Monster - A. Lee Martinez [97]
A cat shrieked like a banshee as several imps descended on it. A large gray feline trumpeted as it batted aside several attackers. Monster and Chester tiptoed their way through the melee and stepped out into the other room. The clatter of a sasquatch smashing plates in the kitchen and the hungry eyes of the manticore at the top of the steps suggested that the house might not be the safest place.
Outside was safer. The marooned water horse had given up on trying to move and grazed on the lawn. It used its jaws like a steam shovel to scoop out a flower box.
A glittering phoenix picked through some nearby garbage cans. A hairy purple primate with two heads leaped at the bird. The bird responded by self-immolating in a golden flash, sending the ape scurrying away, yelping.
“This can’t be good,” said Monster.
All around the neighborhood, cryptos of every size and classification roamed. A giant feathered serpent coiled on a chimney across the street. At the house beside that one, an eight-foot anthill was spewing raccoon-size insectoids. An amorphous blob with a single huge eye slithered its way over an automobile, consuming it with a satisfied slurp.
A kracken sat in a driveway. A turtle beast, nearly as big as a house, lumbered its way down the street at the breakneck pace of four feet per minute. And a dragon and a drake engaged in an aerial dispute with plenty of hissing and howling.
“It’s the stone. It’s confused,” said Monster.
A flock of pixies flew down to sprinkle sparkling dust on a cat. The feline turned to glass.
“You don’t say,” replied Chester.
“Where’s Judy?” asked Monster.
“I lost her in all the confusion. I thought you had a homing sense.”
“Whatever the stone did to me, it’s fading.”
“Kind of a shoddy enhancement magic, isn’t it?” Chester leaned against Monster to take the weight off his crumpled leg. “I don’t suppose you have the power to mend paper now, do you?”
“Maybe. I’m not really sure. I’m mostly functioning on reflex here.” A slight tingle at the base of his skull told him Judy was near, and a knot in his stomach let him know that Lotus was close by too. But he wasn’t getting directions.
“All the cryptos seem to be coming from that one direction.”
A giant winged caterpillar with a lion’s head dived at Monster. He turned green and smashed it across the jaws. It crumpled to the ground, struggling to clear its head.
“Good enough for me,” said Monster as he ran against the tide of the great crypto migration.
24
Ed could run farther and faster than any human being, and panic pushed her beyond her ordinary limits. A jellyfish nearly scooped her up in its tentacles. An albino alligator man tried to grab her from a sewer drain. And a small pack of goblins tried to pounce and devour her, only to be left behind in her mad panicky dash. She ran down the street without ever looking back, oblivious to most of the cryptos appearing spontaneously around her, never giving a second thought to them once she was past them.
She just ran.
Somehow, Judy got ahead of her. Ed stopped so abruptly, she fell off-balance and skidded across the street. A speeding car being attacked by a purple people-eater nearly drove over her. It swerved at the last minute to plow through a fence and into a car parked in a driveway.
The neighborhood was in chaos. Cryptobiologicals of myth and legend, many forgotten even by those with the power to remember, were everywhere now. Hairy and scaly creatures of all shapes and sizes were busy fighting each other, chasing humans, or just engaging in general destruction. A two-hundred-pound saber-toothed woodchuck toppled a utility pole with one bite. The power went out, and only the half-moon and aura of the city lit the neighborhood.
“Golly.”
A voice spoke in the dimness.
“Give me the stone.”
Ed thought it was Lotus at first. It sounded a lot like her. Not the voice itself, but the tone, the quiet, assured quality that went with it. But it was Judy, who materialized before Ed. Judy hadn’t changed in any real way. She still looked the same, but an aura of