by Chloe Garner
She needed to be not here, but she didn’t know where to go. Trevor had told her once not to leave her spot, and this was it.
She stood her ground, hoping it was the right thing.
Hoping.
More of the hooligans went up onto the bridge, doing their disruptive thing, and Trevor’s and Zee’s furlings grew more distracted, but not enough to move away from the fight. They continued to grow, snagging stray furlings as they got opportunity - as the little ones were drawn in to watch the fight - and continuing to grow in size. The biggest three, all Zee’s, were the size of cars, but Trevor had a number of them ranging from dogs to horses, all ferocious and coordinating.
They weren’t supposed to do that.
A car came rolling down the embankment, trailed by dozens of furlings who were just giddy to watch, and one of Trevor’s furlings broke off, absorbing all of them in a deft loop and returning to the fight. Lizzie felt exuberance from the hooligans up on the bridge, and they went back to messing with traffic, gathering up what furlings they could find.
Lizzie was proud.
She was afraid, but she was proud.
She tried to take over one of Zee’s furlings again, and it looked at her, getting hit by two of Trevor’s at the same time, but not dissolving.
It moved toward her.
That was a bad sign.
It started up the hill faster, looking directly at her, and she realized that she not only didn’t have control of it, but she’d gotten the attention of a furling that could kill her.
A pair of Trevor’s furlings merged and went after its exposed side and neck, but it didn’t slow.
It was going to get to her.
Another furling piled onto its back, biting and scratching and kicking, and it slowed, but it kept coming.
Feet.
Less than ten.
Less than five.
She could have reached out and touched it. It snarled and raised a paw to swipe at her, and she knew she’d made a mistake.
She should have run.
It dissolved.
Trevor’s furlings fell to the ground, all of them doubling or trebling in size, and they raced back into the fray with the rest of the huge furlings, and Lizzie went to move off of her spot.
“Don’t do it,” Trevor said softly. She wasn’t even sure he was talking to her, but she stayed.
If he was going to face this down, so was she.
The furlings were continuing to merge, and Lizzie couldn’t really tell whose were whose anymore. Zee shook the ground once more, and Trevor ripped it open, revealing a huge black chasm below his feet that went through the nest of furlings and across toward Zee.
“Who are you?” the other man yelled. “Why do you care so much?”
Lizzie straightened.
“You remember the wedding ring?” she yelled. The ground shook again, and the furlings leaped at each other, infuriated.
“You can stand to touch that?” Zee yelled. “What’s wrong with you?”
Trevor didn’t answer. Another furling pulled free of him and slammed into the side of one of the two biggest furlings, merging immediately. His hands were out, curled like he was lifting a huge force, and his posture was rigid, but other than that, he gave no sign how much this might or might not be costing him.
Something about the way the hooligans were moving up on the bridge caught Lizzie’s attention. They’d noticed something and they were fleeing.
Lizzie heard Zee laugh.
She didn’t think Trevor could see them, but from her spot, she could.
A wave of furlings, far enough away that they just felt like an idea, but big enough that they were more of a solid wall than individuals. Accumulated from everywhere, Lizzie guessed, and Zee was bringing them as reinforcements.
“All right, darling,” Trevor said. “This one’s yours.”
She drew her focus back to the fight going on in front of her.
The furlings were blowing up quickly, now. There were only half a dozen left, three of any considerable size. Then four. Then two. Then one.
It was mountainous, bigger than any mammalian animal should have ever been, big enough to peek over the edge of the bridge and look at the cars up there.
She didn’t think he could possibly be serious, but she reached out, mentally, anyway.
“You,” she said loudly. The creature turned its head slowly toward her, and she had him.
He would do whatever she told him to.
And in that moment, she understood what it was Trevor needed her to do.
She pushed both hands away from her, palms out, and it collapsed, rolling down the hill. There was a shriek, and then the furling disappeared.
She stood on her spot, but the battle was over. The shaft of light under her feet, as weak as it had been, was gone now. Trevor took a step up the hill to stand next to her as they looked down at Zee.
He was crushed against the rocks, broken like he’d fallen off of the bridge.
“So that’s how you do that,” Trevor said.
“He’s dead?” Lizzie asked.
“The furlings blew up and you dropped them on him,” he said. “It’s how they work.”
She put her hands over her mouth.
It was over.
And then.
A twinge.
It wasn’t over.
She was on light again. She waited, expecting Zee to get up, but he didn’t. She looked at Trevor, pressing her hands to her mouth harder, and he stepped away from her, holding out an arm.
“Stay there,” he said. “You stay there.”
She shook her head.
“You can’t expect me to…”
He held out his hand more assertively.
“You. Stay. There.”
The wall of furlings hit, drowning over him and rebounding, attacking him one after the next after the next, and he yelled, putting up his arms to defend himself, but there was nothing he could do.
The only one who could absorb them on command was Lizzie.
And there were too many.
She pressed out her power, but there was nothing there to draw on. Trevor had absorbed all of the order in the place in an earlier pass, and the hooligans had done their part to keep it down. She couldn’t reach him.
She watched in horror as dozens, hundreds, thousands of furlings disappeared, hitting Trevor head on, until the wave subsided and the remaining furlings lost their drive and wandered off.
It wasn’t until then that he fell.
She rushed to him, holding his shoulders up off of the rocks and crying.
He swallowed.
“So I didn’t see that one coming,” he said.
He wasn’t looking directly at her.
“You can’t see me, can you?” she asked. He laughed softly.
“Not a bit.”
“What can I do?” she asked. “I can call Robbie. What do you need?”
He shook his head, closing his eyes.
“There’s nothing you can do, darling. I’m on my own, here, like I always have been. That’s what being the demon is.”
He shuddered, almost a seizure, and his head jerked to the side, then he relaxed again.
“It’s okay,” he said softly.
She sat, watching him for a moment, playing a finger through his hair, feeling a sullen sort of disbelief.
This wasn’t how it ended.
Zee killed her, not him. She’d been ready for that, she thought.
He wasn’t even supposed to be here.
He twitched again, his eyes flickering under his eyelids, and she pressed her mouth to keep from crying out again. He could hear her, and that wasn’t going to help.
And then she understood.
“You aren’t alone,” she said. “And you won’t be as long as I’m alive.”
Like remembering the steps to a dance she’d forgotten, she reached over to the point in the ground where here power radiated up from, and she pulled it toward herself, rippi
ng the ground in between easily. The split grew and she pulled it wider, then flung it under Trevor, letting him sink into it.
His back arched and he screamed, his arms flying to try to grab hold of something that wasn’t there, and then he went lax. She looked down at him with a feeling of surreal calm and smiled when he opened his eyes and looked at her.
And that was all.
***
They told her later, much later, that he’d carried her in his arms into the hospital, yelling that she was having an aneurysm, that they ran in her family, that her brother had died of one, that her sister had died of one, that her mother had died of one.
They told her that it was a miracle anyone took him seriously enough to take an image of her brain, where they found a rupture and a fast-pooling lake of blood.
They told her that it was all they could do to drill a hole in her skull to let the blood drain and hope for the best while the brain surgeon prepared for surgery.
They told her it was amazing that she recognized words or faces, after that much hemorrhaging into her brain.
They told her not to worry about it too much; that her hair would grow back before too long.
They told her that street urchins had watched over her in twos and threes through her entire recovery, growling any time anyone tried to make them leave, which they often did.
They told her that he never left her side, not to eat, not to sleep, not for anything.
They told her she was lucky. Lucky in so many ways.
***
She didn’t know that when she opened her eyes.
The light was fuzzy and soft, and she didn’t know where she was.
What she did know was the feel of Trevor’s hand on her forehead.
“Took you long enough,” he said. “Magda just left, and Michelle will be here with dinner in about an hour. She’s going to be happy to see you.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Did we win?”
He laughed and ran his fingernails over her scalp.
“I’m going to have to get used to that,” he said. “Going to miss your hair. You shouldn’t have done what you did.”
She blinked, forcing the room into focus. Rat was in a corner, sitting up on the back of a chair, and another hooligan, one called Scum, was sitting on the floor by the door.
“Zee is dead,” Lizzie said, and Rat nodded.
“My name is Becky,” she said. Lizzie smiled.
“Hi, Becky,” Lizzie said. “I’m Lizzie, and this is Trevor.”
“We’ve met,” Becky said with a shy smile.
“They found a mattress on the side of the road and carried it back to your apartment,” Trevor said. “They say it really makes the place feel like home.”
Lizzie laughed to herself and closed her eyes, resting her cheek against Trevor’s hand.
“I can’t wait to see it.”
The End
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About the Author
I'm Chloe and I am the conduit between my dreaming self and the paper (well, keyboard, since we live in the future). I write paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy, and whatever else goes bump in the night, I also write mystery/thriller as Mindy Saturn. When I'm not writing I steeplechase miniature horses and participate in ice cream eating contests. Not really, but I do tend to make things up for a living.
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