Chapter 39: Stuffing

Running across the street in a blind panic is one thing. A thing that, frankly, I couldn’t believe I’d done now that I looked back at it, regardless of the circumstances.

Standing in the middle of the street when I knew for a fact a car was oncoming? Something else entirely.

I grabbed Lena’s arm and hurled myself backwards. She had the same idea, so I’m not sure we saved each other so much as we got tangled up and tumbled to the pavement together.

We needn’t have worried. The car screeched to a halt, parked along the sidewalk between us and the figure. Its lights stayed on, blindingly bright, but its driver side door flew open.

My eyes were full of spots, still adjusting to the shift between only Third Eye light and a car’s brights shining right at me. I didn’t recognize either the vehicle or the person leaning out of it.

His voice cut through my daze. Benji. “What the hell are you two doing?!”

I fumbled for an answer.

Then I remembered we had far more pressing concerns. “Keep driving! It’s not safe here.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, “but if it’s not safe, that’s all the more reason you better get your asses in the car.”

“We’ll be fine,” I shouted. “I’ll explain later. Go!”

He didn’t.

I gritted my teeth. Even as Lena and I dragged ourselves to our feet, I kept expecting shadows to whip forward and envelop Benji’s car.

Maybe the figure wouldn’t hurt him, since he wasn’t a player. As long as their only interest was in a PVP win, he should be safe. Besides, most Third Eye attacks would do only a fraction of their damage to someone with no HP.

But I didn’t know what Material the figure had used to attack us, or how they’d altered it to get its shadowy, responsive form. With Water, I could transmute Iron into what seemed to be mercury. A metal that was fluid at room temperature, anyway; we hadn’t tested if it was as toxic as the real thing. Hopefully we never would, but it did leave me with the fear, and belief, that Third Eye wouldn’t stop a player from creating dangerous substances.

The figure’s roiling shadows were significantly weirder than anything else I’d seen Third Eye make. Would they do some kind of harm disproportionate to their physical impact?

It didn’t matter.

No darkness enveloped Benji’s car. The figure didn’t attack him.

But then, they didn’t attack us, either.

After a moment, as my eyes adjusted to the dim illumination from the convenience store at our backs and reflections from the headlights of Benji’s car, I realized that he was the only person I saw in front of me. There was no line of darkness against the gray stucco of the veterinary hospital.

The figure was gone.

Lena and I exchanged glances.

“Where did he go?” she asked.

“I didn’t see.” I turned back to Benji. “Did you catch somebody dressed in black? Running off, maybe?”

“What are you talking about, Cameron? All I saw was the two of you screwing around in the middle of the street.” He frowned. “All I saw once I got here, anyway.”

Lena looked at me. “What’s he talking about?”

I tried to smile. “I, uh, took a shortcut.”

“You jumped off the goddamn balcony,” Benji snapped. “I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance until you ran off like it was nothing. What even was that?”

“You what?” Lena gripped my arms. “What the hell, Cam? We didn’t know for sure –”

“And now we do.” I met her gaze. “You needed me.”

She averted her eyes, but not before I saw freckles blossom on her tear-stained cheeks. So quietly I almost missed it, she said, “Oh.”

I wanted to scoop her into my arms, but I could think of at least three good reasons not to. Unfortunately, two connected to those tears.

The third was Benji staring at us.

“I’ll explain later,” I told him.

“This better be good.”

“It’ll be something, all right.” I patted Lena’s back and stepped away from her to scan up and down the street.

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No sign of the figure.

Lena followed my gaze. “Dammit. Son of a bitch got away.”

They must’ve done so damned fast. I supposed they could’ve slipped around into the parking lot of the veterinary hospital, or maybe behind it in the direction of the human one. If so, they’d finished dashing through the areas illuminated by the streetlights before my and Lena’s vision cleared, without Benji noticing their movement.

Possible. Apparently.

Which just left one more reason not to spend the rest of the evening with Lena in my arms. The worst reason.

Her shoulders slumped. I think her adrenaline must have fled her. She whispered, “Oh God. Bernie.”

“Your stuffed toy?” Benji asked. “Did somebody mug you and take it?”

Rather than answer, she staggered back toward the street. I caught her arm before she stepped out into it.

She shot me a wounded look.

“Let’s be a little more careful, yeah?” I whispered.

She pulled against my hand, but I could tell it was on principle. She didn’t even try to tug free.

Eventually, she sniffled, rubbed her nose, straightened up, and looked both ways. “Logan’s not super busy this time of night.”

“Still got to check,” I said.

She gave a quick nod.

But since there were no cars on Logan other than Benji’s, we’d run out of excuses to delay.

Lena padded across the street. I followed. Benji watched us pass, staring like he was looking at a couple of lunatics.

Maybe he was right to. I didn’t give a damn.

I had one more excuse not to look at Bernie: sweeping my gaze and my phone around to make sure the figure had fled, rather than hiding to strike us from ambush. If they were lurking somewhere, they’d done a good enough job of it that I couldn’t spot them. I even checked the roof of the veterinary hospital, in case they had enough Air to fly with.

If so, they’d kept on flying.

At last, I drew to a stop behind Lena and lowered my gaze.

Until then, I hadn’t had the time or the heart to do more than acknowledge that Bernie was lying there on the sidewalk. The light from his fire had gone out, and the course of the fight had pushed Lena pretty far from his side, so he’d only been dimly lit until Benji’s brights caught him.

Now I got a better look at Bernie’s condition. His much-patched plushie form was tipped over on its side, legs stiff and sticking out toward us. So far, so normal.

But one hole remained very much unpatched. It was a jagged tear at the seam where his upper left leg met his torso. About an inch of torn red fabric, with fraying thread along each edge. White polyester stuffing puffed out from the gap.

I forced myself to look at him through my phone.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to see. His leg, almost dismembered? Blood pouring from a wound? Him whimpering in pain, or past being able to? A hollow shell with a fiery core burning inside – or extinguished?

I didn’t see any of those things.

I saw the exact same thing I did without my phone’s Third Eye filter. Except that the light from Lena’s blazing dress and wings illuminated him even more clearly, proving I hadn’t somehow switched the filter off.

As for Lena, she sank to her knees on the sidewalk and scooped Bernie into her arms. His leg flopped, and I saw that the attack that had pierced him had done far worse damage leaving than it had entering. Polyester spilled from a hole in his back the size of my fist.

I fell to my hands and knees. Frantically, I scooped up the stuffing.

Lena cradled Bernie, sobbing against his head. “Nonono. This can’t be real.”

I tried to shove some of the stuffing back in.

“Don’t touch him!” she snapped. A sob wracked her body. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to help.”

“Lena...” Her name hung in the air. I grasped for something to follow it up with, but my mind felt as hollow as my heart. I gave up on the stuffing and just wrapped Lena in an embrace.

I felt her shoulders shake, heard her wet sobs, but I couldn’t see anything. At some point, I’d squeezed my eyes shut to try to stop tears from streaming down my own face. Unless it had started raining – it was way too cold to rain – I hadn’t succeeded.

I didn’t know how long we knelt there. If we’d been left to our own devices, we might’ve stayed till midnight. If the figure had crept back up on us, they could’ve spent hours lining up flawless killing strikes on the backs of our heads. We wouldn’t have so much as looked up.

The one who interrupted us wasn’t the figure, though.

I was vaguely aware that at some point, the light streaming through my closed eyelids had gone away. Of booted feet on the sidewalk behind me.

I didn’t pay attention to any of that until Benji said, “What the actual fuck.”

I forced myself to look up.

Once again, he stared at us like we’d gone crazy. He looked us up and down, looked Bernie up and down, then shook his head. He put a hand on the gray stucco. “You two are good actors,” he said, “but don’t you think it’s in kinda bad taste to do it right here?”

I blinked tears away and looked around, uncomprehending.

Lena’s head snapped up. She gulped, trying to clear a clog of snotty tears. She almost managed. “W-what?”

“It’s a vet hospital, right?” Benji rapped the wall with his knuckles. “People’s actual pets die here.”

Lena surged to her feet. More stuffing spilled from Bernie’s back as she squeezed him. “What do you think –”

“He doesn’t know,” I said gently.

Her eyes snapped to me like I’d slapped her. Her lip trembled.

“He doesn’t know, Lena,” I repeated. I scooped up all of Bernie’s stuffing I could find and stood to put an arm around her trembling shoulders. “That’s on us. We never explained any of this.”

“No shit,” Benji said.

I kissed Lena’s hair. She buried her head against my chest.

I raised my phone and tapped from the camera with its Third Eye filter to my saved media. I wasn’t going to share all the videos I had on there – some of them showed us at the construction site, where we were technically trespassing, to give just one example – but one Lena and I had taken when we were testing how Bernie’s movement worked? That was fair game.

Of course, that meant I caught a glimpse of him in salamander form, bounding happily through our apartment.

I gulped back another wave of tears. After that didn’t work, I waited until I felt like I could speak clearly. I held the phone out to Benji. “Watch these, Ben.”

There was enough light to see his scowl fade when I called him that, although his eyebrows were still screwed up in confusion. I felt Lena stir against me and gave her a squeeze.

He took the phone and cocked his head. “What am I looking at?”

“Bernie,” I said. “And more of what Lena and I haven’t told you about Third Eye.”