Zosma screamed in displeasure and frustration. House fragments soared past them. Slicing, shooting, grunting, roaring, Allister fought the compulsion to rush back and aid her. He’d get in the way. He’d make things worse.
“How you holding up?” he asked Bazzo.
“Doubt I’d be moving if it weren’t for you.”
Dorian’s triumphant silhouette greeted them from the cobblestone driveway.
He deserted their brief bromance, nearly dropping Bazzo to dash ahead and throw the hug he’d saved for Dorian around his neck. Signature dimples appeared in the corners of his mask-free smile, as he hugged Allister’s torso in reciprocation.
“The Sonic Superhuman,” Allister said, “it’s good to see you.”
Dorian nodded despite the playful chokehold and squeezed in response.
“Mind explaining the friggin’ floating demon or whatever the shit?” Bazzo asked him, winded and hobbling to catch up.
“Zosma called it by the name Dylurshin Hexforth. I don’t know what it is. I just know it’s my fault it’s free.”
“Is she aiming to kill the thing?”
“Yeah, in not so many words,” he answered and turned to address his mistake. The gazillion pieces comprising the mansion’s roof, walls, siding, and foundation had been reconstructed, imprisoning the cosmic duel’s sights and sounds. “The first pulse’ll hit a two-mile radius, the second and third’ll wipe out the Pacific Northwest region. We should, uh, keep it moving.”
Dorian tapped him and pointed at the stomach-down body sprawled at their feet. Scalp visible at the crown. Wrinkled white blazer. A motionless Captain Brandt squirmed and cried out, “Huh, whoa. What fuckin’ happened?”
“You tell me.”
“My mind’s... clear. My mind ain’t been clear since... Allister, tell me you didn’t.” The captain snatched Allister’s elbow. “You killed him? You killed Dr. Giro?”
“It was-it was an accident,” Allister said, trying to pull away, trying to explain away the pangs in his conscience. “He had Zosma and I, I didn’t know what else to do.”
Captain Brandt relaxed his grip. “Oh, this’s bad son.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“It don’t matter anymore either way, you made the choice. Whatever Rabia was, is gone,” Captain Brandt said, “This thing wanted somethin’, and it’s been moving us around on the chessboard to get it.”
An impatient gaze penetrated the captain’s thin follicles. Zosma’s radiance leaked from corners, cracks, and crevices, implored to be seen and known of its impending eruption.
“I...” Brandt followed his concern. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for ya, Allister. You got a lot more livin’ to do, don’t do it angry.” He jerked away, scrambled to his feet, and sprinted to the fractured house.
Allister took a step after the captain, forgiveness and rage battling in his bones. Dorian blocked his advance. He took another step. With an aggressive head-shake, Dorian splayed both hands on his chest.
“Where’s Florence?” he asked. Wild, frantic eyes darted over the yard. Agent. Soldier. Agent. Soldier. Soldier. World leader. Agent. One picture of Florence Belladonna’s charred corpse and his intestines knotted in anxiety. Not again, he thought. “Bazzo, where’s Florence?”
“I-I left her to help Dorian.”
A blue beam tore off the mansion’s roof. Then, fast, furious, and fatal, it twisted and widened and ripped the house apart. Z-energy exploded outward in a fiery kaboom, threatening to overtake a marching Captain Brandt before his plan could take shape. His selfish disruptive field climbed his boots, coated his upper body like a suit of armor, and covered his hands as they flew out to the side. Translucent, rippling energy unfolded from the captain’s hulking shape and expanded into a generous wall.
The pulse fizzed to nothing as it reached the edges. A restrained Z-energy vortex spiraled skyward for miles and miles, the disruptive barrier chasing it the whole way. Allister clenched his fists, nose thrust ahead of him like a bloodhound. The blast drowned Bazzo’s shouting, but he picked up every other word, catching “Allister” and “glowing” on repeat. Unbeknownst to him, the Transporter gems had showered him in the brilliance of temporal energy.
Florence Belladonna
The roar’s distinguishable low pitch beckoned from the conference room at the same time telepathic backlash stormed her skull. And while she’d been lying on rough, uneven marble, committed to having her final resting place be next to Wesley, Florence recalled the petrifying face in Allister’s mind that had accompanied the same infernal sound.
In whole or in part unexpected, Hunter had been relinquished from the mist’s possession and his rampage paused. Recognition of her immobile form shone in his face, became shock, then graduated to horror at Wesley’s mangled remains.
He bolted. She bolted after him.
Gore’s rotten stench would not leave her nostrils. Bathed in tears, rain and sweat, she ran like Cinderella after the clock struck twelve. Curly locks resurrected by moisture bouncing in the wind, serrated sword glinting in streetlight. Dreams dashed, gown ruined; there was no more magic and, worse, no more potential for magic. She thought about the years she and Wesley had wasted, thinking if they stayed apart they stayed alive. Falsehoods forged in fear.
During her mile-long sprint, the scenery shifted from towering cedars to houses clad in poverty. One leg, made of a metal alloy foreign to earth, had unlimited stamina. The other, of muscle, bones, and tendons, was susceptible to fatigue and injury. She slowed. With every third or fourth rapid breath, her feet dragged in an irregular cadence.
Questionable orange lights were strung under an overpass infested with shabby trash-filled cars and pitched tents. The street smelled of urine and desperation.
Four undercover C20 agents had skulked into the spotlight. Her seldom seen savagery provoked, she swiped behind her, cut off an agent’s gun-wielding arm, snatched him by the collar, and tossed him at the oncoming attacker’s feet without taking a single breath. A swift psiborg leg kick to the advancing agent’s throat sent him toppling over himself in the air. He hit the street with a wet thud.
No sign of the metal-skinned culprit.
Wires whisked around her ankles, forcing them together. Air battered her face as she fell and slammed on the asphalt. A trigger clicked. She rolled onto her back and the plasma beam burned a crater where her head had been. Though he missed her, the agent gloated from above, prepared to fire again. She swept her legs right. His body flailed, and the gun flew. Florence cut the wire, returned to her feet, and stabbed him through the thigh. He cried out.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
She retracted the sword and turned to the graffitied wall under the bridge. Hunter leaned on a pickup truck, wearing an arrogant metallic smile. He finished clapping, interlocked his hands, and stretched them above his head.
“You and Giovanni are cut from the same cloth, honey,” he said, chortling. “In fact, you’re worse. Because you pretend to be good.”
Her human leg faltered, and forced her to steady the antique blade’s reddened tip against the street. “Stand up straight,” her father had said, “and conduct yourself with poise and precision, or no one will take you seriously.” She pressed down on the dragonhead hilt and told herself not to fall over, not to give in.
“You. Killed. Him,” Florence said. For those spoken words the sword was no more than the long leg of a cane, needed to hold her up and keep her going. “He was your—”
“God, you’re being dramatic. Just tell me you weren’t going to say friend. Wesley was far from a friend, sweetie, and from what I hear, pretty far from a lover too.” Hunter stopped within arm’s reach. “He was a liar. I take that back. He was a politician. Too caught up in self-interest to see the bigger picture, our preservation.”
And in that sentence Florence remembered she carried a weapon, not a crutch. She screamed, confident her sword’s jagged edges ripped his colon and dislodged his spinal dis
ks as it plunged through his abdominals. Confident it inflicted some damage. Anything. Anything was better than his smile, and the sound of metal scraping metal, as he moved himself forward on the blade.
“I’m metal inside and out,” he said.
His gigantic metal fingers hugged her waist too tight and her abdominal muscles fought oncoming suffocation. She pounded his knuckles with her fists. His grip tightened. She tugged her body upward and kicked wildly. Still, her hip bones, ribs and spine were squeezed closer together. She called upon her telepathic gifts, but was ultimately forsaken by them. They required more concentration and less grief.
Hunter wrenched the Belladonna sword out. “Pretty,” he said and held the stain-free metal to the sky. “It’ll look good on my accent wall.”
Celine Nephthys
“Ben-tii, there’s nothing you could have done,” King Nephthys said. He removed his chechia and smoothed the few silver strands on his head. “Let America have their energy war.”
Celine hated riding in “metal cans,” though her father insisted. Her head swayed, and shoulders rocked at each pothole and road bump. They’d gotten ten miles from danger, yet she felt the foreign creature’s strength inflating.
America. Russia. China. Korea. They were oblivious. Pumping millions into Dr. Rabia Giro’s Z-energy passion project, with no way to decipher the deeper motivation, his history on their planet, or his hand in the advancements of human science and technology. The Antarctic ice knew when the creature landed, and the revelation was too much to accept or turn a blind eye.
“Driver, stop,” she said.
The vehicle lurched and stopped. She opened the door, and one bare foot settled on the pavement.
“It is not our battle, Celinicus Nephthys.” The king tugged at her jumpsuit. “If you die here, there is no one to protect the planet.”
“Then, I will not die.” She placed her youthful fingers on his aged ones, turned, and rose her intense, wooden eyes to meet his. “Do not worry, Baba.”
He let go. “May your mother’s spirit be with you.”
Wind pushed the door shut and the car peeled down the hill to the city.
Celine’s arms curled in considerable effort to inspire the resurrection of a stone structure from beneath the asphalt. The ground pushed the man-made street aside, unveiling her makeshift chariot from a two-foot-wide fissure. She nestled her feet on its warm slate as it levitated higher and skated across a cloudless night sky. Hot breeze fanned her boiling temper, and she contemplated her and Rabia Giro’s initial encounter. Remembering his deep ancient voice wrapped her in paralyzing fear. She’d been unable to admit to Allister, and herself, that the creature’s presence struck a chord in Earth’s consciousness.
A leaf flitted beside her ear.
“Yes, I feel it too,” she said. “The creature called Dylurshin rises.”
She caught it, twirled it in her fingers, and released it to its descent.
Bazzo Sparks
Bazzo had warned at the top of his lungs the gems were glowing. Allister didn’t listen or didn’t hear him in time, or he didn’t care. In either case he’d vanished, Bazzo presumed into the inferno. Running to the sky for freedom, dust curled and swished above a conglomeration of collapsed concrete, marble, and stone. The World Energy Summit had come to an end.
Dorian helped him take apart the undercover uniform, rip its cotton strips and swathe his devastating hand injury. Fluttering eyes disobeyed his brain’s commands to stay open. Blood loss soaked the camouflage colored scraps and for the first time, Bazzo examined his white, near transparent skin. Despite his neurological numbing trick, physical overexertion and its accompanying aches shot through his body. He crumbled. Dorian caught him under the arms to lower him and rubbed his back while he retched bile and acid from his guts.
Dry heaving, he asked, “Did Brandt—?” The question dried in his mouth, answered by what lay on the lawn.
Captain Brandt’s shredded white jacket dancing in the wind. He’d been incinerated. The captain had spent his whole life making the wrong decisions and then woke up and decided to make the right one. Feeling his mortality, Bazzo wondered if it balanced out, if there was time for deliverance in those seconds linking righteousness and the afterlife. “Damn,” he said, wanting to piece himself together and not knowing how to begin.
A pebble dislodged, bounced over a mountainous peak of debris and plopped on the grass. Numerous boulders followed its lead rolling to and crashing at the base. The birds knew of a danger he didn’t, their wings flapping as they fled from treetops. There was a 66 percent chance the person he wanted to emerge would be the person who emerged, and Bazzo wasn’t feeling particularly lucky. Dorian took several cautious steps back.
The dark pulsing mass burst free and ascended to its ten-foot glory, using red energy bolts to snatch, pull, and piece itself together.
Bazzo watched on hands and knees, jaw propped open and exclaimed, “What the fu—?”
Zosma’s bruised body appeared to have been dashed against a concrete slab and remained sprawled over it. Allister’s bloodstained body appeared to have suffered the blast’s consequences and lay limp on uncovered rocks. Both beneath the giant living cloud, neither awake.
He aspired to stand, weary and trembling. His body expressed its disapproval with nauseating waves.
A lumbering Oshkosh MTVR truck smashed through the gate that guarded the property and squealed when it got to the unconscious bodies. Lowest to the ground, Bazzo peered between six deep tread tires. C20 agents exited the truck, shackled Zosma and Allister’s bodies, and loaded them onto the covered cargo bed.
Mist particles slithered over, under, and through the getaway truck’s mainframe, then were molded menacing and whole in front of it. The military vehicle vroomed in reverse out of the uneven driveway.
“Bridg... ”
Acceptance was the qualifying event that dredged up her captivity. Accepting that Rabia Giro, who, in hindsight was a deranged scientist and not much more, had been replaced by this demonic creature made of pure mist. Accepting the demonic creature’s sheer power to defeat Zosma and Allister. The reality was, if they hadn’t stopped the thing, there wasn’t much Bazzo could do. Bridget, himself, and the world were about to suffer irreversible devastation.
Not the bravest crayon in the box, eh, he thought and realized Dorian had crawled out of his peripheral.
“You are as weak and tiresome as your ancestors,” the demonic creature said, shaking the forest with its galactic baritone. “And I hope easier to dispose of.” The creature’s clawed arm stretched upwards, twisting, lengthening and solidifying.
Aaaaanddd his arm just turned into a bloody sword. This is fucked.
Bazzo mustered more energy and gambled two-to-one odds in a staring contest. “Ain’t got a clue what you’re on about,” he said, holding his healthy fist tighter than he thought possible, “but you got my sis and my friend and... ” Accessing nearby street lamps’ electricity, a sparse collection of electric currents formed around him. He went to project the attack, found his arm paralyzed, and retired to grunting and swearing amidst booming villainous laughter.
The thick, sword-shaped limb refused to gleam in the moonlight as the creature took giant clawed steps toward him and touched the sharpened tip to his hammering heartbeat. “It would seem history does repeat itself.”
Celine Nephthys
“You do not belong here,” Celine said and ejected from the chariot. The creature sneered, losing concentration, and the hunched, blonde man ducked and fell away. Her transportation-turned-projectile zoomed through the air and collided head on with Dylurshin’s upper body.
Ascension of Earth’s faithful crust to catch Celine as she plunged feet first, its leveled platform shape and the way it welcomed her as it lowered her to the grass, was proof and promise of their harmonious relationship.
The serpentine hiss signaled the entity’s return to offense. She assumed its loud roar had stemmed from annoyance at the
distraction, not pain, seeing as how inky mist crept ahead and splashed near her like an incoming tide.
“Celinicus Nephthys, the one that got away,” Dylurshin said, “You reek of insubordination.”
“I will not stand by and watch your dreams become what they truly are, nightmares.” Celine’s voice hovered between patience and agitation. Fingers closed into fists then opened to channel her geokinesis. “The Earth identifies you as the exiled from the stars. What business do you have on my planet?”
It snickered. “This is no more your planet than it is mine.” Dylurshin’s body lengthened, opted to stay an upside down pear-shaped blob, pounded the ground and blew outwards.
She lifted her foot and stomped. Displaced rocks, mud, and clay catapulted to six-foot heights. Solidified, they absorbed the assault before shattering back to a loose mixture. Renewed vigor raised her palms from hip level, to waist level. The soil’s millions of tiny hands grabbed Dylurshin’s body. Climbed and thickened as more attached. Her palms went from shoulder level, to eye level, guiding the dirt on its journey upward, and ended above her head.
Sand dripped from Celine’s spine. Her hair, indistinguishable from the wind. Transmutation was inevitable when testing the upper limits of her gifts.
I can’t falter, she thought.
Wooded soldiers summoned to aid her, slinked past, coiling around the cosmic force to extinguish the hostility within it. Vines, foliage, any natural thing in her power’s reach swarmed to encase the creature in a compact cocoon.
Charged black and red energy rays formed fissures on the surface of the cocoon, expanding until they blasted it to harmless wreckage.
“Concerted effort Mentarian witch, you are strong indeed.”
Exhaustion pulled her body to the lawn. “It’s all I have,” she mumbled. Her eyes pierced the ground as though looking at Dylurshin’s clawed arm and sharp-edged blade would validate its ability to overpower her. Dirty nails caressed the supportive soil, and she drew in the elements to keep her dissolving anatomy intact.
Zosma Page 24