Monster (6 page)

“What the hell is that?” asked Monster. “You mean you don’t know?” said Judy. “I believe it’s a kojin,” remarked Chester. “Although I’ve never heard of one outside of Asia.”

The snarling kojin pushed against the frame. Meanwhile, trolls trickled between its ankles. They were groggy in the light of day and confused by the odd surroundings. Trolls ate anything. Or rather, trolls would try to eat anything. They chewed pillows, strewn clothes, the end table, and carpeting.

“Hey! Give me that!” Judy snatched a lamp from a troll’s jaws. “That was my grandma’s.”

The troll snapped up the end of the power cord and slurped it down.

“Damn it.”

The closet frame cracked as the kojin thrust several of its arms into the room. It looked to have at least twelve. It made a clumsy grab at Monster but couldn’t quite reach.

“Time for Plan B, Chester,” said Monster. “We’re going to have to seal them in.”

They exited the apartment. Monster fished around in his pocket and grabbed a red marker. He scrawled a quick containment rune on the door.

“But you can’t just leave these things in there,” said Judy. “What about my stuff?”

“Sorry, miss,” said Chester. “But we’re required to in the interest of public safety—”

“Get me another black marker from the van,” said Monster. “Left the one I had on me in the apartment. Not sure how long a red seal will hold trolls in.”

Chester folded into a falcon and soared off toward the van.

“These doors are made of particleboard,” said Judy. “It won’t hold anyway.”

Something, many things, crashed inside the apartment. The moist troll scent filtered under the doorjamb.

Monster scrawled the last squiggle of the rune just in time as something heavy, probably the kojin, thudded against the door. Several cracks appeared, and the hinges broke off. The magic, and only the magic, kept the door in place.

“How does that work?” asked Judy. “It just works.”

The cryptos on the other side continued their thrashing against the door, inflicting a steady increase in cracks and dents.

“Shit. It’s not going to hold,” said Monster. “What’s going on here?” The manager stormed toward them. “What are you doing to my apartment?”

Judy grumbled. “Look, asshole. All my stuff is getting eaten by trolls. I don’t really need to hear any crap from you.”

“Situation’s under control,” said Monster. “I’m afraid we’ll have to call in a cleanup team. It’ll be inconvenient, but better than having to deal with a horde of skin-eating trolls.”

“They eat skin?” asked Judy. “Among other things.”

“Oh, no,” said the bald man. “No, no, no! You can’t do this! Who do you think you are? You can’t deface private property like this!”

“Relax,” said Monster. “It’s non-permanent.”

Chester appeared with a handful of markers.

Monster grabbed a black one. “Took you long enough.”

The manager grabbed Monster’s wrist. “Nobody marks on my doors without explaining just what’s going on—”

The door crumbled into pieces. Only a residual magic kept the trolls from stepping over the threshold. However, it didn’t stop the kojin from reaching out and seizing the manager by the head. His muffled scream was mercifully ended by a crushing squeeze. His body went limp and he was yanked inside to be devoured.

“Crap.” Monster thought of the demerits he’d get for that. The trolls were too distracted by their meal to notice that the seal had faded. Monster retreated to his van. Judy and Chester followed.

“Oh my God,” said Judy. “They’re going to eat everybody.”

“It’s not as bad as all that, miss,” said Chester. “Even trolls don’t enjoy the company of other trolls. They’ll disperse instinctively and go into hiding from the daylight.”

While Monster radioed in a report to Dispatch, trolls filtered from Judy’s apartment into the parking lot. They were a rainbow of colors, and all different shapes. The stench was overwhelming. Judy pinched her nose. It didn’t help. The odor burned her eyes, and she could taste it.

Out in the open, the creatures became less aggressive. They scampered in all directions, confused and blinded by daylight. They seemed lost now. Hideous as they were, Judy felt sorry for them as they ran about erratically. They darted into the streets, hid in darkened corners, or sought shelter under parked cars.

“Poor things,” she said. “They must be terrified.”

Her apartment burst open as the kojin managed to break free. There didn’t seem enough room on its shoulders for its multitude of arms. The kojin had a tremendous belly and pendulous breasts. It looked as if the beast, with its staggering weight, had to struggle not to fall flat on its face with each step.

It paused to rub its eyes, but the sunlight didn’t bother it like it did the trolls. It scanned the parking lot with a horrible, hungry sneer. Then its gaze fell on Judy and Monster. It wiped the drool from its lips with the back of one giant hand and lurched toward them.

“Oh, crap,” said Monster.

Monster, Chester, and Judy jumped into the van. “If you sit in the back, Miss Hines, you should be safe while we deal with this. No need to worry. We are professionals.” Chester retrieved the thick crypto reference guide from below the passenger seat and started flipping through it. “Kobold, koerakoonlased, koguhpuk… kojin—here it is.”

The creature was beside the vehicle. It clutched the van in its many arms. The squeak of a hundred powerful fingertips crushing the chassis followed.

Monster started the van and pushed the accelerator, but the vehicle didn’t move. Its tires spun against the pavement. Thick clouds of smoke filled the air. The kojin sneezed, and the tremors of its great belly rocked the van to one side. It hung there, balanced on its two passenger-side wheels, for a moment before tipping over. The windshield shattered. Judy bounced around in the back. She was buried under a few pounds of paperwork. Plastic elixir bottles buffeted her, and a metal case smacked her just above the eye.

The hacking kojin fanned the air with its many arms. “Chester, where the hell are you?” asked Monster.

The flattened paper gnome’s voice came out in a muffle from beneath Monster.

The giant sniffed around the edges of the van. It bit into a tire and the rubber blew up in its face. In retribution, it tore off the rear bumper, then flipped the van again, this time putting it on its roof. The same metal case struck Judy in the hip.

Monster, having fallen on his head, struggled to right himself. “Chester, I could use a little help here.”

Chester managed to squirm out from underneath Monster. “We need the baby.”

Monster crawled into the back, but the van’s inventory was in disarray. Judy struggled to work free of the chaotic jumble. A small gash on her forehead was oozing blood into her eyes.

Monster dug through the clutter. He found the doll just as the kojin reached through the shattered windshield and seized him by the leg. He didn’t even have time to yelp before being dragged from the van. The kojin held him aloft. Rivers of drool dripped from its wide jaws as it prepared to bite off Monster’s face.

Monster held up the doll.

The kojin stopped. Its small black eyes narrowed as it grunted curiously.

Monster pulled the ring on the back, and the doll squeaked. “Ma-Ma.”

The creature’s eyes went wide with delight, and it cooed. Its coo was more of a rough snort, but there was no mistaking the joyous expression on its hideous face.

Monster threw the doll as far as he could. The kojin dropped him and stomped its way over to the baby. Blissfully it scooped up the doll in one of its dozen immense hands. It drew the baby close to its chest and sat down on a sports car, crushing it beneath its colossal butt cheeks.

“Damn.” Monster surveyed his ruined van. “I just had twelve more payments to go.”

Chester tiptoed his way through the safety glass sprinkled on the asphalt. “You okay, boss?”

“I’ll live.” He nodded to the kojin. “How long will that doll keep her distracted?”

“Hours. Maybe days.”

Judy shouted from inside the van. “Could someone help me out here? I think I smell gasoline.”

It took Monster and Chester a few minutes to wrench open the van’s back door because the frame had been bent. After that, it was another minute to dig Judy out.

Meanwhile, the giant grunted a heartfelt rendition of “Rock-A-Bye, Baby.”

Monster helped Judy to find a seat on a car hood a good distance from the van. He didn’t see any leaking fluids, but with no sense of smell, he figured it was better to be cautious.

“I put a call in to the Arcane Commission,” said Chester. “They’re sending a team over.”

With a piece of chalk in hand, Monster went over to the kojin. He had to transmogrify it now before the Reds arrived and sealed off the site, robbing him of his score. He drew a wide circle around the creature. The kojin was too busy rocking the toy baby in its arms to care.

Judy twisted her head to one side and pressed the short sleeve of her T-shirt against the cut on her forehead. It’d nearly stopped bleeding, but she applied pressure to stop the red trickle dripping into her eye. She asked Chester, “Why is it that whenever you guys show up I end up with a severe head injury?”

“Our sincerest apologies, Miss Hines. Cryptobiological handling is an inexact science.” He held up a clipboard. “We’ll need you to sign some paperwork. Strictly standard procedure—”

“No way. I’m not signing anything. Not until I see a lawyer.” She glanced over at Monster, still working on his magic circle. “How does that work? Magic.”

“It just works,” said Chester. “There’s really no secret to it. Anyone can do it with the proper training. Of course, doing it well is another matter.”

Monster paused to check his pocket dictionary. “Could I do it?” asked Judy.

Chester hopped up beside her on the hood. “You could learn, but you couldn’t remember for long. There’s a nerve cluster in the human brain called Merlin’s lobe. It has to do with magic perception. In most humans, the lobe is underdeveloped, almost nonexistent. Those types, called incognizants, can’t even acknowledge magic, even when it’s right in front of them. They just don’t recognize it.

“The second-largest group, say about twenty percent, have it developed enough that they can recognize magic when they see it but they can’t really remember it very well once it’s gone. They’re light cognizants. Depending on how light, they might recall small details or none at all. Some light cogs have managed to learn some basic magic, but nothing spectacular or reliable.”

Judy pulled her sleeve from her sticky, clotted wound. “Well, can’t I learn to be more aware?”

“Perceiving magic isn’t a skill. It’s a physiological condition,” said Chester. “Can a monkey learn to drive?”

She didn’t like the comparison, but she got the idea. Monster completed the necessary runes on the circle and stepped back. In a soft flash, the kojin was transmogrified from a ten-ton ogre to a twenty-pound stone.

“I could do that,” said Judy. “How hard is it to draw a circle on the pavement?”

“It’s harder than it looks,” said Chester.

Most everyone in the apartments worked days, and while the cars in the nearby streets slowed down to gawk at the overturned van, they didn’t seem interested in stopping. She wondered if it was because they didn’t want anything to do with magic or if they just didn’t want to get involved. She heard sirens, so someone must’ve called the cops.

She slid off the car hood. “Maybe you should stay off your feet, Miss Hines. That’s a nasty bump on the head.”

Her legs were a little shaky, but she needed a smoke. She paused before the missing wall that served as the entrance to her ruined apartment. The troll odor wafted over her, but nicotine called.

Paulie appeared. She didn’t know most of her neighbors, but Paulie was a fellow night-shifter, so they’d run into each other a few times. They’d slept together a half dozen times, when they’d both been in the right mood at the right time. He was a tall, blond Nordic god from the waist up with cartoonishly thin legs. He had a habit of walking around shirtless. It wasn’t to show off his perfect chest, powerful shoulders, and chiseled abs. It was just because he didn’t have any shirts. She’d checked his closet the last time she’d spent the day at his place.

“Hey, Jude.”

He always greeted her the same way. She’d assumed it was a joke, but she’d tested him and was pretty sure he didn’t know one damn thing about the Beatles.

“Whoa.” Paulie pushed his long hair out of his eyes and sniffed. “Smells like trolls. Hey, was that a kojin?”

She nodded.

“Cool. You don’t usually see them outside of Asia, y’know.”

“Yeah. Cool. Got any smokes?”

“You mean, like, regular cigarettes, right?”

When Judy wasn’t horny, there wasn’t much to appreciate about Paulie. Realizing he was magically cognizant annoyed her too. Although it did explain the strange herbs, those odd books on his shelves, and his collection of faerie skulls. Damn it. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

She had. Many times, she realized. But always forgetting afterward. Even now, the observations were slippery, trying to get away from her. She knew that she would forget again as soon as she wasn’t consciously thinking about them.