Semi-Magical

by Isabel Jordan

  Harper let out a huge sigh of relief and sent up a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening. Then she noticed Mischa’s clothes. Her previously pristine khakis and white button-down were gore-coated, and dingy and torn. “What about you? Are you ok?” With the amount of blood she was looking at, Harper wouldn’t be surprised to see a crap ton of gaping bullet holes in her friend.

  Mischa glanced down and pulled a disgusted face. “Oh, gross. There’s no way I’m going to get all this out!”

  If she was concerned about her clothes, Harper had to assume she wasn’t injured.

  “One more push!” Benny shouted as Riddick and Seven took out the last five soldiers in the barn, and Quinn dropped to his wife’s side to hold her hand.

  A scream tore from Marina’s throat as she gave one last hearty push. Benny caught the baby’s shoulders and eased it the rest of the way out.

  “It’s a girl,” Benny murmured, cutting the cord with his pocket knife. “At least eight pounds.”

  “Why isn’t she crying?” Marina asked, panicked.

  Benny grabbed a towel and began rubbing the baby vigorously. He glanced up and caught Harper’s eye, and the panicked look on his face was almost more than she could bear. He rubbed the baby’s chest harder.

  Please, God, Harper begged. Let her be all right.

  All her prayers were answered when the baby took her first gulping breath. The shrill cry that followed was music to her ears.

  Tears pooled in Quinn’s eyes as he took in the sight of his wife and newborn. “She’s perfect,” he said, his voice shaking with the force of his mingled relief and joy.

  “Here we go,” Gabriel muttered.

  All eyes went to him…and then to the rift, which was now wide open.

  Riddick and Seven shot forward and held onto the kids, adding their power to the mix as Gabriel lifted his hand towards the rift.

  Before his fire could hit the opening rift, one, two, three—no, four—giant, snarling beasts that reeked of burnt hair and something so foul Harper couldn’t even identify it tumbled through into the barn, rolling a few times before leaping to their feet and facing off against Gabriel.

  “Holy fuck!” Harper gasped. “What the hell are those things?”

  “Hounds,” Gabriel muttered through clenched teeth as he continued channeling fire into the rift.

  Seven blinked at him. “Like, literal hellhounds?”

  “Yes,” he answered patiently. “Literal hellhounds.”

  Harper was speechless, which didn’t bode well for how this was all going to end. She was never speechless.

  The hellhounds looked pretty much like what you’d expect. They were each about the size of a racehorse, with shaggy, matted fur, long muzzles, and mouths full of razor-like teeth. The beasts’ glowing red eyes sized them all up like they were walking, talking steak dinners, and two of them had what looked like blood all over their faces from a recent kill. Cute.

  “I don’t think they like you much, man,” Riddick said as all four beasts circled, snarled, and never took their eyes off Gabriel.

  “Yeah, they wouldn’t,” he said. “I damn near hunted them to extinction before I came to this dimension.”

  “That’s mean,” Haven admonished, her voice muffled because Gabriel still had all the kids’ faces pressed into his chest.

  “Yes, princess,” he agreed. “It was. But they’re dangerous and have hurt many people in my world.”

  “Quinn,” Harper said as calmly as she could muster, “get Marina and the baby out of here. Benny, drive them to the hospital. Go quickly and quietly. Don’t draw their attention.”

  Benny looked like he wanted to argue, like maybe he wanted to stay and help them, but Quinn didn’t hesitate to scoop up his wife and newborn baby and run out of there. With one last glance in Harper’s direction, Benny ran out after them.

  Riddick rolled his head around on his neck and sighed. “I’m gonna assume we need to kill them because that’s just how our luck’s rollin’ today. So, how do we do it?”

  “I don’t suppose any of you has a blade made from demon bone,” Gabriel murmured.

  “I could rip out one of your ribs,” Seven offered helpfully. “Would that work?”

  He spared her a quick glance. “It’s a little terrifying how quickly you came up with that idea. And yes, it might work, but if I’m trying to recover from you ripping out part of my body, I can’t keep sealing that right.

  The beasts started snarling louder, circling closer.

  “So no rib knife,” Riddick said. “Got it. What’s plan B?”

  “Rip out their hearts. Or, you could…”

  Before he could finish, Seven leapt onto one of the hound’s backs and wrapped an arm around its throat. It bucked like the mechanical bull at Steel Willy’s, the only country bar within fifty miles of Whispering Hope, but it wasn’t able to budge Seven, who merely tightened her grip the more it struggled.

  Then, with the most horrific wet, ripping sound Harper had ever heard, Seven tore the thing’s head off with her bare hands and tossed it to the ground before jumping back to Riddick’s side.

  The whole thing had taken probably three seconds. The other beasts hadn’t even processed what was going on before their friend’s limp body hit the floor. Now the remaining three were baring their teeth, snarling louder than before, and inching closer.

  “…rip their heads off,” Gabriel finished dryly.

  All eyes turned to Seven, who shrugged and said, “What? I thought it’d work. I took a shot.”

  After a brief pause in which everyone was so quiet you could hear the hellhounds’ drool dropping on the floor, Gabriel looked at Seven and said, “I really am wildly attracted to you.”

  “I know,” she answered. “But it’s never going to happen. You might as well give up now.”

  He opened his mouth to say something else and Harper stopped him by smacking him on the back of the head with an open palm. “Will you focus? Just close the fucking rift, already.”

  Gabriel spared Seven one last glance, sighed, and threw more fire into the rift.

  Riddick lifted his chin toward one of the hounds. “That one. He’s going to move first. Looks like the others are going to hang back to see what happens to him.”

  “How can you tell?” Mischa asked.

  But it was Hunter who answered. “Because his back legs are twitching, tightening to lunge at—”

  The sentence hadn’t even finished falling from Hunter’s lips when the hound did just that. He lunged right for Gabriel, who tightened his grip on the kids with one arm, and pushed more flames into the rift with the other.

  Hunter moved so fast he was practically invisible to the naked eye and caught the hound in midair, tossing him across the barn casually, like swatting a fly. The beast crashed through the rotting wood wall at the far end of the barn with a sharp yelp, but he didn’t slow down. He hit the ground, rolled to his feet and charged back towards Hunter.

  The other beast chose that moment to lunge at Mischa, who was caught off guard and tripped, falling flat on her back. She caught the beast’s jaws just as they snapped in front of her face.

  Harper and Riddick moved at the same time to help her, while the remaining two beasts went for Hunter and Seven. But before any of them could reach their targets, Lane stepped out of Gabriel’s arms, looked at the hound on top of her mother, and let loose with a horrific, high-pitched screech that had everyone wincing and covering their ears.

  Well…everyone but the hounds, that is. They all dropped dead. Literally. Dead.

  But not before their heads exploded.

  Lane tucked herself back into Gabriel’s side, held up her own little hand towards the rift, and threw her own stream of fire at it. But her fire wasn’t red like Gabriel’s. It was white, and so hot that Harper could almost feel herself getting sunburned from being in the same room with it.

  It only took about ten seconds of Lane’s fire combined with Gabriel’s to close the rift. It
winked out of existence as if it had never been there at all.

  In the silence that followed, all eyes turned to Lane, who merely shoved her hands into the pockets of her pink cardigan and kicked at a rock with the toe of her pink Converse sneaker.

  Hunter pulled what was left of the dead hound off Mischa and helped her to her feet, offering her a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the splattered gore from her face, but his eyes remained on Lane.

  Harper knelt at her side, forcing her to make eye contact before signing, How did you do that, Lane?

  She shrugged and glanced away.

  Harper gripped Lane’s pointy little chin gently, bringing their gazes back together before signing, You did good, baby.

  Lane’s eyes widened and she looked over at Mischa and Hunter, who gave her gentle smiles and nods in return.

  That’s when Lane did something Harper had never seen her do before.

  She smiled, big enough to show that she was missing her two front teeth.

  Behind Lane, Gabriel said quietly, “You know she’s not from…here, right? What she just did…there’s only a few demons in my dimension who can pull that off. I don’t know how or when she got here, but she’s not…entirely human.”

  Mischa’s chin tipped up defiantly. “So? She’s here now. That’s all that matters. She’s our daughter now. I don’t care about where she was before.”

  Gabriel looked like he might argue, but eventually just gave them a terse nod.

  Harper had a lot of questions, but they could wait. For now.

  Nikolai and Lucas chose that moment to stroll back into the barn as if they hadn’t missed all the action. Lucas, who had taken the time to find clothes, thank God, immediately ran to Seven, grabbed her tight, and swung her up into his arms as he kissed the hell out of her.

  But it was Nikolai who held Harper’s attention. Well, not really Nikolai, but who he was dragging along beside him.

  Her father.

  He surveyed the pieces of dead hounds and all his unconscious soldiers with wide eyes. “What have you done?” he whispered.

  Harper flipped her hair over her shoulder and smirked at him. “Saved the world. Why? What have you been doing?”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After another hour-long talk with the President via her father’s satellite phone—one in which she thankfully managed to avoid making fun of his hair this time—Harper called everyone together to meet in the mess hall again.

  And when she said everyone, she meant everyone. Riddick, her mom, Benny, Lucas, Seven, Nikolai, Violet, Hunter, Mischa, all the kids, Gabriel…they were all there. Marina and Quinn—who’d named their baby girl Everly Jayne O’Connell—had even Skyped in from the hospital. Short of her brother who was vacationing in Bali with his vampire girlfriend, her grandfather who was busy catering a wedding, and her cousins who she couldn’t trust not to molest any of her employees (or her husband), everyone she loved in the world was here, in this room.

  And she had something huge she needed to ask of them.

  Benny held his hands up in a what-the-hell gesture. “You gonna tell us what’s going on, or am I just supposed to sit here looking pretty all night?”

  Trust Benny to get right to the point. “I had another talk with the President,” Harper said.

  Violet winced. “Did you make Oompa Loompa jokes again?”

  “No, I kept it together this time, I swear.” Harper cleared her throat. “He told me that my father is no longer in charge of this operation.”

  Riddick frowned. “What operation? The rift is closed.”

  “There’s still at least ten demons in this dimension who came through the rift,” Hunter reminded him. “Or, that’s what Harper’s father led us to believe, at least.”

  “Are we sure that’s a problem?” Mischa asked. “I mean, no offense, but if they’re all like Gabriel, he doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem. Pretty sure I could take him in a fight.” She lifted her chin at him. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” he murmured. “But I wouldn’t be too quick to assume they aren’t a problem. In my world I was the equivalent of a police officer. There were only a handful of us, and we were severely outnumbered.”

  Lucas leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “How severely are we talking about?”

  Gabriel met his stare dead-on. “The odds of anyone you’d ever want to meet up with in a back alley making it through that rift are too small to measure. My world is basically a giant prison with a few guards—most of them corrupt bastards themselves—trying to keep everyone locked up. The damage that one demon can inflict on this world is…shocking. If you want to find them? Try tracking mass murders. The most shocking, horrific mass murders you can find. That’s what we’re talking about.”

  Benny scowled at him. “Well, don’t sugarcoat it, sunshine. Go ahead and lay it all out on the table in front of the kids.”

  Gabriel shot an apologetic glance at the end of table where Addy, Lane, and Haven were sitting. “Sorry, loves.”

  Addy shrugged. “It’s OK. You get numb to the crazy and scary stuff after a while.”

  Benny nodded. “Right? Told ya.”

  “Are all demons pyrokinetic, or do they have other powers we should know about?” Seven asked Gabriel.

  “We’re all pyrokinetic,” he said. “The older we are, the more our…other powers strengthen.”

  “What kind of other powers are we talking about here?” Riddick asked.

  “Mind-reading. Teleportation. Shape-shifting. Extreme strength. Invisibility.” He paused, thinking. “Um…oh, and telekinesis.”

  Frowns rolled across everyone’s faces like fans at a ballgame doing the wave. “Awesome,” Harper said dryly. “So, I’m guessing you’re one of the young ones.”

  “A mere babe in the woods,” he said with that smartass smirk of his.

  Harper let out a deep breath. “Well, so this brings me to my next point. Since the President fired my father—who has already hopped a plane to Antarctica for his new assignment, which entails sitting in a frozen bunker and thinking about what he’s done wrong, I believe—a new task force is needed. Its mission will be to hunt down the demons who made it through the rift, and evaluate if they can be trusted in society, or if they need to be locked up. It’d be up to this team to seal any future rifts that might pop up.”

  Tina narrowed her eyes on her daughter. “You’re being cagey. What does this new task force have to do with you?”

  Harper smiled weakly and said, “The United States government just asked us to save the world. Anyone wanna say no?”

  After a long pause, Mischa crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “Did you seriously just quote Armageddon to us?”

  Benny did a fist pump. “Freakin’ sweet! I loved that movie. I get to be Bruce Willis.”

  Lucas rolled his eyes. “You’re so not Bruce Willis. You’re totally Steve Buscemi.”

  “Yeah, well, if I’m Steve Buscemi, you’re Owen Wilson.”

  “I didn’t like that movie at all,” Mischa said. “There were only like, what, two women in the whole thing? It’s anti-feminist.”

  “You could be Liv Tyler,” Benny offered. “She’s hot.”

  “I don’t want to be Liv Tyler,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Seven can be Liv Tyler.”

  Seven looked confused. “I don’t know who Liv Tyler is. I don’t even know what you’re all talking about.”

  Hunter shot her a sympathetic look. “I don’t, either. It’s best to just ignore it until they’re done.”

  Tina started digging around in her purse until she found a handful of Werther’s caramels and offered them to the kids. “Is Bruce Willis the young man who was in that cannonball movie you enjoyed so much?” she asked.

  On the iPad, Marina’s eyes widened in horror. “Ma, you’re thinking of Burt Reynolds. Burt Reynolds was in Cannonball Run, not Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis was in Die Hard.”

  Tina’s lips pursed while sh
e pondered that bit of info. “Oh. I don’t think I ever saw that one.”

  Benny shook his head. “Sister, I beg you, let me get you a Netflix subscription.”

  “If I’m Owen Wilson,” Lucas said, “that makes Riddick Ben Affleck.”

  Riddick leaned forward in his chair. “Call me Ben Affleck again and I’ll break your fucking arm.”

  Harper rubbed her suddenly aching temples. “We can argue about who gets to be Bruce Willis later, OK? The point is that I’ve been assigned to head this task force. Are you guys with me?”

  Riddick grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips for a quick kiss on her knuckles. “You don’t ever have to ask where I’m at. You should always be able to feel me right beside you.”

  Harper felt tears stinging her eyes. Damn it, that was beautiful. “I love you,” she whispered.

  He winked at her and grinned.

  She cleared her throat again. “What about the rest of you? I mean, this is going to be a lot different than simple skip traces and the kinds of light detective work we’ve been doing. We’re talking about hunting down actual demons. Demons who can throw fire at us. If any of you don’t want to do this, I totally understand.”

  Quinn was the first to speak up. “Harper, you hired me when no one in their right mind would’ve. I’ll be with you until you fire me. That’s a promise.”

  Nikolai nodded. “Same. Where you lead, I follow.”

  Benny grinned at her. “You’re the only family I’ve got. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Hunter offered. “You have my full support and the full support of the Vampire Council.”

  “Point me in the direction of an ass that needs kicking and I’ll kick it,” Mischa said with an evil grin.

  Seven shrugged. “I’m in. I don’t have anything better to do.”

  “I go where she goes,” Lucas said, jerking a thumb in his wife’s direction.

  This time, Harper didn’t bother trying to stop the tears. She kept herself from blubbering, but just barely, but went ahead and let the tears flow freely. “Shit, you guys. I love you all. You know that, right?”