Blood Ties

by Robert J. Crane

  “Hey, Nealon,” Veronika shouted, looking at Friday, who was doing a little dance around the Grendel. His pectorals looked to be the size of a truck tire, but his head was still normal-sized. “Your pet monkey looks like he took all the steroids.”

  “Awww, you have a pet monkey?” Friday shouted. “That’s so cooooool.” His words dribbled out, slurred. He blinked a couple times, then looked at Grendel. “Is this it? Looks yellow. Heheh. A pee monkey.”

  “Can I prevail upon you to end this quickly by scourging this thing with fire?” Sienna called from just behind a white van with its doors thrown open. Some sort of mechanical something or other was hanging out the open doors on the side.

  “No can do, champ-ette,” Veronika said, keeping her distance. “We’re supposed to stand back and let ol’ yellowbones try and finish this fight with you, then mop him up if he lives.” She shrugged. “I guess the boss is pissed you wrecked her plans last night. And that house.”

  “Wait, you all are fighting the pee monkey?” Friday’s eyes were blank, ping-ponging around him like saucers. “That’s so unfair. And animal cruelty.” He looked right at Grendel. “I got you, bro. Let’s do this thing.”

  And he leapt at Veronika and her crew.

  “What the—” Phinneus barely got out before he had to dodge out of the way without firing so much as a shot.

  Chase and Veronika each dove in a different direction, acutely aware that what was coming their way would not land on them prettily. Not at all.

  “Probability shift! Probability shift!” Tyler screamed, kicking up his legs almost to his chest, but not really moving in any direction. He held out a hand as though his powers could somehow shift the probability of Friday crashing into him—

  It didn’t work, or at least not enough to stop him. Friday crashed into Tyler and the smaller man went flying like a football during kickoff. He landed in the woods somewhere up the hill as Veronika picked herself up.

  “You’re all a bunch of bullies!” Friday shouted, swiping at Chase with forearms as big as concrete pilings. She dove out of the way again, lightsaber deployed, swiping it behind her to cover her retreat.

  It skipped across Friday’s massive forearm, drawing a little blood but slowing him down none at all.

  “What are you doing, Veronika?” Berniece’s voice reached her as she dove again, Friday’s wild swings forcing her to hustle a lot more than she’d thought when she’d gotten out of the limo.

  “Trying to stay alive,” Veronika said, getting ready to get her plasma on. If this damned idiot would stop lurching at her long enough for her to take a shot, anyway.

  101.

  Sienna

  Friday leapt off to do battle with Veronika for some reason before I could even call out a question to him about it. I had a few, too, like:

  Why?

  What are you doing?

  Why not finish Grendel?

  Why are you suddenly on Grendel’s side?

  How did you get so stupid that a LIVE LAUGH LOVE t-shirt sounds like a good idea?

  But I forwent asking any of these questions and so very many more because I was left alone with Mendelsohn, nothing but the van between ourselves and Grendel. Who was doing a sort of mewl-roar and thumping into the back bumper.

  “What...just happened here?” Mendelsohn asked, his mouth returning to hanging wide open after delivering that question.

  “Don’t ask,” I said. “It’s quicker to jump to what needs to happen. Which is us stopping Grendel.”

  The van squealed, the shocks moaning as Grendel put a whole lotta weight on our vehicle. I had a feeling he was trying to stand using the van to brace himself. Tough to get up with one arm.

  “How?” Mendelsohn asked. Really cuts to the quick, that guy.

  “Did you perchance leave the van in neutral?”

  He blinked, thinking about it a second. “No. Why?”

  I opened the door and shoved him in. “Put it in neutral.” I circled around to the hood, planting both hands on the front.

  He popped up a moment later, dark hair curly and wild, eyes just about the same over the dashboard. He nodded once, and that was all I needed.

  I shoved the van as hard as I could, pushing it like it was a dumpster containing all the Coldplay albums in the world and Grendel was the fires of a thermonuclear weapon. I heard the tires thump over that big yellow sonofabitch and he let out a squeal as he disappeared under the back bumper, the shocks jarring as the whole vehicle thumped madly.

  “Put on the brakes! Put it in park!” I shouted, and the van thumped to a stop right where it was, then vibrated like something was moving it. Or trying to. I was hoping we’d pinned Grendel in a position where he couldn’t get any leverage. “Now get out, quick!”

  Mendelsohn didn’t have to be told twice. He plopped out of the passenger side door a moment later, dusting his khakis off as he looked up in surprise that the side doors were still open.

  I came around to join him, watching the van sway, Grendel grunting from beneath it. The object of his love was just sitting there in the open door, looking like...I dunno. A satellite telescope or something. “What is that?” I asked.

  Mendelsohn shrugged. “It does not appear to be any sort of computer device or server-related item. So I have three guesses—a nuclear warhead, an EMP-generating weapon, or—”

  “It’s an EMP,” Grendel’s voice came from beneath the van, full of strain and anger as the vehicle swayed again, jolting as he tried to throw it off one-handed and failed.

  “What the hell are you going to do with an EMP?” I asked, bending over to look at him beneath the van. His face was shadowed, and his remaining wrist was pinned under a rear tire. He was trying to kick, but his legs were too far out of the back of the van, and he wasn’t having any luck.

  Yet. Give him long enough, that would change.

  “What do you think?” Grendel’s teeth gleamed from beneath the van. “I’m going to give the tech sector a hard reboot.” He guffawed in what I’m sure he thought was a sinister manner, but really just sounded like gravel being thrown from beneath a spinning wheel.

  I was tempted to let him out and push the button. “Huh. Not sure I’m on the right side here, suddenly.”

  “What?” Mendelsohn stopped his examination of the EMP device to do a double take at me.

  “Well, I’m hard-pressed to say he should kill people to get this thing,” I said, “but really, knocking out the electricity to Silicon Valley for a while?” I shrugged. “Oh noes, as the kids say these days. Lemme warm up an extremely small violin as Socialite’s profit margins eat shit for a few quarters.”

  “First off, there are people who own that stock that aren’t evil assholes that would be affected,” Mendelsohn said. “Second of all, that EMP would hit the entire Bay Area, knocking out all the electricity, which would mean the pumps for fresh water and sewer—”

  “Seems to me if the sewer pumps go out, you’ll just have a few more people shitting on the streets. No big.”

  “—and the freezers at grocery stores, every car in the entire area, every delivery truck, including those that bring food—” Mendelsohn threw his arms wide. “Not a simple thing, an EMP.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said, doing a lunging jump onto the back of the van. Grendel let out a sharp grunt as my strike to the vehicle mashed it down on his trapped wrist. “I was just joshin’. Lighten up, Mendelsohn. Someone might accuse you of being an overly serious type.” I bounced the van on its shocks a few times. “But at least you won’t get called a naughty name for something you didn’t actually do.” I drew a sharp breath. “All right, let’s contain the problem and deal with—”

  Unfortunately, Grendel chose that moment to make his move.

  102.

  Veronika

  “What are you doing, Friday?” Veronika shouted as he swatted at her again. Why was she hesitating to burn his damned eyebrows off? Or hell, his head. He wouldn’t miss that.

  “My lig
htsaber isn’t even getting through his damned muscles!” Chase shouted as she dove out of the way of his swinging arms.

  It was true. Friday had a dozen burnt gashes down his arms and legs where she and Chase had landed hits, but he wasn’t acting like he was feeling it at all.

  Actually he was...

  Humming?

  “Friday?” Veronika held up her hands warningly. “Friday, if you don’t knock this off—”

  He came at her like a lumbering slab of beef—maybe several of them, all stacked one atop the next—and she fired off a plasma burst that went over his shoulder, singeing hair and clothing and leaving him with bubbling blisters on his shoulder.

  Still, he did not stop.

  “Shoot him in the face!” Chase shouted from somewhere behind him.

  Veronika hesitated, hands glowing. “I can’t!”

  “What the hell do you mean you can’t?!” Chase’s voice was moving, like she was trying to get into position to strike again. “He called all lesbians angry! You know he was talking about you! You’re probably the only lesbian he knows!”

  “Yeah, but he’s a moron and I make allowances for that,” Veronika said, backpedaling. “If I killed all the people who did stupid things, there’d be no one left. Including you, sweet cheeks. Not going to mention your affinity for pumpkin spice everything here.”

  “I feel personally attacked by this!” Chase leapt up, blazing saber held high. She brought it down, down toward Friday’s neck—

  And sunk it into his trapezius muscle a good eight to ten inches, where it stopped, and she just hung there, speared by her own weapon’s sudden halt in momentum.

  Friday paused, grunting, as he turned his proportionally tiny head to look at Chase. “Hmmmm?” His grunts sounded like Yoda, and his brows were stitched tightly together. “Offffffffff.” And he flicked her with a single finger, sending Chase flying up and over the limo. But not as far as Tyler had gone.

  “Friday, I thought you liked Chase?” Veronika tightened the plasma beams on her hands. Maybe some small, high intensity bursts would wake him out of his stupor.

  Well, make him less stupid. Maybe.

  “Phinneus, do not kill him,” Veronika shouted. A quick search of the nearby area revealed Phinneus was not going to be shooting Friday, nor anyone else. Because Phinneus had thrown himself head-first into a curb, and he was, at minimum, out for now. She didn’t think he was dead, but she didn’t have time to check for a pulse or breathing, either.

  “Kristina?” Veronika called. “This would be a real nice time to help your gal Veronika, who got you this job.”

  “This’d be a real nice time not to end up a stain on the bottom of that big white boy’s shoe, too,” Kristina’s voice came from beneath a nearby car. She was in shadow, and apparently not coming out. “Thanks for the job though, honey. You keep doing you, I’ll help you when I can.”

  “Damn you, Friday, for making me do this,” Veronika said, under her breath. With her hands outstretched, she fired a dozen egg-sized blasts into the air between them, taking aim at his muscles in hopes they’d take most of the burn.

  They all hit.

  Friday did not slow down. Just grunted a little.

  And grew.

  “DiD yOu knOw I’Ve nEveR sEen a sIngLe epIsodE of GamE of thrOneS?” Friday asked in a horribly modulated voice, slack-jawed and drooling. Veronika just turned and ran, knowing that even the minimal brain power he once had was long, long gone.

  103.

  Sienna

  I was not expecting it when the van flipped over. The tire swung up and clipped me in the chin, causing me to see stars, then the Golden Gate Bridge, in rapid succession as I bounced on the pavement. My head rattled a little more than it already had on the impact.

  Come on come on come on—

  I shook it off, blinking the stars out of my eyes. Grendel was moving, and I heard Mendelsohn scampering away over the downed van, which creaked as Grendel set it back on all four tires. He must have caught it after launching it off of him.

  “Now you can watch the Bay Area grope around in the darkness,” Grendel said, spinning the van around on screeching tires like he’d driven it into a tight turn. But he hadn’t. He just...moved it. Like it was nearly nothing.

  He hovered his hand over a button on the side of the EMP’s casing—

  And pushed it—

  The stars in my vision hovered overhead, and I watched the dimly glowing street lamp hanging over the parking lot just sitting there. I waited for it to go out, for some noise or horror or shock to fill my ears as the EMP exploded into existence.

  But nothing happened.

  “Uh...” I said, finally blinking the stars out of my eyes.

  Grendel frowned, pushing the button again. And again.

  There was no noise from the device that my meta ears could hear.

  I started to laugh as Grendel blushed a horrific, banana yellow. “Looks like somebody got betrayed,” I said, unable to stop myself. Which was bad because I wasn’t even upright yet.

  Whoops.

  Grendel’s face went through a couple evolutions of emotion. Disbelief, betrayal, anger—they all flashed through in a few seconds, finally settling on the last of those. And his eyes...

  Well, they focused on me.

  A real sinking feeling came over me as Grendel came for me and I let out a very un-Sienna sound—a brief shriek—as I tried to get my balance again and get the hell away from the giant yellow monster who meant to kill me again.

  Because this time I doubted he’d make the mistake of leaving enough of me for anyone to revive.

  104.

  Friday

  “WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP,” Friday sang. Singing was good. Crushing things was also good.

  Grey skies sad.

  Red-haired angry blue hand person funny. But stinging.

  “Friday, stop it!” Blue Glowy Hand Lady said as he tried to touch the blue hands. So pretty. Touch blue! “Stop, you nimrod! You’re going to burn yourself!”

  “Bluuuuuuuuuuuue,” he said. Because blue. So pretty. Like glowy hand girl. She pretty too. “Me touchey!”

  Scream?

  Not red hair glowy hand.

  Who...?

  Friday turned. Yellow angry thing angrier than glowy blue hands. Claws sad. Ouchy.

  Dark-haired girl stumbling. Trying to get away.

  Friday skin hot. Not from glowy hands.

  Hurt...girl?

  Yellow monster hurt...what name?

  Si...enn...a?

  Hot flush.

  Hands tight.

  Big mood.

  Friday...angry.

  “ROARRRRRRRRR!”

  105.

  Sienna

  The sound was like the wrath of God, if God was a bull moose in rut with his genitals caught in a bear trap. I thought it was Grendel at first, but Grendel actually whipped his head around to see what the hell was making it.

  It didn’t help him survive the impact.

  Friday slammed into him like a rocket-powered train running on greased tracks and Grendel lost his footing, ripped from the ground and trapped in Friday’s oversized arms.

  “ROARRRRRRRRR!” Friday let loose with all the anger in the world, spitting fury right into Grendel’s face, wide-open yellow eyes just staring back at him, hands limp by the creature’s side.

  I don’t think Grendel had ever been attacked with such feral savagery before. He didn’t know how to take it.

  Friday lifted him up with a hand in the center of his chest, then jerked him down with the other clenching a leg. The result was right out of the WWE, a powerbomb that shattered the pavement and knocked me over from the impact. It probably set off seismic sensors all the way down in LA, because dayum.

  Friday. Was. Pissed.

  He didn’t stop with the powerbomb, either. He climbed on top of Grendel and started throwing hands. None of the punches were pretty, but what they did was even less so.

  Grendel was unconscious—I
think—after the first or second hit.

  He had to be dead after the third or fourth.

  Friday was just smacking wet skull fragments into the pavement by the seventh, tunneling to China through the very sparse remains of Grendel’s skull.

  “Friday, I think you got him,” I said, clutching at the multiplicity of ouchies about my body.

  Friday lunged up from the carcass, locking eyes on me.

  “Uh oh,” I said, catching the eyes of a man who’d just brutally annihilated the beast that had vexed me for the last week. He’d killed Grendel like a cockroach. If the cockroach had said something terrible about his mother.

  But in those raging eyes, I saw that hot gaze soften as it met mine.

  “See...ennn....uh...?” Friday burbled out. Along with a significant amount of drool.

  “Oh, man, Friday,” I said, “you’ve gone full Flowers for Algernon, haven’t you?”

  “Flow...urrrr?” he asked, toddling over to me, walking like an ape with his shoulders swaying.

  “Shrink, Friday,” I said, waving him down. “Lose some muscle mass, gym bro. You gotta come down off the, uh...swole high, I guess...?”

  Friday looked at his own overgrown forearms as if seeing them for the first time. Even his damned arm hairs looked like tiny crops scattered among too large of a field. He stared at them for a moment, then looked back at me, curious and questioning but also like a moron who didn’t understand words.

  “Seee...ennnn...uh?” He really mangled my name, but I guess he remembered it, so points to him.

  “Yeah, Friday?” I asked, slightly hunched from the ouchies.

  Sirens echoed in the distance, faintly at first, then growing closer.

  Friday went ramrod straight, looking around for them, eyes wide and panicked.

  Then he looked at the Golden Gate Bridge, so tall and majestic and orange-red, just behind me.