But what he wouldn't give for a weapon a little better than a damn table leg. It was just a little too thick for his hand and, considering his great strength, every time he swung it he risked crushing it in his grip. What I wouldn't do for a long steel pipe, he thought, smashing another skeletal hand into shards as it clawed at him through the barrier. I sure hope this stops at dawn. Considering that was still a couple hours away, it was a forlorn hope in the first place. I hope we last till dawn.
Before he could answer, something big hit the barricade, toppling one of the slot machines. It fell to the floor with a crash. I might not have a choice but to shift, he thought with a low growl. What is that?
Do I even want to know?
* * * *
The seriousness of whatever was going on down the road struck home when they spotted a red, fiery streak passing over them. “The Burning Man,” Baraz murmured.
Jaz nodded. If the Crimson Sash were heading to the scene, it had to be pretty serious. Athena and Thoth still hadn't shown up. She was getting antsy. She'd deliberately rationed how much food Quickfingers was getting. If the little imp was going hog-wild in there, she couldn't begin to guess how long it would be before it reproduced.
For all she knew, it already had.
She heard a ferocious giggle from above and a window shattered. A piece of machinery hurtled downward, shattering against the pavement some twenty feet away. “It's gotten bigger,” she remarked, scuttling out of the way and under the canopy protecting the entry. Baraz stayed where he was, glaring upward with a baleful eye.
"And more destructive,” Baraz commented.
"Hey, boys and girls. Hot meals.” The voice cut through the night like a laser. Three figures appeared across the street and started moving in their direction.
"You've gotta be kidding me,” Baraz grunted, shaking his head. “Go away,” he warned in a deadly voice. “We really don't have time for this."
"Candy factory's closed,” the one in the lead, a pale, artsy looking male with long, lanky hair, commented with some amusement as he seemed to float across the asphalt. “But we'll cure your disappointment."
Jaz watched in horror as the three vampires drew closer to her mentor, who, truth be told, looked anything but concerned. Baraz turned to face them completely, flexing his fingers and rolling his shoulders. “You seriously don't want to do this."
"Why not?” the female, a short-haired butch-looking type, purred. “The cops are busy over at the casino. Raven hasn't been seen in days. And here you two are, happy meals with legs."
The whole thing seemed to unfold instantly. One second they were crossing the street, the next they were surrounding Baraz, reaching out like starving children for a stick of cotton candy. Time suddenly slowed and, as if he had all the time in the world, Baraz reached out and grabbed one of their outstretched wrists. He pulled the vampire toward him, other hand rocketing upward to catch the creature just under the chin.
It seemed to float as it left the ground and gently wafted into the middle of the road, time resuming its normal course just as it struck the pavement and slid toward the opposite gutter. In a flicker of movement the other two dove for the attack, but, in an equally blurred segment, Baraz seemed to pirouette away just in time for the two remaining vampires to crash into one another.
It dissolved into an silent, eerie ballet under strobe lights. Most of the time she couldn't quite make out what was happening, but time seemed to nearly stand still in brief moments and she caught sight of the damage Baraz was doing. As quick as the vampires were, her friend seemed even faster. The whole fight couldn't have taken more than ten seconds, but, to her perceptions, it went on for hours.
In the end the female vampire ended up running away, a shadowy blur swallowed by the surrounding darkness. The two male vamps lay like broken dolls on the sidewalk. “Fucking idiots,” he snarled, aiming a vicious kick at the more vocal male.
He wouldn't be vocal anymore, Jaz noted. His neck had been cleanly broken, severing the spinal column and rendering him well and truly deceased. She felt a sudden chill. Baraz had just taken on and defeated three vampires ... by himself?
Baraz was an immortal. It was the only explanation. And the call he'd made to Athena. He'd identified himself as—
"—holy crap! You're Deryk Shea!"
He glanced up at her. “Do you want to buy some airtime on a local radio station?” he grumbled. “I think there are people in South Tacoma who didn't hear it."
"Sorry, Baraz.” She got a mischievous glint in her eye. “Or should I start calling you Deryk?"
"Only if you want a spanking,” he snorted. “Where the hell are Athena and Thoth?"
Even as he asked the question a scintillating effect heralded their arrival via transit tube. The two magi stepped out onto the sidewalk and Thoth closed the tube with an absent wave of his hand. “What the hell's going on?” Athena asked, scowling. “This better be important. The casino's being attacked by skeletons and zombies. We should really be over there, not standing out here."
"Skeletons and zombies?” Jaz trotted off the stairs and to where the three immortals stood. “Sounds exciting."
"Hardly,” Thoth responded, staring down his long, blade-like nose at her. “What are you doing here? It's past curfew."
"She's with me, Thoth. Don't worry about it. Actually we're chasing an imp."
"Her imp? I thought he listened to her."
"He does. This is his offspring,” she confessed.
At their puzzled looks, Baraz—Shea—hastened to explain. “They reproduce asexually. Apparently Quickfingers has been trying to eat his way through the school's stores of food. Figuring that it would cause even more problems, our girl here decided to keep it quiet and feed him on the sly.
"Last night she figured out why he was eating so much. Not because he needs to—it doesn't look like he needs to eat at all. But somehow he has an inbuilt drive to reproduce. Just like the little bugger who's hiding somewhere up there in the candy factory."
"And you don't have any control over him—it?” Athena asked Jaz pointedly.
She shook her head. “Uh-uh. Quickfingers listens to me, most of the time. This new imp couldn't care less what I say, except maybe to send it in the opposite direction I had in mind."
"Did it do this?” Athena asked, prodding one of the corpses with her foot.
"Nope. Baraz did. They're vampires."
"They were vampires,” she retorted. “Looks like they picked the wrong necks to chew on. Thoth—do something with Abner Cadaver and Corky the Carcass here, will you? They're distracting me."
He frowned, but did something with a couple of threads that made the bodies vanish. “Any ideas?"
"Not off-hand. But they're right. This is at least as important as the assault at the casino. We're going to have to trust Sash and Mr. Dalmas to take care of things there until we can wrap this one up.” She turned a withering glare on Jaz. “You have a habit of generating trouble, don't you?"
"Athena.” The word was a low growl of warning from Shea. “She already feels bad enough."
"Well, maybe it'll teach her a lesson."
"What? To stifle her creativity? I thought you mages valued creativity. Don't be a bitch, Athena. At least she's out here trying to fix her mess. She could have just left it for you to take care of."
The look she turned on the other immortal could have peeled paint. “Do you mind not giving me shit in front of our trainees, Deryk? We can talk about this later, in private."
He shrugged, as if it didn't matter one way or another to him. “Just lay off the kid."
"Fine.” She took a deep breath and ran her gaze over the building. “We'd better call Loki in. Next to a few of our most promising students, he's the most creative mage we have."
"Works for me. You have his number?” Shea dug his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. Athena rattled it off as he dialed. “Loki, please.” He paused, waiting. “Hey, Loki. It's Baraz. Yeah, I'm the new hand-to-han
d instructor over at the Academy. I'm here with Athena, Thoth, and one of the students. We've got a situation.” He quickly ran through a situation report and waited for a short time as the other immortal replied. “Yeah, we know about the casino. This is at least as important.” He nodded once and snapped the phone shut. “He's on his way."
Almost immediately another transit tube opened and the red-headed immortal stepped out onto the sidewalk, closing the tube behind him. He wore a slightly distracted air like the old familiar lab coat covering his wiry frame. “So, what's the deal? Some weird magical construct using the candy factory as a feeding ground until it's ready to bud?"
"Make it sound like some sort of mold,” Baraz grunted. “But, essentially, yeah."
Loki rubbed his hands together. “Fascinating. Well, let's have a look.” He turned to peer at the building in much the same way Athena had only moments before. “Huh. So what don't I know about this creature?"
"That's a silly question,” Athena muttered. “We barely know anything ourselves."
"Okay—what don't I know that you do?"
The other three immortals looked at Jaz, who fidgeted under their appraising stares. “Okay,” she said. “His parental unit—the imp I call Quickfingers—can teleport, seemingly at will, and enter some other plane of existence he calls ‘the ethereal plane'. He's pretty much immune to spells and mana effects, and seems impervious to physical damage. I created him a little over a week ago, I think, and he's been eating almost non-stop ever since."
"Now we know why. To reproduce."
"How much did he eat over how much time?” Loki asked with a slight frown.
"Hell, about three times as much as I could,” she answered, shrugging.
"Did he ever seem to become satiated or full?"
She shook her head. “Not that I can remember. He would have kept eating if I'd let him."
"By the sounds of it we could have more than one—you called it an ‘imp,’ did you not?—in there right now. With a theoretically unlimited supply of food, it could generate a bud in less than four hours. How long has it been in there?"
"About four hours,” she answered. “Maybe five."
"I'm really hoping my calculations aren't wrong at this point,” Loki murmured, “but I'm beginning to think they are. Take a look through the walls with magesight."
Jaz did so and paled visibly. “Those little knots that look like spells moving around are imps,” she said. “At least, I think they are."
Loki nodded. “And how many do you see?"
"Fifteen. Maybe twenty."
"That's what I got, too. They're multiplying exponentially, and at a faster rate all the time. We have to come up with a solution before they eat everything in there. If they run out of food, they're going to take off and we'll never be able to find all the little buggers."
* * * *
The barricade seemed to explode inward and four massive humanoid figures, their coloring as such as to make them nearly invisible against the backdrop of the external night, smashed through the rubble and gained the casino floor.
Ben crouched several feet away, feeling the change coming upon him despite everything he could do to hold it back. He was faced with the preternatural and his lycanthropic nature was bubbling up from beneath his skin, screaming for him to defend himself and his pack—to which not only Amanda belonged, but also the few casino employees, both men and women, who had stood beside him to defend the customers they'd helped ensconce upstairs and elsewhere within the vast structure. In that respect, the wolf was more of a pragmatist than Ben himself.
As the humans withdrew from these massive, bat-winged forms, Ben let out a loud snarl of challenge and felt the wolf flow through his flesh. He made a powerful leap onto the carpeted floor in front of the advancing creatures—these demonic images with their obsidian black skin and massive wings—and growled his defiance.
As large as his were form was, these monsters dwarfed him. Each of them might as been as tall as twelve feet, with huge, bulging musculatures and long, black taloned hands. Faces as aristocratic as any king's stared down at him with an absence of anything but mild curiosity. They certainly didn't view him as anything remotely resembling a real threat.
Their mistake. Curling his right hand into a ball, he lunged forward and drove the fist deep into one of the creatures’ midsection. Gaping in shock, it folded straight into a looping uppercut with the other fist that snapped it back upright and sent it tumbling backwards into the ruins of the barrier.
The other three monsters seemed to take exception to this treatment of their fellow. The one on the far left gave an inarticulate grunt of anger and sprang forward, tucking its wings behind it as one massive, claw-tipped hand lashed out.
The wolf was more or less in charge of his body at this point, but the neurons had been trained through regular drills and practice. He wasn't operating so much on instinct as upon reflex. Schooled reflex. He caught the arm with a grasping block, his own claws digging deep into the muscular forearm as he pivoted and jammed his own forearm against the creature's elbow. Rather than allow it to be broken, the monster followed along the path in which he directed it, smashing itself into one of its companions with a horrendous crash that sent both of them tumbling to the floor in a tangle of limbs and wings.
The only one of the creatures still standing, this one obviously female judging by the well-positioned breastplate with the two knobby protrusions on each side of the chest, stared down at him with a markedly amused look on her strikingly beautiful face. Inhuman, perhaps, but truly beautiful in a way that only the most exotic could be. “So you are the werewolf,” she asked in a low murmur. “You are indeed quite the specimen."
He didn't bother replying. This time when he shifted he didn't make the effort to reshape his vocal apparatus to allow him human speech. He simply lowered his head and, when one of the downed monsters began to move, slammed it in the side of its head with a balled fist.
"You have no idea how much it pains me to do this,” she continued. As the one he'd thrown into the debris of the barricade began to rise, she simply took a step back and fired a back-fist into the center of its face. It went back down and stayed there. “I hate my life,” she sighed. “I hate having to serve that ego-maniacal jerk who calls himself our ‘Lord.’ But my people have proclaimed me their ‘Queen’ and their safety hinges upon my conduct."
He continued to watch her warily as she leaned down and took a weapon from the belt of one of the fallen warriors accompanying her. She lifted the glittering dagger—to her it was a dagger, but to him it would be a sword—and turned it over in her hands. “My people are called Abyssians, and we belong, body and soul, to the Dark Lord Hades. Some of us may not like it, but it's the truth. As long as he draws breath the Abyssians must follow his commands, whether we would choose to or not.
"I can't tell you how much I regret this. My name is Feral Dusk, and I am truly sorry.” She raised the dagger and released a incredible vortex of crackling energy. He barely had time to blink before it blasted him to the ground and swept him away into darkness on a great midnight wave.
* * * *
By the time dawn came there were about fifteen agents and other members of the PAC standing around outside the candy factory, including Fenris Wolf and the perennially absent Stormchild, who'd arrived just that morning for a concert series at the Tacoma Dome over the following weekend.
Also present was Nemesis Breed, the city's Chief of Detectives. The tall wiry blond seemed a bit out of place amidst the immortals and preternaturals gathered there, but it sure didn't appear to bother her much. Instead, Jaz noted, her eyes tracked just about everything Shea did, even if it was only wandering in a circle grumbling.
"Mages—to me.” Loki motioned them over and started a huddle. Upon landing on the receiving end of his piercing gaze, Jaz wandered over as well. “One of us started this whole mess, so it'll be up to us to clear it up."
Athena gave Jaz a sidelong glance that ma
de the girl flush. Why doesn't she just kick me out of the Academy, she thought, if I'm that much of a screw-up?
The first possibility, of course, was that she didn't want to let Jaz out of her sight and out of her—admittedly sporadic—control. She already knew that one of the Academy's greatest fears was the appearance of a rogue mage.
"I was recently on another version of Earth—another dimension, if you will—and they have a couple techniques I picked up that might work well for us now."
"You going to explain that, Loki, or just leave us to wonder?” Athena asked, after a moment of silence where everyone stared at Loki waiting for some sort of explanation.
"Keep your pants on,” he snapped back, then grinned. “Or don't. I don't think anyone here would mind."
"You're a sick man, Loki,” she retorted. “Enough fucking around. Just tell us what we've gotta do and let us do it."
* * * *
"Oh, God, I'm exhausted.” Athena dropped her ass onto the steps and sagged against the wall. “That was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be. It sounded easy...” she paused, sighing. “Shows how much I know."
"It did sound easy,” Jaz groaned, settling down on the other side of the staircase. “How hard could it be?” She gave a tired moan and glanced over at the Amazonian immortal.
"Good work,” Athena told her. “You caught on to what Loki was up to before the rest of us did."
Blinking at the unexpected compliment, Jaz shrugged. “Quickfingers has taken me into the ethereal plane before. I probably had a better idea of what it took to get there than any of you did."
Athena thought about it. “Good point."
The amazing thing was how well all the divergent mages worked together to extend their will through the factory. They'd cast a huge net woven out of mana, something none of them had any idea could even be done. Up until now every mage had created and cast her own spells, but this required them all to work in concert.
The web they wove carried over twelve hundred strands. It scooped the little imps up wherever they hid and forced them all into the ethereal plane, locking them there with a weave of such complexity no one would ever be able to free an imp by accident. For the time being, only the mages who'd participated in their imprisonment would be able to call upon them, and would have the power to send them back whenever they willed.
Freak City Page 24