by Tempe O'Kun
“Don’t hurt her.” The canine’s voice rumbled like leashed thunder. “I’ll give you back what we took. The spire and the disk, both.”
“Max no!” The grip tightened around her chest. “Ghk!”
Guttural shadows crept into Joe’s voice, but his tone remained clear and polite. “I’d suggest you hurry…”
Max spread his paws. “Just don’t hurt her.” Backing up, he padded into his room. His stormy eyes never left Joe until he rounded the doorway. A clatter, then he returned with the disk and pulsing bone pillar under one arm. He crouched beside the stair railing box and held the items out.
The Joe-thing beckoned with a talon, his false hand dangling like a loose sleeve. “Give them to me.”
“Let her go.” The canine didn’t flinch. His blue eyes flashed to her.
The otter spotted hackles pricked down her boyfriend’s back, his stiff posture, his bristled tail. She gave the tiniest nod. Then, with all her strength and a mighty squawk, kicked off the wall.
Joe staggered, knocked off-balance by the force. His torso bent at a fantastic angle, tail slapping into the floor to steady himself in a way that should have been impossible.
In a smooth arc, Max drew an iron rod from the box, leapt, and swung it into the side of the creature’s head. The bludgeon struck with a crackling thud, scattering yellow nerve endings and shards of black shell.
His face paralyzed in a well-mannered smile, Joe shrieked and rounded on Max. He raised his claws to rip the dog apart.
With a frantic twist, Kylie seized a digit holding her and chomped, teeth piercing a rubber exterior into something like lobster shell.
The yowl spiked. Claws at her throat bore down with crushing force. Talons exploded from the beaver’s flat tail and streaked toward her.
A second swing of the iron rod crushed the creature to the floor. Teeth gleaming against a snarl, Max pummeled the beast. The black spindle fell again and again, smashing flesh and breaking carapace. Fine drops of yolky gore scattered from the bludgeon with every blow.
The lutrine tumbled to the floor, then fumbled to draw a slim aerosol can from her vest pocket. Cold and heavy against her palm, a flick of her thumb popped off its safety cap. She scrambled to her feet as blows fell on the thrashing creature.
The polite face roared at his attacker, three pincers reaching out from its torn mouth. Joe reared up and knocked the husky on his tail. It pounced onto him.
Flat on his back, Max jammed his makeshift weapon into the beast’s three mandibles.
With a shriek, the creature pranced back and scaled the china cabinet backwards with unnatural ease. Six claws gleamed in the kitchen light. He arched back to swing a scythe-claw through the husky.
The otter aimed the spray can and thumbed the trigger.
A torrent of red fluid struck Joe’s eyes and writhing mouthparts.
A keening screech scoured her mind. Joe recoiled and wiped desperate limbs against his face. Red liquid welled in every gap in his shredded mask, clinging to the flesh beneath. The mask’s mouth worked wordlessly as the creature snarled.
Kylie stepped over Max and hit the trigger again and again; shot after shot of pepper spray blasted the creature’s face. It beaded against his carapace, flowing down his head like crimson tears.
Flailing, the Joe-creature staggered back, bracing against a wall. His three eyes fell upon her, a swollen trinity of hate.
Cold fury flooding her veins, she raised the canister for another shot.
Disguise in ruins, face a swollen mess, the creature scrambled away on six limbs in a haphazard, spastic retreat. His tail claw gripped the disk and pillar. His front limbs yanked open the door, and he vanished into the inky night.
Still coughing from the pepper spray, Max stood beside her, one paw on her shoulder, iron spindle still in the other. Yellow ichor dripped from it, traced with red.
In a numb panic, she gripped his bare fur. Adrenaline pulsed cold through her veins as they hurried back from the choking cloud of aerosolized pepper oil. A crimson trace curled from his palm, spreading into his pristine fur. She grabbed his arm, paws clumsy with shock. “You’re bleeding!”
He set the rod down on the tile, then flexed his paw. A bloody scrape glinted on his palm pad to stain his white paw fur. “I’ll be fine. You?”
“I think so.” She rubbed her shoulder and breasts, aching from the crush of the Joe-beast’s hand. Shaky, she rose and headed for the stairs. “Be right back.”
With a look around and without a word, he padded after her anyway.
Upstairs, she grabbed bandages from the bathroom, then a baseball bat from her great uncle’s room. She placed the latter in Max’s good paw while she wrapped the former around his bloodied one. “So you don’t destroy your paw.” She crept down the stairs with him at her heel.
Max hefted the bat, child-sized to start with and about the proportion of a billy club for the huge dog. He shot her a questioning glance. “We’re going after this thing?”
“The evidence my family’s not crazy? The monster that broke into my house and tried to kill us? The reason my family’s been going crazy for generations? Yeah, we’re going after that. This could be my only chance to stop it.” She shook the pepper spray canister. “Sounds like it’s got more shots, but we’d better play it safe.” Stuffing it in her pocket, she bounded over to the kitchen and began rooting around for dangerous utensils. “Maybe get the old harpoon gun.”
The canine patted her shoulder.
She popped up like a nervous buoy, floating on a sea of adrenaline.
“We don’t know if or how the harpoon gun works.” His blue eyes flicked to the ladle in her paw. “And we need a plan.”
“The plan is to stop him from doing whatever crazy bullshit he has in mind for those things you gave him. Or to take his picture, at the very least.” Kylie jabbed at the darkness with the scoop. “He has to be going back to his lair.”
His ears rose. “So there’s more to it than what we destroyed?”
Her paws gripped the ladle. “Or he dug it out again.”
Max cast a determined glance at the forest.
Kylie snatched a pair of sushi knives and stuck them, scabbards first, into her jeans pockets. Not that she knew what to do with them, but it was better than nothing. She’d have carried more of them, but her vest pockets weren’t big enough.
As she turned, Max stood in the somewhat-destroyed entryway. Yellow ichor shone along the ancient hardwood. Plates lay smashed, chairs flung about the room. With a conflicted and quiet whine, he worried a small object between his paws.
“What’s that?” She pointed at it.
With great hesitation, he revealed the item with a wet jingle. “An unidentified set of house keys.”
“These have to be Joe’s keys! Oh, nasty.” She took the slimy key ring with ginger claws and rinsed it in the kitchen sink.
He tilted his head to the scene of the battle. “Maybe I shouldn’t have picked them up.”
The otter squawked. “Are you kidding? Now we know he can’t skip town—he’s gotta be going back to his lair.” She bounced from foot to foot. “We can totally catch up to him!”
His bandaged paw closed around the handle of the baseball bat. “That’s just what I was afraid of.”
Stars hung cold in an inky sky. Lutrine and canine stood before the entrance to the mine, which lay buried under a ton of stone.
Max sniffed, bat in hand. “Hmm. Unless he can phase through rocks and leave no scent, I’m thinking there’s another entrance.”
Glum, she sat down on some moss and swept the woods with her flashlight. “Yeah, but where?”
Max’s eyeshine glinted in the white, wide-beam light. “Also important: how do we find or open that entrance without the disk?”
“Oh.” Her paw slipped into a vest pocket and drew out something resembling a sand dollar. “I stole the smaller one you found in the lab.”
Pointy husky ears rose. “And you assumed Joe couldn
’t sense it or something.”
She shrugged. “If he could sense them, why’d he bother taking a hostage?” Her paw rubbed the bruises forming along her breasts.
Max gave a slow nod, then gestured with the bat at the bridge overhead. “The caves ran under Windfall.”
Her fingers traced the etched bone disk, then she looked up. “So the entrance might be in town.”
“Makes sense.” He tapped his claws on the length of the bat. “Hmm. If our monster is its own accomplice, then who was living in the house your uncle burned down?”
“The monster in accomplice form! Joe!” Kylie bounced to her feet. “Come on.”
“Okay.” He followed over the mossy ground. “Where’s Joe live?”
Kylie froze, then sputtered. “No idea.” She smiled. “But I know how we can find out…”
The night hung close around them, broken only by the occasional car rumbling down the block. The buildings in this part of Windfall held a sense of age, but constant upkeep. Shane’s family’s yard stood fenced and groomed. A lawnmower stood in one corner, not put away.
Phone still glowing from the text, Kylie bounced in place on the steps. If Shane fell back asleep instead of coming down, she’d drag him out by the tail and beat Joe into submission with him.
Max stood behind her, the slim bat buried in his pocket. His heavy paw rested on the pommel as those stormy blue eyes watched the street. The angle he stood at more or less concealed the bludgeon.
Shane stumbled to the door, rubbing his eyes, phone still in hand. “What’s this about?”
She poked a digit at the tabby. “You said Joe lives around here. Where?”
“Three houses down.” He blinked, pointed, and stretched. “What possible home maintenance emergency are you having at four AM? Toilet detonation?”
The otter took a deep breath. “He’s actually an immortal alien monster who’s been battling my family for generations.”
“Huh.” The cat yawned back into the house. “Well, goodnight.” He closed the door.
Upstairs, a light clicked on in an upstairs window. A floppy-eared shadow materialized into Sarah, who studied them with the same steady concern she’d expressed guiding them in the Crystal Caverns. Arms crossed, she watched the pair standing in her yard.
Kylie shrugged up at her.
The bunny only quirked an ear, like she wanted an explanation later. Then she turned and vanished deeper into the house, probably to catch Shane on his way upstairs.
Husky and otter stood in the street for a moment, then the dog slung his backpack over his shoulder. They hustled up the block, past the Amphicar, to the house Shane had pointed to.
Slinking up the sidewalk, her nervous paws pulled the pepper spray from her vest and toyed with it. “How’d you know this would work on aliens?”
“I didn’t.” Max tapped a claw at the ingredients list. “But I got you the brand with tarantula venom, to hedge my bets.”
With a look of worry, she held the can a little further away. “Harsh.”
“I just had to trust you wouldn’t blast yourself with it.” He smirked and slung an arm over her shoulders, drawing her close. “Or me.”
She felt a little safer and a little more trusted. Most boyfriends didn’t entrust their girlfriend with chemical weapons.
One story tall and in good repair, the house languished a color-starved pallor. A familiar work van stood outside; Max’s paw traced over the hood to find the engine cold. They moved with care down the walkway, wary of the lawn gnome. Joe seemed too practical to have a lawn gnome.
Creeping up the front steps, the husky turned to her. “We’re sure this is his house, right?”
“I don’t know!” Kylie’s whisper came out more frantic than she’d realized. “Shane said it was!”
He nodded, braced himself to bash the door down, but froze when she waggled the keychain at him. She flipped through the keys, at last finding the right one. The lock resisted. It dawned on her they could have the wrong house, not matter what a groggy feline said. Then the key turned, not with worn surrender of heavy use, but with the slick grind of having sat untouched for years. The door swung open at her barest touch, oiled to silence. A scarce whisper of breeze came as the only indication sound still existed in the world.
The husky offered her only a shrug.
They proceeded inside.
Inside, the house seemed just as normal. A bit too normal, like a set designed for a passing shot. Darkness draped over every surface, puddled in every corner. They tiptoed in, but found not a single squeaky floorboard. A clock, a television, a living room set: old perhaps but in excellent condition.
Flashlight beam cutting through the gloom, Kylie’s eyes fell upon a picture frame. A heartbeat of panic followed. Joe wouldn’t have family photos—this had to be the wrong house. She froze, transfixed by the strangers in the frame, wondering whose home they’d just invaded. She recognized none of the people and they seemed to be all from different species. One of them held up a sign with pricing and photo size info. Only then did the otter breathe again. “That lazy bastard; he never took out the display photos that came with the frame.”
Max tapped a digit against his lips for silence and led onward. They slunk downstairs, finding a stark and empty basement. Bare studs lined the walls around a pristine concrete floor. If the upstairs had been an underdressed set, this room sat naked. The canine padded into center of the room. “Smells like Joe’s been here. And it smells like the mine.” He looked around, but found only a few three-clawed scratch marks in the walls. “Don’t see any door that could lead there, though.”
“Oh.” The lutrine pulled the small disk from her pocket. Tiny lights flickered along its periphery. Her teeth buzzed.
The concrete floor rippled and split open under him. He dropped with a flail, a yelp, and a thud.
The otter raced to the edge of the concrete maw. The edges had become bone-white. “Ohmygosh, are you okay?”
Dazed, the dog shook his head. He waved her concern away. Yellow light flickered off his silver wristwatch. “I’m in one piece.”
“Stay there.” Tension still gripped her. They’d fought off Joe together, but if he found them separated… She shuddered, then tried climbing down, but found the walls of the passage too steep. She hurried scoured the room for something to climb down with. That ladder on Joe’s van would do, but the night had gotten a lot scarier with Max down a hole. After a tense second, she grabbed a sturdy chair from upstairs and lowered it down the hole. Using it as a platform, she hopped down the bare bone wall. The dog steadied her shoulder as she landed on the lumpy white floor. Around her, the space hung empty, as if this tunnel gulped shut when not in use.
They pressed on. Down, down, diving into darkness and thrumming organic contrivances. Pale spires and pillars grew in the dark like toothy fungi. The machinery moaned a discordant drone. A journal entry surfaced in her mind, one about a noise that sank into your bones and couldn’t be shaken, and how her great-uncle had begun hearing it in every distant echo.
Max took her paw.
Shoving the memory aside, she gripped his uninjured hand and headed further into darkness. Slowly, slowly, a light grew around corners. Down the cave’s throat, they found a chamber tangled with grown equipment. Yellow light swallowed all other colors. They ducked through the pulsing glow into the cavern, climbing over smooth, white spikes.
She recognized it as the cavern they’d collapsed, only…crumpled. Now a fraction of the size it had been, pillars of fresh, clean bone strained under the weight of the roof. The ceiling hung barely high enough to stand in some places. Scree and jagged rocks lay in piles around the floor.
In a pit at the room’s center, an archway of bone perverted the reality within it, twisting it into impossible shapes. Beside it, an obsidian form hunched, manipulating knobs and arteries with swift claws. Joe straightened from his console, obsidian and six-limbed. He sighed. “You kids’ll be the death of me.”
Movement at her feet made her jump. The remains of his beaver disguise pooled on the floor like a discarded robe, mouthing his words.
“You’re the one who broke into our house and tried to kill us!”
Joe didn’t respond, only fine-tuning a few prickly knobs.
Keeping Max in sight, Kylie lit a cluster of glass spheres with her flashlight. Each held strange shapes writhing within, set on a countertop that pulsed with clotted ichor. Above it, on a diagonal strut, hung the rack of small bone disks they’d stolen from last time. Beside it, a row of brittle, bleeding alien machines sputtered and chugged, held together with duct tape. With her free paw, she drew one of the sushi knives and prodded a tube. The blade nicked a small hole in the membrane. Clear liquid glopped out, setting an acrid tang to the air.
The whole chamber rumbled. Bone struts clattered together like cannibal wind chimes. Dust curled in thin curtains from the ceiling.
A throaty buzz rattled inside Joe’s control console. His back arm adjusted a lever. “Are you trying to kill us all, missy?”
The leak slowed to a drip.
The otter lowered her knife, watching the flashlight beam catch on the scabbed-over cracks in his carapace. Why had she stopped? She shouldn’t be listening to him, he was a hideous space monster. Her mind flashed to the disk, to Leister’s journals, to voices clawing at her dreams. Had the nightmares implanted a suggestion in her brain? Some kind of crazy safety protocol, to make her hesitate?
Except a quick glance to Max found him likewise appraising the situation—and he was the sanest person she knew. So instead of getting stabby right this instant, she straightened to stare the monster down. “It’s over, Joe. You’ve got nowhere left to go.”
“Just one place, actually.” He lifted a claw to the shimmering snarl within the archway. “The ley lines have converged and my portal is opening. If you just let me go home, we can all walk away from this happy campers.”
