Monster (26 page)

“Get clear, Chester!”

The gnome folded himself into a bird and flew away as Monster hurled the rune. It bounced off Ed’s chest. She swung out with her right foot and narrowly missed striking him across the ribs. He pressed closer to the wall as she tried to follow up the attack, only to discover that her left foot was stuck to the floor.

“That’s not fair!” she said.

Monster dug in his pocket and found another spell. He rolled it into a ball and hit her with it. Instantly, Ed started croaking like a toad. It didn’t really do anything to further impede her, but it cheered him.

Monster worked his way around the edge of the room to stay out of her reach as Ed continued to croak and Ferdinand flopped around on the floor. Ed would remain stuck to the floor until she touched her nose. Or a handsome prince came along and kissed her. He figured the nose thing was more likely. Either way, she was out of the way for a while.

The imp, its mouth full of red fur, hopped before Monster.

“Did you win?”

It barked and wagged its tiny tail.

“The kitchen’s this way,” said Chester.

“That wasn’t so hard,” said Monster.

“Don’t count your eggs yet,” said Chester. “You’ve been lucky.” He couldn’t argue. Ferdinand and Ed were dangerous, but he’d been prepared. If Lotus was still in the house, then she’d probably make short work of Monster and his weak magic. All the more reason to get out of here.

Judy was in the kitchen. She raised her head at Monster’s arrival. “Hi, how are you? Want some tea?”

She held out a saucer and cup. He knocked it away.

“A ‘No, thank you’ would’ve been sufficient,” she said.

“Come on.” He tried to pull her out of the chair, but she resisted.

“What’s your rush?” she asked. “Sit down. Have some tea.”

“I don’t want any tea.” He pushed the cup off the table.

“Why do people keep doing that?” Judy stood. “Now I’ll have to get another cup.”

The imp scrambled up onto the kitchen counter. It yapped and howled as it struggled to lift the stone beside the sink.

“I don’t think Mrs. Lotus would want you touching that,” said Judy.

Monster pressed a rune spell across Judy’s forehead. She went limp and fell into Monster’s arms. The paper wasn’t sticky, so he had to hold it in place. He lowered her the rest of the way to the floor, keeping the spell pressed to her forehead.

“Chester, find some tape or something.”

“You didn’t have to keep the rune pressed on the others,” said Chester as he rifled through the drawers.

“This is a different spell,” said Monster. “They don’t all follow the same rules.”

“I don’t know how you keep track of it all.”

“I don’t. That’s why I need my dictionary. I only remembered this one from my college days.”

Grinning, Judy giggled.

“Cheaper than weed,” said Monster.

“I’d heard getting high on magic can be dangerous,” said Chester.

“I handled it fine,” replied Monster. “Until the freakout. Now I never touch the stuff.”

“Never?”

“Okay, so maybe I’m getting a bit of a contact high, but there’s no way around that.”

“She’s already pretty buzzed from that tea,” said Chester. “Is it a good idea to mix the effects?”

“Not really.” Monster glanced down the hall and checked on Ferdinand’s progress. She was on her knees, taking in deep breaths and regaining her equilibrium. “How’s that tape coming?”

“No dice.”

“I can’t keep holding this…” Monster snapped his fingers to get Judy’s attention. “Hey, how you feeling there? Pretty good, right?”

“Peachy.” Her eyes crossed as she giggled.

“If you want to keep feeling peachy you’ll have to hold this in place. Can you do that?”

Judy nodded, and Monster lifted her hand to her forehead and let go. She kept the rune in contact. She didn’t resist as he helped her rise.

“We’re leaving now. How’s that sound?” asked Monster.

Judy nodded as her eyes nearly rolled back in her head. He slapped her lightly on the cheeks.

“Come on now. Stick with me. I can’t carry you out of here.”

The imp barked and continued its struggle with the stone slab.

“I think he wants us to take this with us,” said Chester.

“So take it. I don’t care.”

Chester grabbed the stone. He yelped as his paper body wilted and fell flat, floating to the floor. He slowly folded himself back into gnomish shape.

“Geez, that packed a punch.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Touching it disrupted my interface with this body. Must be some some kind of hard-form interdimensional sink.”

“Must be,” said Monster, as if he understood any of what Chester had just said. “Leave it, then.”

The imp grabbed Monster by the pant leg and yanked while yipping and barking.

“Okay, okay.”

He released Judy. She managed to stand on her wobbly legs.

“We really don’t have time for this.” He took the stone and tucked it under his arm. “That crazy old broad could show up any—”

“That does not belong to you, young man,” said Lotus. She’d freed Ferdinand and Ed from their spells. They stood behind her in the doorway, but Lotus was the real threat.

Monster pulled another rune spell from his pockets and crumpled it. “Stay back. I’ll use this if I have to.”

Lotus smiled. “And what will this spell do? Make us all terribly itchy?”

“It’s my last resort. It’ll start a raging fire.”

“I’d be careful, ma’am,” said Chester. “He isn’t very good with magic, but he does excel at burning things to the ground.”

Judy spun around, laughing. “To the ground!”

Ferdinand and Ed moved forward, but Lotus held them back.

“I pride myself on my patience, but you have nearly exhausted it, Mr. Dionysus. Now if you would put down the stone.”

“Wait a second, boss,” said Chester. “I wouldn’t do that if I were—”

Lotus flicked her fingers at him. Invisible blades sliced him to shreds.

“The stone, if you please, Mr. Dionysus.”

Monster studied the pile of confetti.

“Wait a second. You’re afraid of me because I have this, aren’t you?” He tightened his grip on the stone.

“Why on earth would I ever be afraid of someone as ineffective as you?” said Lotus.

“He’s a dumb-face,” said Judy with a snort.

“Go on then,” said Monster. “Take me out. I’m waiting.”

Lotus smiled humorlessly. “You’re brighter than I gave you credit for.”

“That’s right. I am.”

“Ferdinand, Ed, would you please remove the stone from Mr. Dionysus’s possession?”

They advanced.

Monster shut his eyes and let loose with a burst of bright light. Ed and Ferdinand recoiled, turning their faces away. They rubbed their eyes. Judy was blinded too, but her senses were already playing tricks on her, so she didn’t think it odd that everything went white and spots danced in her vision.

Lotus had been looking straight at Monster when he’d flashed. She wasn’t bothered. She did not appear pleased, but she didn’t make a move toward him. The stone kept her at bay. He clutched it close to him and tightened his grip.

He still had to worry about Ferdinand and Ed. Once they recovered, it wouldn’t be hard for them to kick his ass and take the stone.

His only choice was to make a run for it. He grabbed Judy’s hand and bolted out the door leading to the backyard. He dashed down the steps, toward the picket fence. He’d leap that and then he’d…

He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t worked out his plan much beyond that.

A trio of Lotus’s garden gnomes, spears at the ready, sprang between him and escape. Screaming, they charged. The imp leaped on the lead gnome. Monster used the stone to deflect the second gnome’s spear, but the third gnome cut him on the thigh.

“Ow! You little son of a—”

He kicked one gnome and smacked another with the stone. Both went flying across the lawn. The imp and the lead gnome rolled around, locked in combat.

Monster glanced back at the house. Ferdinand and Ed came stumbling onto the porch. They were halfway down the steps when Monster flashed again. Ferdinand had had the foresight not to be looking directly at him, but Ed hadn’t. Her blindness made her miss the third step on the short flight. She fell onto the lawn, tripping Ferdinand.

He didn’t waste any time congratulating himself on his luck. He turned back toward the fence.

Lotus and a legion of cats stood in his way.

He could try blinding them again, but he was beginning to feel weak. He swallowed, reminded of the absence of even an ounce of saliva. At most, he had another two bright bursts in him before he risked collapsing from dehydration. Ferdinand, Ed, Lotus, the gnomes, and the army of cats surrounded Monster and Judy.

“Though I do admire your resourcefulness,” said Lotus, “it’s time to end this farce. Don’t you agree, Mr. Dionysus?”

He shook Judy to get her attention. “Why don’t you do something? Call up a dragon or something. C’mon!”

Judy gaped at him. “Whaaa… ?”

Even if Judy had any conscious control over her crypto-summoning powers, she was blitzed out of her mind. There’d be no help there.

“Oooh, pretty.” Judy touched the stone. It changed color, from black to bright red. The tingle in Monster’s hand became a stinging bite. He released the stone. Or he tried to.

He couldn’t let go.

Time slowed. It was so slow, it almost appeared to stop. But Monster noticed the slight ripple in the grass. He and Judy were unaffected, but the rest of the world had ground to a halt.

“What did you do now?” he asked.

Judy pointed to a bird hanging in the air and made a cooing sound.

“Give me the stone now!” shouted Lotus, unaffected by the time slip. Monster yelped in terror of the old lady (he would deny that later) and struck her with the stone in his hand. Three things happened. Not exactly at the same time, but close enough that most wouldn’t have noticed.

In the instant that the stone made contact with Lotus, the force of Monster’s glancing blow was amplified ten thousand times. With a thunderous boom, she was hurled upward, a luminescent comet burning through the night sky. She passed through the atmosphere before gravity slowed her enough to begin her descent. The earth had rotated beneath her by then, and she came down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

The second effect was a twist in the fragile framework of time and space. Judy and Monster disappeared.

The third and final effect was the restoration of the normal flow of time.

The triumphant imp howled over the defeated gnome, then scampered away, disappearing into the bushes.

“What just happened?” asked Ed.

“Beats me.”

“They escaped,” said Lotus from behind them.

Ed and Ferdinand jumped. It wasn’t Lotus’s sudden appearance. Both of them were used to that by now. It was something in her voice, a quality they’d never before heard. She was angry.

She was also soaking wet, and a strand of gray hair fell across her face. It was a small thing, seemingly insignificant. But Ed and Ferdinand had never seen a single hair out of place on Lotus’s head.

Ed asked, “But how—”

“I don’t know,” replied Lotus.

Ferdinand and Ed exchanged glances.

“You don’t?” said Ferdinand.

“No, I don’t.” Lotus smoothed an errant strand of hair out of her face. “But believe me, I do intend to find out.”

Monster had never teleported, but he’d heard it was a lousy way to travel. It wasn’t difficult, magically speaking, to cut loose from the fabric of space and time. The hard part was the reconnection. The body wanted to remain part of the universe—so much so that it’d fall back into place just about anywhere. Without proper aim, a teleport spell could transport someone anywhere in the universe, and anywhere was a very big place, so big that the odds of actually ending up somewhere where you didn’t die instantly qualified as a miracle. Not to mention the extreme gut-wrenching strain on every cell of the body, not so much painful as unpleasant, like riding in a centrifuge for six hours straight. Or so Monster had heard.

This teleportation was so gentle that he didn’t notice until it was done—like rolling across the surface of the universe before plopping comfortably into a Monster-shaped hole that was already there and waiting, warm and inviting.

He cursed, realizing the stone in his hand had become white hot. He released it. It bounced off his foot, and when he hopped around, he tripped over someone.

It was Judy, out cold. She was breathing. He put his ear to her chest, and her heartbeat seemed okay. Not that he knew enough to be sure. He slapped her lightly on the face, but she wouldn’t wake up. He opened her eyelids and checked her pupils. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but they usually did that on TV, so he gave it a shot. She looked okay, he guessed. Just unconscious.