Monster - A. Lee Martinez [66]
The horse nickered and nodded as if it agreed.
Hardy trundled around the corner. He carried a grimoire as thick as a phone book under one arm.
“Don’t they have a pocket edition of that?” asked Monster.
“I prefer the large-print edition. Easier to read.” Hardy struggled to get the hooks of his glasses under his curved horns and over his ears as he flipped through the book.
Monster settled in. Incantations were Hardy’s magic of choice. Monster didn’t care for spoken magic. One garbled syllable could have unpredictable and disastrous results. He’d given up on incantations in college when something had gone wrong while he attempted to light a candle with a chant. Instead, he’d melted the table they were sitting on. He knew magic had its own logic, but even he didn’t see how a wooden table could melt. From then on, he’d stuck with written magic, convinced that nobody could do anything significant by incantation.
Hardy pulled a large Zip-loc bag from his pocket. He cleared his throat and put his hand on the horse’s muzzle. He chanted in strange, unintelligible syllables for a few minutes. A breeze kicked up, and thunder cracked. The winged stallion collapsed into a mound of fine white powder. A miniature tornado swept up the powder and funneled it into the bag.
“What did you do?” asked Monster.
“Dehydrated it for easy storage,” said Hardy as he sealed the bag. “Some of us are professionals.”
* * *
Monster wondered if Judy was really in trouble, but it didn’t make a lot of sense for her to ask him for help. He couldn’t think of a reason to risk his neck by getting involved. He felt bad for her, sure, but it wasn’t his business. He wasn’t the kind of guy to jump on a winged stallion and ride to the rescue. She should’ve known that. He hoped she was okay, but expecting him to get more involved was just dumb.
Monster had Spaghetti-Os for an early dinner, then tried to watch some television. All reruns. He was too weary to pay much attention in any case. Healing magic always had that effect. It wasn’t hard to coax the body to quickly recover from wounds, but it still played hell with his metabolism. Combined with his lack of sufficient sleep, Monster was drained. He fell asleep on the couch again, and woke up a couple of minutes later. He’d changed from yellow to a painfully bright orange.
Orange wasn’t so bad. He could glow when he was orange. As bright as a spotlight if he put some effort behind it, though prolonged radiance dehydrated him. Not really useful, but it was voluntary and didn’t make his life harder.
He sluggishly rose from the couch and trudged toward the bedroom. He was almost too focused on his bed to hear the gentle scratching at the door. Almost.
It wasn’t hard to figure that this was probably another crypto sent by Judy. He didn’t want to open the door to find out. Maybe if he just didn’t answer the door, Judy would get the hint and seek help elsewhere.
Monster flopped into bed and tried to ignore the steady scratching. It grew louder. He remembered the gaborchends, and how that problem had only worsened until he’d confronted Judy. Maybe if he confronted whatever was at the door, he could persuade it to leave.
Worth a shot.
He opened the front door a crack and peeked outside. It wasn’t a winged horse this time, but a gryphon. It had clawed away most of the paint on the door, leaving a deep gouge.
“For hell’s sake.”
The gryphon screeched and pushed against the door. Monster pushed back, but the beast easily shoved its way inside, aside from some difficulty getting its wings through the door.
“No! No! No!” said Monster. “Forget it! I am not going! Do you hear me? I’m not getting involved.”
The gryphon screeched. Then tore away swaths of carpet with its claws.
“Why me? Why not someone else?”
The beast tilted its head to one side, then screeched again. But this was just a dumb crypto. It couldn