Iron Inheritance

by G. R. Fillinger

  Great. It was a Minotaur.

  And a lizard and a bat and a dragon.

  Cloudy gray eyes turned to me as I ran. It reared up on its hind legs and lifted Nate fifteen feet in the air. Unwilling to let go, he flipped around and dangled parallel with the beast’s scaly, winged back. Josh continued to hit it, now darting in and out of its underbelly, but his attack did little but make the beast annoyed.

  “Nate!” Ria ran down the front steps of the liquor store toward the creature.

  Miranda, Freddy, and the store clerk stood by the windows, transfixed.

  “Ria, wait!” I stretched out my hand, almost to her.

  The beast turned quickly and knocked her to the ground with its wing.

  “Ria!” I shouted, getting to her just as she skidded against the ground, her hand and leg instantly bloody from catching her fall.

  My heart beat out of my chest, and the monster let out a roar, its talons clutching at its neck as it spun around and around. Nate had his green whip wrapped around its neck and hung from the other end like a rope swing.

  It continued to scratch at its throat, shrieking and stomping the ground to dust, before it extended its wings fully. With a single beat, it lifted into the air and rose exponentially higher with each subsequent rep before disappearing into a thin gray cloud two hundred feet up.

  Ria screamed her throat raw, staring up at the sky as I propped her up and carried her back to the Jeep. They could still get away if they left now. “Come on.” I waved Freddy and Miranda out, but before they could make it down the steps, a feeling unknotted in the pit of my stomach as a fuzzy picture slowly filtered up through my spine into the back of my head. “Watch out!”

  I pushed Ria’s legs into her chest and pressed her against the outer wall of one of the Jeep’s tires, spreading my body around hers as much as possible to get the brunt of whatever was coming.

  Rocks and fire.

  The demon hit the ground like a glowing red cannon ball. The gravel parking lot exploded with molten pebbles and rocks. They pecked and peeled my back and arms. I held in a scream until my lungs burned, long past when it ended. Fine dust settled in my hair and on my raw back. I heard Nate’s weak voice. He was near us, closer than the beast.

  “Josh,” he said. “It won’t last long. Get them out.”

  “Nate. Are you ok? Where are you?” Ria slid out from under me.

  Boom! The ground rumbled.

  I struggled to my feet.

  BOOM! A vibration ran up into my shins.

  I turned around and saw Josh standing near the beast’s head, jumping up, and thumping his hammer into its skull with everything he had.

  I started toward him. The beast was already stirring, its front talons scratching the ground to pull it up to its full height.

  Ria stuck her hand in Nate’s, kneeling down next to him, close enough to the monster to be hurt again.

  Enough of this.

  I ran as fast as I could, my hands pumping up and down and leaving streaks of blue light in the air as my heart thumped. At the last moment I pounded my foot into the loose pavement and sprang into the air, landing on the scaly, winged back just as Josh hammered its skull into the asphalt.

  Before it could get back up, I smashed my fist between two scales, past the beast’s rocky under-flesh and into its neck.

  It yowled in anguish as its whole body pressed into the ground with the force of the hit. Its vertebrae rippled down and then back up.

  “Eve, hold on to it. Don’t let it go,” Nate called, on his feet now.

  Ria stood behind him, her hand on her mouth in surprise.

  I felt it—something gooey and cold. I made a fist and held on.

  “Now pull it out,” Josh said, standing back, his arms hanging at his side like they were lead weights.

  I tried to gently slide my hand out of the goop of bone and tissue, but the thing in my hand squirmed and held tight to its host. I took another deep breath, and blue light enveloped my whole body—everything in my vision fiery blue.

  Another roar echoed until my fist slipped free with the black, thumping darkness in tow. The demon’s body slumped down like a machine without power, and the scales under my feet started to move.

  “Eve, get down!” Nate yelled.

  I leapt off, and the scales I’d been standing on began to retract as the whole body shriveled and compacted on itself. When I looked back it was completely gone, a light fog hovering over the ground for a moment and then quickly evaporating into the night.

  “Keep holding,” Nate said tensely, staring at my hand.

  I looked down and recognized the black mass of demon essence, similar to the one Josh and I had caught, but much larger. I squeezed tighter, but it didn’t squirm, only thumped a faint heartbeat.

  “Hmm.” Nate cocked his head to the side, his khaki shirt scorched black and so brittle it might crumble in the wind. There wasn’t one scratch on his skin though. “It’s tamer than I thought.”

  Yeah, because that’s the weirdest part of all this.

  “I didn’t know you’d learned to use your essence as a shield,” said Miranda, suddenly at my side, eyes wide with curiosity.

  “That’s awesome,” said Freddy, standing next to Ria and already starting to heal her. In the distance, on the front steps of the store, I saw the store clerk lying on the steps, unconscious but otherwise unharmed.

  Didn’t these people just see us fight a minotaur? How was me being able to hold this thing the most interesting thing?

  “Shield? Why would I need a shield?” My hand was still swathed in blue light, but the rest of my body seemed to have returned to its normal human hue, at least according to my eyes.

  “Because that demon would try to possess you if you touched it with your bare hands,” said Nate.

  I looked at my hand and then at Josh. He kept his eyes on the darkness.

  Back in the subway I thought—

  “Here, hand it to me,” Nate said.

  I turned my hand over and loosened my grip, feeling strangely emotional as I did, like I wanted to cry and yell at the same time.

  The moment it touched Nate’s green hand, the darkness squirmed violently. “Whoa, guess it doesn’t like me.” His fist jerked back and forth with a mind of its own.

  A wild look came over Josh’s eyes as he stepped up closer to us. He was as unscathed as Nate—not a single scratch on him. “Tracker,” he said, turning first to me and then the rest of the group.

  Nate inhaled and clenched his jaw. “We should go back to headquarters. It’s not safe for her to be out here now. Morales—”

  “They’re attacking her now,” Josh said wildly, angrily. “She can handle herself—you saw what she just did. She should know who’s responsible.”

  I repeated the word “tracker” over and over again in my mind. “Wait, this thing can lead to…?” The gears clicked together in my head.

  “To whoever summoned it.” Josh nodded, a wildfire burning in his stormy blue eyes.

  “Let’s go,” I said definitively. This was my chance. I already knew they were coming after me. The last demon had said his master would return, that’d he’d find me. But maybe if I could get there first, surprise them when they expected this Minotaur-dragon to kill me, I could find out exactly who the master was.

  What are you, some detective? You’re eighteen and can barely—

  Fight demons? Lift a car over my head? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  “This isn’t what you think.” Nate’s eyes followed mine. “It could lead us anywhere, come from anywhere. The bottom of the ocean, the center of a mountain, another continent for all we know.”

  “Then I hope the Jeep can fly,” I said, already walking back. “For that matter, I hope it can run at all.” Aside from the puncture holes in the doors, several of the windows had been cracked, and much of the paint had been scratched away.

  Freddy and Miranda didn’t waver at all but followed after me, Freddy already stretching out
his hands to heal my back with a catchy, snapping rhythm. The only thing he couldn’t heal was my dress, unfortunately.

  “We can’t.” Nate shook his head. “I’m taking you back where it’s safe.”

  I squared my shoulders and turned toward him, blue essence evaporating off of me again like my body couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. It seemed to get easier to see the more out of control I felt.

  “I’m doing this,” I said and grabbed the demon essence from his struggling hand. It immediately calmed down.

  I walked back to the Jeep and got in. Everyone but Nate followed. I looked over at Josh as he sat down in the driver’s seat and nodded. I hoped I was making the right decision and that this didn’t lead to some Aqua Man episode, cool as that might be.

  Nate opened the driver’s door and slid in, pushing Josh to the middle seat. “There’s no way I’m letting you drive my baby again,” he said as he closed the door. Light from one of the puncture holes streamed in on his leg.

  “Wait, what about her?” I said, looking at the unconscious store clerk lying just outside the store.

  “Listen,” said Freddy.

  Sirens suddenly became apparent, maybe a minute away.

  “Paramedics will be here soon, and they’ll find her in perfectly good health.” He smiled. “I just made her forget and go to sleep. She won’t remember a thing.”

  I nodded and faced forward, adding that skill to the list of abilities I had no idea about.

  “You know this isn’t the smartest thing to do, right?” Josh whispered in my ear, a wry grin gracing his lips.

  “On three, then,” I said, my jaw set, the words of the last demon I’d spoken to ringing in my ears as I stretched my hand out the window.

  The black cloud in my hand purred softly.

  “One. Two…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Three!”

  I opened my hand, and Nate punched the gas. The darkness surged forward like it was fired from a sling shot, a long skinny void slithering straight down La Cienega Boulevard.

  “The light!” Freddy yelled, a red light passing over our heads as cars swerved to avoid smashing into the back end.

  Nate revved the engine, and we were pushed back into our seats.

  “Slow down.” Ria’s strained voice came from the backseat.

  I gritted my teeth, all that she’d said at the party still pecking at the back of my skull. Not even a demon attack could make it go away.

  “Can’t. The trail’s already getting dim.” Nate clenched his jaw and wrenched the wheel to the left, tires screeching across the ground.

  My shoulder slammed into the door, and Josh’s hand pressed against the metal frame above to keep his body from sliding over and crushing me.

  My heart pounded in my ears, and the effervescent black liquid floating through the air was visible to me for another second. As long as I kept the adrenaline up, it seemed like I could see it.

  Nate blew through another intersection and then screeched to a stop that snapped the seatbelt into my chest.

  “We’re here.” He narrowed his eyes and cut the engine.

  Across the street, a long, two-story building stretched around the block like a wall surrounding a compound. About twenty yards down, I spotted a black hole in the wall that decreased its size by the second until it was completely gone, only beige stucco left.

  “Where’s here, exactly?” asked Ria, creaking her door open onto the desolate street. A golden streetlight shone down from above. The cracks in the pavement matched the cracks reaching through Nate’s windshield.

  I stepped out and looked from left to right. No other cars. No other people, as far as I could see. So why come to some kind of office building? “What’s the plan here?” I asked, more to myself than anyone else.

  “I’ll take the machine gunner on the roof. You take the two guards at the north and south entrances,” Freddy said, mirroring the rigid scowl Nate had burned into the building since we’d arrived. “What?” he added innocently. “No one plays video games?”

  I smiled. Nate ignored him completely and waved us several paces forward so we could see the company sign over a narrow alleyway that split the building in half.

  It was a movie studio.

  Nate shook his head and waved us back. “Babylonians design their headquarters like our own—a maze of hallways and tunnels and a thousand other precautions to make sure we don’t get in. And when a demon’s essence comes back to the summoner, they’ll know we killed it,” he added darkly, every syllable a warning for us to turn back.

  “But they won’t know we followed it,” said Josh, his expression oscillating between excited and nervous. He kept glancing at me and then looking toward the security booth at the entrance to the alley that led into the studio. We could only see a sliver of it from here, but there was bound to be a guard in there—demon, human, or other. My imagination couldn’t decide at the moment.

  “Morales will have our heads for breaking the peace,” Nate said more adamantly, obviously trying to get the rational side of my brain to come out from behind the adrenaline-soaked curtains.

  I knew he was right, that this was probably something better left to Patrons with more training, but now I knew the Babylonians were attacking me specifically. The two times I’d left the headquarters I just so happened to run into demons? I don’t think so. The master, whoever he was, still pulled the strings.

  And now was my chance to pull back.

  “We’re wasting time.” Ria tugged at her dress uncomfortably. Dried blood from her freshly healed scrapes ran down the side. “We won’t get another chance like this.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me forward as everyone else froze.

  “Ria, we need a plan,” I whispered hurriedly as we neared the guard’s station. My own dress, little more than red tissue paper held up by frayed string, slipped another inch as the guard came into view. He sat inside his box with his feet up, the sliding door to his left open. If it hadn’t been open, I don’t know that he would have been able to fit in there at all.

  “Excuse me. Hi.” Ria ducked under the security gate arm and ran her hands up and down her bare arms until her dress threatened to unleash her breasts—not that it hadn’t been threatening that all night.

  The guard fumbled out of his box and stepped in front of us, his eyes narrowing with his arms crossed over his black uniform.

  Ria brought her finger to her mouth and chewed on her nail innocently. “My friend and I were just wondering—” She tilted her head forward, a little woozy, and twirled a lock of caramel hair around her finger. “We wondered if you could give us a private tour or something. We love movies.”

  A flicker of consideration cracked his stony face. He looked to me as if waiting for my plea.

  I turned to Ria with wide eyes and a shake of my head.

  “Sock it to him.” Ria winked with a cute little jab to his enormous gut. “Ooh, so firm,” she added, giggling.

  The guard kept his arms crossed over his chest but smiled as he looked down at Ria’s cleavage.

  Ria turned back and winked at me again. “Pow pow,” she said with two more little jabs to his belly.

  Oh!

  I sucked in a slow breath and focused my mind on images of Kovac, on the demons that attacked, on the faceless shadow of the master that continually felt out of my grasp.

  My fists curled into rocks. Pow POW! I jabbed straight up at the guard’s nose, dodged around when his hand came up, and then rammed my right fist into his kidney.

  He dropped to his knees with a low, grumbling moan. I popped him once more in the head, and he was out.

  Ria grinned. “See, who needs a plan? Now, let’s go find this jerk who keeps trying to kill you.”

  I breathed heavily as the rest of the group came up behind us.

  “He’s a bad guy, right?” said Ria.

  “Definitely.” Nate nodded as if he could see something she couldn’t. I narrowed my eyes at the guard’s chest and
found a darkness similar to the demon’s still swarming around, thumping with his heart.

  “We can’t just leave him here. Someone will find him.” Josh looked around at the buildings on either side. There weren’t any cameras, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.

  Freddy and Josh looped their arms under the guard’s and started to drag him to a dark alcove so no one would see him from the street.

  “No, we can’t just leave him there,” I said.

  “Eve, he’s a Babylonian.” Ria shook her head. “Who cares what—?”

  “I don’t care,” I snarled, and a flame of anger flared up in me again. There was a part of me that didn’t want to stop punching him, a part of me that wanted to lose complete control and take on every Babylonian who existed just to get this energy out of my limbs. This power burned and whispered that they all deserved it, that I was doing the right thing.

  I breathed in and held it. None of that rage would get me anywhere tonight, not with all of them here. Freddy, Miranda, Ria. I should have never agreed to follow the demon in the first place. They couldn’t protect themselves against people like this. Ria acted tough, but she’d never been in a real fight, never even thrown a true punch.

  “Eve?” Nate’s calming voice called me back to the present.

  I blinked. “Get him back in his box. Put his feet up like when we first saw him.” I turned to Freddy. “Then you heal him and wipe his memory like you did to the liquor store clerk.”

  Freddy nodded and turned back around with Josh in tow, each of them supporting one of the guard’s arms.

  Ria raised an eyebrow at me.

  “We can’t afford for someone to find his body and raise an alarm. When he wakes up, he’ll think he just nodded off.” I turned toward the building on our left. “That’s where the demon went, right?”

  “It could have just gone through the walls on its way to the other side of the studio. There’s no telling,” said Nate.

  I huffed and tried to think.