by Rob Horner
“Why is that?” I asked, pitching my voice lower as we turned right again, now moving across the front of the gift store.
“If we have time to arrange a group to meet someone, then they have time to arrange something as well,” Fish answered solemnly.
“And it probably won’t be as nice as a friendly professor walking up to shake your hand,” Brian said, his voice coming through the Port-Comm.
It made sense, in a scary they’re all out to get me way of thinking. And while it might not technically be true for everyone else, they really were all out to get me. Every Dra’Gal that was a part of this hive, or collective, or whatever you wanted to call it, knew who I was. If my dreams were any indication, they even had a name for me. The Banisher.
I didn’t think that would make a very good comic book.
We rounded the side of the building, moving along the storefront facing Atlantic Avenue. There were five people idling outside the Virginia Gift Shop, which was nothing more than a souvenir store selling the same knick-knacks you’d find along the Interstate at the state line. “Virginia is for Lovers” T-shirts lined one wall, while standing racks held large coffee mugs featuring full-color symbols from the numerous military bases scattered throughout the state. F-14 Tomcats soared in formation across placemats while scenes from the boardwalk covered postcards and keychains.
Two of the people, one a middle-aged man and the other an older woman, looked as though they’d just passed each other as one entered, and one left the shop. The other three gave an odd impression. Two tall men stood to either side of a short woman, almost like bookends. What I could see of her features appeared Asian, which fit the name we were given, Joi Chen. But she’d dyed her long, straight hair blond so that it fell in cascading yellow waves down to her waist, shimmering in the Spring sunlight like spun gold.
The two men beside her stood like bodyguards, tall and straight with hands folded in front of them. They were alike as mirrors, obviously twins, and not Asian. Both had stylishly tousled, boy-band brown hair framing gentle faces, though the blue eyes that locked onto the professor and I were anything but welcoming.
The woman didn’t see us at first. She was looking up and down the avenue, radiating calm in that way some women have even if their stomachs are in a knot and their hearts are trip-hammering. It was the men who saw us, who saw me, and once their eyes latched onto me, hers immediately followed.
Before I could say anything, memory struck.
I passed a third set of alcoves, a third pair of corpses, and couldn’t stop myself from looking, memorizing the faces and features of more victims of this carnage. A tall woman, maybe six feet, with caramel skin and fine, chiseled features, and another young woman, blond, alike in size to Crystal but with features that appeared Asian: tilted eyes, small mouth. The contrast between hair and features was arresting, but I couldn’t stop to mourn the loss of her beauty.
The woman’s dark eyes flashed, turning blue.
And I was suddenly drowning.
Chapter 13
Oh my! It’s Aqua-Woman!
I don’t mean that in any romantic way.
Not like the soulful pull of her eyes caught me, drowning me in their depths like a diver caught by the lure of a mermaid, certain he could never know such beauty above the waves.
This was literal.
One minute I was breathing fine, about to point out to Jeff the odd way the woman’s gaze shifted after the men saw us.
Maybe I was just going to say Hi.
I inhaled and got nothing but water even as the sensation of having my head submersed in a tub struck me. It wasn’t just the air coming into my mouth, it was all the air around me.
Water is fire when it enters the lungs. There is no subtlety to it, no gentle acceptance that this might be all right. There is immediate and complete rejection.
My indrawn breath turned to a hacking cough, weak and ineffectual because there wasn’t much air left in my lungs to begin with. Jeff coughed as well, staggering away while his hands came up to his face.
A sense of immediate desperation overcame me. This wasn’t a hold your breath moment.
I had no breath to hold, and my depleted lungs were demanding that I try to draw something in.
The world swam in my vision. My hands came up to my face and felt a resilient wall of water covering my skin. I shook my head, feeling water fly away the same way you do when you get out of a shower. But if there were drops being flung off to either side, the bubble remained.
The two men started forward, no longer looking like boy-band dancers but now like melted candle-wax figures through the water-lenses placed over my eyes. A flash of light strobed across my sight from the right and the woman hissed.
Gunshots sounded from somewhere, the reports distant and echoing, though that might have been because of the water surrounding my head. “We got company,” one of the soldiers said in my ear.
The two men stopped advancing and twisted in opposite directions, looking for something.
“What’s happening?” sounded in my right ear, Fish looking for an explanation.
The flash of light.
I had one chance, maybe two or three seconds before my body would rebel, forcing me to inhale.
These were demons. They had to be.
I clapped my hands.
The woman smiled.
Purging Dra’Gal may be the most important aspect of my ability. It may well be the thing that eventually allows us to win. But it wasn’t the first gift I discovered.
If anything, it was a side-effect.
All these other people, with their telekinesis, and pyrokinesis, and super speed, and weird skin-changing talents…well, I could stand toe to toe with them on the front line of any battlefield.
I could expel force, which always came with a flash of white light.
At first it only happened when trying to hit something, until I learned to hit without the force, and to expel force without hitting. I could also magnify it, in a way, by slamming my hands together, creating a shockwave effect that flew out in front of me, usually with the net result of demons and any unsecured belongings flying backward.
So, I clapped.
Light flashed, bright despite the sunlight.
And she smiled, small mouth turning up at the corners. If anything, her eyes turned bluer.
A rushing stream of water raced out at me, originating from somewhere in the air about six inches in front of her chest. It was a raging torrent, a tsunami wave concentrated into a foot-diameter beam of water.
Shockwave met water jet in the kind of splash that can only be described by drawing comparisons to the videos they used to show us in school, what a nuclear explosion would look like underwater. The force of my power vaporized her water as it tore through it, like a molten knife edge carving vertically through a block of butter. But my shock wave was a fine line, a literal scalpel compared to the large diameter body of liquid she threw at me.
I think she smiled because she was expecting my shockwave. She knew about it the same way she knew to attack me on sight. That shared-mind thing the Dra’Gal had.
She thought she could stop it with her power.
It tore through her stream unimpeded, slamming into her torso and knocking her backward. Her two tall lookouts, each facing a different direction ninety degrees offset from her, staggered sideways.
Unfortunately for me, that same difference in effect allowed most of her water stream to flow to the left and right of my shockwave, hitting me on both sides of my face and torso, pushing me backward. Maybe if there’d been more room separating us, the stream would have divided enough to miss me completely.
Falling away, I couldn’t stop myself from taking in a breath. Sweet air rushed into my body. A sound like a diver clearing a mask underwater filled my chest as the sudden infusion of air filled the spaces in the bottoms of my lungs. I was racked by hacking coughs, spastic things just one step shy of dry heaves as my body worked to get rid of the
last vestiges of inhaled water.
For the next few moments I was helpless, easy prey if the woman or her friends renewed their attack. She’d been stunned enough to let the mask of water lapse, but it wouldn’t be long until she did it again.
Still coughing, I forced myself upright, slamming my hands together again for good measure. Another flash of light arced out, yet as I opened my eyes the sound of glass shattering filled the air. I’d gotten turned a little by the staggering attack of water and the subsequent coughing fit and was now facing more toward the front of the gift shop than my three attackers.
Shouts of surprise came from inside the store, followed by the sounds of running footsteps, someone coming to check. It wouldn’t be long before the police were called, if they weren’t already on the way. There was a chance the local precinct hadn’t been co-opted, but it was a bet no sane gambler would take.
“Get down!” Brian shouted, his voice loud and clear from in front of me, followed by an electronic echo in my right ear that lagged by about a half-second.
I dropped to my stomach, landing on my hands, as something arced-sizzled in the air. The woman staggered forward, back arched, head tilted up, eyes darkening from blue to brown-black, as fine wires appeared to connect her to something in Brian’s hand.
Sudden snarls and growls came from the right, inside the gift shop, and I turned as three demons jumped through the remains of the store window.
I know they aren’t demons, not really. They don’t come from hell, and they aren’t the result of a supernatural pact between an evil man and a fallen angel. But when this all started, that was the only name that came to mind. Habits are hard things to break.
Their heights ranged from five-and-a-half to somewhere north of six feet tall and seemed to equate to the size of the human they inhabited. Their skin was a mottled patchwork of earthen colors, everything from sand to mud, gray clay to red, with some dark green striations for extra variety. They were bipedal with a head, shoulders, and two arms, but that’s where all similarities to humanity ended.
Their faces were a mixed bag of features. The leader of the trio coming through the window had a broad face with a porcine snout pushing out of the center. Strangely curved fangs, like a cross between a wolf and a vampire, extended from the upper and lower sides of the snout, like the mouth was hinged at its base, rather than below it. Red eyes that retained the shape and size of its human host glared at me from below scaly eyebrow ridges, while upright scales, like small fins, ran from the center of those ridges back up and over the scalp. This specimen had no visible ears, just holes in the sides of its head, though both of its fellows had large, pointed things on either side of theirs. The arms and legs were oddly jointed, segmented like an insect, though the knees and elbows could bend completely in both directions, giving them great flexibility and strength.
Long claws, sometimes curved, sometimes straight, always wickedly sharp, topped off each hand. Some of them clopped around on goat hooves, but if they had feet, those would be taloned as well.
Another snarling growl came from my left as a fourth Manifested Dra’Gal revealed itself. It was the middle-aged man, who’d been leaving the store as we arrived. Which meant one of the trio to my right was the older woman who’d been going into the store. Were the other two store employees, or had they also come with the group?
It seemed like a nonsense question, but I wanted to know if there were any innocent bystanders to worry about.
Fresh screams, real screams from real people suddenly shocked out of their everyday lives by the sight of living nightmares appearing in front of them, came from all around us. Brakes screeched at the same time engines raced, different people reacting differently to impossible visual stimuli. Immediately after came the crunch of bumpers and the blaring of horns as panicked motorists reacted and tried to get away.
I lurched back to my feet as the Dra’Gal with the pig face charged from the right. It was still clothed, though not in plain dress and sensible shoes, so it wasn’t the older woman. Clad in jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt with the local surf shop logo climbing the arms, its limited amount of bare skin would make Purging it more difficult.
Its two fellows turned, located Brian, and charged. Those had burst through their clothing, so that only rags and tatters remained. The one coming from the left increased his pace, barreling in, khaki slacks and sportscoat still spotless. Whether he meant to help the surfer attacking me or provide extra protection for the girl, I couldn’t tell. The New Kids twins recovered, still in human form, and clasped hands over the prone form of the pretty Asian girl.
Something red began to form in the air between their bodies and hers, hovering like a gas ball.
“One hostile down, six standing,” Brian reported in my ear, his voice no different than if he was discussing dinner options. One salad please but bring six plates. We like to share. Light flashed in his hands, and the Taser gun disappeared, to be replaced by the handgun he’d leveled at me that morning. “I don’t want to shoot them, but—”
“Where are Gus and Little Jack?” Fish asked.
“Gus’s down,” Little Jack replied, sounding winded. “And Jeff’s hurt, but not too bad. They were waiting for us up here.”
“Damn,” Fish swore.
“Had to use lethal force,” the big soldier added, “so we got three bodies up here.”
The pig demon swung at me, a wild, wide arc of the left arm that would break through any defense, would break my arm if I tried to block it, even with my power. I ducked and lurched to my right, but before I could set my feet, it pushed off its leading leg and pivoted, coming right back at me with an overhand right, again wildly exaggerated.
They were learning, collectively, from every fight, like a boxer reviewing film prior to facing a new opponent. Pretty soon every Dra’Gal who shared this collective conscious would know all my favorite tricks, reducing my effectiveness in one-on-one combat.
The red ball between the twins grew larger, now a glaring globe that encompassed them, the girl, and the fourth Dra’Gal, who’d placed himself between me and them. It…pulsed, light pushing out from the center, reaching to the edges, and the edges expanded.
Shots rang out as Brian fired at the charging demons. Inverted knees blew apart in a spray of red and green. The demons toppled to the sidewalk, their screams of pain an unnatural cross between a human and a mountain lion.
Pig-face swung again, this time without setting its feet, its left arm coming around at chest height. I pivoted to my right to meet the blow, bringing both arms in tight to my sides, forearms in front of my chest, fists up. I had no intention of pushing my arms out to meet the swing, but rather wanted to use my whole body as a shock absorber. I willed my power out as its arm connected, throwing its arm back out wide as light flashed.
The shock ran down into my elbows and back up to my shoulders, but it didn’t stagger me. Stepping forward, I fired two quick jabs into its stomach, a right and a left, using all my training and natural strength, but withholding my power. The demon was edged backward by each blow, off-balance but hardly injured. It was enough. It had no defense in place for the third strike, a rising jab to its unprotected chin.
Light flashed.
“One of them just disappeared!” Brian shouted.
That’s what happened if I banished one while it was Manifested. It vanished completely. Did that mean I had killed the human host?
I didn’t know, and the uncertainty ate at me like a cancer. Ever since the power manifested, I’d been worried, filled with guilt. What if this power destroyed people completely? It was them or us. I knew that. But there’s a big difference between knowing you must do something and being okay with doing it. Not having a choice didn’t make it right.
The red glowing ball was now larger than the twins creating it, reaching out to surround everything in the vicinity. It didn’t seem to be doing anything other than growing, but I needed to get in there to Purge the girl.
The t
wins as well, but definitely her. Like Gina and James, Tiffany and Ricardo, she was another of those I saw in a dream. It might have been nothing more than a this is what’s coming kind of vision, but I didn’t see it that way. If that were the case, then why fight? The same dream also foretold my own corruption, my body taken by the red light, turned into a weapon for the Dra’Gal.
I saw those bodies hanging on meat hooks as a challenge. If I could save them, if I could somehow save even one of them, then the dream wasn’t an absolute promise. And if part of it could be changed, then why not all of it?
The globe expanded again, now wide enough to touch the frame of the gift store, curving beyond the shattered glass and into the building, causing no visible effect. Brian charged forward, light appearing around his fists, resolving into handcuffs. The demons on the ground batted at him as he approached, but he deftly avoided their claws, swinging the handcuff like a baton so one cuff latched on an exposed wrist when it struck. Using a twist like a modified wrestling move, he got behind the thing, securing a knee on its back and using his leverage to grab its right arm, quickly cuffing the wrists together.
Jumping off the first demon, Brian repeated the maneuver to secure the second.
Jeff couldn’t teleport demons, just as Tanya hadn’t been able to use her telekinesis to grab them. After she was converted, she couldn’t use her power directly on me. We’d have to knock them unconscious, get them back into human form, for me to save them.
“Just three left standing,” Brian reported. “Two of them are holding hands, creating a red barrier, or bubble, around themselves. It keeps getting bigger.” He reached out, palm forward like he expected the light to have substance. There was a spark and a crackle, like a mosquito hitting a bug zapper.
“Sonuva—” the cop swore, jerking his hand back. He shook it, like it’d gone numb from the contact. “Can’t breach it. It’s an electrical field.”
