Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass)

by Marlow, Shaye

  “You and your friends tried to rob me,” Sunny said.

  The girl snorted. “Rob you? Master Zhong wouldn’t have allowed it. More likely, you tried to hurt somebody, Wū jìyì .” The way the girl said it, it was a curse. Sunny had a great deal of experience with people who spoke to her like that, and it was never pleasant. She decided she had better things to do.

  “So is that Master Zhong?” Sunny asked, pointing.

  The girl looked. Sunny ran. When she peeked back, the girl was still standing where she’d left her.

  “Tadzi told me to watch for you!” the girl called. “I know I saw you ‘cause I broke the stick I held in my hand.”

  Sunny winced. Aside from Gary and her sister, both of whom she’d trained to use a notepad or Post-Its to record her visits, she’d never had anyone figure out an antidote to her Aura of Forgettability so quickly. Knowing the girl’s penchant for flips and pulling triggers, she stayed hidden.

  “He says the devaputra can make something to disable it in the astral, but you’ll have to do the rest.”

  Sunny hesitated. Should she show herself? Or was it just a clever trap?

  The native girl snorted and threw the stick aside in disgust. “Yeah, whatever. I hope the Náakw eats you!” She started to walk off.

  Sunny waited for her to leave. She was, after all, not about to repeat the same mistake twice.

  The native girl hesitated after a few paces, looked over her shoulder, then scoffed, shook her head, and kept walking.

  After a few minutes had passed, Sunny quietly got up and went over to the alder thicket that the girl had indicated. She had already checked the site once and found nothing, but upon second inspection, the layer of leaves brushed away to reveal the hatch from last time.

  Sunny checked over her shoulder, then slipped into the tunnel.

  When she came out the other side, it was late afternoon.

  Sunny pulled her phone from her pocket to call Daphne, but found it had gotten waterlogged from her dunking in Thunderbird Falls. “Damn,” she muttered, watching water dribble out from under the glass. A new phone was definitely something she didn’t have money for.

  She looked nearby for someone to borrow a phone from, but—oddly—no one was reclining on the grass at Mirror Lake Park. She walked to the road, but she didn’t see anyone for several minutes. In fact, the Dome was unusually silent for that time of day, almost like everyone was inside.

  That was just starting to register for Sunny when something small and stinging hit her in the side of the neck. She immediately lost strength in her legs and went down to her knees.

  “You owe me twenty bucks, asshole!” she heard the older, combat-clad DPS agent from earlier call out. Sunny fell forward, and she saw him jogging towards her, once again wearing paramilitary black.

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t hit her,” Khaz said. “I said you couldn’t bring her in on your own.”

  The last thing she saw was Khaz bending down to pluck a dart from the side of Sunny’s neck. He cocked his head at the dart, then down at her. He did not look happy, his lips set in a grim line. “I think it’s time for some answers…don’t you?”

  Chapter 13: Devaputra

  When Sunny woke up, she was seated at a steel table, her wrists chained to an eye-bolt in front of her. She lifted her head groggily.

  “Looks like our slippery little leprechaun’s awake,” the older—but ripped—agent said. He spat out a toothpick and slid off the counter against the wall, cracking his knuckles as his big shoulders flexed menacingly. And, now that Sunny was getting a good, close look, she realized he looked familiar from somewhere…

  The chainsaw guy, she realized with panic. The one who killed the ‘bear’ on his lawn…

  “So,” Darren said, “you wanna tell us who you are, what you are, and who you’re working with?”

  “You have the wrong person,” Sunny said.

  “Bullshit!” Darren slammed his fist into the table. “Dortez is following you around like a poodle!”

  “Uh, you got that backwards, Gramps,” Sunny said. “I’m tracking him so I can kill him. Go check his apartment. I killed his kid.”

  “So that’s why he took out the side of the Aurora ,” Darren snapped. “You killed one of his kids , you stupid—”

  “Damn right !” Sunny interrupted, lunging forward. She was brought short by the cuffs linking her to the table. Getting as in-his-face as she could, she snapped, “He’s out there killing kids. Good kids !”

  “And since you woke him up, he’s killed seventeen people!” Darren retorted. “You might as well have killed those people yourself!”

  “Oh yeah?!” Sunny snapped. “How many extra suicides are we having this year? Since you’re probably too much of a jarhead to do that kind of research, gee, let’s see, it’s five hundred extra just in the first three months. How many of those corpses does he use to hatch his freak demonspawn? How many of his spawn are now out there doing the same fucking thing?!”

  Darren narrowed his eyes at her and cracked more joints. “I’m gonna teach you to appreciate—”

  “Top, go take a Sudoku break,” Khaz said from behind her.

  “I’m due some break time,” Darren announced. “I think I’m gonna go do a Sudoku.” The man stopped cracking his knuckles and walked out.

  Sunny grimaced and turned to see Khaz, in his opalescent Indian sherwani, walk around the table to sit down in front of her. He crossed his big hands in front of him and just looked at her. Sunny scowled back, refusing to be intimidated by a poofy-pantsed freak.

  “Would you like to start or should I?” Khaz asked.

  Sunny knew she was in deep shit, but she tried not to let her nervousness show. Chained to a table, talking to a BPI agent who remembered her… Yeah, she was looking at jail time.

  “How about I go first.” Khaz’s voice was pleasant, but there was an underlying threat to his words. “It’s high time you know what you’re dealing with.” As he spoke, his image shifted, the sherwani elongating and becoming a roiling cloud of layered, shimmering energy. Under those flowing iridescent sheaves, his tawny skin took on a light-eating voidlike quality. Glinting, black opal horns sprouted from his head, twisting out and forward, the points ending in front of his face, like a bull’s. His face shifted, no longer quite human, but not animal, either. Having been only medium height as a man, he grew in size by over a foot and his eyes took on a luminescent green and purple flame, like they were lit from within, and with that came an unsettling feeling of power that made Sunny’s heart pound with an instinctive fear. Like everything in the room, right down to her mind, body, and soul , belonged to this creature, and he could shape it with his very will, at a whim.

  Sunny felt herself leaning away from him, being brought up short by the chain on her wrists.

  “Now it’s your turn,” the man—creature ?—said, lazily leaning over the table towards her. “Show me.” It was another one of those strange commands, but with more power this time, it was all Sunny could do to resist it.

  “Show you what?” she gritted, fisting her hands to keep from screaming.

  He slammed his big, obsidian-black hand into the tabletop, making her jump. “Do it!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she screamed, stunned and humiliated by how afraid she was.

  The creature blinked at her, green-purple eyes blazing. He leaned forward until his face was all but touching hers. “Show me,” he growled. His teeth, Sunny realized, were a predator’s teeth.

  Sunny didn’t reply. With him this close, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t think …

  The creature took a deep breath through his nose, delicately inhaling her like a savory morsel. “Show me, little veilkin,” he warned. It was unmistakably a threat.

  “Show you what ?” Sunny babbled.

  The creature narrowed his eyes and inhaled again, much more deeply this time. She felt herself extend , felt her body go weak… She felt that part of herself ge
t cut off, trapped within the creature’s body.

  Is he… eating…me?! A new wave of terror was magnified by the threat in his alien eyes as he held her within him, the way he seemed convinced she was something she was not. He could swallow, she thought. He could swallow part of me and I’d never see it again.

  Her strength returned to her on his exhale and he smiled viciously, showing those sharp teeth, stark white against the ebony skin of his lips. “Get the picture?”

  Sunny definitely got the picture. He’s a demon. Fuck me he’s a demon. Her whole body was shaking. “Please let me go—I don’t know anything.”

  “I can do this all night.” Almost casually, like he was playing , he took another breath, and Sunny felt herself get drawn into him again. And now that she knew what to look for, Sunny felt it this time. She felt herself flow into his lungs, felt her very essence get trapped inside him momentarily before he let her go again on the exhale…

  He licked his lips. “What are you? You taste…amazing. And there’s so much .” He groaned. “It’s hard not to take a little for myself.” His purple-green eyes watched her ponderingly, like he was debating doing just that.

  Oh shit, oh shit oh shit…

  Unable to get any farther away, brought up short by the cuffs digging into her wrists, Sunny shuddered, transfixed in a stranglehold of terror that choked off all rational thought. “Please…”

  “You’re still being stubborn?” he chuckled. “Fine. There’s no escape this time, my little friend. When you’re ready to give up, let me know.” He leaned forward and casually breathed her in again. He smiled as she went limp, seeming to be enjoying himself. He held her that way much longer than the last time, meeting her eyes, letting her know he didn’t have to let her go again.

  Please , Sunny begged him with her eyes, because she was too weak to speak.

  “Show yourself,” he urged.

  Unable to speak, she just shuddered in terror, knowing she was being eaten alive, unable to stop it.

  He frowned. “What is wrong with you? You know you’ve been made. You know I can consume you. Just show yourself so we can talk.”

  When she said nothing, he narrowed his eyes and breathed in more… She felt more of herself drain away…

  Faced with a demon, being eaten , it was all Sunny could do just to keep a grip on her sanity.

  The creature made a disgusted sound and let out a whoosh of breath. When he finally released her, Sunny couldn’t make anything come out of her mouth other than a whimper of fear.

  That didn’t seem to be the response he had been expecting. “Why are you being so goddamn stubborn?”

  Her hands were shaking so bad that, even fisted, her chains were rattling. He must have heard it, because he looked down and peered at her hands a moment before he followed the chains back up to her face. “Why don’t you show yourself?” He sounded puzzled.

  “Demon,” she babbled. “You’re a demon.” Then, at his recoil, she made a nervous chitter of relief that he was no longer so close.

  “You think I’m… But you’re—” He froze, glancing again at the chains trembling against the metal table, then back at her face. Frowning, he reached out for her head.

  Sunny let out a little sob of panic and tried to pull away, but was brought short by the chains.

  “Please let me see?” He waited, the inhuman, taloned black finger hovering over her brow.

  Sunny shuddered and watched him. Taking that as permission to continue, the creature touched her forehead, the pad of his finger warm, the talon just lightly brushing her skin.

  The same sickly green light that she had seen come out of the girl in the ambulance spun out of her forehead, wrapping itself around his arm, displacing the opalescent sheaves of energy there. The creature cursed and yanked his hand away, flicking the green luminescence aside and blowing on his finger as if he’d burned it. His eyes jerked back to her face, and she saw shock. “That’s a spell .” His glowing purple-green eyes went wide. “You’re human .”

  A moment later, Khaz sat in front of her, complete with Indian sherwani. No horns, no added height, just a BPI agent giving her a sheepish look.

  Sunny leaned over and vomited. Her whole body was shaking uncontrollably.

  “I’m so sorry.” The man—thing ?—sounded almost…contrite. He bit his lip, looking like he was searching for things to say. “The spell on you is a very good one. Many layers. Very strong. It makes you appear…to be something you’re not.” He coughed, looking guilty. “Do you, uh, know who did it?”

  “What are you?” Sunny rasped.

  Khaz looked uncomfortable, then glanced behind him at the door. “It would be best if you forgot you saw that.”

  “Un-fucking-likely !” she shrieked. The terror was gone, swept away with the disappearance of the beast, leaving indignant rage in its place.

  He gave her a long look. “I can make you forget.” He seemed to catch himself with a wince. “If you give me permission.”

  “No . I’d rather fuck a diseased wolverine on PCP.”

  He winced. His Indian skin no longer ate the light and he didn’t have horns jutting from his temples, but they had been seared into Sunny’s memory like a brand, and now she couldn’t see him without seeing what he had been .

  Khaz cleared his throat awkwardly. “I think maybe I have some explaining—”

  Darren barreled into the room, looking irritable. “Sorry, I lost track of time doing a Sudoku and I—”

  “Does he know what you are?” Sunny demanded of Khaz. She put as much threat into her words as she could.

  “Do I know what?” Darren stopped, giving the tile floor a frown. “Why the fuck is there vomit on the floor? Did she vomit?”

  “You really want to finish that Sudoku,” Khaz said.

  “Fuck this, I’m gonna go finish a Sudoku.” Darren walked out.

  “He’s not very smart, is he?” Sunny said, giving Khaz a pointed look. “I mean, not even questioning the stuff he’s told to do? It’s almost like he’s being…compelled .”

  “I’m his boss,” Khaz said, but his face was reddening.

  “Bullshit ,” Sunny cried. “You’re one of those things you guys are hunting. How can he not see that?!”

  Khaz glanced over his shoulder at the door, which Darren had left open, then leaned forward to whisper, “Look, I’m really sorry about—”

  “Just let me go !” she snapped, reeling away from him. “Don’t you dare get close to me again.” Her heart was already hammering at the thought of him breathing her again.

  Khaz opened his mouth, looked like he wanted to argue, then closed it again. He leaned back and considered her, tapping his fingers on the table. Finally, he said, “All right. I’ll let you go. Then what?”

  “Then I’m gonna go find and kill Dortez.”

  Khaz’s eyes widened. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “You saw what he did to my block,” Sunny said. “He’s gonna go after my family .”

  “Dortez isn’t killable,” Khaz snorted. “Especially not by you .”

  We’ll see about that. Sunny squinted at him. “What about something like you?”

  Khaz’s fingers stopped tapping on the steel and his gaze caught startledly on her face. He seemed to hesitate.

  “You’re a devaputra, aren’t you?” She was proud of herself for remembering the word the old fart in her dream had used.

  Khaz bristled, and his body language was enough to confirm. “Who told you that?” he demanded.

  Sunny laughed. “What, so you can scare the crap out of him , too?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what kind of misinformation is out there.”

  “Misinformation? What, like there’s a soul-stealing monster running a division of the BPI?” Sunny jerked the cuffs. “Let me out of here. Or I’ll start telling people what’s really going on here.”

  The BPI agent narrowed his eyes at her, and she thought she saw a flicker of that purple-green fire. “Is
that a threat?”

  “If you want it to be.”

  She held his scowl unflinchingly until Khaz finally caved first and looked away. “I’m sorry for scaring you. It was meant for…something else.” He tossed a tiny set of keys across the table to her. “Please leave Dortez alone.”

  “What, so he can murder more people in peace ?”

  Khaz sighed, deeply. “Something like that. He’s…very powerful here.”

  “No, fuck that.” Sunny had grabbed the keys and was already unlocking her cuffs. “He gave my nephew PTSD. He needs to die.”

  “Look, you have no idea what you’re messing with.”

  “But you do?!” Sunny demanded. “Why are you guys just letting him kill people?!”

  Khaz bristled. “If you had any idea how much I want to destroy that abomination, you wouldn’t even ask me that.”

  “So why don’t you kill it?” Sunny asked. “Can’t you just, like, breathe it or something?”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?!” The thing before her was obviously some sort of predator. “Just eat him.”

  Khaz hesitated again. Instead of answering her, he said, “I’ll go distract the crew while you slip outside.”

  As he was standing, Sunny stood with him. “That person who said you were a devaputra said you could help me kill Dortez.”

  Khaz snorted. “Not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  He laughed. “Because this isn’t my realm. I don’t have the authority to—” He hesitated, catching her eye with…nervousness ? He seemed to shake himself and quickly looked away. “I’ll go run interference.”

  “You really want me to leave now,” Sunny mused. “Like you’re afraid of me . Why?”

  “You want me to change my mind?” he growled.

  Following a desperate hunch, Sunny said, “I want you to help me kill Dortez. I want your…service.”

  The BPI agent went completely stiff and he blinked at her as if she had been the one to just grow horns.

  “I’ll pay,” Sunny babbled. “Whatever you want.”

  Khaz studied her, his face completely unreadable. Without another word, he turned and walked out, leaving Sunny alone in the room, the door open behind him. She considered whether or not to follow him. Could he help her kick Dortez’s ass? If he could, why hadn’t he done it already?