by T. A. Pratt
He started to stand, and I shot him in the face. A .22 doesn’t make a very big noise, but in the confined space it was loud enough to make my ears ring. Didn’t do much except make a big noise, though. The bullet passed through his head like a rock dropping into a pond, his flesh rippling for a moment and then smoothing out again. ‘‘That’s not where I keep my brains,’’ he said, and I realized he was cloaked in some kind of an illusion, just wearing the semblance of humanity. That was confirmed when he finished standing, and I saw his crotch was entirely bare, smooth as a doll’s. He hadn’t bothered to make the illusion that complete.
The monster grinned at me, jaws and lips contorting, at least half a dozen mandibles—they looked like crab legs—unfolding from within his mouth and wriggling at me, dripping what I could only assume were assorted venoms. He reached out with an arm that was rapidly mutating into something multi-clawed and hard-shelled.
I kicked him right between his hairless legs. The inertial charms in my boot gave my kick the impact of a battering ram, and I hit something solid that crunched with a sound like a stomped eggshell. His body flew upward hard enough to hit the ceiling, then crashed back down on the toilet. The illusion draping him wavered and vanished, revealing his true form. Man-sized crab-spider-octopus, more or less, with a thin veneer of slime eel. I’d seen worse, though it was certainly nothing you’d want to share a bathroom with.
‘‘Doesn’t matter,’’ it slurred, human voice emerging from the grinding nightmare of its mouthparts. ‘‘My hive-mates are legion, and they converge on the house of the Eater. The work will go on.’’
‘‘The work always does,’’ I said, and stomped down on its head. Then, remembering the comment about where it kept its brain, I stomped the rest too, until all the bits stopped wriggling, and they were no longer recognizable as parts of a coherent whole. Dismemberment-by-stomping is pretty tedious work, and my legs got tired, but it was easier than running an entire city and more straightforward than playing occult detective, which were just a couple of the other jobs I’ve had in recent years.
I didn’t envy the maid who’d have to clean that bathroom. It didn’t look like a murder scene, at least; more like a dozen people had used the contents of a sushi bar for a mosh pit.
I climbed back out the window and returned to my room, washing off my boots in the sink.
‘‘Well?’’ Nicolette said. ‘‘Are they okay?’’
I frowned, poking my head out of the bathroom. ‘‘Are who okay?’’
‘‘The monster’s captives,’’ she said. ‘‘Or didn’t I mention there were captives? I’m totally getting a captives vibe.’’
‘‘You bitch,’’ I replied.
I went back to the monster’s room, doing my best to jump over the nastiness in the bathroom, and searched his belongings. I found a set of keys and took the risk of slipping out his front door—it was dark, and as far as I could tell we were the only two guests on this side of the motel anyway. I made way through the parking lot, to the far end where the big rigs were. There were two: one gleaming black with a shiny refrigerated trailer, and one smeared with mud and muck, with a dirty white trailer. I took a wild guess and tried the keys on the dirty truck. The door opened right up.
The trailer in back was locked, of course, but flipping through the keys I soon found the right one. I tugged the trailer door up and open, and found... Nothing. Empty trailer, just a big dark echoing space.
Remembering the illusion the monster had cloaked itself in, I grimaced. I’m capable of seeing through illusions, but it gives me a nasty headache if I overdo it. Oh well. Some things can’t be avoided. I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, the truth inside the trailer was revealed.
It looked like a child’s bedroom. Giant fluffy stuffed animals, mostly bears of various kinds; a child-sized pretend kitchen, complete with stove and oven and sink and cabinets and little dishes and fake food; a miniature table and chairs, with a plastic tea set; three sets of bunk beds with brightly-colored sheets all done up in superheroes and princesses; and the whole scene lit by whimsical lights in the shape of ladybugs and smiling suns and flowers stuck on the walls and the ceiling.
Half a dozen children sat in a circle on the colorful rug, eating candy bars, faces smeared with chocolate, a litter of discarded juice boxes all around them. I’m no good when it comes to guessing ages—kids all look like lumps of uncooked dough to me—but the oldest couldn’t have been more than six. They had dirty hair and wrinkled clothes, ranging from footie pajamas to Sunday dresses. One little girl stood up and waved at me, tentatively. ‘‘Is this the farm?’’
‘‘Farm?’’ I said, wondering if I sounded as stupid and stunned as I felt.
‘‘The farm where mommy and daddy are waiting,’’ a little boy said. ‘‘The man said it was a surprise.’’
‘‘We will ride ponies,’’ the girl said solemnly.
One of the younger kids wailed. ‘‘No farm! Want mama!’’
I swallowed. Some things you couldn’t fix with guns or knives or magic boots. ‘‘This man—did he hurt you?’’
The oldest boy and girl shook their heads; the others were too young or distracted to notice my question, but I took two yeses as a good sign.
‘‘Did this man... take you?’’ I asked.
‘‘He said it was okay to come with him,’’ the boy said.
‘‘He’s my mommy’s friend,’’ the girl added. ‘‘He knew the secret code, so it was okay to go with him.’’
I closed my eyes. Code word. Right. I’d heard about that sort of thing—you teach your children a secret family pass phrase, and they know they shouldn’t go with anyone who doesn’t know the magic words. As far as security precautions went, it had a few flaws, especially when you were dealing with a telepathic monster who could pluck the words right out of your head. He’d probably skimmed all their minds and come up with whatever info he needed to lure them in. But why take all these children?
Then again, who cared why. There weren’t a ton of non-horrifying reasons to steal children. ‘‘Come on, kids,’’ I said. ‘‘You’ll see your parents soon.’’
Getting them across the parking lot was a little like herding a bunch of lizards on meth, but I got the kids settled into my room—after nipping in real quick first to cover up Nicolette, because the little ones didn’t need more trauma. Once they were happily ensconced in front of the TV (little kids maybe shouldn’t watch Godzilla movies, but it was the best I could do), I said, ‘‘Be right back.’’ I left, and took my suitcase and the birdcage with me.
I unhooked the trailer from the truck, then climbed into the cab. I put Nicolette down on the passenger seat, and after I took her cover off she looked around and whistled. ‘‘Do you know how to drive this thing?’’
‘‘I know how to do everything worth doing,’’ I said.
She snorted. ‘‘Sure you do. What are you going to do about the kids?’’
I took out the pad of stationery I’d taken from the motel room, then turned on my cell and dialed the number on the letterhead. The bored-sounding clerk answered. ‘‘Hey, this is Marla, in room 6. I came back from dinner and found six little kids in my room. What the hell?’’
The clerk squawked in disbelief and surprise and annoyance but I cut him off. ‘‘Look, I don’t care, that shit was too weird. Consider this me checking out.’’ I hung up, and just to be safe I dialed 911—confident my cell couldn’t be tracked or called back, since it was magicked up one side and down the other—and told them I’d seen a guy in a mini-van dump a bunch of little kids in the motel parking lot and then drive away. I hung up before the follow-up questions got too personal. Between the two calls I was confident somebody would look into things and get the kids back to their parents.
‘‘You’re not going to deliver them personally?’’ Nicolette said as I started up the truck and eased out of the lot, trying to get the feel for the sticky clutch and loose gearshift. ‘‘You’d be a terrible mo
ther.’’
‘‘No argument there.’’
‘‘So where are we going now?’’ Nicolette said.
I tapped the little LCD screen on the dash. ‘‘Even monsters use GPS. I’m going to snoop through his travel history and see where he’s been, and try to figure out where he was going. He told the kids he was taking them to some kind of farm, and he also said his hive-mates were continuing ‘the work’ and converging on ‘the Eater,’ so I doubt the kids were being abducted for a vacation to Disney World.’’
‘‘The great savior on a children’s crusade,’’ Nicolette said. ‘‘So let’s say you save, oh, twenty kids. Make it thirty. Will that make you feel better? Wash away some of the guilt for all the people you’ve killed and screwed over?’’
‘‘This isn’t about redemption.’’ I slammed the truck into its next gear, working my way up to highway speed. ‘‘I just like beating things up, so I might as well beat up things that deserve it—’’
‘‘Maybe it’s not redemption,’’ Nicolette said. ‘‘Maybe it’s just penance.’’
‘‘That’s bullshit. Everything I ever did, I thought I had to do. Sure, I made mistakes but—’’
‘‘Now who’s spouting bullshit?’’ Nicolett chuckled nastily. ‘‘There are two dozen ways you could track down monsters to kill, Marla. You’re not the most talented sorcerer in the world, but even you can do the kind of divinations that would lead you to disturbances in the Force or what-the-fuck-ever. You’ve got rich and powerful contacts, gifted sorcerers who could line up worthy victims to keep you busy for decades. Instead, you wander around like a vagrant, with the head of your worst enemy in a cage, choosing to travel with somebody who hates your guts. And you want me to believe you aren’t punishing yourself? Of course you are. Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad. You deserve to be punished. I’m no angel, but you’ve fucked things up for people on a scale I could never match. Hell, you’re the reason I got decapitated. But don’t pretend I’m the only one in a cage here. You’re bad, at least as bad as I ever was, but you don’t have the stones to live with yourself, so you do all this—’’
I braked as hard as I dared—with no trailer hitched up, there was no risk of jackknifing, and the highway was pretty empty here. The truck lurched, jerking me forward hard, banging my chest painfully against the oversized steering wheel. Nicolette’s cage flew forward, hit the dash hard enough to dent the bars, and then fell into the footwell on the passenger side, bouncing her head around a lot in the process—painfully, I hoped.
Nicolette started cursing like she does, and I turned up the radio loud enough to drown her out, and felt a lot better. For a little while.
Manic Nixie Dream Girl
This is another of Marla’s adventures as a monster hunter, this time accompanied by Bradley Bowman... sort of. Marla’s ex-apprentice-turned-murder-victim ascended to a position of godhood even higher than Marla’s, as overseer of the integrity of the multiverse: every version of Bradley from every parallel universe was combined into a single figure who lives at the center of that multiverse, and sees all. Occasionally ‘Big B’ buds off one of his many individual components and sends them on missions. This particular ‘Little B’ is from a reality very similar to our Marla’s, and he ends up hanging around for a while, as you’ll see in later stories.
“We’re looking for a monster,” Marla said. “Except at this point we’re pretty sure it just looks like a person.”
The small, white-whiskered old man sitting in the velvet armchair across from her nodded thoughtfully. “Ah,” he said. “A person. That narrows it down. There are only about eight hundred and twenty-five thousand of those in San Francisco. Closer to seven million if you consider the Bay Area as a whole. Can you be any more specific than ‘a person’?”
Marla shrugged. “We heard it was in a body that appears male, so that cuts the options in half, except it’s clearly a shapeshifter or has the ability to hide itself with illusions, so never mind. It’s not very nice. It seems to literally gain power from killing people and eating them, or consuming them in some way that might as well be eating them.”
Sanford Cole, the legendary and immortal (so far) figure recently awakened (again) from magical slumber to serve as chief sorcerer of San Francisco, stroked his neat little beard. “The city has been troubled by a shapeshifting creature in recent days. I’ve had trouble narrowing down its location through divination – and as you know, that’s one of my strengths – because its form is so malleable. It could be your monster, I suppose. The city is woefully short of battle magicians since our former leader Susan Wellstone’s tragic demise and the defection of many of her people to neighboring organizations, so I haven’t tasked anyone to track the creature down yet.”
Marla smiled. “I’m happy to volunteer my services. Monster hunting is kind of my thing these days.”
“I will give you what information I have on the creature,” Cole said. “But may I have a few moments alone with our mutual apprentice?”
Marla glanced over at Bradley, who was standing in a corner of the suite, in the deepest shadow he could find, as if trying to disappear, or at least go unnoticed. “Sure. But, ah, you know, he’s not exactly our Bradley – ”
“I know,” Cole said. “But he’s close enough.”
Marla sat fidgeting in a chair in the hallway outside Cole’s suite, in one of the luxury hotels on Nob Hill, flipping her dagger into the air and catching it by the hilt, over and over. After about fifteen minutes, Bradley – B to his friends – came out, looking visibly pale and shaken, and leaned against the wall beside her. “That was weird,” he said. “Sanford Cole was, like, congratulating me on everything I’ve achieved. Sanford Cole. He was court magician to Emperor Norton! He kept the city from falling into the sea during the 1906 earthquake! And he says he’s proud of me.” B shook his head.
Marla snorted. “B, you’re the defender of the multiverse, a position so badass it even freaks out gods. Of course Cole’s proud of you.”
B winced. “To be fair, I’m just a fragment of a fraction of the defender of the multiverse, an autonomous node budded off from the greater collective over-mind and imbued with all the awesome powers of any ordinary mortal who happens to be a pretty good psychic. This, standing before you, is as human as I get these days, and once we track down the Outsider, I’m not even sure what happens to me – if I get absorbed back into the ur-Bradley or sent to live on a farm upstate or what. It is weird, being locked down in one branch of the multiverse again, in a single isolated version of myself. Like being blind and deaf and tongueless.”
“Yeah, your life is one of interminable suffering, and so on. Let’s maintain focus, B. Did Cole tell you about this shapeshifter thing?”
B nodded. “Something’s going around drowning people in bath tubs, toilets, and swimming pools, mostly young men who just moved to the city. There’s a new tech boom, so lots of new people are moving here, getting high-paying jobs, paying three grand a month for shitty studio apartments, driving up rents, pricing out longtime residents, and so on. Cole figures the shapeshifter is some local sorcerer pissed off about gentrification, striking back at the brogrammers, but maybe it’s our guy.”
“What do you think? Any inspirations fizzing in that psychic brain of yours?”
He shook his head. “The Outsider is almost impossible for me to sense – it’s from outside the multiverse, so it’s not under my jurisdiction, and it’s really good at cloaking itself from conventional divination. Cole says whenever he attempts to narrow down the location of the thing that’s drowning people, he just gets visions of puddles, fountains, the bay, various bodies of water. Not exactly the same failure mode, you know? And the method of killing is totally different, too, from total devouring to drowning and leaving the bodies... But the Outsider did spend a long time buried beneath the desert in Death Valley, so maybe it’s decided to go with a watery-murder theme now that it’s in wetter territory. Who knows how that thing thinks? Getting insi
de the Outsider’s head is like trying to figure out the inner life of a virus. Or a prion disease.”
“So Cole’s monster might not be our monster at all. Still, it’s worth checking out. If nothing else, killing something would be good for my morale. Do we have any place to start, or are we just supposed to hang around damp places and hope for the best?”
“There’s a survivor,” Bradley said.
Erich Shiriam sat in his tiny one-room apartment in the Mission, jittering in a high-end office chair and intermittently gulping at an energy drink. He was bug-eyed and wild-haired and his shirt was turned inside out, but Marla didn’t know if that was typical of his nature or an expression of his trauma. She did know she was sitting on a dirty futon and there were piles of dirty clothes and take-out boxes everywhere and it was pretty gross.
“Sorry to make you come here, I know it’s, uh, but it’s just, I don’t even like leaving the apartment after what happened, I’m afraid to go out and get... I don’t know... my therapist says I have situational agoraphobia so work is letting me telecommute for a while and I’m hoping – ”
“So you met a girl and she tried to drown you?” Marla interrupted.
Erich blinked at her, then looked at B, who shrugged affably. “That’s right, yeah.” Erich spoke slowly, frowning, and he was probably trying to remember why he’d let these people into his place, and why he was talking to them at all, but before he could go too far down that road Bradley must have given him another little psychic nudge, because he snapped back into focus. “Right. So, look, I went to MIT, I’d never been on the West Coast at all, not even to visit, but I’d heard about San Francisco, how cool it was, how hip, how everything was happening here, you know? Also how it never snows, which after all those years in Boston, that’s pretty great by itself.”
