by Oxford, Rain
Dylan was staring at the jar in revulsion. When the nanny tried to feed it to Sammy, Dylan grabbed the jar and threw it in the trash. “That is the nastiest stuff I have ever seen. I wouldn’t feed it to a dog.”
“It’s none of your business!” the nanny yelled and stomped out. The woman’s only job was to take care of the child, but we had spent way more time with him than she had that day. She clearly did not care about him at all.
Dylan rummaged through the fridge before pulling out a bowl of fruit and a clear sack of vegetables. I tried to act dignified and not play with the bag, but the texture was so smooth. It was strong but as flexible as cloth. It was completely clear like glass, but not invisible. “This is plastic too?”
“Yep. Americans use it all the time. It’s in everything, including a lot of food we eat.” Dylan told me that he had used his magic to examine the ingredients in the baby food and saw that it contained many gross chemicals. He stopped cleaning the vegetables to frown at me. “Do you think he can eat solid food?” he asked.
His mother had given him blended food, but he looked old enough to me that he should at least be eating soft solids. “He looks big enough, but I’ll check first.” I washed my hands at the sink, went over to the baby, and held my finger in front of his face. He promptly bit my finger. “Oh, yes, he is ready. He has fangs.”
Sammy raised his hands with his fingers bent like claws and did an adorable impression of a roar.
I washed my hands and helped Dylan prepare the vegetables. Dylan sat the bowl down and fed Sammy what he called a pea. They didn’t smell very good, and apparently they didn’t taste very good either. Dylan handed him the spoon, and the baby threw the spoon down, then spit the pea across the room.
“Peas are yummy. You can’t have fruit until you eat them,” Dylan said.
He handed Sammy a new spoon and walked away. The baby then picked up the bowl and threw it at Dylan. I fell out of my chair laughing and every time Dylan glared at me, it just made it worse. I easily got Sammy to eat his peas and then gave him fruit.
We may have been a little unkind to the nanny by hiding the baby and pretending to be napping at the time. Instead of searching for Sammy, she watched what Dylan informed me was a game show on TV.
The second time the nanny yelled at Sammy, I didn’t get the chance to do anything. Dylan and I were working on a plan to get Sammy off of Earth, when we heard the nanny yell at Sammy upstairs. Before we could make it to the stairs, there was a scream. She ran down the stairs and out the door, yelling that she couldn’t deal with the demon child anymore.
We hurried upstairs to find the little angel calmly snuggling his teddy. He looked up at us, smiled, and held his arms open to be picked up. I picked him up and he squealed with joy.
“Careful not to spoil him. I hear that’s bad for babies,” Dylan warned. Baby Sammy nailed him square on his chest with the teddy, then squealed again as I laughed. “Don’t encourage him.”
Right as I was about to say something, I heard the front door shut quietly. I held up my finger to Dylan and even the baby stopped babbling. Danger. There was danger in the air. I could smell it so strongly that my eyes itched.
“Vivian isn’t supposed to be home for hours,” Dylan’s voice spoke in my mind. This was something we learned to do quite by accident not long after we met. Oddly enough, it was only between the two of us.
“That is not the mother. We have to get out of here. Now.”
Dylan went to the window and pointed out. There was a very small, metal balcony with stairs leading to the ground. He slowly pushed the window open, wincing when it creaked. “You go first and I’ll hand Sammy to you.”
There was a creaking on the stairs.
“You first,” I argued. Before he could argue any further, I pushed him towards the window. He hurried through it, then reached back for Sammy. I handed the baby to him, slammed and locked the window, and pulled the curtains closed.
“You prick! Get out here!”
The door opened.
“Too late.”
The man who entered the nursery was middle aged, wearing a business suit, and had laugh lines on his face, but there was no mistaking what he was. The creature inside him was so powerful and malicious that it couldn’t have been in the body for very long. Even as it stood there, I could sense the body was slowly burning from the inside out.
“Where is the child?” he asked me, his voice raspy.
“What child? No child lives here,” I answered, kicking a toy away.
I was slammed against the wall as if by a giant hand, and held tightly enough that it was difficult to breath.
“I can smell his magic.” He swaggered up to me. “You smell like him.” He wrapped his fingers around my neck and his eyes turned black.
The hand against my skin was hot and his flesh was beginning to char and boil. I could feel something pressing in on me, trying to suppress my mind and soul. It couldn’t. It felt like I wasn’t compatible.
“Traveler!” he yelled at me like it was a cuss word.
Then he released me and I plummeted to the ground, for the power emanating from him left me weak.
He started for the door before pausing, turning around, and heading for the window. I didn’t have time to think whether Dylan and Sammy got away, or even try to use magic. With a burst of adrenaline, I lunged at the creature and dug my claws down his back. Raw power flared back at me, but my claws stuck deep. We both dropped.
I felt like I had run far too long on a hot day with no water.
“Since when do you have claws?” Dylan was standing at the door. “It’s safe now,” he called out. Vivian came in, carrying Sammy.
I looked at my hands. My fingers melted into wicked black claws, which were shrinking and fading to flesh as my adrenaline fled. Soon my fingers were back to normal, except for being covered in blood.
“Mr. Jones… Why would Mr. Jones attack you? He’s a librarian,” Vivian said, keeping the baby away. Sammy was trying to look even as she blocked his view of the man with her hand.
I crept closer and checked for a pulse. “He’s dead.”
“He was dead for a while,” Dylan said. “The creature killed him and used his body. Whatever it is, it’s gone now, but it’ll be back.”
“Excuse me.” Vivian said, handing the baby to Dylan and darting out of the room. I could hear her emptying her stomach in the bathroom. She then made her way downstairs.
I stood, shaking off the lethargy. “What are we going to do now? He knows where we are. He said he could smell Sammy’s magic.”
“We protect Sammy until someone comes to save us. With my magic and your claws, we can do it,” he grinned.
I groaned. Sammy squealed and lunged himself into my arms. I sighed, trying to hold him without getting blood on him.
“He certainly is a bouncy little guy,” Dylan said.
“Why did Vivian come home early?”
He pulled the cell phone out of his bag. “I couldn’t leave Sammy alone. I called her to come home and take him so that I could help you. You managed just fine on your own.”
“No, actually, I think the beast left willingly. I have a new idea for anytime something like this happens. From now on, when I get attacked, my plan is to distract the monster, wizard, beast, whatever, until you get here.”
“I like that. Count me in,” Vivian said as she returned. She handed Sammy a small cup with a lid. He took it and rested his head on my shoulder, not even drinking what looked like milk. Vivian handed me a wet cloth to clean my hands with. “Keep the enemy busy until Dylan gets here. Sounds great to me.”
“Wait… What? Hang on, that’s a terrible plan. You can’t rely on me to always show up in time,” the Guardian said.
Vivian and I shared a look. “Why not? You showed up in time to save me from the draxuni.”
“They weren’t attacking you. The worst I saved you from was bath time.”
“You showed up in time to save my baby from the
monster,” Vivian added.
“If Tiamat hadn’t told me about it, I would never have known.”
“I’m sticking to my plan,” I said. Vivian nodded her agreement and Dylan sighed in defeat. “So, since we can’t stay here, where should we go?” I asked.
“I have a friend we can stay with,” Vivian suggested.
Dylan shook his head. “This creature can take over anybody to get to us. If it is tracking Sammy by his magic, then we can’t stay in one place for very long, but being around other people is probably a bad idea, too.
“He couldn’t get into me. He tried,” I said.
“You traveled between worlds. We can stay on the road. Let’s head to Georgia,” he said. Vivian made a face. “Nothing Earth-shattering ever happens in Georgia.”
Sammy had fallen asleep, so we went down the stairs quietly. Vivian started gathering stuff into a big, flowery bag.
“Why did you leave Houston?” Dylan asked Vivian. “A larger city would be much easier to hide out in.”
She shrugged. “Better opportunities here. I thought Sammy should grow up in a smaller town. Besides, Texas is being destroyed with earthquakes. Compared to Earthquakes and the flu, salty rain is nothing, so I’m damn glad I chose Arkansas.”
“Well, the raining here stopped, so we can probably assume the other stuff has.”
“But why has it stopped?”
“Maybe because the creature found Sammy.”
“Or because Earth’s Guardian has returned to save it. I just wonder why Tiamat hasn’t done anything to stop it,” I said.
“I think something major is going down with her and the other gods.” He opened the door and checked to make sure there was nobody out there.
We all went outside to a big, red and black, metal beast. I saw these transportation machines the day before on the streets, most moving at incredible speeds. They were all different sizes, shapes, and colors, so a person could actually leave one somewhere and then be able to find the same one again when they needed it. Sometimes they made horrible noises and they all seemed to stink, but they were kind of fascinating. This was the first one I got to see up close, and one of the few that wasn’t covered in rust.
“You went and got a Mini Cooper,” Dylan said with approval.
“Is this a car?” I asked him. “I thought you were lying. I really did.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” he said. This was a phrase he used often when I didn’t believe something he told me about Earth. He never explained it.
“There is no quoting Shakespeare allowed in this car, now get in,” Vivian said, strapping Sammy into a tiny seat that was strapped to a larger seat.
I chose to sit next to him, while Dylan sat next to Vivian. The car moved very quickly as I took in the views through the window. There were tall, thin buildings, mud, and dead grass. After extremely heavy and constant rain for so many days, the gray and brown was only to be expected.
“We can stop by my friend’s place long enough to make a few calls and be out of there before anything finds us,” Vivian said. “Maybe we can take a flight to Houston and hide out there. Surely this thing can’t keep up with a plane.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past it,” Dylan said.
I stopped listening for a moment to break down what he said. After focusing on what each English word meant, I had to deduce that he was using one of the many phrases he knew that made no sense.
“What was that thing with your claws?” Dylan asked me privately.
I knew by the way he asked it that he was wondering if I had kept it a secret from him. He may have wondered, but he trusted me enough to ask and would believe my answer.
“I had never seen them before. When he went after you two, I reacted on instinct and attacked. I didn’t even see the claws until you said something. When I calmed down and realized I had claws, they changed back on their own.”
“Is it like your sense of smell? Cause those kinds of things usually go together.”
“When I signed your book, I felt something snap inside me.”
“You created a bond with the world. I don’t know how it feels for someone who isn’t a Guardian, but you should actually be more powerful now.”
My adrenaline was building the faster we drove, but close examination of my fingers revealed no change at all. I felt no inner magical claws ready to come out. Still, I doubted that would be the last I saw of them.
“Do you think Blood is okay?” I asked Dylan out loud.
“I’m sure. I don’t really think we are, though.” We stopped in front of a large house made of stones and got out of the car. “We really shouldn’t be involving more people. We can just keep driving across country until I can contact one of the Guardians to help us,” he said.
Vivian took Sammy out of his seat. “Easier said than done. Let me call some friends; I don’t want to drive all the way to Texas and find out they’re still having earthquakes.”
Sammy started crying as she shut the door and started up the walkway.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“He needs a nap,” Vivian said.
Then direction of the wind changed. The creature was close; I could smell its unnatural power. Before she could get any further towards the house, I took Sammy from his mother.
“Get back in the car! Get in and go!”
They didn’t hesitate or ask questions. We all got back in the car and were moving before I could shut my door. Sammy was now crying very loudly and all I could do was pat his back.
“This creature takes over bodies?” Vivian asked.
“It does. I don’t know if it has to kill an adult to take over or what, I just know that in order for it to take Sammy, he has to be a child. It wants to take over Sammy permanently and can only do that when he’s a baby.”
“What about you and Mordon? How can I know the creature won’t take over you?”
“We have traveled from another world, making us incompatible. That’s why we’re trying to get Sammy off Earth.
Vivian looked at Dylan before returning her eyes to the road. “Dylan? I know we had our day and it was great, but this is my baby. If it even starts to take over me, you kill me immediately, you got that?”
“Oh, Hell. You just had to give the about-to-die-hero speech. Shit.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Keep driving, don’t die, and call it a plan,” Dylan said.
“I love your plans,” I said.
“Drive where? I’ll run out of gas soon.”
“I don’t think we’ll make it to that point,” Dylan said, right before the car started to make a chugging noise and slowed down. The creature was here. When the car failed, we all got out and I handed Sammy to Vivian.
Dylan dug through the flowered bag and pulled out a plastic baby coat. “Cover Sammy up. Things are going to get wet.” She covered the thrashing baby before Dylan took him and handed him to me. “Get back in the car.” We just barely made it into the back seats before it started raining heavy sheets of water. “Keep Sammy dry, this cold could kill him,” he told me.
I left the door open to help if I could, but I doubted I would be any good with hypothermia. This was Dylan’s rain, not the demon’s. Whether he made it rain to hide what has happening, or to create lightning, it still left me useless in the car, holding the baby.
The creature appeared strolling calmly up the road. Steam rose where the water hit his body. This time the creature was in the body of man younger than myself and the body was already nearly burned out.
“It killed a kid,” Dylan said.
I knew in that moment we were in trouble. As much as Dylan wanted to defeat the beast, he would hold back because of the teenager who was already dead. “The boy is already dead, you can’t do anything for him now. Sammy and Vivian will be, too, if you don’t fight. More people will die if you don’t fight.”
“Step away from me,” Dylan told V
ivian.
There was a crackling in the sky right before a bolt of lightning shot down and struck the creature. It froze for a second before continuing to casually walk closer. Dylan struck repeatedly until the creature was too close. He gasped in pain and I thought he had struck himself somehow, but he started clawing at his neck.
Afraid to make matters worse, I stood by in shock as Dylan dropped to his knees. The iron pentagram he always wore slipped out of his shirt and I could see the problem: The metal was glowing with heat. Unfortunately, to keep it from burning his chest further, he grabbed it with his bare hand. Abruptly, the rain ended.
“Let go!” I yelled. He gasped and grunted and yelled but his fingers stayed curled around the burning metal. I sat Sammy away from the door and got out, closing the door behind me. It took longer than it should have to wade through rushing, knee-high, freezing water. “Let go!” I repeated.
“I can’t!” He fell back just as I reached him.
I pried his fingers open and took the star. It was hot, but despite being hot enough to melt, it did not burn my skin. And then it vanished. The solid metal disappeared right from my hand.
But Dylan didn’t get up. “My energy…” he gasped. “It took my energy.”
With my much more powerful friend down and the demon closing in, I became desperate. As my adrenaline kicked in, I could feel my fingers itch. I couldn’t risk looking, but I knew claws had replaced my nails. I focused my fire, which was trickier when I was cold, and shot a perfectly good orb of flames. Immune to the water, the fire struck his chest and spread over his body. The creature went down and I thought we were safe.
Then it got back up. Burning from the inside and now the outside, the creature still advanced. I created an energy shield, not electrically charged because of the water, but it didn’t even slow the creature down.
Dylan tried to sit up but ended up collapsing back against me, holding onto consciousness by a thread. “Now would be a good time to have Shinobu. Or Edward. Or anyone,” Dylan said weakly.
I figured even my father would be of use right now.