by Alex P. Berg
“Terrible.”
“Well, what are you good with?” Three more beasts went down, two to light beams and a third to a vicious decapitation.
“In video games I usually pick an axe. In real life? I don’t know. A softball bat?”
Larry paused, his brow furrowed as Tank ran by with guns blazing. “A bat for the softball player. It’s fitting.”
The horde continued to push in, faster now that Larry was distracted. “Yeah,” I said. “Only problem is I didn’t bring one.”
“Way ahead of you, Lexie. Tank, cover me.” Larry’s palms faded back to flesh color as he knelt next to the decapitated demon head. Tank’s rifles cracked and rattled. Shell casings flew as Larry passed his hands over the nightmare’s gaping jaws and razor-sharp fangs. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear a word of it over the din. Then he plunged his hands into the demon’s open mouth and grasped one of the protruding canines. He pulled with all his might, but the tooth didn’t give. Rather it grew, lengthening as Larry drove against the stone with his legs. Eventually, it gave with a resounding pop, tossing Larry back two feet through the air. He hefted and twirled it before holding it before him. “What do you think?”
The demon tooth now measured almost three feet in length, with a tapered end where Larry had gripped it and a thicker end where it had come free. Where the end cap would normally be was still rough from the tooth’s roots.
“Not bad,” I said. “But it’s missing a knob.”
“A what?”
“A knob,” I said. “The part at the thin end that keeps your hands from slipping off.”
One of Tank’s rifles clicked as it emptied. “Boss?”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Larry waved his hands and threw the bat into the air before turning and blasting another batch of demons with his laser light hands. As the bat flew, bits of hair from the dead demon’s head swirled behind it, coalescing into a thick pad at the base of the bat.
I caught the thing by the grip in mid air. I wanted it to feel evil, slimy, or disgusting, but it didn’t. It was light but strong. It had perfect balance, and the grip was ever so slightly textured. I gave it a test swing. It whistled through the air without resistance and with just the right amount of bend. There was also something about it I couldn’t put my finger on. A hidden strength that flowed into my fingers and up my arm as I gripped it.
“Well?” called Larry over his shoulder.
I couldn’t lie. “This is the best damn bat I’ve ever held.”
“Great. Now get your ass in here and earn your keep!”
Larry didn’t have to make room for me at the front lines. A hell beast snuck through Tank’s fire and Larry’s vaporizer beams and sprinted toward me at cheetah-like speed. I held my ground, planted my feet in a side stance, cocked the bat, and using the skills I’d honed since T-ball, waited for my chance. The beast lunged and flew. I uncorked on it right as it hit the strike zone. The monster cut loose with a comical wail befitting a cartoon coyote as it soared up, up, and away, at least two hundred feet through the air before disappearing off the edge of the pyramid, but the best part was that my shoulder felt fresh as a daisy.
I looked down at the bat in my hands. “Oh, hell yeah.”
Larry’s voice carried over the mêlée. “Lexie? Any time now!”
I think I actually smiled as I sprinted into the fray.
19
The door to the Nyte Patrol house clattered as we shut it behind us. Larry groaned as he headed to the living room. “Christ, I’m beat. Tank, you want to grab some beers? I’ll take two.”
Tank split off toward what I presumed was the kitchen while Larry unhooked Bill, dumped him into his jar, and ditched the baby carrier before collapsing into his chair. He flicked his hand at one of the guest seats, but I paid him no mind. I couldn’t get enough of the demon tooth bat. It had shrunk to about the size of a walrus tusk on the walk out of the catacombs, but I found that if I squeezed it, it grew back to full size within a second and a half. It was freaking awesome.
Tank returned with a half dozen beers. He set them on the table, popped three of the caps off, and took one. Larry helped himself to one as well, poured some of it into Bill’s jar, and held the third out to me, which I accepted without taking my eyes off my tooth.
While Bill lapped noisily at the finger of beer in his jar, Larry sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Well… That escalated quickly.”
Tank shrugged as he took a long draught of his ale. “I thought it was fun. Feel bad about Angus though.”
“Yeah, seriously,” said Larry. “You straight up murdered him, Tank.”
“I didn’t murder him. It was an accident.”
“Oh, really? You accidentally knocked him off the edge of the walkway as that last batch of hell creatures bore down on us?”
Tank snorted. “Fine. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. But let me remind you he tried to sneak off with the tome when he thought we were engaged. Besides, he’s immortal. He’ll be fine.”
Larry frowned. “Ehh… I don’t know about that. I’m not sure he’s ever been tossed into a river of flowing lava before. His screams sounded pretty… final. Either way, you should probably lay low for a while in case the rest of his clan comes looking for you.”
I squeezed on the demon tooth and it shot to full size. I loosened my grip, and after a few seconds, it shrunk back down again. I couldn’t help but snicker. “This is so cool. Larry, can you make more of these? My teammates would totally flip.”
Larry took a sip of beer as he shook his head. “Sorry, that’s a one time deal. I had to sacrifice one of my four hundred or so middle names to make it. That’s how seriously I take your commitment to this team.”
Bill paused from lapping up the beer in his jar to stare at Larry. “Hey. You never made me a demon tooth anything.”
“You’re a zombie head in a jar, Bill. What do you want me to make you, a demonic sombrero?”
While he grumbled, I heard the back door open and close. Dawn stumbled around the corner, a weary look on her face, with her hair and clothes in disarray and her sheathed swords held in her left hand.
“Dawn!” said Larry. “There you are. We were worried about you. Are you okay?”
Dawn dumped her swords on the floor and walked gingerly toward the couch. She leaned against the armrest and gave a heavy sigh, her eyelids mostly closed.
Larry leaned up in his chair. “Dawn?”
Her eyes snapped open. “Huh?”
“I said are you okay?”
“What? Yeah. I’m fine. Charity and I got separated from you guys during that bit with the earthquake and the steam fissures. We made it out okay.”
I looked at Dawn’s stance, the relaxed manner in which her arms hung at her sides and the look of total serenity on her face. I smiled. “So… you and Charity got separated, huh?”
Dawn shrugged off my mirth. “Whatever. That woman is foxy as hell. If you swung that way, you would’ve done the same thing.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think she would’ve had to buy me dinner first.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Larry’s eyes darted between me and Dawn before eventually settling on Dawn. “Oh. Ooooohh.”
“So,” said Dawn. “Did you get it?”
“Get what?” asked Larry.
“Hello? The tome.”
Larry snorted. “Give me a break. Of course we got it. Tank, you got it, didn’t you?”
Tank frowned and shook his head. He set his beer on the desk, rifled through his duffel bag, and dumped the book on the desk. A dusty cloud filled the air as the cover made contact with the wood. The beer bottles and Larry’s phone rattled from the impact. The thing weighed as much as a sack of bricks.
“For the record, I’m not your pack mule,” said Tank.
“I know that,” said Larry. “But I was already carrying Bill, and my hands were otherwise occupied with literal beams of destruction. What was I supposed to do, shove the
thing in my pants?”
Tank batted a dismissive hand Larry’s way, snagged his beer, and stormed out of the living room.
Dawn lifted an eyebrow. “What did you do this time?”
“Why do you assume this is my fault?” Larry said. “He’s just upset that he killed Angus O'Neill. You know how he gets.”
Dawn sighed. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll get him out of his funk.”
Dawn left after the man, and I settled into one of the guest chairs. “I really hope get him out of his funk isn’t a euphemism for something sexual.”
Larry scowled at me. “Get your mind out of the gutter. They’re friends. She’s going to talk to him, that’s all. Tank might look tough, but he’s a big baby. Gets all worked up over the smallest things.”
“Like you taking him for granted over and over again?”
“When did I do that?”
“In the laser hallway, obviously, and again just now. You never asked Tank to carry the tome. You sure as hell never thanked him for it, and you acted like a giant ass at the very thought of him losing it along the way.”
Larry snorted. “We’re not in kindergarten. I’m not handing out participation trophies. Besides, what makes you such an expert on team chemistry?”
It was a painful jab, but I don’t think he actually knew about my explosion at practice. “I’m literally on a softball team, Larry. Come on. Your spell picked me for a reason. You said so yourself, and I’m telling you that if you don’t want your team to fall apart, you need to stop minimizing everyone else’s contributions. That goes for Dawn as well as Tank.”
Larry sighed. “Fine. I’ll smooth things over with Tank later tonight. But in the meantime, can you stop being such a buzzkill? I mean, seriously. We got it. The Librum de Virtute.” He flourished the hand that wasn’t holding his beer. “That makes two successful missions in two nights, and this one will actually pay the bills. Not bad, am I right?”
I eyed the ancient doorstop. “Speaking of the Librum—can we talk about it?”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“Well, there’s the fact that according to your bibliomancer friend, the University tried to get rid of the book some years ago but the original Spanish owners refused to take it. So instead they buried it deep in an underground catacomb surrounded by lava and protected by a bloodthirsty minotaur, and then when Charity picked it up off its pedestal, it spawned a legion of black, furry nightmares that tried to separate our flesh from our bones.”
Larry blinked. “And?”
“What I’m saying is this book is clearly dangerous. Do you even know what it does?”
“Not my problem,” said Larry. “Romanov hired us to deliver it to him, not to teach him how to use it.”
“Which is kind of what I’m getting at,” I said. “Look, I punched Librum de Virtute into Google. It literally translates as ‘Book of Power,’ which, yeah, after tonight with the demons and the lava and everything else, I totally believe. And you’re willing to hand it over to this Romanov guy, no questions asked.”
“Well… he pays really well,” said Larry. “And on time, I might add.”
I wanted to reach across the desk and shake the guy by the throat. “You’re missing the point, Larry. How well do you know him? Can he be trusted? What are his motivations?”
“Not very well, I have no idea, and beats me, in that order. But I told you when we first met, we’ve located a number of items for Romanov over the past few months and to the best of my knowledge he hasn’t done anything evil with them so far. I don’t see why that would change.”
“What have you given him so far?”
“Let’s see… A magic sword. Some crystals that were imbued with ancient spirits or mystical energies or some crap like that. Ah… a map. I remember that one being quite mundane. And I can’t remember the last one. Bill, you want to help me out?”
Bill looked up from his beer swilling efforts, his eyes glassy. Despite his efforts, a finger of beer remained in the bottom of his jar. He seemed to be losing a fair amount through the decayed holes in his cheeks every time he lapped some up, but I wasn’t sure he’d made any progress. Then I realized the beer was leaking out through his severed neck right back into the jar. I wanted to gag.
The brew seemed to be doing the trick, though. “Whaz that?”
“The items we brought to Romanov, Bill. A sword, a map, crystals, and what else?”
“Hold on,” slurred Bill. “Itz on the tip of my… on the tip of my tuh… tuh… tongue.”
“Oh.” Larry snapped his fingers. “An amulet. That’s the last one.”
“And all these items were magical in nature?” I said.
“Well, yeah. All except the map. I’m pretty sure we got that one at a gas station.”
I frowned. “That’s odd… but whatever. The point is, what’s Romanov going to do with all these items? No. Scratch that. You don’t know. Of course you don’t. But what could he do with them?”
“Ah. Well…” Larry stuck a finger into the air. “Actually I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe that’s something you should figure out before you hand this all-powerful book of ancient magic to him, hmm?”
Larry rubbed his chin and surveyed me carefully. “You know, you’re starting to get awfully involved in this job given that you haven’t fully committed to being a permanent member of our team yet. Hint hint, I can snag a contract real quick, nudge nudge.”
“It has nothing to do with you, trust me. I’m mostly invested in not releasing a swarm of demon creatures on central Texas.” I glanced at my phone. It was ten to midnight. “I’ve got to go. Please don’t show up at my dorm again tomorrow. Just give me a call or a text like a normal person, okay?”
“But I can’t use a phone because—”
“Then get Dawn to do it. Come on, Larry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I got up. As I headed to the back door, I realized I hadn’t used the promise of tomorrow as an excuse to get out of his sight. I’d actually meant it. I’d be back.
Damnit. I was getting invested.
20
The following morning got off to an inauspicious start. I woke up late. The dorm shower ran out of hot water halfway through my lather, which helped me get out faster than I otherwise would’ve but not fast enough to avoid a late arrival to my eight o’clock class. That in turn meant I got a delayed start on the pop quiz our instructor assigned. It was open book—a blessing because I’d never emptied my bag from earlier in the week—but I don’t think it helped enough. By the end of it, I had matrices swimming in my vision and all I could hope for was that the test would be graded on a generous curve.
My second class went better than the first, if only because I didn’t have any exams sprung on me, but gosh darn it if I hadn’t come down with a case of sudden onset daydream syndrome. One moment, I’d sat there while Dr. Borovyk droned on about stresses from bending moments, then a wail filled the air, the door at the front of the lecture hall burst open, and a swarm of smoky, razor-clawed demons poured inside. I’d leapt to my feet, demon tooth bat in hand, and started swinging it with wild abandon. The beasts went flying, crashing through the walls and ceiling, howling with fear as they tried to escape the blur of my bat. I smacked one across the jaw. It soared into the projection screen at the front of the hall only to fade into nothingness. Suddenly there was Dr. Borovyk again, and the presentation was about eccentric axial loading instead of moments and I had to click back several slides on my laptop to figure out what I’d missed.
Similar problems afflicted me throughout lunch and my afternoon lab. As I exited my last class of the day and headed to the study hall, I silently admonished myself for my lack of focus, something I’d always thought I’d had in spades. With self-imposed threats hovering over me, I jammed my ear buds into place, cranked up some AC/DC, and got to work on another pile of homework that I hadn’t touched the night before. It was going pretty well until my screen went fuzzy and my eyelids ga
ined ten pounds. Then I was off in Neverland again—or at least back at McCombs Field. I was in the middle of a game, but Larry and Dawn and Tank were there. Bill, too. Then my teammates magically disappeared, replaced instead with a herd of chimeras in softball uniforms. Larry’s magic crackled, Dawn’s blades flashed, Tank’s guns rat-a-tat-tatted, and I was in the middle of it all, fighting, leaping, yelling, and having the time of my life.
I awoke with a start. I blinked a few times and worked some saliva onto the roof of my mouth. My collar felt damp as I plucked it off my skin, and I sat up, pretending like I hadn’t been drooling all over myself while sawing logs in public. My earphones were still blaring AC/DC—the eponymous track from Back in Black. It was a bad sign given the last song I remembered was “Whole Lotta Rosie” off Let There Be Rock.
I tapped on my laptop to wake the screen and cursed when I saw the time. “Shit. Shit shit shit.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and pushed my thumb to the scanner. Four messages waited for me. Three of them were from Heather, and they were as bad as I’d expected.
At quarter till three. I’ll see you at practice in fifteen. Hope you worked on your speech.
Twenty minutes later. Lexie, where the hell are you? You’d better be hauling ass to get here.
And then the last one, from fifteen minutes ago. Damn. Way to reinforce my trust in you. Good luck with life, I guess.
Whatever mirth was left from my epic dream battle against the Greece Tech Mythological Bombers shriveled and died on the vine. I couldn’t believe I’d missed practice again, and after promising Heather I’d be there and make good on my outburst to boot. The worst part was that softball hadn’t crossed my mind all day, at least not until my sleep-deprived, hard rock fueled dream. What the hell was wrong with me? Did I not care anymore? Did I no longer want to be a part of the team?
If anyone had ever asked me, I would’ve told them ‘quitter’ wasn’t in my personal dictionary, but I’d never bungled something this badly before, either. Over the last thirty-six hours I’d gone from a bad teammate to a nonexistent one, and perhaps worse, I’d become a bad friend to Heather. Maybe the world’s worst one.