by Mary Dublin
Finding herself positioned immediately in front of Jon's pocket, she knew what he was getting at. She leaned out, gripping the lip of the pocket while he held it open for her. As she climbed in, she couldn't help but think about Cliff's comment on how uncomfortable it was to carry her. She could only hope that Jon wouldn't feel the same.
"Think this'll be too distracting?" she asked with a grunt, shifting around to face forward with her arms folded over the side. It couldn't be much more distracting for him than it was on her end. His heartbeat thudded right through the fabric, to her wings, to her back. Though she couldn't see his face well from her new vantage point, Sylvia felt the jacket crinkle this way and that, and imagined he must have been shaking his head.
"I can hardly feel you in there," Jon answered, sounding a little flustered all over again.
Still pinching the lip of the pocket open, Jon strolled over to the bathroom door. The room passed by swiftly, his long strides thudding right through her and endangering her grip on the pocket. He turned to face his reflection in the mirror, bringing them both face to face with their odd reality.
"What about you?" he asked, tugging at the bottom of his jacket to smooth it out. Even then, the dent of her hidden form was barely visible. "Does this… feel okay to you?"
Sylvia didn't answer right away, eyes fixed on the mirror. Their reflection really put things into perspective, and it made her insides crawl almost as much as seeing the humans' silhouettes standing over her for the first time. Her gaze trailed up higher to Jon's face, and her unnerved expression softened into a smile.
"It's great," she answered, but her enthusiasm was forced. "I mean—this is fine. I've got plenty of room, and it's like…" She looked straight at her reflection, face falling. "Like I'm not even there." She adjusted, aware of how far her feet were from the bottom of the pocket. "It works."
Cliff's reflection entered behind Jon's. He looked much the same as usual, not counting the superhero amount of tools he had crammed into his harness.
"Get your head outta the clouds," Cliff dangled the other utility harness out for the taking. Sylvia gasped and white knuckled the pocket as Jon spun on his heel to take it. The boys passed looks over her head, a silent conversation that she was once again cut out from.
Jon slipped on the harness over his shoulders, clipping it around it waist first before adjusting the strap across his chest.
"It's okay," he muttered to her, his long fingers pulling at the canvas straps right over where her feet tip-toed away from the outer edge of the pocket. "I'm not gonna smush you." True to his word, the strap was left noticeably loose, in a way that wouldn't add any pressure on her pocket-hideaway at all.
Once Jon dropped his arms, Sylvia released a breath she didn't realize she had been holding. After dealing with a full-out battle from within Cliff's pocket in the cave, she would have expected to have gotten used to a human's massive movements right at her back. Unfortunately, there was no ignoring it. The memory of the dog hunt fresh on her mind, she leaned forward and turned a nervous gaze down at the rest of Jon's harness.
"What do you expect to find?" she asked with a frown.
"Local news reports are flooding in," Jon said, lumbering back into the bedroom. "The bodies of a few homeless guys have been washing up at sewer outflows."
Jon crossed the room in a few long strides. He pulled a handgun out from the nightstand drawer and slid it into a holster. Sylvia resisted the urge to drop to the bottom of the pocket. Only five minutes in and her arms were starting to burn from holding her up. All Jon's moving didn't help.
"But they didn't drown. They were carved alive," Cliff tacked on. "Teeth marks reportedly found on the bodies. Big ones. Not sure if we've got another monster dog on our hands or not. Whatever did this, it wasn't an accident."
More than ever, Sylvia worried about what exactly she was getting herself into. She could still see scattered human bones in the cave and hear the monstrous dog ripping into its latest kill. Maybe her kind did have the right idea, keeping away from the world and staying close to home. She had to close her eyes for a second to gather herself, adjusting her arms with a huff to reestablish her hold on the rim of the pocket.
"Doesn't seem like a coincidence, does it?" she mused, veering away from thoughts about her home—former home. "I mean, unless it's a regular thing to have two unrelated sources of humans getting torn apart in the same area."
A chuckle broke the tension, pulling Sylvia's attention up and to the side. To her surprise, Cliff was smiling at her.
"You catch on quick, short stop." Cliff arched an eyebrow at her, giving her a look that Sylvia liked to think was approving. "Even for us big, scary humans, this ain't normal."
Jon slid a matching, battered flashlight into the holster on his hip. "It's getting worse," he muttered cryptically.
The comment did nothing to calm Sylvia's fraying nerves. She took a glance around the room, at the charts and articles on the walls. After spending mere days with the humans, the information and images became less of a curiosity and more of eerie illustration of their lives.
"And what exactly do you get out of all this?" she asked, genuinely puzzled. It did no good trying to look up and see Jon, so she focused on Cliff instead. "You put down that dog… and then what?"
Cliff's full lips parted, looking a bit taken aback by the question.
"What we get out of this?" he echoed. "If we put this thing down too… nobody else dies because of it. I dunno know about fairies, but that's what we call results."
His green eyes lingered on her for a moment, in a way that made her skin crawl. She was reminded acutely that just earlier this week, Jon and Cliff had been saddling up to go hunting something… something that ended up being her, even if it was a case of mistaken identity. She was grateful when he turned away and his heavy steps thumped toward the hallway.
"Keep your head down, shortie," he called over his shoulder.
"I didn't mean it like…" Sylvia trailed off. Cliff was too far out of earshot for her to explain herself. She deeply regretted asking, but there was no taking it back. There she was, boarding in their home, and she couldn't help but feel like she had just insulted them.
Needing no further prompting, Sylvia carefully released her hold on the lip of the pocket and slid down to the bottom. She adjusted herself in the darkness, feeling Jon's heartbeat and breathing on one side, and the loose strap of the harness on the other. At the moment, she would be glad to go unnoticed.
***
Rusted, heavy metal scraped across concrete. Muddled voices above ground became clear as the manhole cover was lifted off and lowered aside by two pairs of hands. A circle of blinding daylight pierced the darkness within. The ray of light shone down upon a rusted ladder, and beyond that, pierced a pair of crusted, scaly set of eyes. They dilated into slits, jerking skyward as the outside noises disturbed the silence. Without so much as a bubble left in its wake, the creature submerged beneath the polluted stream and disappeared.
Cliff leaned over the mouth of the sewer opening. One hand angled the flashlight beam down into the entryway, the other he cupped over his nose and mouth to stifle the stench.
"I'm gonna need to shower for a week after this one," he said, stifling a gag.
Jon leaned over as well. There was no hiding the apprehension in his expression, even from Sylvia's awkward view of him from the pocket. She quaked as a tremor ran through Jon without warning. She turned and found Cliff's hand retreating from slapping him on the back.
"Well," Cliff drawled, waggling his eyebrows at him. "Ladies first."
Jon shot him a sour look. But all the same, he tucked his flashlight onto his belt and lowered himself feet-first into the manhole. The treads of his boots made tender contact with the slick rungs of the ladder, made moist from condensation. Cliff held a single beam of light steady from above, becoming more distant as Jon descended deeper.
Sylvia was already missing the caves beside the lake by the time Jon rea
ched the bottom of the ladder. She kept a hand clamped over her mouth and nose. The position made it even more difficult to hold herself to the top of the pocket. It was nearly pitch black around them, until Jon clicked his flashlight on.
The beam of light revealed rounded passageways stretching off into darkness in both directions, a sight that reminded Sylvia of her village. That was where the similarities ended. Foul water ran between the walkways that lined either side of the concrete tunnel. Having prepared herself for a gruesome sight waiting at the bottom, Sylvia held in a sigh of relief after her eyes dared to sweep around. No bones or carcasses. Then again, she was getting only a limited view of what had to be a much larger system.
"Any idea which direction the bodies have been washing up from?" she asked, pulling her hand only slightly away from her mouth.
Jon tucked the flashlight under one arm and pulled out his cellphone. The screen shone like a beacon in the murkiness of the city's underbelly. He shifted this way and that, gathering his bearings with a barely functional compass application.
"The northwest outflow by Waterbeek. Which is roughly…" He settled on the tunnel to the right, the flashlight settling on the crummy, snaking pipes along the ceiling. "That way."
He pocketed the phone when the ladder started to clang with Cliff's incoming footsteps. He stood off to the side, angling the flashlight upwards to light the way down.
Without warning, a light pressure bore down on Sylvia. She gasped, heart racing… realizing seconds later that it was only Jon. His long fingers found her form through the thin wall of the pocket, rubbing her gently without looking.
Despite being startled, she smiled at the comforting gesture. There was little she could do to return the favor since her arms were occupied, but she began to wonder if Jon received some sort of comfort from the gentle action himself. She remembered how he petted her during his argument with Leeana—the way the motion became more fervent the angrier he got.
Sylvia was freshly startled when Cliff dropped down heavily beside Jon. The flashlight beam swiveled away from the ladder and toward the right tunnel. Craning her neck, she looked toward Jon with a faint chuckle. "Not nervous, are you?"
Jon tilted his chin to his chest to look straight down at her. He smiled briefly, but the warmth was fleeting.
"I'm always a little nervous before a hunt," he confessed, his voice low as he started toward the right-hand tunnel. "It's probably the reason I'm still alive."
Amidst his every rattling step, Jon's heartbeat pounded at her back. It was an irregular flutter of strength mingled with anxiety, certainly a confirmation that he had been telling the truth. She could only imagine how Rebecca and Damian would have laughed—a human hunter, afraid.
She supposed she couldn't blame him, given the grisly knowledge that humans were turning up dead with chunks missing. But she tried not to be nervous. The hunters were prepared, unlike the victims. Still, it was hard to feel confident in a dark, concrete tunnel where every thudding footfall carried them farther away from escape.
Keeping her qualms to herself, Sylvia focused on following the flashlight beams and straining to hear beyond the hunters' walking. After all, she had insisted on joining the hunt in the first place. The least she could do was keep an eye out.
Then she felt it.
Precisely the same feeling she'd gotten in the caves when approaching the dog; that gut-twisting sensation that begged her to get as far away as possible. Before she could think on the feeling, something caught her eye.
Far ahead on the edge of the light, she swore she saw the water stir a bit on the edge of the light. When she whipped her head in that direction, there was barely a ripple on the surface. "You see that?" she blurted, gripping the edge of the pocket tightly.
The hunters stopped short, going rigid as stone.
"Where?" Cliff murmured urgently.
He swung his arm wildly around them, grazing every inch of their surroundings with a pass of light. It was dizzying, focusing only on the skating dots of light that she couldn't control. A shiver ran down Sylvia's spine as the light touched the surface of the water. It was filthy to the point of opaque, and the flashlights couldn't penetrate beyond a few inches in.
Tense seconds ticked by. The water's current remained constant, undisturbed under their scrutiny.
"What did you see?" Jon asked.
"The water moved up there—I mean, I know it's already moving, but…" Sylvia trailed off, eyes never straying from the stream even as she gathered herself. "I didn't get a good look, but I think something broke the surface for a second. Whatever it was, it's moving with the flow. Not there anymore."
Cliff got closer to the water, the toes of his boots nearing the edge of the platform. He frowned, eyes darting all over the churning surface. "Gashers don't swim," he muttered under his breath.
Cocking her head at the word gashers, Sylvia glanced up, trying to get a read on Jon's face from her low vantage point. He wore a similar, confused frown.
They were keeping something from her.
"It's moving with the current," Jon's voice rattled her from such depressing thoughts. "Let's keep moving."
He took the lead this time, his steps careful but quick as the cement walkway bridged to a short set of stairs that had long since rusted-over. Beneath the perforated metal of each step, Sylvia would occasionally glimpse glass bottles or crumpled blankets beneath the steps. Nothing had been touched in days, and her heart clenched to know exactly why.
Halfway down the steps, a new noise joined them from the distance: an eerie groaning of metal, punctuated by three dull thuds. Just around the corner, the flashlight beam was victorious at last: the end of a powerful, spiny tail was illuminated in its narrow beam.
"Holy shit!" Cliff's shout was nearly lost to the roar of the water. He took off at high speed, Jon right on his heels.
The quaking was too much. Sylvia lost her grip and slipped down to the bottom of the pocket in a heap. She scrambled to right herself, jostled up and down from Jon's running. Finally, she managed to grip fistfuls of fabric in front of her to stay upright. Her heart pounded in her ears, and she had half a mind to stay where she was, let the boys deal with the owner of that massive tail.
She heard a menacing hiss and more thuds up ahead. Gritting her teeth, she pulled herself back up, ignoring the soreness in her arms as she fought the violent, dizzying motion Jon inadvertently created.
To make matters worse, that gut-wrenching instinct of dread threatened to cloud her thoughts. Where on earth were these animals coming from? What were they?
By the time she managed to cling to the lip of the pocket, a splash rang through the tunnel, easily trumping the volume of the hunters' steps.
Sylvia paled when she caught sight of the water. The monster was no longer fleeing, but cutting easily against the current in their direction.
A strange growl was garbled into the water foam, rows of ragged teeth flashing in and out of view within a long snout, bared threateningly. The closer it got, the more Sylvia realized the water concealed much of its bulk. The thing was massive—she reckoned if Cliff and Jon stacked atop each other would hardly rival its height. Even if she had wanted to scream, she doubted she was capable of making any noise at all.
There wasn't much walkway left. It cut off toward an eight foot wide metal grate. The current pushed the water through, falling into intangible darkness that Sylvia didn't care to think about. The flashlight's illumination was blood-chilling, but necessary. Losing sight of the monster for even a moment could be fatal.
Four gunshots lit up the space at a deafening volume, the muzzle flash illuminating Cliff's desperate scowl for a split second each time. The charge was interrupted as the creature took pause for its injuries. Its black eyes targeted Jon next, the muscular tail flicking out of the water to power a new thrust forward. Sylvia went weak in the knees when Jon fired at it. She clutched her head hard, unable to rid the ringing from her ears. Blurring, she saw the massive monste
r change course. It was going for the grate. Going for an escape. Distantly, the clicks of hands over metal told her the hunters were reloading their guns.
It was going to disappear. The thought blared through Sylvia in a panic, though it was a wonder she could even hear herself think with her ears ringing so painfully. Even if Jon and Cliff managed to slow it down, the current was still on its side. Before she could change her mind, Sylvia removed her hands from her ears and aimed toward the water, keeping her upper arms clamped over the lip of the pocket to prevent slipping back down.
Her own voice was barely audible to her as she muttered a spell. More gunshots rang out, startling her into stopping. She grimaced, knowing she didn't have enough mobility of her arms to pull off the spell anyway.
Focused solely on fixing that, she hoisted herself upward as she restarted the incantation under her breath. The moment she was able, she flicked open her wings and brought them buzzing to life. Hovering up level with Jon's shoulder, she threw her arms out again toward the current—the massive beast was mere moments from reaching the grate. It slowed suddenly, having to thrash wildly against her redirection of the water to move forward.
Sylvia released a shuddering breath, head pounding more than ever in her effort to keep the spell active, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she lost the fight.
To her dismay, Jon's gun lowered. He was distracted, telling her something she couldn't hear. He spun in her direction, looking entirely conflicted about how to proceed. While Cliff leveled a shot between the monstrosity' bobbing eyelevel, Jon reached out a hand for Sylvia.
Though she was spread thin for magic, the monster was held in place. But that didn't keep it from trying. A scream stuck in her throat as a massive, ridged tail rose up out of the churning water and swung down in a slicing motion. It clipped both Jon and Cliff in the middle, slamming them into the crumbling brick wall. The steady beams of their flashlights vanished, one swept into the foaming water, while the other skittered up to the foot of the stairs. The tunnel plunged into darkness. Cliff's shot went awry, a deafening mistake to hear as it ricocheted off the ceiling in two places before finding a watery grave.