Monster (12 page)

More kitchen staff fled in a mad rush, and by now most of the other customers had gotten the idea.

Judy fixed him with a stare. “What?” he replied. “I’m off duty. Let somebody else handle it.”

Someone in the kitchen screamed.

“At least let me finish my eggs,” he said. “They got the yolks just right. I mean, look at these yolks. Do you know how hard it is to find a place that makes yolks like I like them?”

The unidentified creature thumped the wall and roared. Almost like a lion’s roar but with a strange warble at the end.

Monster pushed his plate away. “Okay, okay. I’ll take a look.”

Another person filtered out of the kitchen. “Oh my God! It’s going to eat Chipper!”

“There’s no rush,” said Judy.

Monster was already up and heading toward the door. Judy decided to follow.

The kitchen was in a shambles. Pots, pans, and broken dishes were strewn everywhere. The sink had been crushed and was gushing water. There wasn’t much room, and the giant beast took up most of the space.

Though it had a dog’s head, it wasn’t a dog. It was huge and black, with scaly skin. Its body was that of a walrus, complete with the thick tail, but it had legs, four of them. Each foot ended in a wide paw.

It had Chipper cornered, but its bulky body was wedged between the fryer and the grill. The waitress had climbed atop a refrigerator and was safe for the moment. The beast’s tremendous size kept it from reaching her.

“You should do something about it,” said Judy. “Use one of your magic letters or something.”

“Until I know what it is, anything I try will probably make it worse,” he said. “Do me a favor and get my reference guide from the car.”

While Judy retrieved his guide, Monster watched the creature menace Chipper, edging closer and closer. It lashed out with a large paw, nearly knocking over the refrigerator and sending Chipper toppling into its jaws.

“Hey!” he said. “Hey, you dumb thing!”

The creature turned its head, eyed him, then returned its attention to Chipper.

Against his better judgment, Monster grabbed a nearby fork and flicked it at the beast. The creature failed to notice, and the refrigerator teetered after another swipe. Chipper screamed.

Monster pointed one finger at the creature’s tail end. He narrowed his eyes and forced out a lightning bolt. Just a little one.

“Ouch.” He sucked his finger. “Son of a bitch, I hate that.” The beast turned from Chipper and threw another annoyed glare at Monster. It bared its teeth and uttered a growl.

The beast paused, unsure whom it wanted to eat more. Trapped by its cramped quarters, it went back to Chipper, the easier snack. It managed to tip the refrigerator. The results didn’t please anyone, the beast included. The refrigerator crashed onto its head. Chipper tumbled onto its back.

The first thing in the manual was to remove any civilians from the area of risk. Monster didn’t usually follow the manual, but he didn’t need another casualty on his record. One was just bad luck, but two in two days usually meant a board inquiry.

“Miss, come this way,” he said soothingly.

Chipper, eyes wide with terror, kept her death grip on the creature. Monster swallowed his annoyance. He took a step forward, closer to the creature’s giant fish tail. It twitched limply now, but it could start swinging with crushing force at any moment.

He held out his hand to her. “Come on,” he said. “Come on.”

Trembling, she reached toward him.

The beast sprang to life. Chipper was thrown off, striking Monster with enough force to knock him to the floor, which was fortunate, as the creature’s tail would’ve crushed him where he stood otherwise.

Chipper scrambled roughly over him. Her knee mashed his sternum, and she stepped on his arm. He swore as she dashed out of the kitchen.

“You’re welcome,” he groaned.

The creature snapped and growled at Monster as it struggled to turn around. He backed out of the kitchen. Judy was in the empty diner with his crypto guide.

“Took your sweet time.” He ignored the thrashing and roars as he took a seat and flipped through the book.

“Should we maybe get out of here?” asked Judy. “Oh, it’s fine. The thing is so stuck in there that it’ll never get out.”

“And the trolls in my closet weren’t anything to be frightened of either,” she said.

“You wanted me to handle this, so I’m handling it. Anyway, I’m betting this thing is pretty rare, and I’m not willing to pass up the score. You can go if you want. It’d probably be better if you did.”

“I’m staying.”

“Suit yourself.” He skimmed the identification indexes. Since he didn’t know what this thing was, he had to work his way backwards, using distinctive features. It wasn’t hard to identify. Even in the world of cryptobiology, there just weren’t that many dog-headed seal beasts.

“Az-i-wu-gum-ki-mukh-ti.”

“What kind of name is that?” asked Judy. “Inuit. It isn’t usually seen outside of Greenland. In English, it’s often referred to as a walrus dog.”

“That’s original,” said Judy.

The az-i-wu-gum-ki-mukh-ti howled. “Walrus dog sounds almost cute,” said Judy, “and that thing is not cute. So now that you know what it is, can you capture it?”

“No problem.” Monster picked up a napkin holder, a cube of aluminum, and traced a rune on it. He consulted his pocket dictionary.

“You’d think you’d have memorized those by now,” said Judy.

Monster ignored the comment. Rune magic was just writing, but with a thousand-letter alphabet and rules of grammar and punctuation that were nearly beyond human comprehension. It was the shorthand of the universe, and the universe wasn’t particularly bright when it came to interpreting it. A rune spell that could humanely incapacitate one yeti could blow the head off another. And he didn’t want to kill the walrus dog.

He completed the rune, satisfied it would do the trick. “Now what?” she asked. “Now I throw this at it, freeze it in a block of ice. I make the world safe for greasy-diner-goers everywhere, and get a few bucks for my trouble.”

“You said it’s from Greenland, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, isn’t Greenland the one with all the ice? What if it doesn’t freeze?”

“Actually, Iceland is the one with all the ice,” he said. “No, it isn’t.”

Monster spoke through a tightly clenched jaw. “It doesn’t matter. Even if Greenland is the one with the ice—which it isn’t, because that would make no goddamn sense—this isn’t regular ice. This is magic ice.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Muttering obscenities, Monster entered the kitchen. Judy didn’t follow, and that was probably a good thing, since he was very tempted to push her into the walrus dog’s maw before freezing it. The creature had managed to turn itself halfway around and had destroyed the kitchen in the process. The counters were uprooted; half the tile floor was knocked loose. Broken dishes littered the floor, and water was spurting from several broken pipes. The stove was knocked askew, but Monster didn’t smell any leaking gas.

No lightning bolts, he reminded himself.

The walrus dog snapped at him, but it wasn’t much of a threat. When it came to land mobility, the thing was definitely more walrus than dog. It lashed out with its paws but came up short.

Monster tossed the napkin dispenser at it. It bounced off the az-i-wu-gum-ki-mukh-ti’s black scales without leaving a mark. A blue flash engulfed the creature, and by the time Monster’s vision cleared, the walrus dog was encased in a block of ice.

Judy entered, and Monster smiled smugly at her. “See? Frozen. No problems.”

“I take it, then, that it’s supposed to be doing that?” asked Judy.

The walrus dog shimmered. Its scales lightened as it slowly absorbed the ice around it.

“It’s nothing to worry about.” Monster flipped through his dictionary. “I’m on top of it.”

The glow increased as the ice thinned enough for the creature to twitch its tail.

“Yeah, I can see you’ve got it all under control. Good luck with that.”

She went to the front door. The handle snapped off.

Her left palm itched. The misfortune hex had struck. She pushed on the door, but it was designed to open inward and didn’t budge. She tried getting her fingers between the door-jamb, but the seal was too tight.

The light coming from the kitchen and the raspy breaths of the walrus dog did not inspire Judy with confidence. Monster appeared through the swinging doors.

“We should get out of here.” He stopped at the front door.

Judy held up the handle.

Monster went to the door on the other side of the restaurant. That handle broke off too.

She scratched her palm. It was itching like mad. “Sorry.”

He shoved his shoulder against the glass door. “I already tried that,” she said.

The walrus dog howled.

Monster picked up a napkin holder, cocked back his arm, and hurled it into the door. It bounced improbably off the glass and smacked Judy in the head, knocking off her hat. She stumbled back and fell over a chair.

“Son of a bitch!” she grumbled. Despite the sudden throb in her skull, she was painfully aware of the itch in her palm.

The walrus dog pushed its way through the swinging kitchen door. The rune spell had transformed it into a living ice sculpture. Little pieces of ice cracked off its body with its every movement, but the shards were replaced with a steady refreezing. The az-i-wu-gum-ki-mukh-ti got stuck halfway through the kitchen door. It dug its frozen claws into the tile and struggled to pull itself the rest of the way through.

“This isn’t fair,” said Monster. “It’s your bad-luck hex. Not mine.”

Judy righted a chair and sat. She was having trouble concentrating, and her knees were weak. But she was getting used to functioning with head wounds, so she was aware enough to keep her wits about her but dulled enough not to be frightened by the prospect of being eaten by an ice sculpture.

“What about a lightning bolt?” she asked. “Does that do anything to ice?” said Monster. “I don’t know. But it’s not normal ice, is it?”

Only the walrus dog’s hind legs remained stuck, and it was wiggling those free. Judy wasn’t that worried. The thing was too big and clumsy to be much of a threat, and the transformation to ice hadn’t helped it any. They could probably outmaneuver it fairly easily, but her aching skull reminded her that nothing was easy right now.

Monster leveled his hands at the walrus dog, closed his eyes, and unleashed a blast from all ten fingers.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.”

The creature absorbed the lightning, drawing it into its body. The ball of electricity crackled in its heart. The beast bayed, and voltage leaped off it. The diner’s lights exploded in a shower of sparks. Monster sought cover behind a booth, and Judy, having regained some semblance of balance, joined him.

“Great idea,” said Monster. “Don’t get mad at me. This is your job, not mine. And if you’d listened to me in the first place and not tried freezing the thing, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“If I’d ignored you in the first place, I’d still be finishing my eggs.”

They chanced a peek. The walrus dog had freed itself and was advancing in their direction. It was getting slower if not weaker. It batted aside the tables in its way.

“We could run around it,” suggested Judy. “I bet there’s an exit in the kitchen.”

“If we get anywhere near it, we’ll be fried,” said Monster. “We could bash it with a chair. Maybe stun it enough to get past.”

“Everything in this place is metal. Not sure striking a living lightning generator with a metal rod is a smart thing to do.”

A single paw trod into view. Monster and Judy jumped back against the wall as the crackling walrus dog raised its head, with a maw of jagged ice shards, and howled.

The howl ended in a whimper as its jaw fell off. Fissures split the az-i-wu-gum-ki-mukh-ti’s huge tail, and it shattered. The creature tried to raise a paw. The limb broke apart. The walrus dog attempted to keep its balance, but its frozen limbs weren’t able to keep it from falling, so it rolled to one side. The electricity in its heart fizzled, and the az-i-wu-gum-ki-mukh-ti exploded in a glittering burst. Frost covered Monster, Judy, and the diner in a thin coat.

“Is it dead?” asked Judy. “What do you mean, is it dead? Of course it’s dead.” Monster wiped the ice from his face. “Damn, I guess I lost the collection fee on it. Not even good for parts.”

Monster and Judy found the back door out of the diner through the kitchen. They went around to the front, where most of the customers and employees were standing around in mild confusion. Chipper was still flushed and wide eyed, on the verge of madness, and Judy forced herself not to smile at the perk-deprived moppet.

Judy guessed the combination of danger, chaos, and magic caused the stupefying effect. Monster ignored the crowd and got into her car without saying a word. But Judy thought she should say something to ease the crowd’s bewilderment. Without her magic rune, she’d have been just as confused.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled to the crowd, though not too loudly. The bump on her head was still throbbing. “It’s okay, folks. It’s all taken care of. The, uh, the big dog is dead. It won’t hurt you. You can all go in and finish your breakfast now.”