by Rob Horner
Renewed gunfire pounded the twins’ shield, coming from the wide-open front of the building, as more possessed police officers poured through the breach. The sound of breaking glass from behind us—the direction I was supposed to be monitoring—caused me to spin around. There were several Dra’Gal jumping through each window, ignoring the tearing glass as they attacked the pairs of Chosen in each room.
For a moment, all I could do was watch, trying to determine which side needed my assistance.
On the left, Chris stood firm close to the window. I don’t know what substance he’d transformed his skin into, but it blocked demon arms with a resounding clang. Behind him Michael let out small bursts of flame like arcing streams from a Smurf-sized flamethrower. He kept his aim low, scorching the Dra’Gal on the feet and legs, so the fight looked like a weird combination of a dancer competing with a boxer, and neither sure what steps to take.
The right looked more my style, though Caitlin didn’t seem to need any help. All she had to do was get a hand on a Dra’Gal, and it went flying. There were no blasts of light, and she didn’t appear to be exerting force. It was more like the force was within her, coming out in a show of strength. If she punched, chests collapsed, and bodies flew backward. If she grabbed and swung, Dra’Gal went airborne, crashing into walls or back out through the window and into their fellows.
Like Michael, Scott stood behind his protector, glowing pebbles evident in his hands. Whenever an opportunity presented itself, he would hurl one or more past Caitlin, out the window and into the milling masses awaiting their chance to attack. The explosions were small—size did matter when it came to his glowing bombs—but still impressive enough to hurl bodies away, some of them with oddly-twisted limbs, like the force of the explosion broke something.
The zap sound of the rifles with their weird upper barrels started up behind me, and I knew the soldiers were doing their part. Iz shouted instructions to Joi and James, pointing out areas where cops could be safely sizzled without hurting anyone else. Jeff and Jason—the other two J’s—milled about in the center of the barrier with Angelica, waiting for a chance to help. Bradley was between Joi and Bart, occupying the middle space at the bullpen side of the shield, arms waving, light daggers flying.
I looked back to see the demons streaming past the windows where Caitlin stood ready to repel them. Apparently, they’d had enough of her arms and Scott’s bombs. Instead, they were piling up outside the room on the left, where Chris fought to maintain his one-man wall. Lunging into the room, I got an arm out to block, letting the bare skin of the Dra’Gal slam into it. Light flashed, and there was one less attacker.
“Aw yeah!” Chris yelled, standing tall beside me as I went to work. High block to middle, back to high, then low, I let my arms do most of the work, sleeves rolled up and just waiting for a chance to touch their skin.
The light flashed in a regular staccato, until a large clawed hand reached through the window, grabbed me by the shirt, and hauled me bodily out onto the scant grass that covered the space between building and sidewalk.
“Crap! Michael, burn them!” Chris yelled, but I couldn’t afford to look and see what they were doing.
Gigantor was back.
Well, I don’t really know if it was the same Dra’Gal who attacked Tanya, Crystal, and me back at the Coliseum. Other than big and ugly, there weren’t too many distinguishing features. He certainly looked the same, but a lot of that was perspective. He was a lot bigger than me, in every direction.
Bodies smoked around us as Michael set to work. Demon voices howled in pain, but Big-Ugly blocked everything else out. His scaly arms remained clad in policeman blue, and though he’d busted out the legs of the uniform pants, it was below the knee only. I thought about making a dive for his shins, trying for a desperate touch of skin to scale, but something about his stance warned me against it.
These things knew about me and about my power. They even had a name for me. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think they’d send this guy with the express purpose of trying to get me to use my power, and they had a plan to counter it.
What they didn’t have a plan for was Caitlin.
I caught a flash of motion, a running form coming in from behind the demon, and I ducked. Chris said she pulled a Hulk Hogan dropkick on the demon’s back, which I couldn’t see. All I saw was a half-ton of surprised Dra’Gal suddenly flying at me. Her kick drove him forward, not up, so all I could do was put my hands out and hope I didn’t get crushed.
Light flashed as my hands hit its shins and the thing was gone, leaving me cowering on the grass. Determined to regain some self-respect, I thanked Caitlin, then got back to work blocking, striking at unprotected faces, and doing my damnedest to make sure nothing else got through the window and came at our guys from the back. Michael and Scott continued their flame-throwing and firebombing, with Chris, Caitlin, and me mopping up any that got past them.
A minute later and the outside was clear.
“You up for some payback?” Caitlin asked.
“What’ve you got in mind?” I replied, panting a little.
Her mouth curled up in a smile. “Let’s go hit them from the rear!”
We had orders to hold the back. Iz might need us. Maybe we should ask for permission first.
Those three objections rolled through my mind, and instantly blew away.
For just a moment, it wasn’t Caitlin in front of me, it was Tanya. Caitlin was shorter and, while she was cute, she didn’t attract me like Tanya did. It was the smile, that same I double-dog-triple-cat-dare-you-and-if-you-don’t-do-it-you-suck smile.
What would Tanya do in this situation?
Hell, what would I do if Tanya was the one asking me to do something crazy?
The answer was simple.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We hurried around the west side of the building, following James Madison Boulevard until the giant parking lot opened on our left. We skirted the curb, staying close to the building, and followed the brick walls through the maze of haphazardly parked police cars until we came to the gaping wound in the facade where the armored car had bulldozed a way inside.
There were a dozen cops outside the wall, waiting for a chance to rush in. I could see flashes of light, purple and cobalt-blue, as our soldiers and James did their work from inside. Streaking blurs sped through the air, evidence of Bradley at work, and everywhere inside the building there was water.
Caitlin and I were upon the cops before they knew we were there. And since they hadn’t Manifested, all it took was a quick tap on a hand or cheek to reduce them to unconscious puddles on the ground. There was no sound other than those that accompanied any battle: the crack-sizzle of the strange upper barrels firing, men on both sides screaming and yelling, the crashing of collapsing walls, doors, and glass. Danielle was in there, probably putting out her ultrasonic wave preventing the Dra’Gal from Manifesting.
We made it to the opening before we were noticed. And the first cop to spot us got a double punch to the chest from Caitlin, which threw him backward into his fellow Dra’Gal officers, knocking several more to the ground. Before they could recover, I ran among them, careful not to trip, just touching wherever I could.
The press of bodies threatened to separate us, but every time someone in blue got between us, Caitlin was there, using her strength to blast them away.
I don’t know how long we fought on the back edge of the policemen, but by the time Iz shouted for us to stand down, I could barely keep my head up. Somehow, we’d moved into the building, almost to the shattered wall of the bullpen. Downed officers lay on the ground in a wide circle around us, like we were the impact point of a meteorite.
“Anybody hurt?” Iz asked, walking across the ruins of the bullpen.
“Just exhausted,” Caitlin said, putting her back against a section of wall that hadn’t collapsed, then sliding down to rest on her bottom.
“Make that two of us,” I said lamely.
“Iz,” Brian’s voice said into our ears, “instead of hauling all these guys to Mandatum, why don’t we set up at one of the other stations. It might do some good to have them wake up in familiar surroundings.”
“I’m not opposed to that,” Iz replied. “But I’m not sending Fish to explain things until we’re sure they’re all going to play nice.”
“I can respect that,” Brian answered.
“The Second Precinct was deserted,” Fish offered. “We could start taking them there.”
“Okay, get on it,” Iz ordered. “Get Brian and those guys already at Mandatum first, though. They’ll be waking up the soonest. We’ll guard here until you’re done.”
“Finally, a break,” Caitlin said.
I smiled and closed my eyes.
PART III
New York State of Mind
Chapter 23
Workout time
The rest of the evening went by in a blur. It was full dark by the time Jeff, looking as exhausted as I felt, finished transporting all the unconscious police officers to the Second Precinct out by the beach. Chris had to shake us awake so we could start the walk back to the vans. I don’t know what time it was when we got back to Mandatum, just that my keycard worked, there were new clothes to sleep in, and the beds were clean and comfortable.
My dreams were different from previous evenings, but no less troubling.
Rather than being caught in the middle of an attack on Mandatum, I found myself back outside the carnival, though it looked different than any of my previous excursions. For one thing, though the midway was as colorful and sprawling as ever, all the rides and attractions were to the right of the entrance.
Straight ahead was one side of a low building, like the side of a barn. But if this was a barn, it had to be one of the longest in existence, easily two or three hundred feet. I had seen farmer’s markets and flea markets in similar buildings, stall after stall lining the sides with hordes of Sunday shoppers crowding the floor between. This looked bigger, and just by shifting my perspective a little to one side or the other, I could see wide doors peppering the long side, things that should open in the middle with the familiar crosshatch pattern that spoke of horses and cows.
On the left side of the barn building was something I’d only read about or seen on television. A split-rail fence painted white traced the circumference of a large oval. Inside the fence was hard-packed earth with hundreds of tracks stamped everywhere. Rows upon rows of plain metal bleachers lined the outside of the rail. It was a horse-racing track, or stadium, or whatever it was called.
But the lighting was odd.
It was night, as evidenced by the darkened sky and the brightness of the lights to my right. The stadium and barn were unlit and unused and should have been nearly invisible in the wash of light from the midway, yet I could see both clearly. And beyond the carnival, behind the stadium, sprawled a city of trailers and mobile homes, much too far away to be seen from the entrance, yet somehow visible to my eyes. They were the goal, the bullseye on a target.
One other thing was different.
I knew it was a dream.
That knowledge might be what kept it from progressing in a linear fashion. One moment my eyes were scanning the distance, seeing the trailers through a quarter mile of lights and balloons, metal struts and plastic slides, and in the next second I stood among them, with no sense of having traversed the distance.
Crashing waves of sound enveloped me as the trailers appeared; I’d transported into the middle of a raging battle filled with the screams of Dra’Gal, men and women shouting, some yelling with pain, and automatic weapons spitting their deafening chatter. The brilliant, multi-colored lights of the carnival were replaced by the garish brilliance of portable spotlights, all illuminating a terrifying scene.
The alpha stood before us, a twelve-foot tall monstrosity, and nothing we did could hurt it.
There were bodies strewn all over the ground, hard to tell friend from foe, because all Dra’Gal revert to human form if killed. And then my eyes happened on two figures, two women laid out side by side.
Tanya was one.
Crystal was the other.
The gruff voice of Iz called out orders into my ear, but a surge of grief and anger overrode all caution.
I charged the alpha…
…and found myself on the floor of a familiar trailer, staring at a fuzzy reflection of my face as seen in a pair of well-shined loafers. Demon voices filled the space behind me, while in front waited the normal face and figure of the man who wanted to put a Dra’Gal spirit into my body. Things progressed as they had before. Something shook the trailer, and the man turned around holding one of those statues. I promptly closed my eyes.
“You really think that will save you?” the man asked with a laugh?
Something long and sharp stabbed into my ribs, a knife or a claw, it didn’t matter. Pain like I’d never known lanced into my body. The knife dug, twisted, seeking my lung.
My eyes popped open.
Redness awaited.
“No!” I shouted, exploding out of sleep. My heart pounded and my side felt…desperately I jumped out of bed, racing to the small mirror set between the two chests of drawers, yanking on my T-shirt. My side was unblemished, nothing there but a phantom ache.
The message was clear.
Tanya and Crystal were at that carnival. Maybe they’d died, or maybe they were knocked out, purged by my power. It was a chance to save them.
It was also a place to lose myself.
Climbing back into bed, I was certain there wouldn’t be any more sleep for me. My thoughts were too tangled with my emotions to allow for rest.
But they weren’t, not really. There wasn’t a choice here in whether to go after them. That was a foregone conclusion. There also wasn’t a decision to make in whether to tell Iz and Fish about this dream. All that was up for debate was how much to tell them.
Just enough to make sure we go to that place.
And with that decided, I fell back asleep. This time, no dreams bothered me.
It was lunchtime on Saturday before I emerged from my room. Brian’s bed remained undisturbed; he must have stayed at the police station in order to help ease the transition for the policemen. Remembering my first encounter after purging him, I knew he would have his plate full just getting those guys to understand they’d lost several days; I had no idea how he was going to convince them of the Dra’Gal presence.
The growling of my stomach pulled me through the halls to the Rec Room, and there I stopped, arrested by the television. It wasn’t just the news story being reported by the anchors on the local ABC affiliate, it was also the crawl. With no Crystal or Angelica to tell me who was gifted, who was Dra’Gal, and who might be a Quin, it was all about the news.
The pretty brunette anchor did most of the talking while her older male counterpart waited patiently with stacked papers in hand, ready to transition to something else.
“—numerous sources report gunfire around two Virginia Beach police stations yesterday, though the only damage is from a reported drunk driver accidentally crashing into the front doors of the headquarters out on Princess Anne Road. Amazingly, no one was injured. A police spokesman said all administrative operations are being conducted at the Second Precinct while their headquarters is repaired and reiterated the Department’s thankfulness that no injuries or fatalities were sustained. When asked about the identity of the driver, the spokesman said it was being kept confidential pending an investigation.”
“Thank you, Suzie,” the man said as the camera shifted to him. “Let’s stay in Virginia Beach for one more interesting story. Apparently, there was a firefight inside the Pembroke Mall yesterday, though you’ll be hard-pressed to find any details anywhere. Sergeant Michael Adams of the Virginia Beach Police Department, though more than talkative when it comes to the drunk driver plowing into their headquarters, denies any police involvement with what a dozen mall-goers have said was a substantial pol
ice action against an unknown group of people, possibly some kind of paramilitary group.”
The image on the screen showed the food court where we’d made our stand against the Dra’Gal, purging not only the people, but also the figurines and cheap jewelry they were using to infect others. The camera panned and zoomed, showing broken glass, pock-marked walls, and the blown-out entrance doors.
“The Sergeant did acknowledge that these appear to be bullet holes and has vowed to investigate the matter. But those promises don’t bring us any closer to understanding what happened.”
The news on the screen was important, but not for the story itself. More telling was the response of the police spokesman. It had to mean that Brian was accomplishing something. Otherwise the story would be different.
I wished the same could be said of the WORLD NEWS crawl on the bottom of the screen, which reported that the gathering outside the Vatican had been successfully dispersed, and the gates to the Holy City closed and barred. Even more telling, there would be no public Mass for the foreseeable future.
Did that mean the Pope and all the cardinals were aware of the invasion, closing their gates to prevent any Dra’Gal from infiltrating their ranks? Or was it like we feared? Were they already possessed and actively working to enact a plan against humanity and our Quin allies? Iz told me there were other factions, other governments working with the Quin, so maybe all those yellow-glowing people in the crowd outside the Vatican were working together.
It would be nice to know that we had allies in other countries, other groups fighting the same fight. Before yesterday, that was the assumption. None of us had talked yet about the implications if other Quin groups were compromised.
We also hadn’t talked about what it meant if the Quins didn’t need their protective suits on our planet. Why would they lie?