Lucy: A Paragon Society Novel (Book 3)

by David Delaney

  But, Lucy thought, was it the cavalry or more bad guys?

  CHAPTER 19

  Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, Cynthia and the other Society mages instantly understood that my friends and I weren’t the biggest threat. They immediately squared up with our ranks, ready to meet the onrushing horde. I shifted into beast form and Mr. Kelly didn’t ask the question I could tell was on the tip of his tongue. He followed my lead and shifted to beast form too. Elyse gave her mom’s hand a squeeze, let go and they both shifted, her mom into beast form, Elyse into her cat form.

  I concentrated and shifted just my head enough so that my vocal cords worked and I could speak.

  “Wyatt,” my voice was deep and growly. “Cause as much mayhem as you want, but keep your eye on Maddie and stay within blink range. Elyse?” Elyse chuffed at me. I reached out, brushing a knuckle along her soft cat cheek. She nuzzled it back and chuffed again. Yeah, she was ready. I turned to the Kellys and the assembled mages, who were all looking at me like the freak-show that I was, and said, “We have to stop them, but the only way to do that is for me to get inside the house and find Lucy, the girl with the dark hair.”

  “As I stated earlier today, we know who she is and she’s been dabbling in things she shouldn’t,” Cynthia said. “But there is no way she’s responsible for these creatures. This is powerful, dark magic, it has to be Marcus.”

  I shouted her down. “There’s no time to discuss this as a committee,” I said, channeling Han Solo. “All you have to do right now is slow them down while I try to find Lucy. Trust me, it’s the only way this is going to end.”

  I didn’t wait for her reply. I shifted my head back to its nasty, tear-you-apart form and jumped over the closed gate. Maddie was right—the place was a fortress. Marcus’ magic wards hit my body like a sledgehammer, but I had been expecting them and I let the power ripple around me as my aura tore through the energy like paper. The only problem with my plan was that with the wards down, creatures from Lucy’s monster mash-up could follow me into the house.

  Too bad for them, my inner-baddie crooned.

  I hit the driveway at a run, my clawed feet leaving grooves in the asphalt. The mansion loomed in front of me. It still seemed quiet as a church—not good. I desperately scanned the magic spectrum for any signs of life, but I wasn’t getting anything, not a blip of energy. I focused on the magic wards protecting the place. They were seriously intricate and multi-layered. I shifted to my much more tank-y bear form and continued to pile-drive through the wards, ignoring the spells I was tripping. They were mostly the romp and stomp version, designed to deal kinetic damage to the trespasser, but there was also the occasional fire, or slice and dice, varieties—it seemed that Horn was paranoid as well as a total evil dickhead, because even one of these wards would have been lethal to anyone but me.

  We are the true dealer of death. All others are simply pretenders to our rightful place.

  Whoa. Death dealer? What’s that supposed to mean? You and I need to have a serious conversation when we’re not running into mortal danger.

  We laugh at danger. We are . . .

  If you say we are Ollphiest one more time, I’m going to put you in time out.

  Silence.

  Good. Now concentrate, we’re not out of this yet and I don’t want your cocky attitude causing us problems.

  I still wasn’t having any luck pinpointing where in the house Lucy, Marcus or anybody else might be located and my patience was growing thin. A jabbering howl of what sounded like an entire army rose up behind me.

  I heard Wyatt shout, “Monkeys!”

  Monkeys?

  The size of my bear would seem to indicate that I wasn’t very agile, not true. It must be the Ollphiest juju, but I could turn on a dime—of course, the ground and anything else that happened to be in my way was usually obliterated. I spun, sliding to a stop, throwing up a wake of driveway asphalt.

  Even with all the supernatural craziness I had seen up to this point in my short career as a shape-shifting super-bear, I wasn’t prepared for what Lucy’s magic had summoned from her imagination—flying monkeys. As far as I could remember, having only seen the movie once, they were a pretty good rendition of the monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. They were missing the funny little costumes, plus they had pointy claws and long fangs, but other than that they would have fit right in with Dorothy, Toto and the rest.

  Lucy liked to play the brooding, silent badass, but this glimpse into her mind was revealing someone with a crazy-creative imagination—well, a crazy-creative and deadly imagination—but still it was impressive. Watching the monster monkeys fly at my friends, I was torn at returning to help them or pressing on with finding Lucy. Cynthia and the other two mages lit the sky up with a fire so bright it seemed, momentarily, as if the sun had decided to make a guest appearance. Charred flying-monkey bodies fell like rain.

  That wasn’t something you saw every day.

  They totally had it under control.

  I turned and sprinted toward the front door again. I was done being cautious. The last few wards exploded around my aura, leaving my fur smoking. I dropped my head and hit the double front door like a battering ram. It splintered apart, and ready to rip and rend I sailed into an entry hall.

  Empty.

  Come on? Where the hell was everybody?

  I roared my displeasure, picked a direction and moved at top speed—furniture, decor and walls be damned. I was like a giant, hairy locomotive. I smashed my way through two doors and one wall, ending up in a huge restaurant-style kitchen. I picked another direction and continued smashing until I reached the end of a hallway that appeared to be a dead-end, so I sped up. I crashed through the wall and into a large room—I would have guessed a ballroom, but this was 1980s Los Angeles and as far as I knew ballrooms weren’t a thing back then.

  Blood.

  The smell of blood was overpowering.

  I quickly assessed the crowd in front of me—blood-mages, every single one of them. Then I noticed the two bodies. And a kid, no older than ten or eleven, was tied to a chair next to the corpses crying his eyes out.

  Oh no.

  Lucy.

  The Valley girl, eighties version of Lucy was pinned against a wooden column. I didn’t see any ropes, but when I focused I saw the binding spell holding her in place. Her eyes were a swollen, bloodshot mess. Her mascara and other make up had run down her cheeks giving her a serial-killer, prom queen look. The emotional devastation was coming off her in waves. The bodies and the kid had to be her family.

  Damn.

  Why hadn’t she ever said anything?

  Lucy’s eyes went wide at the sight of me standing there covered in dust and debris from the hole in the wall.

  Hope.

  I saw a glimmer of hope in Lucy’s eyes and it killed me, because this was just a memory and what happened on this night thirty years before was history. There was nothing I could do to save her from the brutal reality of the past. Lucy’s parents were long dead and buried, her little brother—I didn’t know his fate, but as I’d never heard mention of him I assumed the worst.

  Kill them all.

  Yeah, I could do that. I could give Lucy the gift of watching these assholes being ripped to shreds. Maybe it would help me reach her through the mental walls she’d erected and pull her out of this memory prison. If she’d spent her entire coma reliving the events of this night over and over, I wasn’t sure how stable she would be, but anything had to be better than this horror show.

  I roared at the blood-mages, the rage spilling from me, letting them know that they were about to suffer at the hands of the Ollphiest. The closest blood-mage must have been high on blood or something, because he ran at me like a linebacker. Seriously, dude? You don’t think the giant, scary bear deserves at least a shield spell? I swatted a paw out, casually ripping the guy in half.

  I growled with pleasure. Yeah, that should freak the rest of the room out.

  Something enormous landed on my back and I stumb
led forward, my front legs buckling. An instant later a mouth full of razor teeth started chomping at the base of my skull—ouch. Then a tail with a massive, wicked-looking barb whipped around toward my face, almost impaling my eye.

  What in the hell?

  I shifted to beast form and the thing on my back slipped off due to the instantaneous change. I spun on my attacker, claws out.

  A massive Xenomorph stood in front of me.

  It couldn’t be.

  I ducked as the tail whipped out at me again.

  Yep, that’s exactly what it was—Lucy had conjured up the alien queen from Aliens. I couldn’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure I performed the first ever beast form, Ollphiest eye roll.

  * * * *

  Lucy’s question about whether the commotion outside was good or bad was answered when a bear the size of a car smashed through a wall of the ballroom. The bear roared, shaking the room like a mini-earthquake. The closest evil maniac tried to attack the bear, and the bear ripped the guy in half with one swipe of a massive paw. Lucy thought she and Jason might just be saved when something that looked like an alien from that movie with Sigourney Weaver jumped through the opening onto the back of the bear.

  Lucy refocused on breaking the binding spell.

  All hell broke loose around Lucy. Marcus’ group was charged up with magic, created from the blood of her mom and dad. Lucy bit her tongue to stop from losing her control. She couldn’t help her parents, but she could save Jason, she had to save Jason.

  Half of the mages in the room started shooting spells at the alien and the other half started shooting spells at the bear—no, it was no longer a bear, it was now some sort of bear-man monster thing. Lucy paused, had she seen something like that in a movie once? It looked so familiar, and if the alien was making a guest appearance here at the evil magic castle then why not another movie monster?

  Enough. She needed to get free, she needed to get Jason and herself out of here and let these psychos kill each other. She tuned out the battle raging around her, focusing on the magic spell wrapped around her body. She was able to use her energy to pick at the knot of magic like it was a rope and it started to unwind, slowly at first, then it just fell apart all at once.

  “Yes!” Lucy cried, shaking out her arms and rubbing her shoulders.

  “Impressive.”

  Lucy turned slowly. Marcus was casually standing in the middle of the room as if there wasn’t a monster movie battle scene taking place all around him.

  “Your innate magic is even stronger than I believed. In my estimation your blood will, at a minimum, double my power,” he said with an evil grin.

  The whole house shook again, this time hard enough to crack the marble floor. Lucy couldn’t help herself, she imagined a giant toddler throwing a tantrum, banging his toy house on the ground in frustration. A giggle slipped past her lips. Oh yeah, if she didn’t end up in the funny-farm after the events of this night it would be a miracle. Lucy stole a quick glance at Jason. He was still tied to the chair, his eyes closed tight. Smart boy.

  Marcus took a step toward Lucy. She tried to back away but there was nowhere to go, there wasn’t even anything she could use as a shield—as if a shield could stop magic. Marcus’ grin grew wider. Lucy’s fatigued brain may have been playing tricks on her, but his teeth looked longer and pointier. The ground shook again, but this time the reason for the shaking made an appearance—giants.

  Seriously.

  A group of giant, thick, smelly men—wait, one of them was a woman—a group of giant, thick, smelly people crashed through the hole that the bear made, bringing down the remaining pieces of wall and leaving a ruined gap large enough to drive a dump truck through.

  Marcus stopped advancing on Lucy, his head cocked curiously to the side, “Ogres? In LA?”

  Ogres. Lucy was positive that’s what Marcus had said, but ogres were make-believe, characters from fairytales and movies and stuff. They definitely didn’t hang out in Bel Air. Of course, until a few days ago, Lucy would have scoffed at the idea of magic at all—so why not ogres?

  The ogres turned as one, staring directly in Lucy and Marcus’ direction. Lucy got a very bad feeling as they completely ignored everyone else and started lumbering toward her, the ground vibrating with each step.

  Marcus placed himself in the ogres’ path, the ritual daggers he had used on her parents at the ready. “Low creatures!” he shouted. The ogres slowed, staring down at Marcus with matching stupid looks on their ugly, flat faces. “How dare you enter my house uninvited!”

  The lead ogre blinked a few times, then scrunched up his face and roared at Marcus. The thing surprised Lucy when it moved with much more speed and agility than its large size seemed capable, snapping out a kick at Marcus’ head that would have decapitated him if it wasn’t for his magic. Lucy watched, mesmerized, as the ogres’ foot smashed into an invisible wall—a force field. Marcus had created some kind of magic force field. The ogre yelped in pain and then all the ogres attacked at once, pummeling the invisible shield with their huge fists.

  With Marcus concentrating on the ogre attack, Lucy turned to run and bumped into the redheaded kid with glasses. It was like he had appeared out of nowhere.

  “Hi, Lucy,” the kid said gently. “I think maybe we need to get clear of this room, it’s getting a little crowded.”

  The redhead held out his hand. Lucy glanced at it and then back up at the kid’s face. There was something about him, maybe he went to El Camino and she’d seen him in the halls? Her thought process was interrupted by a fireball exploding on the ground so close that she could feel the hairs on her arm singed.

  “Yep, we’re out of here,” the boy said, and grabbed her arm.

  “No!” Lucy shouted. “My brother is—”

  They were no longer standing in the middle of a battle between magic users, bear-monsters and ogres. She and the redhead were now by the front door. It wasn’t really that much safer, because it seemed like the entire house was under attack. Lucy could see down the hall that a giant black panther was tearing apart one of those monster-dog like things that had appeared in Vegas and the Hollywood house.

  A troll?

  Lucy wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe that’s what the monsters where called. No, that wasn’t right. Trolls didn’t have tentacles. What? How did she know that? Lucy felt like her mind was starting to fracture, strange images invading her thoughts. She didn’t have time for this.

  “Lucy?” The kid said her name again with the same gentle tone.

  Lucy balled up her fist and punched the kid in his nose.

  “Ow!” the kid shouted, grabbing his face. “What the hell?”

  The pain that shot up Lucy’s arm was intense and she may have broken a finger or two, but it felt good to fight back.

  “My brother’s back in that room. We need to get him.” Lucy told him.

  “Lucy, that’s not really your brother.”

  Lucy swung another punch at the kid’s face, but her fist sailed through empty space.

  “Stop that.”

  Lucy spun around. The kid was standing behind her.

  “How?” Lucy began.

  “My name is Wyatt,” the redhead said wearily, watching Lucy for any movement. “I’m one of the good guys. I’m here with Orson and we’re here to help you.”

  Wyatt? Orson? Lucy’s head was spinning.

  “We need to get my brother,” Lucy demanded again.

  “I’m telling you it’s not your brother.” Wyatt went silent when the black panther from the down the hall stalked up next to them.

  Lucy backed away, eyes darting around for an escape route. The panther made a chuffing sound. Lucy stumbled back against the front door and had to use it to keep from falling over when the panther morphed into the tall, beautiful, amber-haired girl from the craziness that went down in Hollywood.

  “Hi, Lucy. I’m Elyse. I know all this must seem super-crazy, but I need you to trust us. Okay?”

  At a loss f
or words Lucy stated the obvious. “You’re naked.”

  Elyse smiled.

  The front door exploded off its hinges sending the three of them tumbling through the air. Lucy tensed up preparing for a bone-crunching landing against the far wall, but it never came. Wyatt reached out and snagged her foot and the two of them ended up in a pile at the top of the stairs. Lucy barley registered the fact that Elyse had turned back into a panther, landing in a crouch, hissing towards the door.

  Marcus stood in the doorway, looking like he had just stepped out of the pages of a J.Crew catalogue. His clothes were still perfectly pressed, there wasn’t a hair out of place on his head, and he was smiling.

  “You weren’t leaving were you?” Marcus asked in a hurt tone. “The party, as they say, is just getting started.”

  Marcus thrust both his arms forward, palms out, and a jet of green liquid-fire shot at the panther, Elyse.

  CHAPTER 20

  I was getting the crap kicked out of me. The alien queen was perfect in every detail; she even had acid for blood, which meant every time I used my claws on her I injured myself, the fur on my hands and forearms burning away leaving acid-peeled skin in its place. It looked gross and smelled even worse. I had lost count on how many times I’d been knifed in the abdomen by her deadly, whip-like tail. My super-healing abilities were having a hard time keeping up with all the damage.

  And to make matters even more fun and exciting the fight that was supposed to stay outside had moved inside.

  The alien, ogre, demon-dog and flying monkey party had been joined by imps—I hated those little bastards—and several man-shaped creatures that looked an awful lot like a cross between Leather Face and Michael Meyers, and I kid you not, honest-to-goodness Gremlins. It was as if a Hollywood special effects shop had come to life and decided to go on a murderous rampage. The only bright side was that Lucy’s memory-monsters were not discriminating. They attacked the blood-mage convention with as much gusto as they attacked my friends and me.