“Go,” he told John as he closed his eyes.
“Jeremy ...” John started, recalling Walker’s level of power and considering the massive damage to Shining Star’s throat. “I think it’ll take both of us, like it did with—”
Walker cut him off, and sounded quite confident. “Go, Gladius. Our work on Vortex taught me a few things.” He kept his eyes closed in concentration, but he smiled.
True enough, even as John withdrew his hand and stood to draw his second gladius, he could already see the blood flow tapering from Shining Star’s wound. And both Shining Star and Powerhouse perked up, as though they were each catching a sudden, unexpected second wind.
From the shadow, the Skygger hissed yet again, this time trailing off into a growl. “Interloper ...” it grumbled.
Shockwave chuckled for show. “Ain’t that just like a bully: Things don’t go your way, you whine about it.”
John thought back on his different experiences with the Skygger. “You’re right about that.”
“I am done with you, ‘The Gladius’ ...”
The voice was less omnidirectional that time, less jeering and more bitter and hateful.
“Hey,” Shockwave muttered under his breath. “To the right.”
John turned that way. Sure enough, the Skygger was allowing itself to be seen, somewhat. It remained in the shadows, scarcely more than a shape against the darkness, but John could see that it stood upright, its lanky limbs straight, its taloned hands out to its sides. Its face remained too shrouded for details, but John spied its eyes glistening — the wounded left one less so than the right.
“I am done with you,” it repeated. “All of you. This world has turned out to be more trouble than it is worth. And you know how I hate having my fun spoiled.”
“Yeah,” Shockwave retorted, “we’re real broken up about that.”
The Skygger ignored him, but shifted its gaze downward. “And this is the second time you have spoiled my fun.”
Jeremy Walker recoiled, startled to have been addressed. “Uh ...”
“Oh, yes, my little friend,” the Skygger spat, “you have, as they say, ‘made my list’. I’m going to take you down along with the rest of them.”
Walker swallowed in obvious fear, but he nevertheless jutted his chin forward in defiance. “I’m not scared of you.”
“Oh, yes, you are,” the Skygger chuckled without any humor as the darkness undulated around it again. “Because Gladius there did not include you in his mental smokescreen cheat. I know that you—”
Without a word, without a sound, Shining Star exploded into action, taking all of them by surprise.
Including the Skygger.
John would never have suspected the alien’s throat had just been ripped open as Shining Star soared at the monster, closing the distance in the blink of an eye. He collided with the Skygger before it could evade, for once, wrapping his arms around it and cranking his aura to its highest levels.
The Skygger screamed in agony beyond anything John had yet heard from it. It squirmed and shifted its shape and proportions, writhing within Shining Star’s light as the Taalu’s flight arced up, over, and back down, slamming it into the pavement hard enough to leave a shallow crater, then scraping it along several feet of asphalt past Walker, who scrambled for the hospital door. Shining Star drew back a glowing arm, fist poised to strike, but the Skygger wormed its way free just in time to kick him in the chest and dodge the blow ...
... and to collide with John’s Cataptis net.
For the first time against the Skygger, John’s magical net performed as intended, wrapping around his target, pinning the Skygger’s arms and legs. The monster tumbled and rolled, twisting about like a snake, spitting and rippling its form as it strove to free its limbs.
Until Powerhouse stumbled over and kicked it in the face.
Whatever the nature of its power-dampening abilities, that was enough to stun even the Skygger. As its movements slowed, Powerhouse stomped on its head, creating a cavity in the pavement beneath its skull.
John rushed forward, grasping at its rare moment of vulnerability, ready to skewer it with his gladius swords once and for all.
The Skygger contorted its neck like a corkscrew, evading Powerhouse’s next trample and biting him on the ankle, its teeth sinking deep. Powerhouse bellowed in pain, jerking his leg to the side to shake off the Skygger. It worked, but had the unfortunate side effect of knocking both John and Shockwave from their feet. The jolt also served to rattle John’s magical concentration — he was an outstanding multitasker, but his thaumaturgical foci could only handle so much — and the energy net fizzled, freeing the Skygger.
Shining Star had gotten back up, his aura reigniting and focusing around his outstretched hands as he prepared to fire after the Skygger. Except the creature had continued to roll with Powerhouse’s freeing kick until it managed to scurry up ...
... and onto Jeremy Walker’s retreating back, its talons poised against his chest. Walker cried out, the sudden weight causing him to stumble and fall sideways against the hospital wall, the door out of reach. The Skygger grunted and lurched him around so that he stood hunched between the creature and its enemies.
“Back!” it barked at them with authority ... except that its voice carried a shaky wheeze, which John found encouraging.
They all stopped where they were, Shining Star, Shockwave, Powerhouse, and the Gladius forming a rough battle line as they faced toward it.
“Get back, or I’ll rip out his heart!” it warned, flexing its talons for good measure. “Alien, shut off that glow! Gladius, if I so much as smell your magic, this human will fountain blood. And drop those damned swords!”
John and Shining Star glanced at one another, then mutually sighed in frustration. John dropped both swords, and Shining Star dimmed his aura to its lowest levels, but without quite allowing it to snuff out.
“I am quite serious,” it growled at Shining Star. “Have I given you any reason to doubt me? Perhaps you require a reminder of my sincerity!” It adjusted its scarred snout so that its teeth were at the side of Walker’s skull. It said to its captive, “Since your friends don’t seem to want to listen to me, how about I start with your ear?”
John’s mind was racing, striving to think of how to save Walker with minimal harm to the man, when he saw Walker’s expression shift. The fright remained, very much so, but the Skygger’s would-be victim’s eyes revealed something else, something new, a literal twinkle sparking to life within his pupils.
The Skygger, were it in better shape and not so distracted, might have reacted sooner. As things stood, it picked up on his thoughts with just enough time to demand, “What are you—?”
That was as far as it got before the pain struck and its words choked.
Walker, his voice only betraying the slightest fear, echoed his earlier statement: “Working with the Gladius taught me things.”
The Skygger’s eyes widened, then its left eye began to smolder and leak pink-red blood again; the scars on its snout rippled, then burst open and bled the same color. Then the skin all over its body blistered, and several of its lanky bones issued harsh cracks!
The Skygger bellowed in agony as all its recent wounds relapsed in seconds.
Walker’s reversed his healing power, John realized. He’s un-healing it.
Walker shoved himself backward, slamming the suffering Skygger against the wall. It relaxed its hold on him, and he pulled free.
But like most wounded animals, the Skygger remained dangerous. It stumbled and kicked a clawed foot after Walker, catching his right leg and tearing a deep furrow through his calf muscle. Walker gasped, but kept hobbling away from the monster.
The others were already moving forward, and John shouted, “Careful of its blood — it’s toxic!”
Shockwave hit the monster with a kinetic wave, throwing it back against the hospital. It tried to squirm away, but it was unsteady, uncoordinated, and moving at half its normal speed, which allowed th
e handful of asphalt, thrown by Powerhouse, to miss its head but still strike its shoulder.
Then it tried to crawl up the wall, out of reach, but Shining Star was already there, waiting for it. In a gravelly voice, grunted past his still-recovering throat, Shining Star stated, “Let’s try this again.”
Shining Star’s silver light shone once more, bright as ever, forcing the others to look away.
The Skygger didn’t scream — it wailed, a pitiful sound that evoked no sympathy from John whatsoever.
After several long seconds, the intense light faded, leaving Shining Star gasping for breath and barely glowing enough to stay aloft. But the Skygger collapsed, plunging to the ground with a satisfying thud.
It was still moving, though, and the wounds Walker had reawakened were already looking a little better, a little less painful.
They didn’t have long. So John did not waste time retrieving his swords.
He stepped up behind the Skygger, placed his hands on either side of its ugly head, and pronounced, not his mental probing Spoetium, but a special variation: “Spectionium!”
PCA
As John burrowed into the Skygger’s mind — not a probe, but an outright, unapologetic invasion — a rounding thought echoed everywhere and for always — almost like an introduction, as if the Skygger had waited for this moment and had prepared an opening proclamation for the theatre of its existence:
I loved
I lost, so lost
My new love: Loss
The Skygger was old, not just hundreds of years or even thousands, but tens of thousands. Perhaps more.
Once, so incredibly long ago, within the furthest reaches of its worn memory, it had been something like a male human being, and on its world — as where John found Dryal, he supposed it was another dimensional version of Earth, in a way — an event occurred which came to be known as The Weir. The Weir, like the White Flash or the Malba Dico, changed things, bequeathing some few with paranormal abilities.
The Skygger (it had long forgotten its original name) acquired the ability to peer through the multiverse.
This ability served little real-world purpose — the Skygger could not see into the future; it could not spy on events occurring in its own dimension — something the people of Earth would have labeled “Class Two.” It could see these incredible things, but not touch them. Soon, it became a regular nightly passing for the Skygger and its mate, the woman it loved so much, to share some of the things it had seen. She adored hearing those tales, as it painted with words the endless worlds beyond the veil.
Then the Skygger had seen a place so wondrous, so magnificent, it could only be described as heaven. And it took to peering only into this place of paradise, describing it to its mate as best it was able, and their own world grew tired, then shabby, then utterly undesirable by comparison.
The Skygger thought it should stop. These sharings, originally bringing pleasure, now brought pain. But its mate could not let it go, wanted it to continue ... and so it continued, to please her.
Then the Skygger determined that maybe, just maybe, it could do more. Perhaps it could bridge the two worlds, and cross over.
And so it made the attempt. And then again, and again. Over and over, on and on. Until finally, it succeeded.
It returned for its mate, and she cried with joy at the news. And when the Skygger next crossed the bridge, it brought its mate with it.
Except something went wrong. The Skygger arrived in the perfect, heavenly world, but its mate did not.
Somewhere along the way, its mate was lost. It had already strained its paranormal ability by bridging in the first place. Bringing its mate with it had been an act of greed.
Desperate to find her, the Skygger created another bridge but stopped short, somewhere between heaven and its old world. It searched world after world, bridging again and again, over and over.
And it finally wound up somewhere less like heaven and more like hell, a wasteland bog with little light, little to eat, and little to drink. Its mate was not here, so it attempted to move on ...
But it had bridged one time too many. Its ability had burned out.
The Skygger was trapped in hell.
It considered suicide, but could not quite bring itself to do so — less to preserve its own life, more in the faint hope that its Weir ability might recover, and it could continue searching for its mate.
And so the Skygger scrounged out a long, miserable, lonely life. And when it was elderly, it felt itself fading, and so it bid farewell to its absent mate, its beloved, and it closed its eyes ...
... only to awaken as a young man once more, but in a new world!
At first it thought this was a dream — it had been so long since it had seen healthy plants, heard birds whistling on the wind, smelled clean water from a bubbling brook! And when it was satisfied that this world was real, it thought that perhaps the other world, the hellish bog, had been the dream, the nightmare.
Except its mate was still missing. And it found itself still unable to bridge.
And so the Skygger again considered suicide, and again decided against it. At least it was no longer in hell.
The Skygger lived another long life — not so miserable, but equally lonely, as there seemed to be no more sentient beings here than had been in the bog world.
And eventually the Skygger grew old and faded once more, and knew that it was about to die ...
... only to be reborn again on yet another world, this one full of nothing but cold mountains. And no mate.
And it happened again, and again, the Skygger living and dying, only to be reborn on the cusp of that sweet release. Through hundreds, then thousands of years’ worth of empty, lonely life.
And never with its mate, the woman it still loved.
It knew that its mate must be long dead ... or was she? As it was “reborn” back to the same age, over and over, perhaps she was as well? Might she still be out there, somewhere, living over and over again, waiting for it to find her?
But it never, ever found its mate, dead or alive.
Never found love, never found happiness.
And slowly, over an unimaginable stretch of time, the Skygger changed. Not only was it progressively filled with anger and bitterness, its paranormal abilities changed. It regained the ability to bridge, after a fashion — crossing over was far more difficult, straining, tearing at what might have once been called its soul. And still, it could never find its mate.
It also gradually, steadily gained something new: The ability to affect these new dimensions it entered, bringing its pain along for the ride. It could darken these worlds; dampen, stifle the realm around it, sapping it not quite, but almost, like a parasite. Not only that, but the Skygger could take some of these elements into its own body, its shape, its nature, adapting to the environments around it when necessary — and later, shifting whenever it wanted, into whatever it desired.
And the Skygger discovered a new form of ... well, not happiness, never happiness ... but pleasure.
As it discovered more and more worlds with people — real, sentient people, similar to its original home — it found itself disgusted by anything resembling the love it had once felt for its lost mate (a mate whose face it could no longer remember), or love of any kind, really, be it romantic, or religious, or anything in between. And it drew pleasure from ruining that love, that happiness, in others. And this satiated it for some time.
But it was so easy, it eventually grew bored with that and sought new ways, interesting ways, entertaining ways of souring the new worlds it inhabited. It would find a world and pluck its wings in the most delicious ways, then — when it grew disinterested — move on. It grew obsessed with this new pastime, this new almost-joy, this ruination of all things “good.”
As Shockwave had put it to John: It wanted — no, needed — to watch the world burn.
And in its fixation on inflicting pain and misery upon others, it became equally intolerant of, repelled by
, any sort of pain upon itself.
Pain was meant for others, not for the Skygger.
Pain was for the naïve, the insufferable, the unsophisticated innocents who could not recognize the universe for what it was: A putrid abyss of despair. In other words, anyone even remotely like the man it had once been, that miserable buffoon who had been so haunted by “his lost love,” so revolting, so weak. The man who had wanted to die, but was too much of a coward to act upon the desire.
A pitiful man — no, a repulsive man. A man who, perhaps, deep inside, hoped, maybe even prayed, that some day the decision might be taken out of his hands, and he would be put out of his eternal misery?
No. No, that’s not right. That can’t be right.
Why? Why make me recall such a man? Why?
Why, you bastard? Why are you making me remember? WHY?!
Get out. Get out of my mind. Get out of my mind!
Get out Get Out Get Out GET OUT!!!
PCA
John was physically ejected by the Skygger’s mental expulsion, his black boots leaving the pavement, coming down on his back a few yards away. He blinked and shook his head, trying to drag himself back to the here and now, to absorb that his tremendous voyage through the Skygger’s mind, its past, had occurred in mere moments in the real world. The magical attack had been less about “understanding” the Skygger, and more about finding any key weakness they might exploit; his own mind a whirlwind, John wasn’t sure what he had accomplished.
The Skygger flailed about like a rabid animal, crazed, hissing, spitting, howling with rage and pain — which John now knew was, as a cross to a vampire, its personal bane. It thrashed around on the ground like the wounded beast it truly was.
Shining Star settled back down to earth, clutching his throat and panting. Powerhouse had another chunk of pavement in his hand, ready to throw, but he was also unsteady on his feet. Jeremy Walker had limped back inside the hospital, but he was watching through the door’s rectangular window, ready to help again if he could.
John’s only sturdy ally at this point was Shockwave. The red-clad man had both fists pointed at the Skygger, ready to fire, but he seemed taken aback by the Skygger’s bizarre display, unsure what to do. He looked to John for guidance.
Paranormals | Book 3 | Darkness Reigns Page 35
