by D. N. Leo
Mya was disentangling herself from her airbag as well. Her head popped up above the white fabric. “Yes,” she responded.
“Kirra!” Zach called out, looking at the mess in the backseat.
Kirra pulled an airbag away from her face and muttered, “I’m fine.” She reached for the buckle of her seatbelt.
“Don’t unbuckle,” Zach said quickly. As he spoke, they felt the impact of the animals hurling their bodies at the car. They pushed and shoved the vehicle. One of them jumped onto the hood of the car and reached its giant front paw inside. Zach pulled his dagger and stabbed at its leg. The animal roared and jumped back down off the car. It limped around on three legs, teeth bared.
“Are they the lynxes of magical leopards, Mya?” Zach asked.
“I’m not sure. But they hold a lower rank in their pack.”
Zach pulled out his Eudaizian laser gun. “This gun didn’t work on the old lynx we killed. But let’s see if it works on these minion leopards.”
He aimed at those still crashing into the car. But the gun didn’t work. And it made the crazed animals even angrier.
“Great,” Zach mumbled.
“They’ll toss us!” Kirra shouted.
Even before she finished the sentence, the leopards pounced at their vehicle, managing to roll the car over several times. Zach kicked at the side of the car, throwing his weight in that direction as much as he could to make sure they landed on all four wheels.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Mya growled. She unfastened her seatbelt and stepped outside the car.
“Mya!” Zach shouted, unbuckling and rushing after her. Kirra followed him.
Outside the protection of the car, they were surrounded by hundreds of menacing leopards, stealthily whirling in circles around them.
“What’s your plan, Mya?” Zach asked.
“I don’t have one.”
“What?” Kirra exclaimed.
Zach narrowed his eyes. “Don’t lie to me, Mya. What’s your plan?”
The leopards approached them slowly.
“I’ll tell you my plan if you kiss me.”
“Mya!”
“Will you kiss me or not?”
Zach approached. He placed one hand at the nape of her neck and kissed her. She kissed him back slightly then reached her hand up and yanked his wrist unit off. She shoved him away with her other hand.
“Mya!” Zach exclaimed.
She gestured to him not to approach. They heard a low hum from the leopards. It was in sync with Mya’s movement of the hand in which she was holding the wrist unit. The animals tilted their heads with each movement of her hand. It was almost as if they might start dancing if she swung her arm in a rhythm. “You see, they don’t want to eat us. They’re here for your wrist unit,” she said.
“Even if you combine all three of us, we don’t have enough meat to feed them all,” Zach growled. “But I have no intention of giving them my wrist unit. Give it back to me, Mya. Elanora knows the unit wouldn’t work without me anyway.”
Mya tossed her chin toward the animals. “They’re merely minions. They don’t know that. Their task is to get this wrist unit.”
“Still, I don’t want to give it to them.” He reached his hand out for it.
She smiled and said, “Stay here.” Then she turned around and raised the unit up in the air so the animals could see. Using one of her rare abilities as a deity—running like the wind—she charged away, up the hill.
The leopards took off in her direction in a storm of fur.
Kirra ran after Mya, but Zach held her back. “No one can run as fast as she can. You’ll only slow her down.”
When the last leopard had left the scene, they heard a clapping sound. Elanora stepped out from behind a tree. “She must love you madly. She’s trying to lure the leopards away.”
Zach smiled. “She’s a good deity. And very capable. You must know that by now. What can you possibly do as an alpha if you lose all of your followers?”
She chuckled. “They’re not my pack. And don’t try to use your charm on me. I can eat you anytime I want to. But you’re not to my taste. But now…I’m going to take you. Then I’ll come back for the wrist unit.” She shifted into her lynx form again, shot a menacing look in Zach’s direction, and charged.
Zach pushed Kirra back, pulled his daggers, and lunged at the attacking lynx.
They fought a few rounds, and Zach was sure he had done some significant damage to the animal in exchange for a few minor scratches and bite marks. Then he heard Kirra shout, “Get down, Zach!”
He flopped to the ground as the lynx leaped at him. Kirra stood next to the car with the rifle. She fired at the lynx while it was in midair. Zach’s Eudaizian gun hadn’t done the cat any damage, but the primitive earthly weapon in Kirra’s hands did.
The animal dropped to the ground.
But in a short moment, it scrambled up, eyes blazing. Zach jumped to his feet. He could see the fire in the magical creature’s eyes—the fire of fury. He wasn’t sure what it could do, but he knew it would be nasty.
He looked back to where Kirra stood next to the car and saw the heat from the ground rising up like a transparent curtain of steam. A thought dawned on him, and he yelled, “Get away from the car!” He charged toward her as she ran away from the car.
Zach felt heat behind him as if someone had ignited a line of fire. The heat transmitted quickly through the air. Before he could blink, there was an intense pressure in the atmosphere. The car shuddered and exploded like a bomb.
Kirra had made it several feet away and began running toward him. He watched her as if everything was in slow motion, saw a piece of metal that had broken from the exploded car flying toward her. It was going to pierce her body and impale her from the back to the front.
Zach darted toward Kirra, grabbed her outstretched arm, and pulled her toward him. He swiveled, knowing someone had to take the hit. He angled his left shoulder and could feel the impact of the metal as it penetrated his flesh.
Chapter 7
Leon kicked the man hard, sending him back to the concrete floor. He heard the woman crying, but he couldn’t let the man stand up and attack him again. Leon knew now the man was a shapeshifter. But why had he wanted to capture Leon? And why didn’t his mother seem to know? He could take this opportunity to kill the shapeshifter. But it didn’t seem right to kill a half-conscious man in front of his grieving mother. Leon cursed. He had no idea when he’d grown so sentimental. He tied the man to a chair and left the basement.
Back on the street, Leon looked around and felt the impact of the strange environment on him. He walked away from the theater, found a quiet corner, and opened the map again. He knew it wasn’t drawn to scale, but he found the spot that indicated Wagga Wagga. At least he knew he needed to head west.
“You need help?” a man who appeared to be in his sixties asked. He looked at Leon with a warm smile on his face.
People on Earth are so friendly, Leon thought. He nodded and pointed to Wagga Wagga on the map. “I need to go there.”
The man looked at the map. “You can take the train there.”
Leon frowned. “What sort of training should I take?”
The man stared at him blankly then spoke slowly. “No, you don’t need training to go there. What I meant was that you need to go to the train station.”
“Oh!” Leon said as he recalled reading something about that in his traveler’s guidebook.
The man pointed. “The station is just around the corner. Take the train, and you’ll be at Wagga Wagga in a few hours.”
Leon thanked the kind man and walked toward the station.
The imposing sign of the train station stared down at Leon. He now understood what a train was. He approached a man who looked as if he was giving instructions and flipped out his map asking for directions. The man gave Leon the number of the correct train platform. Heading in the direction the man had pointed, Leon could see the platform with the correct number.
He saw people lining up. He watched as they swiped a card across some kind of a stand, and a waist-high bar lifted to let them through to the platform on the other side where the train waited.
Leon could easily step over the low bar, but he figured it was there for security reasons. If he stepped over the bar without using a card, he would be stopped by the guards. Then he noticed that the bar remained in the air for a short time after a person walked through. That was all the time he needed. He tore out a page of his travel book and folded it to the approximate size of the card he saw people using.
As an elderly woman carrying several bags approached the gate and was busy swiping her card, Leon headed over as if to help her before she dropped her things. She thanked him. He moved his hand quickly across the stand as if swiping a card but in actuality trailed the old woman through the gate before the bar dropped.
He knew he was doing the wrong thing, but the situation called for it. He tucked away his feelings of guilt and walked toward the train.
The train moved at an incredible speed. Although he was transported between the Babylonian court and Earth in the blink of an eye, he had never been able to see the journey or understand how it worked. He couldn’t even judge whether it was fast or slow. But from his very comfortable seat looking out the window, he could tell this railway transportation was fast.
“My God!”
Leon jumped out of his skin as he heard the voice of the woman against his ear. But before he could respond, he saw an authoritative-looking man approaching him along the aisle. He was checking people’s security cards. It would soon be his turn to show a card he didn’t have.
“My God!” the voice said again.
“What do you want?” Leon snarled.
“Please accept my gratitude for not killing my son. I’m not sure what he did to offend you.”
“Well, he knocked me out, bit me with his poisonous teeth, and kidnapped me. If I were at the court, I’d send him to the well to fight the two-headed lizards. Let him see whose teeth are sharper.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Stop talking. Nobody can see you. And I’m about to be found out by that man over there. I don’t have the card he’s asking for.”
“You mean the ticket? You don’t have a ticket for this train?”
“Whatever.” Leon grimaced. “I can’t exactly jump out of the train right now, can I? It’s moving like a storm from an angry god.”
“Do you want me to make this problem go away, my God? You only need to say the word.”
“What? Can you get me one of those tickets?”
“No, I don’t have that kind of power. I can’t make things appear out of nothing.”
“So what can you do?”
“I can make your problem go away. Do I have your permission? I only want to show my gratitude.”
Leon nodded and waved his hand absently. “Do what you have to do. I don’t really want to have to jump out of this moving train.”
In the blink of an eye, the security man grabbed his chest and fell to the floor of the train.
“He had a heart attack. Do we have a doctor on the train?” somebody yelled out.
“Stop the train!” someone else called out. Some passengers rushed toward the man. More followed. They tried to resuscitate the man.
“I think he’s gone,” a man said as he checked the man’s pulse.
Leon jumped to his feet. He spoke between his teeth. “What did you do? I didn’t ask you to kill him!”
“You gave me permission to make the problem go away, my God.”
“But I didn’t ask you to kill the man. Surely there was another way? Can you take back what you did?”
“I am sorry, my God. The only thing I can do is to take souls away. I can’t put them back.”
“What are you? Death?”
“No, my God. But I used to be one of his apprentices. I am a soul trader.”
Chapter 8
Zach grabbed the piece of metal in his shoulder and pulled it out. If Kirra had been stabbed by this while standing by the car explosion, she would have resembled exactly the vision Mya had seen—Kirra dead, floating in fire, a knife piercing her heart. Now that he had taken the stab, he thought he had saved her—at least from this particular lethal incident. But he knew the pain-in-the-neck lynx would soon do something else since she hadn’t been able to kill Kirra this time.
A short distance away, the lynx had stood up and changed itself back into a woman’s form. She looked as if she was ready for a second attack. Hand-to-hand combat with his daggers would ward her off, but he wasn’t sure it would kill the shapeshifter. She seemed to keep coming back. So Zach concentrated and tried his unique talent—his sound waves. He used it mostly to annoy people and had never before used it to kill. But this time, he might have to. He was a sound-bender after all.
He sent a blast of sound at Elanora. Not just any sound. This was the sound he had heard from the old female lynx he and Leon had killed in their hotel room.
Elanora let out a bloodcurdling scream when the sound hit her.
It worked! Zach thought and continued to blast more sound.
The woman staggered back and slumped to the ground on her knees.
Zach kept shooting the waves in her direction. Her skin glowed in a burning red shade as if she were a piece of iron in a furnace. Zach was sure she was going to melt.
He blasted the sound. More. And more.
Suddenly, the woman looked up. Her skin color now looked as if it had started to cool down.
When Zach’s sound waves encountered strong resistance, they bounced back at him twice as hard. There was no mistaking it when the sound hit him. The force was so strong it pushed him backward and lifted him off the ground. He landed on his backside. He stood up, cursed, and blasted again.
The sound hit the woman. She roared—and it bounced back at Zach. He fell again but sprung up to his feet and blasted at her again. He wasn’t sure how long he could sustain this fight. The woman seemed to cool down quickly, and each blast from him appeared to have less impact on her—and cause more damage to himself.
Then Kirra charged past him with the piece of metal he had just pulled out from his shoulder in her hand. She was fast. So fast he couldn’t grab her and hold her back. Kirra said nothing but shoved the jagged metal straight into Elanora’s heart.
Elanora let out a dreadful scream.
Kirra pulled the metal out and stabbed again.
The lynx burst into flame, and the force of the sudden heat pushed Kirra backward.
Elanora’s eyes sparked with fire. The two women stood, staring at each other. Zach darted toward Kirra, but the heat forced him back like a tidal wave. Elanora let out another chilling scream and then exploded into nothingness.
Kirra stood still. So still it was scary. From behind, Zach couldn’t see her face. But he saw her skin turn white and blue and then return to normal skin tone, all within a few seconds.
Zach rushed over. He didn’t touch her at first. She might break like crystal, he thought. He walked around to the front of her. She was looking down, and he couldn’t see her face.
“Kirra!” he said softly.
There was no response.
He touched her chin gingerly, tilting her face up. “Kirra, please don’t scare me.” Her eyes were as glassy and empty as Mya’s in her deity mode. Kirra stared at him blankly as if seeing through him. Then she fell into his arms.
Chapter 9
Mya ran as fast as she could with Zach’s wrist unit in her hand. She had cleared quite a distance with the leopards. She couldn’t believe they could be that slow. They didn’t seem to be able to catch up with her at all. Or maybe she was faster than she gave herself credit for. It was suddenly quiet. Have I completely cut you all loose? she thought, but she kept running. It could be a trap, something to try to get her to slow down. For a while, only the quietness followed her. This can’t be right. If she kept running, she might end up back at the Babylonian court. She
stopped and turned around. The serenity of the Australian outback stared back at her—the animals were nowhere to be seen.
“Where did you all go?” she asked. But she decided to return to where Zach and Kirra were. In the distance, she could see Zach stepping out from what looked like a war zone with Kirra in his arms.
She darted over. “What happened?” she asked, looking at Kirra. She knew Kirra hadn’t died. She didn’t sense her death, nor did she see it on Zach’s face.
“She killed the lynx,” Zach said.
“She killed it? You mean it’s dead? Of course it is. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have said it was. But how is that possible? A lynx of Elanora’s caliber can’t be killed by a human. What did she use to kill her?” she asked, not expecting an answer.
“Will she be okay?” Zach asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, I think she’ll be okay. I didn’t sense her death.”
Zach let out a sigh of relief. “Let’s find a place where she can rest. She stabbed the woman, and the woman burst into flames. Kirra looked as if she were going to break like crystal. Then she passed out. I didn’t see her get injured…”
Before Mya could say anything, Kirra stirred in Zach’s arms and opened her eyes.
“How are you feeling, Kirra?” Zach asked.
She looked at him groggily, then she turned and looked at Mya. “Let me down,” Kirra said.
Zach put her down. She could stand on her own, but he held on to her shoulders to steady her before letting go. “Do you remember what you just did?” he asked.
She looked at him, and then she looked at Mya. She gasped and glanced around. “You took Zach’s wrist unit and lured the leopards away!”
“Yes, I did,” Mya said. “On that note, here you are, Zach.” She gave the unit back to Zach. “I thought I had outrun the animals, but it appears you’ve killed the lynx, and that’s what caused the leopards to disappear.”
“I didn’t kill it. I shot at it, but it didn’t die, and it got really mad.”