by Alana Melos
“What is this?” I asked, not really expecting an answer… but one came to me anyway. Thoughts of what Regulus and I had seen in the plant’s mind swum up from the bottom of my mind. The spores… this thing was connected to the forest. Realizing we had to get it out of his apartment now, I gestured to the window with my sword. “I’m going to push it out. Open the window or I’ll break it.”
“You can’t put it on the street!” he exclaimed. I gave him an impatient look and Tim grumbled. “Fine, fine.” He reached the window nearest him as the tentacles lashed out. A half dozen or so hit home, and he hissed as they cut him with thorns. I hadn’t recalled that plant having thorns before, but it sure did now.
I stepped forward and struck out with my o-wakizashi, severing a couple of the tentacles. The plant turned its attention to me, leaving Septimus alone to jerk the window open. Without further ado, I pushed the writhing mass of green-brown horror out the window to let it drop below before it grew much bigger. Both of us moved and stuck out head out the window to watch it fall, and I debated going after it.
“Jesus Christ,” Septimus said, swearing loudly. “Holy fu… look.” He pointed.
It wasn’t just this plant which had come alive and grown, but others as well. Some of them, like Tim’s, had been on a table or shelf near a window. The silhouette of monster plants blocked out the light of apartments across the street. Other people in Tim’s building were taking care of their own vegetation by doing much as we did--pushing it out in whole or in pieces. Gunshots went off nearby. A few people screamed. I sighed. This would have been a wonderful buffet of emotions to play with, but everything remained dead and lifeless to me, like a flat B-list movie.
“I have to help them,” Tim said in a rush as he darted into his bedroom. I followed more slowly, my sword still at the ready.
“Why?” I asked. “People seem to be taking care of it themselves.” It was only a few houseplants after all.
He gave me a hard look, then raised a brow as if to ask ‘you really have to ask?’. As he threw his clothes on, he said, “It’s my duty. People need help. Plus, I should call this in. I wonder if it’s localized or--”
Tim didn’t get the second part of his musing out as the building rocked, knocking both of us to our feet. The floor trembled. Cracks appeared on the wall. When I looked outside the bedroom window, the light from the outside street lamps had been blocked out. Only slivers of the yellow glow shone around the edges of whatever it was in front of the window. I grabbed my trench and threw it on, then flew into the living room just in time to see a branch as thick as my arm wind its way up and over the window, stretching towards the sky.
I jumped outside, and flew up to get a better look on what was happening to the building. It wasn’t just Tim’s building, but the whole block and beyond. The plants which had started off as little bundles of tentacles morphed into thick, heavy trees. They grew fast, and they kept growing. The branches wound around the building like a vine did around a trellis, up and around, sometimes through an open window only to burst out of the brick wall. My sword looked very tiny compared to them. Even if I wanted to help, there wasn’t anything I could do. If it was just one building or one area, maybe. The entire block had erupted in violent plant life.
Tim’s face appeared at his living room window, and I yanked him out of his apartment telekinetically. “What in the…?” he asked, his voice trailing off as he saw the extent of the damage. “Is it an attack? It has to be.”
“Yes,” I said, flying us both up higher. The cold hit me like a ton of bricks and I faltered for a heartbeat, shaking with the low temp. When we flew clear the top of the nearby buildings--most of which were ten to fifteen stories in total, not nearly as big as some others--we saw the trees had mostly stopped growing by the time they had reached the top, as if their own structure couldn’t support them. More alarming, it wasn’t just the nearby neighborhood. The growth had blotted out much of the lights of the city to the north and east: the direction the platform had crashed so many years ago and where the majority of the spores had landed.
Turning, I saw the growth didn’t extend much beyond Tim’s apartment building, and from here the lights of Manhattan seemed to be intact. “They’re out of range,” I muttered under my breath.
Tim didn’t hear me. “I have to get to the police station, I need to make… damn! I left my phone inside.”
“I’m not going back in there to get it,” I stated flatly.
“Not asking you to,” he replied. “If you can drop me near a police station… two blocks over and one up… I’d appreciate it.”
I glanced at him and nodded. It didn’t take me long to zip over there and drop him off. I didn’t literally drop him, but the thought was tempting. I had other business to take care of myself now. I didn’t let the Reich invade, and I’d be damned if I was going to let some stupid plant take over my city.
Chapter Eleven
After cinching up my coat tighter, I flew to the motel. The plant invasion had to be what Adira had called about before I smashed my phone against the wall. She’d mentioned Rory first, then the trees. My guess was that since he was infected with the plant material, when the trees or plants or whatever it was exploded with growth, something bad had happened to him as well. All that work and my telepathy gone for nothing.
As I flew over the city, I saw it definitely wasn’t just the neighborhood surrounding Tim’s home. The closer I flew to the crashed platform of Uptown, the denser and wilder the growth became. Trees had sprouted from the middle of the street, growing thick and strong. Plant life had overtaken whole buildings, enveloping them heedless of the structure or the people within. Cresting over a tall building which had been completely engulfed, I pulled up short in shock. I had thought since the motel was much closer, it would be covered with the mutant plant, maybe even destroyed. The Red Swallow stood untouched.
I lowered myself to the ground apart from a crowd of terrified people who were trying to get into the office. Shivering in the cold and wishing I’d grabbed my clothes rather than just my jacket, I flew to the motel room, only to find the door open and a squatter inside. A quick brandish of my sword and the squatter left, but Rory and Adira were nowhere to be found. The room wasn’t any more trashed than I expected it to be. They’d left the chains for Rory attached to the bed. They weren’t broken or mauled, which meant Adira must have released him. The rest of the room stood disheveled, like someone had been living here for a couple days. In other words, just what you’d expected.
Adira had left some clothing here, so I grabbed a pair of pants which were a little bit too short for me, but too wide in the hips. Unfortunately, she hadn’t left any shoes. I took a couple of her scarves and wrapped them around my bare feet, then tied it off. It would work until I could hit up one of my hideouts.
I left the room, thinking of where to hit next. The pack HQ seemed the most likely target, but since they were both kicked out, they might not have gotten the warmest reception. Deciding to try there anyway, I started to take off when a loud voice stopped me, “Hey, hey you! Hey, broad!”
That caught my attention and I turned to see the motel clerk from the other night. He strode with purpose towards me, so I lowered myself again. He might have seen them leave. “Hey, the people staying in the room… when did they go?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” he swore. “I got all kinds of people here since this… whatever the fuck it is happened. I want the other half of my money.”
Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten to pay him. Reaching into my coat, I pulled out the wad of cash and counted out a thousand. When I handed it to him, I grabbed his hand and pulled him closer. “Here’s your money… and for calling me ‘broad’, a bonus.” I twisted his arm with savage strength, breaking it.
The money fluttered from his fingers. “Crazy b--” he began, then stopped himself. Groaning in pain, he brought his arm close to his chest while he chased the bills down.
“I saw them leave,
” a young woman said. When I looked at her, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and that was being generous. Overly made up with hollow eyes and skimpy clothing, the girl hooked for a living. Her blond hair hung in a stringy mess over her shoulder. As I met her eyes, I saw they were blue like mine.
“See who?” I asked.
“The big green werewolf and the foreign chick,” she said. “They went into… that.” She pointed at the thick of trees which swarmed the area in the direction of the pack’s HQ. “The trees… it was weird.”
“How weird?” I looked at the thicket, which from this angle appeared impenetrable.
“Like they moved for ‘em,” she said. When I glanced back to her, I didn’t miss the hopeful look in her eyes. She stuck her hands in her jacket pockets, standing there shivering.
The hair and the eyes… I could have been her, in a different life. As soon as that thought touched down, I groaned. No. No, I was not feeling sympathy for a total fucking stranger, just because she bore a passing resemblance to myself. My left eye throbbed once as if to agree, and I rubbed my temple.
“Here,” I said, snarling the word and handing her the remaining cash in my hand.
Her eyes lit up as I rolled my own and took off. I didn’t want to hear her thanks or see the stupid look of gratitude on her stupid face. The sympathetic feel in my head eased as I flew off and got her out of my sight. A few seconds later, it was forgotten as I flew to the pack’s HQ not that far away.
Like the motel, I thought since the pack had their HQ on the edge of the forest, it would be overwhelmed and maybe not even visible from the air. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The apartment building, and a couple others nearby, which served the supernatural refugees from their home stood untouched and undamaged. There wasn’t even a whisper of green around it.
I lowered myself to the ground, but kept hovering above it. Cold soaked through me. The flimsy protection I had wasn’t nearly enough. Approaching the front stoop of their HQ, I saw the guard outside, as always, but he sat on the front steps instead of looking around at attention. “What’s going on?”
“I do not know,” he said, his English accented heavily with German. “The trees. They do not come.” He shrugged and continued smoking his cigarette evidently not worried about other invaders coming near their home. The rest of the city in a wide arc was congested enough that he was probably right.
“I’m going to see Freyja,” I told him, and he waved me through. When I opened the door, a riot of noise hit me. It sounded as if all of the remaining pack were here and they were shouting over each other in an argument.
Letting the door fall closed behind me, I traced the noise to the basement, where they had grown used to hanging out. The comparison between their underground cavern in Berlin and the basement here flew across my mind, sparking a different idea which I filed away for later. I had to concentrate on the here and now.
Descending the basement stairs, the noise increased. When my foot hit the bottom of the stairs and I turned the corner, I saw their common area stuffed full with their pack. Most of them I at least knew on sight, but there was a face here and there which was still unfamiliar to me. Most of them were werewolves, but all of the remaining vampires were present, standing silent vigil on the edges of the large room. Freyja stood in the middle, ringed by the wolves in their human forms and the vamps who skulked along the outside of the circle in the shadows. The sheer amount of volume produced staggered me. I couldn’t see how anyone heard anything in that mess, much less to have a discussion. As I tried to assess the situation, I stood there silent, letting the warmth of the room fill me and dispel the lingering cold from outside.
Although I couldn’t read their emotions, the tone of their voices seemed to cut the camp into two spheres: those who were afraid of something, and those who were pissed at something. The leader of the pack stood there, her eyes flicking here and there as the members spoke. Freyja raised her hands, and the silence fell like the iron curtain.
“For now, we choose not to attack,” Freyja said, her voice loud, clear, and oozing authority. “We have no reason to. We’ll revisit the matter in a couple of days, when our supplies run shorter and we have more information.”
I shook my head. How could she have heard anything in all that? Yet it appeared the wolf had. Perhaps it was a knack developed from having to listen for orders over the sound of battle. More likely, her mind was already made up on whatever decision was made and she listened out of politeness rather than actually trying to hear out arguments. Whichever it was, the angrier wolves left in a huff. I stepped aside quickly so as not to be bowled over by the bigger of them--Frank or Franz I think his name was. The others who ‘lost’ the discussion filed out behind him. The rest seemed to relax into the couches, their fear dissipating.
Stepping up to Freyja, I asked, “What’s going on? What was all that?”
Freyja jerked her head my direction, scowling. “A disagreement, and one I think we should discuss outside.”
I got the hint and followed her out. The wolf on the doorstep upnodded at us as we strolled past on the mostly cleared sidewalk. My eyes turned towards the forest. From here, it seemed taller, more imposing. Had the trees always been that height before?
“Spill,” I said, hovering above the cold sidewalk.
“The two exiled came back here,” she said, her voice curt as her breath frosted the air. “Not long ago. We were occupied with getting this… vekst… this whatever it is cleared from the building when the branches lifted, by themselves.”
“They… lifted?” I asked, arching a brow.
She shrugged, tossing her braided hair back. “Withdrew,” she said. “When they were gone, then we saw the two.” The werewolf shook her head. “It was obvious he had saved the building, that he commanded the forest to retreat, but we can’t accept him back.”
“He’s fixed,” I said. “I fixed his mind.”
Her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed, but she spoke in an even tone, “It’s done. There’s no going back.”
I ground my teeth. “What happened after that?”
“Adira spoke. We gave them a warning to leave and not come back,” she said, her voice growing thicker, showing an emotion other than anger. “They saved the building, so we let them go.”
“Did you see which way?” I asked. When she shook her head, I nodded. “Well, thanks for nothing.”
Her blue eyes flared with anger, “You’re a sister of the pack, but you’re not one of us. You don’t understand.”
“I understand enough,” I replied. I hesitated “This isn’t over.”
The diminutive wolf shrugged again. “It won’t change.”
“You have to change,” I said. “This isn’t Axis.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Good luck, battle sister. You are always welcome here.”
I upnodded at her, then took off, straight above the HQ. It wasn’t the only building clear, and if Mauler could control the plants, the next clear building would be the logical place to start looking for them.
Hearing voices before I saw anything, I lowered myself to the roof and waited. “She is still not answering,” Adira said from somewhere below me. “I do not know what else to do.”
I hunted around for the rooftop access door. The door itself lay mangled and twisted not far away. “It does not matterr,” the werewolf growled. “I am staying herre.”
“You can’t,” she said. “The forest… what if it takes you again?”
I moved through the open doorway and descended the stairs. They were in the hallway below. Adira stood twenty feet away from the green werewolf, while he stood at the end of the hall, looking out the window the direction of the forest.
“You guys were looking for me?” I asked, floating down the hallway. Adira gave me a cool smile, barely visible in the dim light. The wolf’s ears twitched, but that was all. “What’s this about staying here?”
“It is wherre I belong,” he snarled.
>
“No, it’s not,” Adira said as I drew up next to her. “You belong with me.” The hard tone in her voice belied her frustration.
“I belong with the Motherr,” he said.
“Let’s back up a little here, and tell me what happened?” I looked to Adira, who sighed, her breath not frosting the air one bit. When I touched her hand, she was cold as ice, taking on the ambient temperature of this very cold building.
“I’m still not certain,” she said. “Rory slept for a long time. When he woke, he was much like his old self, but refused to come near me.”
“You arre dead,” he said. The naked hostility in his voice sent shivers down my spine.
“Yes, but I’m still…” she said, then let it go. “We talked. He remembers much, but not all. Then, he shifted, abruptly. The building groaned and began to shake. I ran out to see the trees growing, attacking. They came for the motel, but he commanded them back.” She ran a hand through her wild curls, “After that, I feared for the pack. The wolf… he wanted to go back to the forest, and led the way.”
“And got turned back by Freyja,” I said. “I got that part caught up.” I looked over at Mauler, who stood there perfectly still, gazing out the window. “If he wants to get back so bad, why hasn’t he just run off?”
“I can hearr you, simian,” he said, half turning.
Adira smiled, a touch of her cool calculation come back, bringing calm to her worried features. “I told him he couldn’t without your permission, since you’re his leader now.”
“I’m what?” I said, looking back and forth between the two of them.
At that, Mauler turned fully around and padded down the hallway with thundering footsteps. Adira retreated to just behind me. He snarled at her, showing some very white and very sharp teeth, but didn’t attack. “You bested me,” he said, but his eyes narrowed. “Though you cheated.”
