“Aunt Sunny!” the kid cried, seeing her. He got up to rush towards her.
“Stay there,” Sunny commanded, making the kid stop, mid-lunge. As Rusty blinked at her, uncomprehending, she put a couple extra steps between them. “What’s your mother’s favorite type of candy?” Sunny asked.
Rusty blinked at her, obviously confused. “Pink Nerds.”
Sunny lowered her guns. Her sister had been neurotic about Nerds, always sorting the candies by color, and always handing off to Sunny anything that wasn’t pink. Sunny closed the distance and went down on one knee beside him, lowering the Super Soaker to grab Rusty’s chin. He looked terrified, but she didn’t see any signs of anaphylaxis.
“You gotta help Mom,” Rusty babbled. “Please, Aunt Sunny.”
“I will,” Sunny said. “How many members of your family are up there, Rusty? Mom and who else?”
“Mom, Will, and Baby Jeannie,” the kid said obediently. “Everyone else went to Thom’s soccer game with Dad.”
Sunny nodded. “Get down the stairs, okay? Go all the way. There’s a man outside who will help you.”
“What about Mom and Jeannie?”
“I’ll get them,” Sunny said, though her heart was already wrenching at the thought of being wrong. “Go downstairs. Aunt Sunny will take care of things from here.” God she hoped that was the truth… She gave Rusty a nudge and picked up the gasoline-packed Super Soaker again. Once she was sure he was headed down the stairs and wasn’t going to try to follow her, Sunny started climbing again.
In her head, over and over, Sunny saw that truncated foot, flopping over as she hit it with the edge of the door.
Please be alive, she thought, her heart trying to tear through her ribcage. Fucking be alive.
She got to the tenth floor and hesitated at the exit to the stairs. Peeking around the corner, she saw that the doors to the six tenth-floor apartments were wide open, but nobody was in sight.
Please be alive, Sunny thought. It had become a mantra. Please don’t be dead. Please be alive…
She crept closer to the door to Daphne’s apartment, which her daughter had decorated with pink butterflies. It, like the others, was ajar.
Inside, she could see the entry and book-lined living-room. Beyond that, sunlight filtered in through the glass walls and ceiling of the atrium. She gingerly pushed the door open wider.
She saw a small stockinged foot, moving gently against the floor. She heard little wheezes…
Sunny shoved the door the rest of the way open and dropped down beside William, her sister’s five-year-old. The boy’s mouth was open and he was gasping, tight, barely audible whistles. His whole arm was red and inflamed, with puffy white marks on his bicep. His face was swollen, his tongue sticking out.
“Shit,” she murmured to herself. Watching the entry deeper into the apartment, Sunny carefully pulled her sack over her shoulder and set it down beside the boy as quietly as she could. She got out her EpiPen and dosed him with it, then made him take a few puffs of albuterol.
Deeper in the apartment, someone sobbed with pain.
Cursing under her breath, Sunny gave Will a Benadryl injection, then, shotgun lowered, cautiously pulled him out into the hallway.
Behind her, a smug voice said, “I wondered how you were doing it.”
Sunny froze and turned, slowly.
“You’ve had some medical training.” It was the big military man from the gathered group of onlookers who had tried to stop her from coming inside. And, now that Sunny was paying attention, he looked like one of the EMTs that had been at the scene of the Willow massacre, running gurneys in the background.
“So,” Dortez said, crossing his arms over his big, burly chest, “tell me how you managed to get past me outside without me noticing.”
“I scaled the wall,” Sunny said. At her feet, William’s breathing was improving, which was good, because if Sunny got any of Daphne’s rugrats killed, she knew her twin would never talk to her again. Ever. “South face.”
“Hmmm.” The man cocked his head at her. “Odd, since that helpful young boy ran out and said you’d saved him on the stairs.” He took a casual, lazy step towards her. “How are you doing it?” He cocked his head. “I’ve reviewed the video footage. You don’t have a command word. Is it a field, then? An aura?”
Sunny took a nervous step backwards, deeper into Daphne’s apartment. Dortez followed her, stepping over William, totally unfazed by the shotgun staring him in the face.
“So, to extrapolate,” Dortez continued, “the moment you step out of the radius of effect, I’ll forget you were there. Is that about right?”
Sunny took another step deeper into the apartment. Her heels hit the Super Soaker and she pushed it deeper into the apartment with her.
Dortez took another step towards her, an arrogant smile taking over his face. “Or is it when I look away from you that the spell takes effect?”
Daphne appeared in the doorway behind Dortez. She was bloody, dirty, pregnant, and she’d tied a shredded piece of cloth over a bloody wound in her forehead. She was carefully approaching Will, watching Dortez.
Sunny pushed the Super Soaker deeper into the apartment with her heels and continued to back up as Daphne painstakingly lifted Will over her shoulder. She nodded at her backpack, which was set against the wall, just inside the door. Daphne saw it, nodded, and slowly bent to pick it up. Then her twin sister gave her a look and twisted her head to the left.
Sunny chanced a sideways glance. She could see Baby Jeannie huddled against the wall, whimpering. The toddler was covered in bruises, but no blood that Sunny could see. Sunny returned her attention to Daphne. I’ll get her out, she willed her twin to understand. Just go.
Daphne glanced toward her baby girl again, then back at Sunny nervously. Reading her twin was like reading a book. Take her with you?
Sunny gave her sister an affirmative nod.
“I told you,” Dortez chuckled. “I figured out your trick.”
Raising her voice, Daphne said, “So what’s in here, a bomb?”
Dortez frowned and turned.
Sunny grabbed the Super Soaker, picked it up, and aimed it at Dortez’s back.
“How did you escape again?” Dortez snapped at Daphne. “That’s the third time !” He took a lunging step towards her sister, who had spun and was running towards the stairs as quickly as her child-laden body would go.
Sunny soaked Dortez’s back with gasoline. Then, when he whipped around with a snarl, tentacles sliding from his flesh, Sunny lit a match and set him on fire.
As Dortez was digesting that, his stolen body becoming a billowing column of flame in less than a second, Sunny ducked to the side in the gout of black smoke that followed, grabbed Jeannie, and ran to the atrium. From the atrium, she lunged out onto the outdoor sundeck, separated from the other apartments’ by short privacy walls.
She knew there was a fire escape on the outside of the building, but Sunny didn’t have time to unfurl it. She leapt the small brick wall separating the rooftop dwellings, dodged into the next door neighbor’s apartment, and ran through the mirrored layout that returned her to the main hallway. Dortez tried to give chase, but he stumbled to a halt somewhere in Daphne’s living room, that wind-whistling roar shaking the floorboards. Sunny felt the building around her start to creak as something heavy began to settle in the apartment next door.
Crap, she thought, dodging out into the hall and down the stairs. She met Daphne halfway, still waddling as quickly as she could go with William in her arms. “Trade me!” Sunny cried, handing her sister her youngest child in exchange for the medical supplies. Daphne took Jeannie, Sunny threw a still-gasping Will over her shoulder, and together they bolted.
By the time they made it back to the bottom of the stairs and out into the crowd of onlookers, smoke was starting to billow from the uppermost floor.
“Mom !” Rusty cried, running towards them and throwing himself in Daphne’s arms.
Holding h
er son, Daphne turned on Sunny. “Did you get him?!” she cried.
“I set him on fire,” Sunny said, pointing.
Daphne froze. “You did what ?!” She glanced up, saw the smoke, and went pale. “That’s my apartment!”
“Just get in the truck,” Sunny said, dragging Daphne and Rusty over to Tommy’s Chevy. “Drive! Don’t come back until this thing is dead!”
“Will needs to get to a hospital!” Daphne said, climbing in behind the wheel as Sunny got Will settled into the seatbelt.
“I treated him already, but he could use another dose. Give him one each of these in a few minutes,” Sunny said, handing her sister another dose of cortisone, Benadryl, and an albuterol inhaler. “And if Jeannie starts showing symptoms, give her some, too. Should hold you over until you get to the ER. What about you? He scratch you? Any signs of anaphylaxis?”
“Don’t think so,” Daphne said. At one point, Daphne had trained as an EMT with Sunny… But then she’d gotten pregnant again, and gone back to mopping up baby vomit and spaghetti spatter.
“Just in case.” Sunny tossed more drugs onto the seat beside Rusty, then threw the backpack over her shoulder. At the top of the building, a gigantic octopus was rolling over the edge of the upper-story gardens, roiling tentacles getting caught in the greenery as it thrashed. It wasn’t on fire, but then, Sunny figured that was probably too much to ask for.
“Go!” Sunny cried, slamming her hand against the door of the Chevy. After hesitating only a moment, looking anxiously at the smoke billowing up from her apartment, Daphne put the truck into reverse and mowed through another patch of floaters to get back out to the road. Then, putting the truck into gear, she drove away.
Now what ? Of her original supplies, Sunny had a shotgun and a machete. Even her knife had gone to that money-grubbing Irish cabbie.
Chunks of cement and torn shrubbery came raining down on the lawn from above as the Náakw reached across with a twenty-foot tentacle and latched onto the next building over.
Seeing the monster clinging to the apartment complex like an octopus to a rock, people on the ground started to scream and back away. As if in response, the Náakw started tearing out windows in the new building, its tentacles seeking around inside the lower story apartments…
It’s looking for people, Sunny realized, stricken. It wants another skin.
Shotgun in hand, she started for the nearby building.
A grip on her jacket brought her up short, spinning her. “Gimme that,” Darren’s voice growled from above as he yanked the shotgun from her grip. Almost carelessly, he yanked Sunny around and shoved her at Khaz. “Done enough damage for one day, don’tcha think, firebug?”
“I’ve gotta stop him!” Sunny cried, stumbling away from them. “He’s gonna find another skin and get away!”
Darren moved to block her path, shotgun held dangerously between them. “I think you’re due for a time-out.”
“Look at that thing!” Sunny cried, coming dangerously close to crying. “I can’t believe you’re just gonna leave it up there!”
“Fact is, we ain’t equipped to handle a god,” Darren growled. “And you had to go wake it up.”
As if to punctuate his words, the massive creature tore a piece off the building and threw it into a cluster of floaters.
“That’s not a god!” Sunny said. “It’s just a goddamn squid !”
“Oh yeah?” Darren sneered. “Tell that to the twelve thousand people who were sacrificed to it in Mexico back in the day.”
At Sunny’s startled blink, Darren gave her a vicious smile and added, “Maybe you should’ve read the whole docket, sweetie.”
Up above, someone screamed. Sunny glanced over Darren’s shoulder, saw the octopus retrieve a woman from a broken window and yank her out over the pavement. Instead of trying to eat its victim, the creature let go. The woman shrieked as she fell ten stories, her cry coming to a sickeningly abrupt end as she hit concrete.
“No!” Sunny lunged to get around Darren, who flipped her over his back and threw her to the ground with the speed and efficiency of a martial artist. Sunny hit the grass hard, the wind knocked out of her. She blinked up at the sky, gasping.
Above her, Darren chuckled. “Thirty years in the USMC,” he said. He brushed dirt off his forearm. “Beats mind-tricks any day.”
Khaz crouched beside her, giving Darren an irritated look. “She irritates you. Go back to the van to cool off.”
“You know what?” Darren growled. “I can’t stand this entitled millennial bullshit any longer. I’m going back to the van.” He turned to walk away.
“And leave the gun!” Sunny snapped, sitting up.
Darren laughed. “You wish, mama-san.” He kept walking.
Khaz glanced at her, then sighed. “Leave the gun.”
“It’s a piece of shit anyway,” Darren said, lowering it to the ground. Then he stalked off to the van. In the driver’s seat, Sunny could see the corpulent woman in a new floral print, once again bobbing her head to some music.
Up above, the monster shrieked and slipped into the hole it had created in the side of the building, disappearing within.
Sunny lunged up to retrieve her shotgun, but Khaz grabbed her arm.
Sunny hesitated. She looked at Khaz over her shoulder.
“You wanted help?” Khaz asked softly.
Sunny’s heart started to pound. “Yeah?”
Khaz seemed to scan her eyes for something. Then, seemingly coming to a decision, he said, “Meet me at the Eklutna Wall in two hours. There’s a…ceremony…involved.”
Two hours ? “But that thing —” she started.
Khaz’s eyes flickered to the now-empty side of the building and he shook his head. “It spent three thousand years in hiding—it’s already gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone —” Sunny started. “It doesn’t have a new skin yet!”
“Doesn’t need one. It can hide in a crack the size of your pinkie,” Khaz said. “Create an interdimensional hole and stay there the moment it senses danger.”
“But I destroyed its hidey-hole!” Sunny snapped. “Burned the plants it was using!”
Khaz blinked at her. “You burned the—” He looked flabbergasted. “How?”
“It dragged me back to its lair and I tore them out of the nooks and crannies around Thunderbird Falls and set them on fire.”
Khaz stared at her a moment later, then seemed to shake himself. “Okay, that’s good—very good , because it means it can’t slip away if we destroy its shell—but we still won’t be able to find it by hunting it down. It’s too smart for that.”
“So we use me to lure it out,” Sunny said. “Easy.”
Khaz gave her a long, considering look. Almost reluctantly, he said, “We’re dealing with something that was worshipped as a god for thousands of years. It consumed so many souls in that time that that’s essentially what it became. If we’re going to kill it, you’re going to have to change your tactics.”
“Like what , exactly?”
Khaz met her eyes again, then looked away…nervous ? “I’ll show you. In two hours at the Wall.” He stood, his gaze flickering back to her face one last time before he turned and hurried off.
Sunny grabbed her shotgun and jogged over to where the woman had fallen from above. She squatted beside her, but didn’t need to check her pulse to tell she was very dead. Her head was flattened and her neck and lower body juxtaposed in an angle that gave her goosebumps. She put her fingers to the woman’s neck and checked anyway, for old time’s sake.
Dead.
Sunny stood, unable to help the sinking feeling that she was responsible for this. First the Willow massacre, now an apartment complex on fire, another torn to shit, and a crumpled stranger on the pavement.
Nearby, a man was crawling out from under some shrubbery. “Did someone get that on video? Anyone?” He was looking up, not even noticing the dead woman.
“No one’s gonna believe us!” a woman cried, a
lso not noticing the corpse. “A freakin’ octopus …”
“It’s like that giant bat thing!” someone else cried from an open door across the street.
Sunny looked up at the building, wondering if she would have any luck hunting the Náakw down.
Me and what army? Sunny thought, glancing down at her shotgun. It seemed kind of pitiful, considering the size of the creature she was going up against. Kind of like hitting an elephant with a BB gun.
Still, she, Sunny Day, had started this, and she was going to goddamn finish it, even if it meant dousing herself in copper and getting herself swallowed whole.
To that end, she walked over to one of the onlookers and grabbed their phone from their hands. “That cop told me to,” Sunny said, pointing when they complained. They looked, forgot, and she dialed.
Daphne picked up on the first ring. “Sunny?” her sister blurted.
“Yeah,” Sunny said, feeling deflated. “Look, it got away. Take Gary and the kids and head to Fairbanks. For real this time, okay? Take Dad, too.”
“We’re already in the North Dome,” Daphne told her. “Dad’s saying it’s ridiculous, but Gary saw Will and told him to shut the fuck up and get in the car. He’s taking us to the Megarail now.”
Score one for the pedophile. Sunny felt the teensiest stab of respect for Gary before it withered and died in the face of her resentment for the impregnator-of-sisters. “How’s Will?”
“He was fine after twenty minutes. We didn’t even need to take him to Emergency.”
“Okay. Stay safe. I’m gonna find this thing and kill it.”
“Sunny, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea—”
“Hey,” the guy nearest her said, grinning and gesturing to the phone at her ear, “you got a phone just like mine!” He reached for his pocket to show her.
“Gotta go,” Sunny said. “Don’t come back ‘til I call.” She hung up just as the man was digging into an empty pocket, his expression morphing into suspicion. To the man, she said, “So you’re the one who dropped it.” She handed the phone to him. “Found it on the grass over there.” She pointed.
The man immediately beamed again. “Oh…thanks !”
Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 25