by Juliet Boyd
They hadn’t been going long when Bones yelped. She sniggered. He sounded so much like a dog. He rolled out from under the car. The faint remnants of a wound on his finger healed before her eyes. It couldn’t have been deep. He shook out his hand. It probably didn’t hurt. Another hard-to-suppress human habit.
“Sharp teeth?”
“What?”
“It bit you.”
“No. I snagged my finger on a jagged piece of metal, but yes, it must have sharp teeth to have bitten through the metal in the first place. I wasn’t being careful enough.”
“Good job you heal,” Rag said, peering underneath the car.
“Something small, with sharp teeth, that can rip cars apart.” Flynn idly mumbled.
“Rip it apart?” Bones said. “No, I don’t think it’s doing that. I think it’s eating the car, bit by tiny bit.”
Flynn stared at him for a moment. This thing was beginning to sound less and less like the little, furry creatures she’d hoped. “Chocolate buttons and metal. Diverse diet. Have we looked up demon dustbin?”
She’d meant it as a bit of a joke. Bones didn’t look amused. “Just make sure you have a spell ready when we do find it, all right? It’s bound to want to get away.”
She saluted, which probably wasn’t the best thing to do, but he didn’t react. Now, if that’d been Rag ….
“I’m going to try searching something else,” she said to Ellie, before locking eyes on her phone again.
She typed metal-eating supernatural creatures into the search engine. That turned out to be no help at all. Car-crushing machines weren’t sentient beings. Then, an alarm beeped. Everyone, now alert, turned to her, as if it were her responsibility.
She walked over to the makeshift table where her pack sat and pulled out the tablets. They each dutifully downed one without the help of water. They were so used to it now they didn’t even gag.
“You haven’t got many of those left,” Ellie said.
“No.”
She’d been putting off making more for days. They were the tablets that allowed them to go out in the daylight. The ones she’d taught herself how to recreate before all hell broke loose in Midbury. Before she’d become a hybrid, rather than simply a witch. Before everything she was, and could be, changed. Unreliable magic was not good for creating things that had to be one hundred percent reliable. She was scared she wouldn’t be able to do it anymore, and there was no way she was going to ask her sister for help.
###
Bones put down the spanner and flexed his wrist. He needed a break. He might have vampire genes and be able to go on forever if he had to, depending on blood supplies, but mentally, he was pooped.
He left the others and walked outside into the cold night air. He knew it was cold because he could see his breath. It only felt slightly tingly against his cheeks. It was still only just past winter. It hardly seemed possible that it was only a few months since they’d left Midbury.
Everything was so quiet. He loved it when it was like this. When it felt as if there was no one else around. When it felt as if he could do anything, could be anyone. Even though he’d lived most of his life in the city, he reckoned he was a country boy at heart.
Boy. Ha. His secret wasn’t hidden in a painting.
He loved the … He looked at the sky more closely. There were no clouds, he could see that, but there were also no stars. That made no sense. He blinked hard, thinking that his eyesight was as fuzzy as his brain from too much staring at metal and bolts, but no. There was still nothing. He considered whether the moon was just too bright, but that had never made a difference before. He had to be imagining it.
“Ellie.”
Ellie came to the door of the barn. “Yes, what is it?”
He pointed to the sky. She looked up.
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly.” And in that precise moment, something tickled at his brain, but it didn’t make him smile. “Look up gremlins.”
###
Rag paced back and forth with purpose. He’d always found it was the best way to sort out the messes in his brain. “But it says they live in planes. Why would it be in a car?”
“Because there are no planes,” Ellie said. Her logic was just too annoying.
Gremlins? He’d thought they were just something made up for a horror film. Not real. Even the name sounded made up. How could they be real? How could they make the stars disappear? You didn’t navigate cars by the stars, that would play havoc with the fields. You didn’t navigate anything by the stars anymore, unless you were some—
Flynn stormed back inside, shaking her head. Never a good sign. “I can’t counteract it. The stars are still gone, or being hidden. I can’t believe they’re really gone. That would screw up the universe, wouldn’t it? Make everything move about wrong? Kill us all?”
On that, he didn’t have a clue. “So, it’s stronger than you?” he squeaked. Not deliberately. His throat was dry. He needed a feed soon.
“I’m not what I was. You know that.”
“Yes, but some tiny little—”
“Size has nothing to do with it when it comes to magic. It’s application that’s the key.”
“So it’s … more applied than you?”
She shook her head in a way that indicated she despaired of him. He despaired of her. He felt like hitting out. He didn’t.
“Something like that.”
Although, he had to admit, she did look worried. Which made him worried. “How big are these things?”
“Pretty damned small,” Bones said. “There’s not much space left in that to hide in.” Bones indicated the car with a flick of his head.
“Are we even sure it’s still in there?” Ellie asked. “Can you put up a shield that we can get in, but it can’t get out of?”
Flynn bit at her lip. “I can try.”
She held up her hands and a glow of light spilled out toward the car, crashing against its surface and flowing across the shape of the structure like bubbling water. Rag walked over and tentatively pushed his hand through. “It’s a bit like that cage—”
“Rag,” Ellie said, stopping him dead. He so wanted not to stop, but she wasn’t the only one glaring. Getting on the wrong side of Flynn was not a good plan.
“I think we should get some rest and start again in the morning,” Ellie said.
“And I think we should have at least one person on watch,” Rag said.
“You’re it,” Flynn snapped.
“But ….” He shut his mouth. He was it. Right.
Chapter 4
The space within Flynn’s bubble needed lighting. That was what was wrong with the whole scenario. It was all very well keeping watch, but if what you were keeping watch upon wasn’t visible, it wasn’t a lot of use. Yes, Rag did have good night vision, but he couldn’t see every detail of some teeny-tiny creature hiding in a lump of metal, when he didn’t even know what it looked like. For all they knew, they’d already let if free. He wished there was a proper description of what a gremlin looked like. No one had ever actually seen one, apparently. Which meant it probably wasn’t a gremlin. It was a demon pretending to be one. A metal-consuming … seriously, eating metal could not be good for any creature’s body. And dull. Okay, there might be lots of minerals, those were generally considered good, but not to the exclusion of anything else. The dirt on the car wouldn’t provide much sustenance, either. All in all, a creature that lived like that would be … mad, probably. Metal poisoning. That sounded like a thing that would send you loopy.
He was so bored.
And when he was bored, he got hungry.
He opened the fridge, which was only cold because of the ambient temperature, and pulled out one of the packets of blood. He bit off the corner and began to slurp it down. It felt good against his throat and sent him into one of those flutters of ecstasy with each swallow, that only lasted a moment, but at once tensed your body and relaxed it. When he’d gulped down the last
mouthful, he stood still for several minutes letting the renewed strength of his powers wash through him. He chucked the bag into the corner of the barn and turned back to the car.
His eyes didn’t have to refocus. Even in the dim light he could see it. A ragged hole that looked as if it had been gnawed out of the bubble. A bubble that he didn’t think was made of solid matter. A bubble that was no longer a prison of any kind.
It had escaped. It was the only explanation.
And he’d been the one on guard duty.
He had a momentary thought of pretending the creature had somehow knocked him out, but he knew that wouldn’t wash. What had he been doing while it chewed its way out? Had he fallen asleep? Had he gone blind? Had he lost all his senses?
Yes. When you were feeding that was exactly what happened. You were in the moment. Nothing else mattered. Even if necks and teeth weren’t involved.
Waking them straightaway would be the best option, other than they’d be all grouchy about having been woken, even before he told them why.
Or ….
There were other vintage, to the point of falling apart, vehicles in the barn.
He crept over to an old tractor and stood there listening, stopping his own breathing action to help. He could hear nothing. He crouched down and looked underneath the vehicle. There were many holes in the bodywork, created by rust and decay. Those were lazy holes. They had no defined structure. The hole in the bubble had a definite shape to it. It was sharp.
He couldn’t see far enough into the structure.
He lay down on the ground and shimmied beneath the vehicle. The depths were still jet black. His eyesight couldn’t penetrate it. But there was a slight reverberation in his ears. Like the faintest susurrus on the breeze. Could a creature chew that quietly? Was he imagining it?
A spec of something crashed into his eyeball and he cursed, lifted his arm to his face without thinking and bashed both his arm and his head on what was left of the undercarriage of the vehicle, as he shuffled back out. The noise, of course, woke the others immediately. Faster than immediately. They were standing over him before he’d even realised exactly what had happened.
“What the hell?” Flynn said. She was looking between him and the bubble. “You were supposed to be on watch. What kind of watch involves not seeing the prisoner escape in plain sight?”
His vampiric belligerence fought back with a vengeance. “Shouldn’t you have noticed? It was your magic it bit through. Doesn’t that send some kind of signal back to your brain?”
He thought he saw a flash of something on her face that was more than just shock at his words, but it was gone so quickly he couldn’t be sure.
“Not all spells have a kick-back.”
Ellie frowned, but didn’t speak.
Flynn was lying. He was sure of it.
###
Ellie eventually found the creature on the list. There was no name given, just ‘indeterminate species’ with a description of what it did — mainly chewing through metal — and a list of its traits, of which the most important was distraction. As if they didn’t know that already. She pencilled ‘gremlin’ in the margin. They were difficult to catch mainly because of the distraction, although she wasn’t sure how that was achieved. Magic? Perhaps, that was why Rag hadn’t noticed it escaping. Although, the newly emptied blood bag, lying in the corner of the barn, might indicate otherwise. Blood was a distraction in itself.
The creature’s size was variable, depending upon how much it had eaten, which she assumed meant it was large now, given it had been eating for hours. But large was a relative thing, if you started the size of a flea. It was a threat because it could potentially destroy civilised life on earth, killing many people in the process, mainly through failing engines and collapsing buildings, but the possibilities were as endless as the uses of metal. It needed to be in captivity and fed scrap. She almost felt sorry for it. Incarceration just because of what it ate didn’t seem fair. Although … There ought to be a better solution. One that would work for all of them, but she couldn’t think of anything.
It was their job to capture it. They had to do that.
Distraction.
They’d already put a shield around all the metal objects in the barn, or rather, Flynn had, in case it was still inside. It was a big ask for Flynn now that she wasn’t the one imbued with the extra powers that leading her kind included. Her half-kind. She looked tired. That wouldn’t do. Ellie got her a blood bag and she devoured it quicker than usual. Then, Flynn sat there staring into space. There was no way she was going to be able to cast any more spells. She might not even be able to maintain the ones already activated.
But what else could they do other than wait until the creature made a move? And watch intently. They couldn’t let it get free again.
If it even was free.
Damn it.
“Flynn, that hole it made in your shield. Is it real?”
Flynn stared up at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
“That hole the creature made in the bubble, is it real? Is there really a hole?”
“I ….” Flynn turned toward it. “I don’t know.”
Ellie was on it. She leaned over and pushed her finger in.
“That won’t work. We were meant to be able to get in. You won’t be able to feel any difference.”
Ellie grunted, removed her finger and slapped her hands against her sides. “So, how are we going to tell?” She noticed Rag was at her shoulder. “You get back to where you were. We don’t know anything for certain. It could be anywhere.”
She reached out with her senses, trying hard to work out whether any living being was within the bubble, but nothing came to her. She sent her thoughts out further. All she could detect was the four of them. Nothing more. But she didn’t really know what she was sensing for. There was no indication in the notes of the creature’s composition. What if it was made of metal? She’d never find that in amongst the dregs of the car.
Flynn shuffled over and knelt by the hole. She held out her hands, as she always did when casting a spell. A white pinprick of light flew from them to the hole and bounced back as quickly as it had left. Flynn dodged it just in time. Ellie wasn’t sure if that was because of instinct, or because it really was dangerous to her. Not that it mattered.
“I’m assuming that means there’s no hole.”
Flynn nodded. “Surely, if it were still in there, that chunk of car would be nothing by now. It’s had … hours.”
“Can you move the bubble and its contents?”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
The strain on Flynn’s face as she tried to do what Ellie had asked was unbearable to watch. This was asking too much. “Wait. Rag. You take one side. I’ll take the other.”
They shunted the chunk of metal to the side, taking the bubble with it. Beneath it was a hole, the size of which was only big enough to fit a hand down, but presumably big enough for a metal-eating creature.
“How long do you think it’s been gone?” Flynn said.
“Ever since that fake hole appeared. It had already dug out its escape route. It was using a distraction. We should’ve foreseen this.”
“To be fair,” Bones said, “We didn’t know it could burrow.”
She was ready with a retort, but the sight of his blonde hair streaked with dirt, making him look like a poor man’s Cruella, stifled it.
Flynn sighed. “How fast do you suppose it could move?”
Ellie ran her finger across her lips. “Not that fast. It would need to displace the soil and it’ll be packed solid. This is grazing land. I don’t suppose it’s been ploughed for a very long time.”
“Do we really need to catch it?” Rag said.
They all spun toward him. He held up his hands and backed off.
Chapter 5
Flynn expelled a deep breath to calm herself. Anger rose within her. Not something she could control. Often, it made her responses more biting than she
intended.
“Look, I can’t maintain all these bubbles and search. What do you want me to do?”
A clutch of faces stared at her with instant vampiric annoyance, immediately tempered by human reasoning. Just.
The answer she was looking for came from Bones. “Don’t worry about the bubbles. I don’t suppose it’ll deliberately put itself in danger again by coming back.”
She huffed out the spells.
They all went outside.
The stars had returned, which she assumed was a good thing, or not. It might mean the creature had already managed to get a long way away from the barn and their search would be as fruitless as salt.
Still, they would search. Ellie was a stickler for detail and divided the field into sections, giving them all their own listening patch.
What fun.
Worm charming, anyone?
They trawled the squares of land the same way archaeologists did with their scanning machines. She remembered having seen that on some TV reruns when she started living in Midbury. Programmes she would actually have seen first time round if she hadn’t been hidden away. What a waste of time that turned out to be. To ensure she didn’t succumb to her vampire side. Well, that had failed. To become her mother’s successor. Failure number two. To stay safe, away from Adrielle. She needed one of those fail noises they had on quiz shows to pass comment on her life.
Listening to the sounds of the ground was odd. She’d never really focussed on it before. Well, why would you? There were all sorts of squelchy noises, that she presumed were said worms, and lots of other scratchy sounds, of other bugs, perhaps. But nothing big enough to be some metal-eating creature tunnelling its way to safety. That was her take, anyway.
Monotonous beyond counting grains.
How long was Ellie going to make them do this before they gave up? Maybe, it was an age thing. Although, technically the others were way older than Ellie, even though they didn’t look it. Grey hair did that, without even looking for wrinkles.
