"You could just conjure them up again, Daniel. They're already dead."
"No. You don't get it, Mom. It's about doing the wrong thing. It's about hurting them. It's just... I don't ever want to put them in danger again."
"You know I love your friends, Daniel. But you can't let yourself be distracted. Number 3, Beta, he's the real deal. You've never faced a power quite like his."
"Yeah, I've been studying him."
"Well, your father did too," she said. "He's been an infestation in this country and on this planet for far. too long."
I was intrigued. "But The List dates his history back only about fifty years. He came to Terra Firma before that?"
"You'll have to figure that one out yourself. Just remember, if you want to play with fire you have to accept the consequences. You will get burned. Trust me on that."
I nodded. I could take getting burned if it meant keeping my friends safe.
She gave a wry smile. "Daniel, you're quite the Alien Hunter already, but I don't know if you're ready for Beta. Your father and I met him once. Think of a million or so angry, hungry wolves--on fire. That's a pretty good approximation of Number 3."
And on that scary note--she was gone again.
Chapter 13
I BARELY SLEPT all night. I couldn't shake my mom's words. Instead, I went into an almost obsessive trance, reading links off Google News--anything that had to do with fire. I wondered just how often Beta was at the center of any and all destructive fires around the world.
And there were a lot of themWildfires, worse than ever in recorded history. Factory fires, mine fires, apartment building fires, churches and clinics and homes set on fire by missing arsonists...
Feeling totally overwhelmed, I reread The List description again. It placed Beta in the British Isles only. So why would he stay here? Most aliens I knew couldn't wait to get their slimy little hands all over the globe.
I asked my friends the same question over a breakfast of cold pizza the next morning. No offense to the Brits, but their pizza sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. Willy had already tossed his slice in the garbage and instead was jury-rigging a TV set to work on the kitchen counter.
"Maybe Beta has a personal thing against England," Dana said as a joke.
"Maybe he had a French relative," Willy suggested. Not the most culturally sensitive comment.
"Or got bad gas from some blood pudding," Joe offered.
"I'm serious, guys. Why not go burn down the whole Amazon rain forest, for Pete's sake? Kill the world's oxygen supply? Or go to one of the poles and start melting the ice caps faster than they're already going? He could do some real damage."
"Speaking of real damage...," Emma began, and her brother finished:
"Maybe he is. Check this out." The picture had just flicked on to BBC News. And it was big, bad news.
Within the past hour or so there had been a giant explosion at a factory outside London. The flaming debris had scattered across a wide area and set fire to dozens of workers' homes that were clustered nearby... and a school and day-care center.
That part drew gasps from all of us.
So far all that was known was that there were likely hundreds of victims, and it was too early to determine just how many of those were children. But the news was expected to be grim. And of course there was no indication of a cause yet.
A highly dramatic shot of billowing flames and smoke that reminded me of the aftermath of a volcanic eruption was replayed over and over, and helicopters in the area showed the guts of the factory spewed across a vast radius. It was truly a horrific sight.
On a hunch, I dashed over to The List computer and tried to find the image of massive smoke and flame on the BBC website.
As you might imagine, my high-tech alien brainbox had extraordinary resolution and magnification capabilities, and I clicked fast to zoom in as much as possible to ground zero of the explosion.
uOh my goodness," Emma whispered when she saw a peculiar black shape take form.
"More like, oh my evilness," Joe corrected, shaking his head in disbelief as we all saw the suggestion of eyes, and teeth.
"Not funny," I said. "At all"
"What is it?" Dana asked, leaning over me to peer at the screen and putting her hands on my shoulder. I took a wild guess.
"The Dark Heart."
Chapter 14
WE DISCUSSED heading to the site of the explosion for clues on Beta but, after some discussion, decided that it wasn't the right thing to do. The entire area would be teeming with police investigators, medical professionals, and grieving families. And if we'd seen what we thought we'd seen, we knew the "perpetrator" would already have left the scene of the crime.
So where would a Phosphorian hang out?
That's how I decided we would split up to investigate different "hot spots"--literally--in the city. Factories that needed flame in their processing, for instance. And if Beta had servants--locals to help with the parts of his fuel-harvesting operation not involving, you know, burning things up--they'd probably be the kind of folks who were used to working with fire.
Emma and I went to a metal workshop in the south part of London. I'd brought Emma with me instead of Dana this time since I sensed she was feeling a little left out of my inner circle of one. She'd figured out that the night before I hadn't "disappeared" Dana at the same time as I'd gotten rid of the rest of them.
My face broke into a smile when we arrived. The sign outside this workshop read B. FAUST AND COMPANY, LTD ., THE INSCRIPTION UNDER A PICTURE OF A JOLLY-LOOKING BLACKSMITH WITH HIS ARMS CROSSED. I HAD A GOOD FEELING ABOUT THIS: HAVING READ MOST OF THE GREAT EUROPEAN CLASSICS AT LEAST ONCE BY NOW, I GATHERED THAT THERE WAS A REAL DEVIL RUNNING THIS PLACE. (LOOK UP "FAUST" ON WIKIPEDIA IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE.) EMMA AND I PEEKED IN THROUGH A PANED WINDOW IN THE FRONT DOOR. THE PLACE WAS INCREDIBLE: A CAVERNOUS, DARK ROOM LIT ONLY BY GIANT FURNACES ALONG TWO WALLS. THE AIR INSIDE WAS ALIVE WITH SPARKS AND THE CRACKLE OF ARC WELDERS.
A nearby figure lifted its welding mask. I was surprised to see a lean, grizzled middle-aged woman's face looking out at us. Grimacing, actually.
"Oi, no kids in here!" she shouted in a gravelly voice, opening the door and giving us a fiery glare. "Go 'way."
I put on my innocent wouldn't-hurt-a-fly face. "Sorry, ma'am, we're just doing a school report on--"
"Something wrong with your hearing, sonny? I said get out! Now, if you know what's good for ya--go!"
We blinked our way back out into the sunlight a few paces from the workshop.
"Well, that seemed promising," remarked Emma. "She had a sort of, um, alienesque rudeness about her."
I shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe she's just a garden-variety humanoid jerk."
I hated to admit it, but I wasn't sure exactly what we were looking for. Ashes? Burn marks? Overdone steaks? This may not be what you want to hear from the Alien-Hunter-slash-Guardian-of-Earth, but sometimes it's the bad guys who find me.
Like that stupid van, I chided myself for the thousandth time, still feeling dumb about the careless move. I couldn't get it out of my head.
"Everything all right?" asked Emma solicitously, putting her hand on my shoulder.
I pulled away, then immediately felt bad as I saw her mouth and eyes droop at the corners. "Yeah, I'm just fine, Em. Come on, let's see if there's a back door," I said, trying to inject some softness into my voice.
But then Emma suddenly grabbed my arm, her hand as tight as a pincer.
"What--?" I started to say, but she cut me off.
"Don't turn around, Daniel," she said softly but urgently. "We're being watched. And the creep watching us is definitely no 'garden-variety jerk.'"
Chapter 15
WHATEVER MINOR COMPLAINTS I might have about Emma--likes animals more than people, overly optimistic to the point of drowning us all in sunbeams--there was one thing for sure: that girl has a bloodhound's nose when it comes to sniffing out bad guys.
Unfortunately, even though I'
m an alien, I don't have eyes in the back of my head. One time in Texas I had to fight an Argusian, a slimy fish-reptile with giant eyes not just on the back of its head, but also on its knees and elbows and on each of its enormous teeth. That was not an easy beast to sneak up on.
Now I turned a little to face the wall behind us, casually leaning against it with one hand. Then I focused all my energies into the wall's surface. This was a relatively easy one: clay to silicate. As soon as I had the thought, on e o f the bricks, up at my eye level, shimmered and became a rectangular mirror.
I scanned the mirror's reflection of the street behind me. "Aviator sunglasses? Cancer stick?" I said.
"That's the creep itself," Emma whispered back.
The guy was sitting on a bench across the street from the foundry, smoking a cigarette. He was throwing us the most casual glances, but when I paid attention, well, even behind the shades, those glances were as piercing as a switchblade.
"Now that looks like a man who works with fire," Emma said, referring to the man's barrel-like arms, scarred and pitted with burns.
I nodded. "But maybe he's just an employee taking a smoke break," I suggested, even though I'd already convinced myself that he was one of Beta's followers. It's an alien-radar thing I've got going on. Somehow, the cretin had already found me.
I heard a familiar roar in my ears, the sound made by the engine of one of those double-decker buses. A lucky break for a getaway. I cocked my head toward Emma. "Hop on my back."
As the bus passed between us and the man with the Popeye arms, Em jumped up onto my back and I sprinted out behind the bus, using it for cover. I kept up a comfy thirty miles per hour or so until the double-decker rounded the corner. Then I skidded to a stop.
I peeked back toward the metal workshop. The guy was looking around, perplexed by our sudden disappearance. Maybe he was only human after all.
He shook his head, stood up, tossed his filthy cigarette butt away, grinding it out with a thick boot heel, and pulled a fresh one out of the pack in his breast pocket. I hate littering almost as much as smoking, but in the next moment 1 forgot about the crudhead's misdemeanor.
Casually glancing around him, he cupped an empty hand. Then he bent his head down and lit his cigarette off a small red flame the size of a strawberry.
The fire was coming right out of his palm.
Did I say he was human? Whoops.
Chapter 16
"FOLLOW THAT CAD," said Em with a wink, and I did. But we stayed well back from Mr. Handfire as he strode away from his post on the bench. He was grumbling to himself, looking around, it seemed, for a stray dog or cat to kick.
"He let us get away. Now he's in tro-u-ble," I whispered in a singsong voice.
After a few blocks, he turned down a cobblestoned alley, tossing his still-lit cigarette into a trash barrel. What a genius. I blinked a few handfuls of water into existence and stopped for a moment to dump it on the trash fire he'd started.
Emma and I got to the alley mouth just in time to see him going through a dingy green door at the far end. After a couple of minutes a shadow flickered in the window of a t hird-floor apartment. The rusted fire escape that climbed the side of the building was only nine feet or so off the ground, so I jumped up to grab the bottom rung. Michael Jordan's got nothin' on me.
I looked down at Emma as I started to climb. "I'll be right back."
She rolled her eyes. "You afraid it's too dangerous for me?"
"No. If I lose my grip you're going to break my fall." Fortunately, she chuckled. She knew I wouldn't let her get hurt. I could whip up a trampoline or something to fall onto if I needed to.
The ladder was rickety, and the balconies above it looked like they were cobbled together from coat hangers and pipe cleaners. This place was in dire need of a visit from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Somehow, I made it to the third floor without getting speared by one of the rusted, broken balcony rails and contracting tetanus. I edged along the wall and looked into the lit window.
The glass was encrusted with grime and cracked in several places, so I had to put my face right up to the window to see through it. Yowza! Now we're making progress.
Inside was a kitchen, the messiest I'd ever seen on Earth. Everything was covered with at least an inch of dirt, mildew, garbage, and rotting food. He stood at the stove, wearing a stained apron that read l Y= GRILLING AS HE STIRRED SOMETHING THICK, DARK, AND LUMPY IN A SAUCEPAN.
I thought I knew every travesty the Brits had unleashed on the culinary world--haggis, spotted dick, good old-fashioned mincemeat--but this didn't even look like food. Unless it was food that had been already eaten, if you know what I mean.
He grabbed a bottle from the counter and poured half of the contents into the pan. Then he lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a swig. Did that label say castor oil? No, wait. I blinked.
That wasn't right.
I squinted through the glass and put my hands up by the sides of my face to get a better look.
Yup. The bottle's label said CASTROL. He was drinking motor oil.
And that's when--in the middle of another swig--he turned and saw me crouching on the fire escape.
NO PROBLEM: i LOVE fighting aliens.
Chapter 17
THE CREEP must have recognized me, because he choked on his motor oil in mid-swig and started spluttering. Once he regained his composure he squinted his eyes and gave me a steely glare.
"So yah spoh'ed me earlier, eh? Won't say Oi'm surproised." His voice came clearly through the cracks in the window, a perfect cockney accent. Joe definitely needed to take diction lessons from this guy. "'E said yah were one to watch out for."
"'E? You mean he?"
"The livin' foire. Yah know, Betah!"
"Beta... he knows I'm here?" It wasn't actually a question. The way things had been going lately, I wasn't surprised in the least.
"'E knows lotsa things. Like he knows Oi'm gonna kill yah. 'E told me so 'imself."
"Why would you work for an evil maniac like him?" I asked, stalling. You'd be amazed how well this tactic works with dumb criminals. They really love to talk about themselves.
"Well, lemme put it this way for yah, mate. 'E gives me certain... benefits."
He put a hand up to his face, and I noticed he was gritting his teeth, hard. Then he raised his sunglasses. His left eye was yellowed and watery. Where his right eye should have been, there was only an empty socket.
I barely had time to register this, when the right side of his face began to swell, and his mouth opened in a primal scream. "Loike this one, f'rinstance!"
Before I could react, a glowing, flaming ball of lava burst from his eye socket, shattered the window, and exploded like a lightning bolt against my chest.
And in case you're wondering, yeah, that hurts even an alien.
I flew backward into the flimsy safety railing. Actually, safety railing was a misnomer--peanut brittle would have done a better job at keeping me safe. The rail buckled instantly, and I went over the side in a cloud of broken glass and rusty metal, flailing my arms in a poor imitation of the backstroke as I fell.
I might have morphed myself into a bird if I hadn't been in excruciating pain from the burn of the flaming eyeball strike. Not to mention that a three-story fall goes extremely fast. There was no way to focus.
I clutched my chest and braced myself for a hard, painful, possibly fatal landing on the cobblestones below. The cobblestones of London's streets had been handpicked to withstand cart wheels, horses' hooves, wheelbarrows. They'd lasted hundreds of years. In a contest with my spine, they were probably going to win.
I gulped, maybe the last thing I would ever do.
Of course, I'd forgotten all about Emma. She hadn't forgotten about me, though. "DANIEL!"
Smackdown.
Not many people would let themselves be clobbered to save a friend. Em was brave, I'll give her that. I ended up on top of her, facedown. She wheezed like she'd been punched in the gut
fifty times.
"You okay?" I asked her, feeling awful. I didn't mean to use her as a cushion. I'd only been joking earlier.
"I might be better if you'd eaten less fish and chips in the past few days," she razzed me. "A few pounds less g-force would have been nice."
I disentangled myself and stood up, pulling Em to her feet as I did.
"I'm guessing your meeting didn't go so well," she said.
"Well, actually, it was a blast."
I could feel blood running down my face where a shard of glass had cut my forehead. A circular singe mark was smack-dab in the middle of my chest. My whole body felt like a giant blister.
"We've got to get out of here," I whispered urgently. "You good to run?"
"Run, no. Stumble, okay. Good thing you're not any heavier or I would have been a rut in the pavement."
As the two of us lurched away as best we could, I heard a demented voice echoing down the alley behind us.
"Don' go, Alien Hunter! Oi just put dinner on! Didn' Oi tell yah, OI HEART GRILLIN'?"
Chapter 18
WHEN WE GOT BACK to the town house that evening, Dana, Joe, and Willy immediately dropped their jaws.
"Wow! What happened?" asked Joe. "Wait, let me guess. Accidentally shot out of a cannon?"
"Almost," Emma said wryly. Dana rushed out of the room to get either first-aid supplies or holy oils for the last rites.
"You both look like mega-crap," contributed Willy. "Are you all right, Em?" He enveloped her in a tight hug. The two of them are so different that sometimes I forget they're brother and sister.
I tried to fake a war-hero pose. "Nothing a few months of R and R wouldn't cure," I said, not wanting to let on how I'd dumped--literally--on Emma. Willy'd never let me live that down. "Em was great. She's due for some vacation time."
"He got blasted off a third-story balcony" said Emma matter-of-factly. "I caught him." Way to blow my plan, Emma.
Joe slapped his hands to the sides of his face. "Great balls of fire!"
"More like eyeballs of fire," I said with a grimace.
Dana came back with a damp towel, sat down beside me, and started to clean the dried blood from my face.
Demons and Druids (2010) Page 3
