I nodded again, dropping to my butt on the edge of the pool. “Okay, Johnny, I need you to unbuckle the floaty that’s caught on the fish.”
He shook his head, starting to sob again. “I tried, I can’t get it loose. I tried, lady. Please, lady, get me out of here.”
I slid into the water and was glad my feet could touch bottom, at least along the edge. The water was very warm and was swirling with scales from the dying demon. The thing about saltwater demon scales is that they’re like razors. They cut my skin wherever they touched, creating slices in my flesh that were so fine they didn’t even bleed. But they definitely stung.
I wanted to pull my power forward and create a bubble around myself but with dozens of frantic humans only a room’s length away I knew I needed to resist unless it was absolutely necessary to use it.
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
I moved slowly toward the kid. The demon had begun to swing its head from side to side, slowly and not aggressively yet but I knew as it came closer to death its movements would become more violent.
Unfortunately, as the demon moved the kid through the water its scales were finding him more often and with worse results. He was sobbing softly, twitching as each scale sliced through his pale skin. I could see several of the nasty things embedded deeply into this thin arms and even a couple in his neck, just under the impossibly red hair.
He’d stopped screaming as I moved closer and was watching me intently. I prayed I’d get there in time. His little face had started to reflect a hope that I would save him.
Unfortunately for me the pool grew steadily deeper as I moved toward the center and, since I’m just over five feet tall, it didn’t take long before the bottom started sloping away from me. I pushed off the bottom with my toes and breast stroked toward the kid, immediately regretting it as dozens of scales embedded themselves into my arms and shoulders.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I kept swimming, knowing I didn’t have much time to save him. Blood started streaming from the cuts as I continued to swim, embedding the scales more deeply and ripping my skin.
The boy’s eyes were wide and his freckles stood out like spots of blood on his small, pale face. As I got closer I could see he was breathing really hard, his small chest heaving with the effort to stay calm.
“Good man.” I told him. “I’m almost there. Are you okay?”
He nodded, trying not to look at the two foot long, slimy yellow fang that curved upward from the demon’s mouth, piercing his stupid floaty device.
When I was just a couple of feet away from the boy I pulled my knife and, watching the demon carefully, reached slowly toward him.
The demon hadn’t moved much in the last few seconds, I knew any excessive movement or rise in the sound level would jerk it from the stupor caused by its impending death and send it into a frenzy of activity.
Needless to say, with the boy perched dangerously on its deadly fang and my own tender flesh only inches from the huge maw of gaping, razor edged teeth, I wanted to avoid that.
I had just started to saw through the nearly impenetrable material of the floaty device when two things happened, the boy’s mother regained consciousness and started screaming that I’d hit her and the man at the door to the observation room took off running toward the woman, probably intending to try to calm her down.
The demon’s eye, which had been just about closed in a state of near unconsciousness, jerked open with a nearly audible click and the boy gave a terrified yelp.
Knowing what was coming next, I immediately stopped trying to cut through the floaty, shoved the knife down my boot and wrapped an arm around the child, grabbing hold of the knife-like fang with my other arm.
I gasped as thousands of needle-like teeth embedded themselves into the soft flesh of my inner arm.
The demon’s head reared up and it roared, flinging the boy and me high into the air on a backwash of sour breath. The thing raised itself up onto the tip
of its massive tail and hung there, whipping its huge head back and forth as if trying to dislodge us.
I wrapped myself more tightly around the boy, bracing my feet against the demon’s lower jaw to keep us from sliding around and getting in between the snapping jaws.
Our descent back into the water was violent, nearly causing me to lose my grip on the kid. We hit the water hard and surged forward with a burst of speed that made me fear we would hit the opposite side of the pool and be crunched between the unrelenting concrete and the certain death of those teeth.
I folded myself over the boy and started to pull my power forward. Clutched closely together as we were, I knew the moment the child felt my power and watched his bright blue eyes pop open wide in astonishment.
Suddenly the demon stopped moving and I took a deep breath, pushing the power back down. Tentatively I felt for the bottom of the pool and realized the thing had moved us into the shallow end of the huge pool.
I made a sudden decision. Planting my feet I used my strength, supplemented with a burst of power, to yank the boy off the tooth and fling him closer to the shallow end.
As the demon jerked into motion again, I grabbed the razor-like fang and screamed over my shoulder to the man and woman, who’d been huddled together at the edge of the pool. “Get the kid!”
The man was already diving into the pool and I felt a jolt of respect for him just before the demon’s snout emitted a burst of air that told me I was going up again.
I had no choice but to hold on. I had to keep the thing away from the kid and the man who was trying to get him safely out of the pool.
That task proved more difficult than I’d expected.
With an angry bellow, the demon gave a quick whip of its powerful tail and we were suddenly surging toward the two humans. I grabbed the knife from my boot and, praying they would get out of the water before the demon combusted, I plunged it deep between the thing’s eyes.
It stopped so quickly I nearly flew off the fang with the loss of momentum. As my arms clutched more tightly in an effort to keep from being thrown free, the tooth ripped me open from elbow to wrist and I screamed, using the adrenaline rush from the pain to plant my feet on its bottom jaw and flip over its thrashing snout to land on the slippery black flesh behind its head.
