by T. A. Pratt
“She’s a god,” Marzi said, surprised at how calm she felt. The adrenaline spike of fleeing the sphinxes – or sphinges, whatever – had passed, and anyway she was on more familiar ground, now; if not necessarily safer. “She’s the god of life in adversity. The god of small poisonous scuttling things. The god of surviving against all odds. I call her the scorpion oracle.”
“Sounds like a practical, pragmatic sort of god.” The Stranger hitched up her jeans and swaggered a couple of steps toward the dune. “I’m that kind of god myself, I think.”
“You are... something,” the scorpion oracle said, and was that a hint of perplexity? “Touched by divinity, but not divine. Yet you don’t seem like one of the unfortunate offspring of a mortal and a god or monster, either.”
“I’m just your average ordinary mortal, right now,” the Stranger said. “Except not mortal mortal, since I can’t die.”
“You can’t die?” Marzi said. How powerful a sorcerer was she?
“I cannot. And may I say, immortality is a considerable advantage when it comes to fighting monsters.”
“Have you come to fight me, half a god?” the oracle whispered. “I am a whole god. You will not find me as easily defeated as a sphinx. Or as given to pointless conversation.”
The Stranger displayed open hands. “No ma’am. I hope you’ll forgive me the coarseness of my speech, as I realize it might seem a mite hostile. Some of that crudeness I come by honest, and some of it’s a condition of my current circumstances.” She didn’t so much as a glance at Marzi. “Let me say clearly that I mean you no harm at all. In fact, I think we’re a lot alike. I hear once upon a time you had a sort of opposite number, a fella devoted to scouring life from the Earth, who lived in here with you? The Outlaw, Marzi called him.”
“I kept the god of earthquakes captive,” the oracle said. “My old enemy was no more a he than I am a she, not really.”
“Sure. How’d you like to play jailer again? We’ve got a prisoner you could watch over, or we will once my posse hunts him down. This particular miscreant is on a murder-spree that shows no sign of stopping, eating people whole, and I mean whole.”
“Life is hard,” the oracle said. “As it should be. Challenges refine us. The predator elevates the prey. Those who survive are stronger for it, and their descendants more likely to live on.”
“I believe I may have read a book that espoused a similar theory once,” Marzi said. “But this thing... it’s bad.”
“This thing is nothing to do with me. My relationship with the one you call the Outlaw was... personal. We were adversaries for a long time. I had reason to frustrate its plans. Why should I interfere with this other creature?”
“This beast is nastier than you know,” the Stranger said. “It won’t stop at killing people. It comes from outside our universe, and it wants to kill everything we’ve got here, from beetles to whales. Anything that has a soul, it’ll eat that, too, and keep them from ever finding peace in whatever precinct of the afterlife might await them otherwise. This Outsider will use their life energy to make itself strong, so it can gobble up even bigger things. Won’t stop until all life in the universe is extinguished, and to be honest, it’ll probably keep on going until all the chemical processes are used up, too, and then it’ll see if it can’t break into the universe next door and eat that one, too. It’s starting with people, but it’ll end with the stars. What I’m saying is, if you’re the god of some subset of things that are alive, you’re not going to have anything left to be the god of, soon.”
The sand shifted. “How can you hope to capture something so powerful?”
“It’s just a baby right now,” Marzi offered. “We want to trap it someplace where it can’t get out, and can’t do any harm, before it gets any bigger. It’s drawn to this place, to the door that leads to this place, we think. It senses the magic, it’s attracted to it, to the power, and we believe we can use that attraction to lure the Outsider through the door. If we do, can you keep it here?”
“I held the Outlaw,” the oracle said. “This door does not open unless I permit it, not from this side. The Outlaw only escaped when it found you, Marzi – someone with the power to make the door manifest in the physical world, someone it could trick into opening the way. If I hold this Outsider of yours here, what will stop someone from opening it on the other side?”
“I will,” Marzi said. “And my friend here has promised to pile on hexes and bindings and all manner of magic to keep that doorway sealed up.”
The Stranger nodded. “We’ll make it so the common folk can’t even see that storage room, and if they start to drift close to it by mistake, they’ll get a powerful hankering to move along right away.”
“Mmm. Then I assent.” The dune shifted around the oracle’s immense body. One claw, the size of a bulldozer, broke through and gestured toward the entrance to the temple. “Go back. Lure this Outsider into my realm. I will never permit it to escape. But if someone opens the door on the other side and sets it free, it is not my problem anymore. I will not reach into dreams to guide you again, Marzi. If you cannot win on your own, this time, you do not deserve to win.”
“Understood,” Marzi said. Honestly, hearing the scorpion oracle wouldn’t appear in her dreams again was some of the best news she’d had in a while. Those visitations hadn’t made for restful nights.
The Stranger tipped the brim of her hat. “Much obliged, ma’am. I’d offer to shake your hand, but we’ve got a mild mismatch of scale between us.”
“I will await the arrival of this prisoner,” the oracle said.
“Uh, are those sphinx things going to try to kill us when we leave?” Marzi said.
The oracles cool voice seemed almost amused. “They prey on the weak, because the weak do not deserve to speak with me. I believe the two of you are safe. Leave now.” The dune shifted again, an avalanche of sugary sand pouring down to reveal a flash of chitinous hide, shiny brown and segmented, and then that tail broke up through the sand, a lethal question mark tipped with a stinger the size of a medieval battering ram. Then that disappeared into the dune, too, either deeper into the temple or along some divine underground highway.
The Stranger whistled. “Damn,” she said. “That is one hell of a mentor you got there, Marzi. All right. The arrangements are made. Let’s see if B’s figured out the right kind of honey to lure our nasty fly.”
Bradley in the Streets
Bradley ran, because when a monster is chasing you, your only choices are to run or to stand and fight, and he wasn’t confident about his ability to fight the Outsider. He wasn’t without his resources – anything with a working brain was vulnerable to his psychic assaults – but if this thing had a brain it wasn’t made of anything Bradley knew how to mess around with. When it came to other methods of ass-kicking, he came up a bit short, and he knew it. Marla was the battle-mage in their duo, the one with the boots enchanted with inertial magic for nasty kicking, the one with charms of protection and deflection and displacement woven into her coat and her jewelry, the one with a knife that could cut through anything –
The knife! The chief sorcerer of Santa Cruz had given him that toy switchblade sparkling with either enchantments or inherent magic, and Bradley hadn’t yet had an opportunity to determine the exact nature of its powers. As he ran along the sidewalk, he reached into his pocket and gripped the little plastic hilt, drawing it out. He glanced back over his shoulder, and the Outsider was right there, drifting at head level no more than three or four feet behind him. Bradley flung himself to one side, landing on his shoulder and rolling onto someone’s drought-brown front lawn. The Outsider didn’t overshoot him, or seem to suffer from the effects of inertia at all – just stopped instantly and then changed direction, angling down toward Bradley’s supine form.
All Bradley’s senses, psychic and otherwise, were strobing the reddest of all possible red alerts – this was death, dissolution, oblivion, the devouring of his soul, again – and he pushed the
button on the switchblade and swung his arm in a desperate arc.
The blade that popped out of the toy hilt wasn’t four inches of silvery plastic. It was more akin to a sword blade, three feet long and burning, like the sword of a cherub guarding a celestial gate, and it sliced through the shadow-substance body of the Outsider as easily as a razor through belly flesh. A foot or so of shadow fell to the sidewalk, where it turned to streamers of blackness and dissipated. The remainder of the creature’s body dropped, fell from the air and landed on the sidewalk, where it writhed and twitched and gathered itself together in folds, like a dying serpent.
Bradley scrambled to his feet, blazing sword held out before him. Had he killed it, and was this thrashing its death throes? Maybe the thing did have an anatomy, despite looking like a uniform ribbon of shadow – and if so, Bradley might have cut off its foul head. He hoped so, because the fire in his sword was already fading, the blade shrinking, and the sparkle of enchantment he could perceive in the plastic hilt was growing duller, too. More like a taser than a machete, then, and he was rapidly running out of charge.
Bradley resisted the urge to prod the Outsider with the toe of his boot, as it had a history of devouring organic material and his boots were leather (and the toes inside flesh). He took a swipe at the creature with the sword, instead, before the fire could fade entirely, and the blade sank halfway into the middle of the writing ribbon before hitting resistance, causing the creature to redouble its writhing agonies. Then the fire winked out, and Bradley was just holding a toy switchblade again.
The Outsider went still, and a smile bloomed on Bradley’s face. “You fucker,” he said. “You messed with the wrong guy this time. I’m Bradley Bowman, you piece of shit – star of stage and screen, summoner of oracles, defender of the multiverse –”
The creature undulated and rose a foot off the ground, unkinking its length, and though its movement was more ungainly than before, especially with the deep cleft halfway down its body (if you could call it a body) where Bradley’s last blow had fallen, it was clearly very much alive (if you could call it life).
His offensive options exhausted, Bradley fell back on running again. At least this time the thing wasn’t quite as fast, and when Bradley looked behind himself occasionally the gap was holding steady, though he wasn’t making up much extra ground. Plans, plans, plans – the problem was, there was no time make plans.
He could veer back downtown, and hope that the presence of other people would spook the thing back into hiding, and then summon it as planned later. But injured creatures weren’t always rational, and what if the Outsider tried to kill everybody instead of running away? Causing the death of innocents was something he devoutly wished to avoid.
Better to go to Genius Loci and hope Marla was there, dagger in hand, ready to save his ass. There was the possibility of civilian casualties there, too, but fewer than he’d in downtown Santa Cruz. If Marla were even slightly psychic he would have tried to send her a mental message, but he might as well try to communicate with a brick wall. Marzi, though... if he could luck into the right psychic frequency....
Help! he shouted. The Outsider is after me, and I’m coming in hot!
He pointed himself at the café on the corner, now just two blocks away, and managed to put on a little more speed.
Marzi at Home
“So what’s the plan?” Marzi hesitated with her hand on the brass doorknob, the Stranger beside her scanning the unnatural desert horizon in case there were any last threats left for them here beyond the door.
“We hope Bradley figured out how to summon the Outsider. If he did, we lure the monster in here, slam shut the door, board it up with illusions and keep-away spells and eldritch bindings and maybe even actual boards made of wood, and hope that’ll do the job.” She shrugged. “Should be easy enough.”
“I guess you do this sort of thing all the time.”
The Stranger tipped her hat back. “Mostly I kill varmints like this instead of putting ‘em in a box, but the principle’s the same.”
“I couldn’t do it. Be a monster hunter on purpose. I’d never stop hyperventilating. Like, when do you have time to make comic books?”
“My proclivities are prob’ly indicative of some profound underlying psychological damage,” the Stranger said. “But I reckon you play the hand the dealer gives you. Let’s get.”
Marzi opened the door and was instantly blasted with sound, so loud it made her drop to her knees, though a moment later she realized it wasn’t actual sound, but more like the way the scorpion oracle talked to her: straight to her brain.
Bradley’s voice, shouting “–is after me, and I’m coming in hot!”
The Stranger was helping her to her feet, through the door, and Marzi croaked, “Bradley’s in trouble, I think he found the Outsider, I think they’re coming now.”
“Ain’t that always the way.” The Stranger pretty much just leaned Marzi against the wall, then reached down to take the pistol from Marzi’s waistband and put it in her hand, closing Marzi’s finger around the butt. “Cover me,” the Stranger drawled. If this turn of events troubled her at all, she didn’t show it. She reached into her pocket, took out a shiny piece of sea glass, then threw open the door to the storage room. “Everybody out!” she roared, vanishing from the room. “The café is closed!”
Marzi took deep breaths, the ringing in her head from Bradley’s shout subsiding, and tried to think back at him: We’re ready. Which was only half a lie. The Stranger sure seemed ready, and Marzi was keeping herself upright, gun in hand, pointed at the door. Ready to see what might come through.
The Stranger reappeared a moment later. “I tossed a stone enchanted with a compulsion to flee into the middle of your front room there. Everybody suddenly had an urgent yearning to be somewhere else. You might have some confused regulars and employees come in tomorrow, but at least they won’t get et today.” She wrinkled her nose. “Did you just make me say ‘et’ instead of ‘eaten’?”
Marzi was feeling steadier on her feet now, and she even managed to smile. “Sorry. I can’t help it. The door to the desert is still open, and reality is really flexible here.”
“Then concentrate on making the Outsider dumb, and slow, and easily trapped, if you can. I peeked out the front door when I drove folks away and Bradley will be here in a few seconds. Hard not to go out there and pick a fight with that shadow snake coming after him, but we’ve got to lure it here. I hate being patient. At least I won’t have to be for long.”
Just then Bradley’s voice howled “Incoming!” – not in her head, just normal yelling – and he burst through the door to the storage room. He reeled as soon as he came through the door, the portal to the desert inflicting some big psychic blow on him, and stumbled to one side, crashing against a stack of moldy old cardboard boxes that had been there since before Marzi bought the café.
“Cover me!” the Stranger shouted, and stood in the middle of the room before the door, legs spread wide, her glittering dagger in her right hand, a set of brass knuckles on her left. “You nasty sack of horse apples!” she bellowed. “You ain’t getting past me! You won’t get through that door so long as I’m drawin’ breath!”
The Outsider slithered in, swaying, hovering about five feet off the floor. It looked thicker and more substantial than it had last time Marzi had seen it, though halfway down its length, its body drooped, seemingly damaged. Even wounded, it simply radiated power, and also wrongness – its very existence was as unsettling as seeing reverse lights on a freeway, as lifting up a spoonful of soup and finding a human tooth in the broth, as waking up to clumps of blood and hair on your pillow.
The Outsider started to dart at the Stranger but she slashed out with her knife and a piece of the creature came loose, turning to vapor, and the serpent recoiled.
“Cut it up!” Bradley cried, pushing himself upright. “I hurt it before, you can kill it!”
“I might at that,” the Stranger said, and slashed again.
“So long as it doesn’t get through that door!”
Marzi had no idea if the Outsider could understand English, or if it was vulnerable to reverse psychology, but at that moment it zipped with unsettling speed around the Stranger and darted toward the open door to the desert.
“No!” the Stranger shouted. “Shoot it! Don’t let it through!”
Marzi obligingly pivoted on her heel, brought up the gun, and squeezed off a couple of shots, the caps popping loudly. One of the spectral bullets hit the thing, knocking a chunk of shadow-stuff out of its tail, but then it disappeared into the land beyond the door.
The Stranger rushed over and pushed the door shut. Then she turned, looked at Marzi, and slapped her a ringing blow across the face with the hand wearing the brass knuckles.
Marzi stumbled backward, her head spinning, and sat down hard on the floor. She only faintly heard Bradley shout “Hey, what the hell!”
Marla knelt beside her and said, “Sorry about that. Had to take you by surprise, snap you out of it. But look – no more door. And I can say ‘isn’t’ instead of ‘ain’t’ again, and I’m not dropping my g’s any more than usual, and I think I’m a couple of inches shorter than I was a minute ago.”
Marzi groaned. “I’m thinking of you as ‘Marla’ again, too, instead of ‘the Stranger.’ Actually I’m thinking of you as ‘you bitch.’ Is that all it takes to get rid of my magic? Smacking me in the head?”
“With brass knuckles enchanted with spells that disrupt magic, yeah. I didn’t get rid of your power, though, I just sort of... hit the reset button. The Outsider is out of our world, now, so his weird field of alien magic isn’t heightening the local mystical background radiation anymore, making this thin place even thinner. I thought if I could get you to stop maintaining the portal, too, it might slam shut. Ta da.” She gestured at the blank wall where the door had been. “I’m really sorry about the whole smacking-you-upside-the-head thing though. It wasn’t concussion-force or anything, but still. I can make up a healing balm for you, but it’ll take me a little while. Not really my specialty.”