Chapter 51: Bandersnatch

I can't save her.

The thought flashed through Rudy's mind as he slammed his shoulder into the hard muscle of the bandersnatch for what seemed like the hundredth time.

If Milissa had used whatever powers she possessed, both she and Rudy might have made it out of the woods alive.

If they'd run in opposite directions, one of them almost certainly would have.

If Milissa had run and Rudy stayed behind, she, at least, would have had a pretty good shot of getting home.

But Milissa hadn't fought. She hadn't run.

She'd slumped against a tree and stared and sobbed and screamed, and now she was so hoarse all she had left was staring and sobbing. She seemed to be in shock, though why it surprised her that a creature she'd warned him about should try to kill her, Rudy couldn't guess.

Rudy had to fight the bandersnatch to save her.

Trouble was, he couldn't.

His fighting style relied on two things: humanoid bodies to shatter and urban environments to navigate. Here he had neither, and no chance.

The bandersnatch, a full ton of muscle, looking a bit like a raccoon the size of a cave bear, swatted him aside with a paw that moved like lightning and hit about the same.

Rudy rolled to a stop against a tree.

By the time he got his bearings, the animal had reared back toward Milissa. It walked with a steady, shuffling gait and covered almost as much ground as Rudy could at a dead run.

It was faster in the trees.

Rudy couldn't save Milissa.

All he could do was die trying.

He snatched up a rock and hurled it at the bandersnatch. It shifted to eye him. Its facial fur, patterned in brown, black and white into a feral parody of a smile, seemed to mock him.

"Come here and eat me," Rudy shouted. "I got all the lean, nutritious muscle you could ask for, baby. So come and get it – if you've got the balls!"

Maybe the bandersnatch was female. Maybe its species didn't have that distinction.

Maybe it just liked tender meat better than it did healthy.

Either way, it swayed back to Milissa and shambled toward her faster than it had any damn right to.

Rudy ran after it. He couldn't catch it before it caught her, so he kicked stones into his hands and pitched them as he went. It slowed him down, but it kept the bandersnatch at least confused enough not to maul the Kyrillos girl huddled before it.

Maybe with his flight suit, he could have found a weak point, assuming the creature had a weak point. But the Kyrilloses had insisted he wear their Principle damned local clothes.

Rudy had gone along with it to get Chloe into one of their dresses.

He'd hardly seen her since.

Wasn't going to see her again.

The bandersnatch whirled back toward him and leapt. It grabbed onto one of the trees, soaring with unbelievable grace in the New Kyrillopolis gravity, and kicked off into a leaping charge. Its 'smile' widened into a maw bristling with gnashing fangs.

Rudy put a stick into the maw and rolled away.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He wasn't going to lose.

Not here. Not to some dumb animal.

Not his style.

"Don't you know who I am," he demanded, kicking the end of the stick and trying to drive it up into the creature's braincase. It didn't budge, but Rudy was too pissed to care.

"I'm the Principle-damned Crimson Phoenix," he shouted.

He took flight. Lower gravity, better leaping. He kicked off the tree beside him, spun, came down with both legs on the stick.

It broke.

Rudy's fall didn't.

He hit the ground hard enough to knock the air out of him. Before he could roll away, a paw crushed his chest, pinning him. With a toss of its head, the bandersnatch rent the rest of the stick, spit half out and swallowed the rest.

"Hope you choke," Rudy spat.

It didn't.

What kind of luck was that?

The bandersnatch bent down and almost daintily bit a chunk from Rudy's chest.

He threw his head back and howled, kicked against the implacable chest, jabbed feebly at the paw that gripped him.

What the hell was Milissa doing? She was supposed to be a nob, wasn't she? She was supposed to have powers!

The bandersnatch gulped down its morsel and bent bloody, slavering jaws back for more.

Rudy thrust one arm toward the jaws and flailed the other back. His fingers closed over a rock. He jabbed it into the bandersnatch's flaring nose.

The beast reared onto its hind legs.

Rudy rolled away before it crashed back down, but he couldn't dodge the backswing of its snarling head. He felt skin and shirt rip in the half second before he was sent flying.

The shirt!

He skidded to a stop and tore the cloth from his back, wrapping one of its sleeves around his arm and holding the other. Adrenaline and fear drove out the cold and the pain from his chest and his bruised body. Or maybe he was going into shock.

The bandersnatch charged again, but this time Rudy was waiting. He shifted his feet at the last second and brought the wrapped cloth down over the beast's head like a hood.

It seemed like a better idea before the bandersnatch bowled through his attack and knocked him into the air. It screeched as the shirt wrapped around its stubby snout. Blinded, it rammed into a tree, bounced off and kept running, thrashing its head to try to dislodge the shirt.

Rudy flailed behind it. He had to kick off the ground and its flank to keep from being trampled. The cloth was sturdy, but he could feel its seams tearing. It wouldn't hold long.

He tried to haul himself up. He didn't think he could break the bandersnatch's neck, but nothing else leaped to mind.

It didn't matter. He didn't have the strength to clamber up the animal's side.

He was starting to feel the cold, too.

Colder than the New Kyrillopolis autumn should have been.

He swallowed a curse. Blood loss kicking in already? As soon as his adrenaline rush ended, he was dead meat, literally. So was Milissa, unless she'd finally gotten it through her head to run that pretty little ass of hers away. He couldn't even glance to see, and he had no idea which way the bandersnatch had run.

Assuming it hunted by sight, he could at least hope it didn't, either.

It rammed into a tree again, scraping the bark along its side. Rudy saw the trunk coming, but he had no time to roll away. All he could do was kick off the ground and get his uninjured, or less injured, side facing the tree.

He grunted when it hit and slammed him so hard into the bandersnatch's body he could feel its layer of protective fat squish.

The creature skidded to a stop. With one last wrench of its head, it tore through the remains of Rudy's shirt.

He fell, broken, beaten.

Milissa lay a few meters away, not even sobbing anymore, just staring into space and trembling.

So much for the bandersnatch not knowing which way it had run.

Rudy tried to pry himself up. "You wanna," he mumbled to the animal, but he could hardly hear his own voice, and it seemed intent on Milissa. Easier prey, and it was probably the type of hunter that injured its food and let it bleed out so it fought less.

And damn, it was cold.

Rudy tried to be proud to have inconvenienced the beast, but his impending death and Milissa's horrified expression didn't exactly make him feel good about himself.

He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep. Which was probably for the best.

Heh. Maybe he'd freeze to death before it ate him alive. Small favors, right?

Why the hell was it so cold? No way he'd lost that much blood.

The bandersnatch coiled and leaped at Milissa.

Something glistening and crystalline met it in midair, punched through its throat in a mass of white and red, and hurled its shuddering corpse to the snow beside Rudy.

He stared at the animal. It had died before it hit the ground. The icicle that killed it was already melting, but it was still thicker at the base than the bandersnatch's neck.

Slowly, Rudy looked up.

The first person he saw was Chloe. She'd run forward and knelt beside him, looking frantically between him and Milissa and the dead bandersnatch as if unsure who needed the most help. She stared at Rudy's wound and Milissa's face and Rudy's absent shirt and Milissa's torn dress and the bloody animal beside them.

The second person Rudy saw was Stephan Kyrillos.

The Black Rook stood behind his sister, palm outstretched, frost glistening on the fingers of his black glove. A second, unnecessary icicle fell from the air in front of him.