Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass)

by Marlow, Shaye

  Khaz actually smiled at her. “Something like that.”

  That didn’t make her happy. In fact, it made her very, very un happy. She inched backwards, deeper into the back of the van.

  “Look,” Khaz said, seeming not to notice that she was inching her way towards the door, “…it’s only a matter of time before Erik or Marlyn find you, and I’d like to save you that, okay? Take it from someone with experience .” He tapped the bracelet on his wrist. “Everything here without a valid contract is fair game—and that includes you.”

  “I have just as much right to bring in Dortez as you do,” Sunny snapped. “Back off.”

  Khaz glared. “Right. Where’s my briefcase?”

  “I don’t have the briefcase,” Sunny said.

  “Of course you—” Then, seeming to catch himself, Khaz frowned. “You…don’t?”

  Sunny was almost to the back of the van, now. “No. I dropped it outside the restaurant.”

  Khaz seemed taken aback by that information, and cursed. “Marlyn…” He gritted his teeth and glanced at the ceiling. “She’s gonna…damn.” When he looked at her again, Khaz looked irritated. “But you do know what was in it,” he insisted. “That’s why you ran.”

  Sunny nodded, feeling for the latch with her hand.

  “Look, miss…” Khaz leaned forward, looking genuine. “I need you to understand that you aren’t safe here. Erik Vandyk is looking for you, and Marlyn is going to be following suit. Sooner or later, one of ‘em’s gonna nab you, and if you don’t have the protection of a contract, you’re gonna be boned. I’m trying to help you out of a bad situation.”

  “Oh yeah?” Why couldn’t she find that damn latch ?! “What situation?”

  Khaz gave her a look like she was being incredibly, intentionally dense. “The one where you’re stuck on this side of the Veil and can’t get back home.”

  Sunny squinted at him, still groping. “What?” From her dabblings in games and fantasy novels, she vaguely understood the Veil to be the separation between the spirit world and the material. But that was fiction .

  “Oh come on,” Khaz said. “We both know what you are.”

  “What I am ?” She continued to feel up the side of the door. “You don’t seriously think I’m working for Dortez, do you? He did this to me.” With her free hand, she waved at her bruises while she kept seeking the latch with her other.

  That made Khaz’s eyes narrow a bit, almost like she had incriminated herself. “If that’s the case, why are you still alive?”

  “Because I was an EMT,” Sunny snapped. “I know how to patch someone up who gets into fights with tentacle monsters.”

  Khaz gave what sounded like a genuine laugh. “I can—and will —send you home. Forcibly, if necessary. As enthralling as this place is, regardless of whether or not you’re working for Dortez, you don’t belong here. I know it, you know it. And we both know what I am, so you know what I’m going to do about it. Anything else is a waste of breath.” As he was talking, a bluish light was building in his left hand, one that was making her vision twist painfully. “I was hoping you would cooperate, but we can do this the hard way if you insist. Your choice, bachcha .”

  “Yeeahh,” Sunny said, “I really don’t think I am who you think I am.” She found the latch with her fingers.

  Khaz sighed. “Don’t open the door.” The compulsion was there, like a minor shove at the edge of her mind. For just a brief moment, her fingers loosened. Then Sunny realized her fingers had loosened, and the rage that immediately welled up that someone would casually try to compel her to dance like a marionette made them tighten again.

  “Fuck you, Obi-wan.” Saluting, Sunny opened the door and jumped out.

  It was probably a mistake, considering how much it hurt. Kind of like getting hit in the face with a truck covered in sandpaper. Somehow, though, she got to her feet and stumbled into the crowd of pedestrians in front of a sunny streetside café. Behind her, she heard tires squeal as the van braked.

  “BPI!” the old commando shouted. “Get out of the way!”

  That’s a neat trick, Sunny thought, as people immediately scattered. She’d have to remember it for later, when she’d poached the mercs’ bounty from them and was running down the next one.

  Sunny bolted into the building. Behind her, café patrons cried out in dismay as her pursuers barreled through them, knocking over tables and people in their haste to follow her into the restaurant. Sunny kept running, dodging waiters and patrons alike to get to the back of the café.

  The next voice was Khaz’s. “BPI pursuing a fugitive! Everyone out of the way!” The lights overhead surged, dousing everything in a painful, too-white luminescence.

  Sunny burst through the doors into the kitchen and immediately ducked into a wall closet. Khaz and the commando followed close behind, bursting through the swinging doors and slowing in the kitchen only feet from her hiding place.

  Watching him through a crack in the closet door, she saw the commando yell, “Where did she go?!”

  “Wasn’t nobody in here,” one waiter said.

  “Hey, man, you sure you guys aren’t smokin’ something?” a cook asked.

  “You wouldn’t remember her,” Khaz said, sounding frustrated. He was looking all over the room, tracing it with his eyes.

  Someone else—probably a manager—stepped up to them in a confrontational way. “Sirs, can you go back out to the front, please? This area is employees only.”

  “Come on,” Khaz said, heading towards the back of the kitchen. “She’s probably in the alley.”

  Darren, who had been following, paused and frowned. “Who’s probably in the alley? What are we doing in a goddamn kitchen, Twiggy?”

  Khaz turned back like a wolf that suddenly smelled meat. “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?” Darren seemed disgruntled, even angry.

  “We were hunting the memory thief.” Khaz’s eyes were scanning the kitchen again, and this time they stopped on Sunny’s hiding spot. “There’s an area of effect. That means she’s still close.”

  Knowing she’d been had, Sunny burst from the closet and ran.

  “Get her!” Khaz snapped.

  And, terrifyingly, sizzling electric wires slammed into the wall beside her.

  Holy shit, they just tried to taze me, Sunny thought, running faster. Adrenaline, she was noticing, was good for limbering up bruised muscles. She hurtled seated people and their tables alike, causing as much chaos as she could as she made her way back out through the café. She sprinted to the van, still parked on the side of the road.

  The corpulent woman was in the driver’s seat, Darren’s headphones over her ears, eyes closed, jiggling with the beat.

  Sunny yanked the door open and hauled the startled woman out onto the street. She hopped into her seat, and, as Darren came running up with Khaz on his heels, she hit the gas hard enough to cause the tires to smoke.

  “Stop!” Khaz shouted.

  “Doesn’t work on me, dickweed!” Sunny shouted back, and then made good her escape.

  She drove the fancy electric van around town for a few minutes, until she realized the Dome Police were probably going to be looking for it. Parking it at the outdomer parking garage, she threw the key away, and climbed into Bertha.

  For once in her miserable life, Bertha started without a fuss. Unfortunately for Sunny’s bank account, however, there were three tickets on the windshield, each saying she owed $25 for parking past operational hours. Grimacing, Sunny drove to the kiosk to pay the fees.

  The grungy, pimply fat man running the kiosk seemed like someone who was probably more comfortable in his grandmother’s basement. His nametag read BRENT.

  “You look like you got kicked in the face by a horse,” Brent blurted. “Bad night at the strip joint?”

  Sunny squinted at him. Then, because she hadn’t yet seen her own reflection, she pulled his traffic mirror around and leaned in to see.

  She looked like a termin
ally ill cancer patient that had been corpsified with a shovel and then trampled by a stampeding herd of cattle.

  So much for her acting career.

  “Huh.” She swung the mirror back and handed him the tickets and her money.

  “No, man, you keep it. Use it to buy a gun or something.” Brent obviously thought she had been assaulted by one of the thugs that liked to hang out on 4th Avenue and steal purses.

  If only.

  “Pretty sure a gun won’t do shit,” she said, remembering Khaz’s mind-trick and the tentacle-monster massage. “But thanks.” She turned to go.

  “What is it?” When she turned back, the cashier, still riveted by her cadaver impression, gestured at her face. At her confused look, Brent added, “AIDS?”

  Because she knew he wouldn’t remember anyway, she said, “Tentacle monster.”

  His mouth fell open and he nodded like that made sense. “Tentacle monster…like in anime porn?”

  “Yeah, no. It’s more teeth, less penetration.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much fun.”

  Squinting at him, Sunny couldn’t actually tell if he was serious or joking. “It wasn’t.”

  “You should invest in some katanas.”

  Now she knew he had to be joking. Shaking her head, Sunny went back to Bertha. She climbed into the truck’s cab and yanked the door shut behind her. She turned the ignition, intending to tuck her tail between her legs, drive home, and lick her wounds. Maybe her landlord wouldn’t kick her out when she missed the rent payment.

  Then she pulled down the mirror and peered into it. She looked like shit.

  No, she looked like the rotting, gelatinous slurry that the shit became as it decomposed in the local sewage plant.

  It was then, seeing her busted face and the dark rings under her eyes, that it really hit home.

  She was at rock bottom.

  Her life was literally a prison sentence. Solitary confinement…for life. She was circling the drain at the bottom of the pond, scrabbling through the sludge for the pennies the casual passerby flicked her way. She was the sacrificial lamb on the forgotten altar of humanity, a bug-ridden potato that had fallen off the truck. She had nobody but some estranged family members, and all they truly remembered were infrequent phone calls and her life pre-accident—or what they jotted onto a Post-It note.

  She had the insane urge to go back to that bounty hunter that remembered her and tell him everything she knew. At least then, it would feel like she wasn’t so alone …

  Then she remembered him telling her they planned to send her ‘home’ across a ‘Veil’, and that they had tried to taze her when his Jedi mind-tricks hadn’t worked on her.

  Sunny pulled off to the side of the cracked highway and leaned her head back against the rest, just trying to piece her life back together in her head.

  Undead little girl whispering to her and forcing her to lean down. Uzis. Tentacle monster. Bounty hunters trying to catch her. Obi-wan warning her she’d be forced to go ‘home.’

  If her past three years hadn’t already been so weird, she guessed she probably would have been huddled under a park bench sobbing herself to sleep right now. As it was, she just really wanted a burger.

  She thought about how much rent was going to cost tomorrow, and how much she hadn’t made the last five days screwing around trying to nab a tentacle monster, and she said fuck it and drove to the local mom and pop burger joint.

  There, as she chowed down on her first real meal in days, Sunny reviewed her choices.

  Choice 1: She could go back to being a blockker and hope Daphne would give her enough of a loan to make rent that month.

  Choice 2: She could find that fucking tentacle monster and kill it and somehow claim that hundred grand.

  Choice 1 seemed more reasonable, especially since she was pretty sure Daphne would let her stay at her house for as long as she needed, as long as she helped stock the fridge and didn’t leave stuff in the dryer.

  It was Choice 2, however, that actually appealed to her the most. Sunny hated being a mooch—hated it with a burning, fiery passion—and by God, if she had to bag herself a tentacle monster and drag its bloody body back to the BPI to reclaim her good name with the government, she was sure as hell gonna do it.

  The question, of course, was whether or not presenting Obi-wan and his gang with a dead tentacle monster was going to clear her in the eyes of the law. They seemed pretty convinced that she was somehow working for Dortez, despite the fact he was a fucking octopus moonlighting as a serial killer.

  Frustrated, Sunny called her sister.

  “Please tell me you don’t need another jump down at the parking garage,” Daphne said by way of greeting. “I have a life , Sunny.”

  “No,” Sunny said. “You have a pointless shitpile full of errands, diapers, and housework.”

  “You got two seconds before I hang up.”

  “I’m calling about Jake.”

  Daphne let out a groan. “He’s into drugs, isn’t he?”

  Sunny flinched, taken aback. Of all her sister’s children, Jake was the last one she would have pegged to be a druggie. “No…why would you even say that?!”

  “First his grades, then accusing the teacher of doctoring his tests, then he comes home and accuses me of sending you to New Republic to spy on him. The kid’s outta control!”

  Sunny was solidly of the impression that, of all the mindless apelets that Gary had squirted into her sister, Jake was one of the least irritating and most in-control of the bunch. “Actually, I was down at New Republic investigating his teacher on Monday. I’m pretty sure Dortez is a serial killer.”

  There was a very long pause on the other end. Then, “You’re actually serious, aren’t you?”

  Remembering the massive tentacle beast, head still throbbing from her run-in with anaphylactic shock, she said, “Uh…yeah.”

  She heard a baby babbling into the phone. “You got proof?” Daphne demanded. “Pictures, a body, something?”

  Sunny looked at herself in the mirror, then held up the camera and took a selfie, figuring that was good enough proof as any.

  It took a couple minutes for Daphne to receive the picture. When she did, she gasped. “Jesus, Sunny! Who did this to you?”

  “Your son’s math teacher,” Sunny muttered. “He’s dangerous, Daphne. Jake shouldn’t be anywhere near him. Believe me.” She stopped short of telling her sister about the tentacle monster, however, because trying to get her to believe that would be stretching even the bonds of sisterhood.

  “He beat you up? That weasely little fellah?” Daphne actually sounded disappointed. “I always took you for a scrapper, Sunny.”

  “He ambushed me,” Sunny said, blushing.

  “Yeah, but…” Daphne still didn’t sound convinced.

  “Are you trying to tell me I just sent you photographic evidence your son’s math teacher is a serial killer who tried to murder me and you’re second-guessing it because you thought I would’ve done a better job fighting him off?”

  “You did kick that blackbelt’s ass in the cafeteria that day junior year…” Daphne said.

  “He wasn’t a very good blackbelt,” Sunny muttered.

  “Yeah, but he was in a coma for a week.”

  “The point ,” Sunny growled, “is that he ambushed me. With drugs . Date-rape drugs.”

  She heard Daphne’s breath catch. “Oh shit, Sunny. You okay?”

  “I fell behind a couch and he forgot about me,” Sunny muttered. “But he’s still out there. And guess what? I found out today that he’s only been teaching at that school for three weeks and he’s already had four of his students commit suicide.”

  Daphne went very quiet on the other end of the phone. Sunny heard a baby burp. Softly, Daphne said, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to kick his fucking ass, that’s what,” Sunny said.

  “You need my help?” Daphne said. “I could bring mace.”

  Thinking of the fo
rty-foot wall of tentacles, Sunny shook her head. “Nah. I’ve got him.”

  “You need help burying the body?”

  Because what were sisters for, right?

  “No,” Sunny said. “Just keep Jake out of class until I can deal with this dude, okay? I think he knows Jake and I are related.”

  “You got it,” Daphne said immediately. Then, as an afterthought, she said, “What about the Dome Police? Did you report it to them?”

  “They don’t take me seriously anymore,” Sunny muttered.

  “And I wonder whose fault that is,” Daphne retorted, with instant irritation. “How many prank calls have you made to them in the last year?”

  “They’re not prank calls. They’re perfectly reasonable.”

  “Trying to get Gary fired for being a pedophile?”

  “That’s what he fucking is!” Sunny snapped on a burst of old anger.

  Daphne took a deep breath, and for a second, Sunny thought she’d hang up. Then, “I could call in, let the DP know what’s going on.”

  “No,” Sunny said, thinking of the forty-foot tentacle beast. “I’ve gotta take him down myself. Believe me on this one.”

  “But the DP is better equipped to—”

  “Daphne.” Summer waited until she was sure her sister was paying attention. “Believe me. It needs to be me.”

  A long pause. “He raped you, didn’t he?”

  Sunny considered how to tell her sister that she’d been attacked by a tentacle monster that would happily rip through the Dome Police like a kid smashing his tinker toys. She must have taken too long.

  “Jesus, Sunny. I’m coming over.”

  “No,” Sunny said hastily. “Just keep Jake safe until I deal with this piece of shit.”

  There was another pause as Daphne digested that. “I’ve got a shovel,” she finally said. “Call me when you need me to bring it over.”

  Thinking how big a hole that would have to be, Sunny grinned. “You got it, sis.”

  “You let me know,” Daphne insisted. “I’ll be there.”

  Sunny felt her heart warm, remembering how close they had been. “I will.”