Authors: Rain Oxford
“I can smell his magic.” He swaggered up to me. “You
smell like him.” He wrapped his fingers around my neck and his eyes turned
black.
The hand against my skin was hot and his flesh was
beginning to char and boil. I could feel something pressing in on me, trying to
suppress my mind and soul. It couldn’t. It felt like I wasn’t compatible.
“Traveler!” he yelled at me like it was a cuss word.
Then he released me and I plummeted to the ground,
for the power emanating from him left me weak.
He started for the door before pausing, turning
around, and heading for the window. I didn’t have time to think whether Dylan
and Sammy got away, or even try to use magic. With a burst of adrenaline, I
lunged at the creature and dug my claws down his back. Raw power flared back at
me, but my claws stuck deep. We both dropped.
I felt like I had run far too long on a hot day with
no water.
“Since when do you have claws?” Dylan was standing at
the door. “It’s safe now,” he called out. Vivian came in, carrying Sammy.
I looked at my hands. My fingers melted into wicked
black claws, which were shrinking and fading to flesh as my adrenaline fled.
Soon my fingers were back to normal, except for being covered in blood.
“Mr. Jones… Why would Mr. Jones attack you? He’s a
librarian,” Vivian said, keeping the baby away. Sammy was trying to look even
as she blocked his view of the man with her hand.
I crept closer and checked for a pulse. “He’s dead.”
“He was dead for a while,” Dylan said. “The creature
killed him and used his body. Whatever it is, it’s gone now, but it’ll be
back.”
“Excuse me.” Vivian said, handing the baby to Dylan
and darting out of the room. I could hear her emptying her stomach in the
bathroom. She then made her way downstairs.
I stood, shaking off the lethargy. “What are we going
to do now? He knows where we are. He said he could smell Sammy’s magic.”
“We protect Sammy until someone comes to save us. With
my magic and your claws, we can do it,” he grinned.
I groaned. Sammy squealed and lunged himself into my
arms. I sighed, trying to hold him without getting blood on him.
“He certainly is a bouncy little guy,” Dylan said.
“Why did Vivian come home early?”
He pulled the cell phone out of his bag. “I couldn’t
leave Sammy alone. I called her to come home and take him so that I could help
you. You managed just fine on your own.”
“No, actually, I think the beast left willingly. I
have a new idea for anytime something like this happens. From now on, when I
get attacked, my plan is to distract the monster, wizard, beast, whatever,
until you get here.”
“I like that. Count me in,” Vivian said as she
returned. She handed Sammy a small cup with a lid. He took it and rested his
head on my shoulder, not even drinking what looked like milk. Vivian handed me
a wet cloth to clean my hands with. “Keep the enemy busy until Dylan gets here.
Sounds great to me.”
“Wait… What? Hang on, that’s a terrible plan. You
can’t rely on me to always show up in time,” the Guardian said.
Vivian and I shared a look. “Why not? You showed up
in time to save me from the draxuni.”
“They weren’t attacking you. The worst I saved you
from was bath time.”
“You showed up in time to save my baby from the
monster,” Vivian added.
“If Tiamat hadn’t told me about it, I would never
have known.”
“I’m sticking to my plan,” I said. Vivian nodded her
agreement and Dylan sighed in defeat. “So, since we can’t stay here, where
should we go?” I asked.
“I have a friend we can stay with,” Vivian suggested.
Dylan shook his head. “This creature can take over
anybody to get to us. If it is tracking Sammy by his magic, then we can’t stay
in one place for very long, but being around other people is probably a bad
idea, too.
“He couldn’t get into me. He tried,” I said.
“You traveled between worlds. We can stay on the
road. Let’s head to Georgia,” he said. Vivian made a face. “Nothing
Earth-shattering ever happens in Georgia.”
Sammy had fallen asleep, so we went down the stairs
quietly. Vivian started gathering stuff into a big, flowery bag.
“Why did you leave Houston?” Dylan asked Vivian. “A
larger city would be much easier to hide out in.”
She shrugged. “Better opportunities here. I thought
Sammy should grow up in a smaller town. Besides, Texas is being destroyed with
earthquakes. Compared to Earthquakes and the flu, salty rain is nothing, so I’m
damn glad I chose Arkansas.”
“Well, the raining here stopped, so we can probably
assume the other stuff has.”
“But why has it stopped?”
“Maybe because the creature found Sammy.”
“Or because Earth’s Guardian has returned to save it.
I just wonder why Tiamat hasn’t done anything to stop it,” I said.
“I think something major is going down with her and
the other gods.” He opened the door and checked to make sure there was nobody
out there.
We all went outside to a big, red and black, metal
beast. I saw these transportation machines the day before on the streets, most
moving at incredible speeds. They were all different sizes, shapes, and colors,
so a person could actually leave one somewhere and then be able to find the
same one again when they needed it. Sometimes they made horrible noises and
they all seemed to stink, but they were kind of fascinating. This was the first
one I got to see up close, and one of the few that wasn’t covered in rust.
“You went and got a Mini Cooper,” Dylan said with
approval.
“Is this a car?” I asked him. “I thought you were
lying. I really did.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” he said. This was a phrase he used
often when I didn’t believe something he told me about Earth. He never
explained it.
“There is no quoting Shakespeare allowed in this car,
now get in,” Vivian said, strapping Sammy into a tiny seat that was strapped to
a larger seat.
I chose to sit next to him, while Dylan sat next to
Vivian. The car moved very quickly as I took in the views through the window.
There were tall, thin buildings, mud, and dead grass. After extremely heavy and
constant rain for so many days, the gray and brown was only to be expected.
“We can stop by my friend’s place long enough to make
a few calls and be out of there before anything finds us,” Vivian said. “Maybe
we can take a flight to Houston and hide out there. Surely this thing can’t
keep up with a plane.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past it,” Dylan said.
I stopped listening for a moment to break down what
he said. After focusing on what each English word meant, I had to deduce that
he was using one of the many phrases he knew that made no sense.
“What was that thing with your claws?”
Dylan
asked me privately.
I knew by the way he asked it that he was wondering
if I had kept it a secret from him. He may have wondered, but he trusted me
enough to ask and would believe my answer.
“I had never seen them before. When he went after
you two, I reacted on instinct and attacked. I didn’t even see the claws until
you said something. When I calmed down and realized I had claws, they changed
back on their own.”
“Is it like your sense of smell? Cause those kinds
of things usually go together.”
“When I signed your book, I felt something snap
inside me.”
“You created a bond with the world. I don’t know
how it feels for someone who isn’t a Guardian, but you should actually be more
powerful now.”
My adrenaline was building the faster we drove, but
close examination of my fingers revealed no change at all. I felt no inner
magical claws ready to come out. Still, I doubted that would be the last I saw
of them.
“Do you think Blood is okay?” I asked Dylan out loud.
“I’m sure. I don’t really think we are, though.” We
stopped in front of a large house made of stones and got out of the car. “We
really shouldn’t be involving more people. We can just keep driving across
country until I can contact one of the Guardians to help us,” he said.
Vivian took Sammy out of his seat. “Easier said than
done. Let me call some friends; I don’t want to drive all the way to Texas and
find out they’re still having earthquakes.”
Sammy started crying as she shut the door and started
up the walkway.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“He needs a nap,” Vivian said.
Then direction of the wind changed. The creature was
close; I could smell its unnatural power. Before she could get any further towards
the house, I took Sammy from his mother.
“Get back in the car! Get in and go!”
They didn’t hesitate or ask questions. We all got
back in the car and were moving before I could shut my door. Sammy was now
crying very loudly and all I could do was pat his back.
“This creature takes over bodies?” Vivian asked.
“It does. I don’t know if it has to kill an adult to
take over or what, I just know that in order for it to take Sammy, he has to be
a child. It wants to take over Sammy permanently and can only do that when he’s
a baby.”
“What about you and Mordon? How can I know the
creature won’t take over you?”
“We have traveled from another world, making us
incompatible. That’s why we’re trying to get Sammy off Earth.
Vivian looked at Dylan before returning her eyes to
the road. “Dylan? I know we had our day and it was great, but this is my baby.
If it even starts to take over me, you kill me immediately, you got that?”
“Oh, Hell. You just had to give the about-to-die-hero
speech. Shit.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Keep driving, don’t die, and call it a plan,” Dylan
said.
“I love your plans,” I said.
“Drive where? I’ll run out of gas soon.”
“I don’t think we’ll make it to that point,” Dylan
said, right before the car started to make a chugging noise and slowed down. The
creature was here. When the car failed, we all got out and I handed Sammy to
Vivian.
Dylan dug through the flowered bag and pulled out a
plastic baby coat. “Cover Sammy up. Things are going to get wet.” She covered
the thrashing baby before Dylan took him and handed him to me. “Get back in the
car.” We just barely made it into the back seats before it started raining
heavy sheets of water.
“Keep Sammy dry, this cold could kill him,”
he
told me.
I left the door open to help if I could, but I
doubted I would be any good with hypothermia. This was Dylan’s rain, not the
demon’s. Whether he made it rain to hide what has happening, or to create
lightning, it still left me useless in the car, holding the baby.
The creature appeared strolling calmly up the road.
Steam rose where the water hit his body. This time the creature was in the body
of man younger than myself and the body was already nearly burned out.
“It killed a kid,”
Dylan said.
I knew in that moment we were in trouble. As much as
Dylan wanted to defeat the beast, he would hold back because of the teenager
who was already dead.
“The boy is already dead, you can’t do anything for
him now. Sammy and Vivian will be, too, if you don’t fight. More people will
die if you don’t fight.”
“Step away from me,” Dylan told Vivian.
There was a crackling in the sky right before a bolt
of lightning shot down and struck the creature. It froze for a second before
continuing to casually walk closer. Dylan struck repeatedly until the creature
was too close. He gasped in pain and I thought he had struck himself somehow,
but he started clawing at his neck.
Afraid to make matters worse, I stood by in shock as
Dylan dropped to his knees. The iron pentagram he always wore slipped out of
his shirt and I could see the problem: The metal was glowing with heat.
Unfortunately, to keep it from burning his chest further, he grabbed it with
his bare hand. Abruptly, the rain ended.
“Let go!” I yelled. He gasped and grunted and yelled
but his fingers stayed curled around the burning metal. I sat Sammy away from
the door and got out, closing the door behind me. It took longer than it should
have to wade through rushing, knee-high, freezing water. “Let go!” I repeated.
“I can’t!” He fell back just as I reached him.
I pried his fingers open and took the star. It was
hot, but despite being hot enough to melt, it did not burn my skin. And then it
vanished. The solid metal disappeared right from my hand.
But Dylan didn’t get up. “My energy…” he gasped. “It
took my energy.”
With my much more powerful friend down and the demon
closing in, I became desperate. As my adrenaline kicked in, I could feel my
fingers itch. I couldn’t risk looking, but I knew claws had replaced my nails.
I focused my fire, which was trickier when I was cold, and shot a perfectly
good orb of flames. Immune to the water, the fire struck his chest and spread
over his body. The creature went down and I thought we were safe.
Then it got back up. Burning from the inside and now
the outside, the creature still advanced. I created an energy shield, not
electrically charged because of the water, but it didn’t even slow the creature
down.
Dylan tried to sit up but ended up collapsing back
against me, holding onto consciousness by a thread. “Now would be a good time
to have Shinobu. Or Edward. Or anyone,” Dylan said weakly.
I figured even my father would be of use right now.
My father was a cruel ruler who only did what was
best for himself and never hesitated to put his servants at risk, but he never
put me at risk. For all his faults and even his hatred and disappointment for
me, he was protective of his only child. After all, I was supposed to be king
when he stepped down, and carry on his objectives. My father was not as
powerful as Dylan, but he was ruthless and knew his magic very well.