Monster - A. Lee Martinez [17]
Monster threw the doll as far as he could. The kojin dropped him and stomped its way over to the baby. Blissfully it scooped up the doll in one of its dozen immense hands. It drew the baby close to its chest and sat down on a sports car, crushing it beneath its colossal butt cheeks.
“Damn.” Monster surveyed his ruined van. “I just had twelve more payments to go.”
Chester tiptoed his way through the safety glass sprinkled on the asphalt. “You okay, boss?”
“I’ll live.” He nodded to the kojin. “How long will that doll keep her distracted?”
“Hours. Maybe days.”
Judy shouted from inside the van. “Could someone help me out here? I think I smell gasoline.”
It took Monster and Chester a few minutes to wrench open the van’s back door because the frame had been bent. After that, it was another minute to dig Judy out.
Meanwhile, the giant grunted a heartfelt rendition of “Rock-A-Bye, Baby.”
5
Monster helped Judy to find a seat on a car hood a good distance from the van. He didn’t see any leaking fluids, but with no sense of smell, he figured it was better to be cautious.
“I put a call in to the Arcane Commission,” said Chester. “They’re sending a team over.”
With a piece of chalk in hand, Monster went over to the kojin. He had to transmogrify it now before the Reds arrived and sealed off the site, robbing him of his score. He drew a wide circle around the creature. The kojin was too busy rocking the toy baby in its arms to care.
Judy twisted her head to one side and pressed the short sleeve of her T-shirt against the cut on her forehead. It’d nearly stopped bleeding, but she applied pressure to stop the red trickle dripping into her eye. She asked Chester, “Why is it that whenever you guys show up I end up with a severe head injury?”
“Our sincerest apologies, Miss Hines. Cryptobiological handling is an inexact science.” He held up a clipboard. “We’ll need you to sign some paperwork. Strictly standard procedure—”
“No way. I’m not signing anything. Not until I see a lawyer.” She glanced over at Monster, still working on his magic circle. “How does that work? Magic.”
“It just works,” said Chester. “There’s really no secret to it. Anyone can do it with the proper training. Of course, doing it well is another matter.”
Monster paused to check his pocket dictionary. “Could I do it?” asked Judy.
Chester hopped up beside her on the hood. “You could learn, but you couldn’t remember for long. There’s a nerve cluster in the human brain called Merlin’s lobe. It has to do with magic perception. In most humans, the lobe is underdeveloped, almost nonexistent. Those types, called incognizants, can’t even acknowledge magic, even when it’s right in front of them. They just don’t recognize it.
“The second-largest group, say about twenty percent, have it developed enough that they can recognize magic when they see it but they can’t really remember it very well once it’s gone. They’re light cognizants. Depending on how light, they might recall small details or none at all. Some light cogs have managed to learn some basic magic, but nothing spectacular or reliable.”
Judy pulled her sleeve from her sticky, clotted wound. “Well, can’t I learn to be more aware?”
“Perceiving magic isn’t a skill. It’s a physiological condition,” said Chester. “Can a monkey learn to drive?”
She didn’t like the comparison, but she got the idea. Monster completed the necessary runes on the circle and stepped back. In a soft flash, the kojin was transmogrified from a ten-ton ogre to a twenty-pound stone.
“I could do that,” said Judy. “How hard is it to draw a circle on the pavement?”
“It’s harder than it looks,” said Chester.
Most everyone in the apartments worked days, and while the cars in the nearby streets slowed down to gawk at the overturned van, they didn’t seem interested in stopping. She wondered if it was because they didn’t want anything to do with magic or if they just didn’t want to get involved. She heard sirens,