Keep Evolving: A Paradise Lot Urban Fantasy

by R. E. Vance

  Red reflected off gray stone and a pair of powerful wings as ScarFace carried Greg higher and higher until it was parallel with me.

  “Time!” Greg yelled. “You’ve got to spend it to make it!” ScarFace flapped his stone wings twice and slowly flew in the direction of the beach.

  “He’s getting away,” I yelled. “Astarte—grab the sling.”

  “Yes, Jean-Luc,” Astarte whispered. “He’s getting away. But we, unfortunately, have bigger problems to contend with.”

  There was a low growl behind me. I turned around to see the rancor no longer had that strange gem on its head. That, and the rancor was no longer a statue.

  The rancor lowered its head, a growl of aggression reverberating from it.

  Hellelujah!

  Chapter 4

  Some Fiction Ain’t Fiction

  I always assumed Star Wars was pure fiction. The sights, the spectacle—a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—were just part of the imagination of a certain George Lucas. But here was an Other that looked exactly like the rancor beast from Return of the Jedi. Makes sense—a universe as rich as that galaxy far, far away could never be purely fiction.

  “So,” I said to Astarte, “we doing this?” I raised my fists up as the rancor tramped onto the balcony.

  “No, Jean-Luc,” she said, touching the nape of her neck and pulling at her collar. “You are.” She gave me a tantalizing kiss on the forehead that was far too distracting given that there was a monster galumphing toward us.

  She pushed me in the direction of the rancor.

  “What are you doing?” I said, stumbling a step in the direction of the rancor. I had just enough time to turn and see Astarte perch herself on the balcony railing. GoneGodDamn she was fast.

  “I think you’re right,” she said. “He is here to help.” She held out the pendant that she had taken from the WildMan at the dock and howled. I don’t mean, she cupped her hands and mimicked a wolf. I mean she actually howled, summoning some ancient voice within and letting loose a cry that demanded the world’s attention. The rancor stopped and stared in awe at the succubus. Hell, even the moon stared down in wonderment at Astarte. It felt as though everything stopped; that as long as Astarte cried out, there was nothing for the world and all its inhabitants to do but listen.

  When she stopped, the world sputtered for a moment before starting up again, returning to its usual scheduled programming—which generally meant it went back to trying to kill me.

  The rancor let out a low rumbling growl. I turned to face it just as it tried to rake one of its massive claws across my chest. The good news about this thing was it was as dumb as a rock and almost as slow. I easily dodged its claw and, feeling for a moment like Luke Skywalker in Jabba’s rancor pit, ducked between its legs and ran inside—if I was going to have a chance to beat this thing, I needed a weapon.

  And Greg had weapons. Lots of them.

  ↔

  It took the creature a moment to wipe the look of confusion off its face, turn around, and follow me into the center of the room. I dodged it when it swung at me for a second time, its claws breaking the case with the Highlander sword in it.

  I grabbed the sword and, pulling it from its sheath, stood to face the rancor. In my best Sean Connery voice, I said, “There can be only one.”

  The rancor apparently agreed because, as soon as those words left my lips, it rose to its full height and tried to snatch me up so it could chomp on me like a midnight snack, get pieces of me stuck between its molars, probably use my femur as a toothpick later. But I pivoted to the side and stabbed the creature in its side. The blade must have been sharp, because I barely had to put any force behind it. The rancor released a howl of pain. I was feeling smug until it backhanded me in the gut, throwing me across the room, back onto the balcony and beneath Astarte’s perch.

  At least I managed to hold on to the sword.

  “Will you please help,” I said, getting to my feet.

  Astarte bit her lower lip in an expression that was not appropriate for fighting a monster and said, “I am helping.”

  “Oh, yeah? How?”

  “Live for a few more minutes and you’ll see.”

  She pulled out two more daggers from GoneGods knew where. We charged the creature together. I fought side by side with guys in the Army for years, and never was an attack coordinated so perfectly. The creature lumbered forward. Astarte tumbled in one direction and I in the other. We slashed at its Achilles tendons, Astarte severing the left one and I the right.

  The rancor crashed to the ground like a felled Redwood and slid across the marble to the balcony railing. Astarte casually followed it, as if she didn’t have a fear in the world. The rancor stood up laboriously, flexing its injured legs until the tendons somehow repaired themselves.

  “It’s a golem,” Astarte said. “It can heal any wound you give it.”

  The rancor grunted and focused its beady little eyes on me with bestial hatred. Then it lunged at me. “Then how do we kill it?” I cried over its growls and grunts, dodging left and right.

  “A lot of damage.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked, using the rancor’s distraction to stab it in the chest. It lurched in pain, and I thought I had it, but then it extended its front claw and picked me up like I weighed nothing at all. It drew me close enough that I could feel the heat of its breath, a thick strand of its saliva glazing EightBall’s collarless jacket.

  I was sure that in another second I would be a headless corpse, but then Astarte came crashing down on it, plunging two blades into its horny back. She stabbed the creature over and over until it staggered, finally dropping me.

  “My daggers have been dipped in poison, they should kill—”

  Before Astarte could finish, the creature, which had been stumbling about the room knocking over priceless memorabilia, shook off the pain and the poison. It huffed and puffed and snarled once again.

  “I guess it walked it off,” I said, pushing Astarte out of the way. The rancor took a swipe at me with its huge claws. At the last second, I jumped on top of the Pac-Man arcade machine, pushed off its control panel, landed astride its shoulders and sunk the sword between two armor plates, deep into the nape of its neck.

  The rancor swung around, swatting me off its shoulders like a troublesome mosquito, and tumbled into the hodgepodge of comics and toys.

  I watched it, expecting it to collapse in death throes. I’d put down dragons, dropped minotaurs—I even sent the archangel Raphael to plummet to the earth with a catastrophic effect. I was able to do those things not because I was super-strong or because I had some super power, but because I could instinctively sense Others’ weak spots.

  But this rancor—it had no weak spot. The sword should have dropped it, but instead of dying like a good boy, it incorporated my sword into its being. I watched the Highlander sword turn a stony gray, then a marble white. The rancor turned around, and the sword hilt stuck out of its back like it was a part of its body.

  The rancor lurched up and bellowed a cry of triumph before landing on its feet again, knocking me into a glass case that held a life-size figure of Arnold Schwarzenegger, à la Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

  Arnold and I toppled over one another, and I ended up facing him, his red, robotic eye staring down at me judgmentally. “I know, I know,” I said, pushing the figure off of me.

  I just about got to my feet when the rancor stepped on me, pinning me to the ground with its elephantine three-toed hoof. I grabbed its two lower tusks and pushed, trying to force its jaw closed, but the weight of the creature was too much. There weren’t enough bench presses in the world that would have given me the strength to keep this up for long—not that I had done many bench presses.

  And that was when things got interesting.

  Someone jumped on the back of the rancor.

  Two massive hands grabbed its upper jaw, mindless of its row of jagged teeth, and pulled. Our combined effort was enough for us to get the d
amn thing off me. With one final grunt, my rescuer twisted the creature’s head back until its jaw practically ripped from its skull. The rancor dropped for all of three seconds before we heard the bones start repairing themselves.

  At least it wasn’t on me anymore. A hairy hand helped me to my feet before getting on all fours and growling at the healing rancor. Enkidu, from the harbor, was standing in Greg’s living room. WildMan and rancor charged at one another, massive bodies slamming together with a thunderous roar.

  Astarte pulled me away from Arnold and looked over at Enkidu. She played with the neck of her blouse and moaned, “See, I told you I was helping.”

  “What …” I said as I sat up, “are you talking about?”

  “Watch,” she said, pointing at WildMan, who somersaulted over to the rancor before leaping onto its back. He clenched his hands in fists and bore down on the beast with the force of a sledgehammer. The rancor’s head hit the floor, shaking the apartment. Enkidu bore down on it again.

  And again. And again.

  Each blow crushed its skull with immense power. Bones crackled and teeth shattered, until all that was left was a flat surface of skin, ground bone and blood.

  Enkidu was panting with exertion, happy that he had defeated the creature before his strength left him. Dismounting, he turned to us and threw back his head, howling in triumph. Then he looked at us, expecting our gaze to be on him.

  Our gaze wasn’t on him. It was on something behind him, on the floor.

  He turned to see the rancor’s skull reassembling itself like an inflating balloon.

  Enkidu sighed.

  “OK,” I said to the case of Smurfs that was miraculously intact. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” I picked up the Highlander sword and charged.

  Stupid. I might as well have announced my attack. The rancor turned and knocked me over. I slid across the marble floor toward the apartment door. It opened, and there stood the frantic, out-of-breath popobawa doorman. “Master of Master Form Filler, a strange human came up without permission and …” The popobawa stopped dead in his tracks as the rancor descended on him. “Oh my!” he cried out, releasing his sonar screech before running out the door.

  Great. Now I was practically deaf. “Thanks, popobawa,” I muttered, barely hearing myself.

  ↔

  Before I could clear the ringing in my ears, the rancor picked me up and threw me into Greg’s massive comic book collection.

  Marvel and DC Comics flew everywhere—a hurricane of sharp colors and chiseled jaws flapping across the modern museum that was his living room. I groaned, peeling myself out of the shattered shelves, the magazines sliding around me. I wanted to take a step forward—rejoin the fight—but my legs failed me and I fell on my rump, my back resting against the imprint of my body. Everything hurt.

  The rancor fought against Enkidu and Astarte, both of them striking it down with blows that would have felled a normal creature. Hell, Enkidu’s punches were so powerful and Astarte’s strikes so accurate that no human, animal, Other or god could have withstood them. But the rancor kept healing itself, and I knew that eventually Astarte and Enkidu would fall from exhaustion. By the GoneGods, I was already there.

  How could Greg control something so primal and powerful? How did it end up in his living room, as part of his collection of 1980s geekery? Sure, the Big Bad—his emperor in waiting, his “master”—could’ve given him the creature as a gift—but for what? To slow us down? To act as his bodyguard? What?

  And how did he control it? It was a statue. A statue, until he took out his slingshot and …

  Holy crap. The ruby!

  I crawled around, my eyes searching the floor. But amongst all the comics and toys and posters and action heroes, it was nowhere to be found. I dug through the piles of expensive stuff until … until … There it was. Just lying on the ground right next to The Mighty Thor #293.

  I picked the ruby up, and immediately my fingers turned gray and my hand lost all sensation. It fell asleep, past pins and needles, past numbness—it turned into a lifeless lump at the end of my forearm. I waved it around experimentally, watching it swing stiffly about like a truncheon, no longer under my control.

  What was most disturbing about the sensation was that turning to stone didn’t hurt. I didn’t want to think what would have happened if I had held the jewel with my fist. I suspect it would have involved a chisel and a few missing fingers for good ol’ Jean-Luc.

  I searched Greg’s cornucopia of geekery for something to pop the gem out of my hand and finally settled on a Dr. Who sonic screwdriver. Of course, it wasn’t a real sonic screwdriver, but it did the trick—the gem popped out of my hand and onto the floor. Lines of red and blue veins crawled from my forearm as my stoney gray hand slowly returned to normal. I’d like to tell you that it felt like pins and needles, but it was more like nails and spikes. Ouch! OK—so bare skin wasn’t an option. I grabbed an old issue of Thor, scooped up the ruby, wrapped it in between the pages and did something the rancor didn’t expect.

  I charged.

  Throwing my whole weight at it, I managed to knock it off Astarte. It reared up. “Strike a pose,” I said, jumping on its chest and slamming the edge of Thor against its forehead. As soon as the jewel touched flesh, it froze. Concrete gray spread from the funneled pages, like I was pouring liquid stone into the rancor’s being. First its head grayed, then its neck, then its limbs, too, becoming hard, unmoving, permanent stone.

  In another second, the rancor was a sculpture once more.

  “What the hell is this thing?” I shouted.

  Astarte walked over to the frozen rancor and examined the crystal, without touching either. “It’s an Eye of the Gorgon. It has to be. I know of no other talisman that turns flesh to stone.”

  “Eye of the Gorgon … As in, Medusa.”

  “Of course, Jean-Luc. Who do you think your girlfriend was? She was one of the most powerful Others the world has ever known, and this crystal was one of her many, many weapons.”

  “Huh?” I guess I’d always seen Medusa as the sweet girl doing her best to be mortal. I mean, how was I to know that the girl with the Hello Kitty purse was a fierce warrior? “How is it that Greg has this crystal?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be with Medusa? Or better yet, lost in the void when the gods left?”

  Astarte shrugged.

  “OK—just another piece of the puzzle … which leads me to my next question,” I said, carefully trying to balance the gem on the rancor’s head. The ridges of its nostrils and brow made it hard to do, but I didn’t dare let it fall off. “Will it hold?”

  “If enough time has been spent on it … yes. But these talismans are created for a specific purpose. The Eyes of the Gorgon only have one function: flesh-to-stone.” She shook her head.

  “And?”

  “It costs you too much. Even I, when time and magic were unlimited, rarely used them. It takes a bit of you with it, storing it for later use.”

  “Like a battery.”

  She nodded. “Like a battery—except the energy it takes comes from within you, and no rest or food will replenish you.”

  “I got it,” I said, still holding the gem to the rancor’s forehead, but this solution wasn’t going to last forever.

  Astarte sensed my dilemma, because she reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a tensor bandage, except these weren’t for ankle injuries. She wrapped the self-adhering elastic around the rancor’s head, firmly fixing the gem to its skull.

  “No,” she said as she worked, “I don’t think you understand. Whoever gave this talisman to Greg has spent a lot of time on it. Years … and for what? So he could lay a little trap. It doesn’t make sense. It’s irrational to give up so much time for so little gain.”

  The first thing that went through my mind was: A Fanatic. In the GoneGod world, there were Others with big enough chips on their shoulders to spend all the time they had on accomplishing whatever they wanted. Often Fanatics were a
bout pure destruction. The gods were gone, and they couldn’t cope with this new world. Better to burn out than to fade away—that kind of thing.

  But Fanatics tended to be the “walk in the room and blow yourself up” type. Whoever imbued this stone with power and gave it to a human was far more calculating.

  There was a low growl. I turned just in time to see a fist smash me right in the nose.

  Chapter 5

  Out with the Old, In with the Chaos

  A second massive fist came down. I sidestepped and tumbled, clutching my nose. Enkidu turned to follow me. But before he could get into the leaping position again, Astarte punched him hard in the face, driving him to his knees.

  He smiled. Blood—red blood—spurted out of his nose, trickling over his lips and gathering in the cracks of his teeth. He stood erect now, and I saw that although he was an imposing figure, he was a whole head shorter than me. For a creature that had just spent several thousand years in the belly of a celestial bull, he still looked human. Hell, he smelled human. He even bled human.

  Others, with their many quirks, did none of those things. Even those who could metamorphose and disguise themselves, under heavy scrutiny could never pass off as mortal humans. It was something in their gait, their smell, their mannerisms that always made them look different. They could fool you for a while, but eventually you figured them out.

  Then there was the issue of their blood. Goblins bled green, orcs bled gray, pixies bled yellow and angels bled light. Of the seven-thousand-plus species identified so far, not a single Other bled red—and yet this manlike being did.

  I took a step back. We squared off, breathing hard, considering our next move.

  “Enough!” Astarte cried out. “Enough,” she repeated. “Enkidu, enough.” Enkidu focused his attention on the succubus. “Do you remember me?” Astarte put a hand out.

  The WildMan gave out a low, guttural warning, at which I advanced. Astarte lifted a hand, signaling me to stop. To wait.