"You're part of those men in black?" Freyja asked Holly.
The latter was awkwardly kneeling on the picnic blanket, hands on her thighs.
"There's no need for hosti-" Holly started to say.
Freyja's hand morphed halfway between its default state and a wolf's paw, retaining bulging, burning knuckles as her fist clenched shut and flexed. Her bicep turned black and fur-coated, expanding, and she threw a vicious uppercut under Holly's jaw. The spy's teeth rattled together as her mouth was forced shut, and the impact lifted her off her knees, six feet into the air. Richie could almost see Freyja standing in freeze frame, punching arm curved high overhead, an expression of tranquil fury frozen on her darkened face. Her fangs were showing.
Then the flow of time returned to normal and Holly crashed back to the earth, landing flat on her back, hands clutching her jaw, agonized noises choking in her throat. Freyja stood over her, face sour and arms crossed disapprovingly.
"No wonder all the creatures coming through are violent - not with the reception you creeps are giving them. Who do you people think you are?" Freyja growled.
Cuppy and Richie blinked at each other, feeling caught off guard and unsure whether they should intervene or not. Chikita fell onto her back in a helpless storm of laughter that made her feel like her sides were going to split.
"How could you be so cold? The manatee couldn't even defend itself. What your faction did is nothing short of cold-blooded murder!" Freyja growled.
"Owowowow!" Holly worked her jaw tenderly. "Don't shoot the messenger. I'm a glorified secretary. I don't agree with what Director Mason does."
"You're still complicit." Freyja said, and kicked Holly in the ribs while she was down.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," Holly said, standing up and brushing herself off. "But that feral was trying to kill the both of you first, wasn't he?"
Freyja nodded. "Yes, but he didn't go looking for a fight. He found himself in water and did what came naturally to him, marking territory. He wasn't our enemy - it was nothing more than a clash for resources. He was beaten, the fight was finished. We took our water supply back and removed the pest. He didn't have to die. The stuffed suit enjoyed killing him while he was helpless. He got satisfaction out of it. You bullies are using the pretense of protecting the city to exterminate anything you call dangerous."
"They are dangerous, in case you didn't notice." Holly said, still working her jaw. "But that's neither here nor there. If I were acting within my mandatory parameters, I'd have silenced you much earlier into this conversation. We shouldn't even be talking like this out in the open to start with. You know too much for your own good already."
"So, your boss's name is Mason, right?" Cuppy asked.
"Yes, that's right." Holly said. A few seconds later, her eyes went wide, and she clamped her hands to her mouth.
Shit! she thought miserably.
"Don't be so dramatic." Freyja gave a humorless chuckle. "Your boss made it quite clear he didn't consider us a threat, even enough of one to take us in or wipe our memories or any other shady extrajudicial shit like that. From the sound of it, he didn't consider you worth telling about it either."
Holly felt a jolt go through her mind. Freyja was right. That discrepancy had already been bothering her. The Institute had already recorded the kids butting into their affairs back in the forest, and Mason himself had gone there in person to flex his authority. Why all that effort just to cow a couple of interlopers? If they were worth coercing into silence, why didn't Mason consider it imperative to capture and imprison them in solitary? Why hadn't he ordained to tell her of such an incident? What about Chelsea? Did Chelsea know? Did she have Mason's favor?
Does the Institute suspect I'm an infiltrator? Why keep me in the dark? she bit her lip.
"It's that weird building, isn't it? That's where you're headquartered." Richie said. "That's what felt off about it. So, are you guys responsible for spilling the fog in the first place?"
Holly shook her head. "No. We're trying to contain it before such phenomena spreads beyond the city's borders."
Chikita stood and stretched out her back, lighting another pipe. "Miss proper here took a tumble into a no man's land stretch of the Backyards while I was squaring off with another monster. It looks like we have the same target."
Cuppy tilted his head. "Miss Yule? How are the rabbits?"
Holly took on a glum look. "Fine, sans one."
"It was Backyards-related, wasn't it?" he asked, eyes saddened.
Holly stared at him, then sighed. "Yes, it was. Listen, I'm warning you kids for your own good. You don't want to get tangled up in this. That goes for you too, icecube." Holly pointed to Chikita.
Chikita blew a huge cloud of smoke in Holly's face mid-speech, choking her with painful coughs.
Richie stood, cracked out his knuckles, and started cleaning up the picnic leftovers. "Keep your warnings to yourself. Authorities have been telling me things for my own good while kicking sand in my face far too long for me to buy it at this point. I already decided I had a score to settle with them,"
Cuppy noticed Richie clench his fist, trembling.
"- come hell or high water. Luchesi or whoever he is has an asskicking coming, and after him, that spook in the cloak is next." Richie said.
Chikita's eyes widened. "What did you say?"
Richie turned to her. "What? The guy who held whatever the doorways were over my head. He was tall and wore a dark blue cloak, like Cuppy's but heavier. Thicker. He knows something about these tattoos too, and he seems to know my life inside and out, enough to fuck my psyche up the ass with a very accurate reenactment of my trauma."
Chikita gave off a notable whoosh of cold air laced with killing intent. "It's him. The Faceless Man."
"Faceless Man?" Cuppy asked. "What about him?"
Holly sighed and shrugged. Whatever, the cat was already out of the bag now anyway. "He's the keystone that the Institute doesn't know about yet. Station Bay has a hidden master. I have my own business with him."
Chikita's eyes went feral, glowing red like those of the oni she had swallowed. "I will cut you both down… right here… right now!" she growled.
Cuppy blindsided all three of them with threads, sewing their limbs behind their backs and their feet to the floor.
"What the hell, Cup?!" Richie growled, falling on his face.
"You all need to settle down. Timeouts for everyone. No one needs to kill each other." Cuppy said, patting Chikita's and Holly's heads. "It sounds like the jerk with the claws and this Faceless Man are the ones pulling the strings. Don't do what they want."
Chikita growled, but allowed herself to be pet, chiding herself when she thought scratch behind my ear.
"The hell did I do?! Let me out of this shitty twine!" Richie continued growling.
"How about this? First come, first serve. Let's just do our own things without fighting each other. Whatever happens happens, no hard feelings. Like a game. Whoever bags the bad guys first can do whatever they want with them." Cuppy said.
Freyja folded her ears, then started walking away. "Count me out. I just want peace and quiet."
Internally, she shivered - when Chikita flared up, Freyja had realized what that weird aura she felt was - an ensemble of different magical beasts, trapped inside her body and screaming. Her bloodlust was not only her own - it was the wild animalistic rage of every monster she had assimilated. The wolf in Freyja cowered before the overwhelming pressure. Her back began to ache again.
…
Freyja sat on the end of a long dock floating on the bay, her feet dangling over the side, swinging back and forth. She had a pile of rocks she had collected at her side, stacked in a short, crude cairn. Every few seconds, she'd work one over in her fingers, rotating it around a bit and hearing her wolfen nails making little clicks over the texture, before she chucked it into the sea. The splashes were cathartic to listen to - little kerplunks that made her ears perk up. When she felt especially ambitious, she'd skip a rock across the surface. The sun was setting into the bay once again, eclipsing another day spent in this strange city, so far from home - not that she had a home to go back to. It was a pile of ashes, long scattered to the winds by now. And good riddance.
The watercolor clouds coloring the sea a sparkling orange was beautiful, like a liquid campfire, but the warmth she sought wasn't here either. Perhaps it had been in the Backyards. Now that she couldn't remember that place anymore, what was she? Who was she? Just a freeloader passing herself off as a dog?
No one needs you. her mother's words echoed in her mind.
She withdrew her legs from the edge of the dock, and hugged her knees to her chest. She couldn't get the image of Mason's sunglass-hidden eyes, black panes of soulless reflective glass, staring them down out of her mind. She couldn't forget the thunderclap of the bullet he had fired, splitting the silence of the forest along with the bunyip's brain. It shouldn't have bothered her - up until seconds after the beast had lost consciousness, Freyja, in her animalistic rage, had been ready to eat the rival alive. But Cuppy's pleading sensibility had broken through the haze of instinct, and reawakened the human heart. She did feel pity for the ruined animal. The memory merging with the psychic wail of the unseen creatures trapped inside Chikita's soul, it occurred to Freyja, at last, why these things had haunted her - and why she had been suddenly angry enough to punch Holly, as if rectifying her stunned passivity in the face of Mason's ruthlessness back then.
A high-pitched series of short clicks and whistles from the water below perked Freyja’s ears, and she looked down to see that a small bottlenose dolphin specimen had breached the surface, gazing up at the girl with curious eyes. Its slick, rubber-like body reminded Freyja of one big cylindrical organic wetsuit, and its flippers at either side were gently patting the sea, making little ripples. Focusing again, Freyja saw that a few of the rocks she had dropped into the sea had landed really close to the dolphin, and she couldn’t be sure if one had sunk right on top of its head beneath the surface, or if she had even accidentally beaned it head on - it depended on when it revealed itself from concealment underwater. The dolphin raised its body a little bit out of the water, fluttering its flippers at Freyja, kicking up playful little splashes. A few spurts of sea spray struck Freyja’s thighs and arms. She cocked her head, then regarded the waning pile of rocks at her side. She pointed to them, and looked back to the dolphin.
The dolphin clicked at her again, making an emphatic motion as though it were nodding affirmation. Freyja reluctantly took a stone and dropped it into the harbor. The dolphin turned and caught the rock on the angled back of its flipper, and rolled it onto its head like a basketball expert doing tricks, moving the ball about their shoulders. It flipped the rock up onto its snout and began balancing the stone on the top of its nose, more like a sea lion balancing a beach ball in Freyja’s mind than anything else. Freyja smiled, and stacked another rock on top of the first one, and together they managed to stack three stones high before the structure collapsed, kicking up a trio of small splashes. The dolphin whistled, clapping its fins and leaning back as its upper body hung out of the water, showing its smooth underbelly and laughing. Freyja laughed back, and clapped for the sea mammal’s performance, eliciting an excited ring-around-the-rosy as the dolphin swam in a happy circle.
Then the dolphin submerged, sinking out of sight. Freyja, after a few seconds of watching the bubbles trickle to a stop, curiously leaned over the edge of the dock, planting herself on her belly to get a better look through the sparkling waters. Moments later, the dolphin burst out of the sea and threshed its tail, broadside, across the water, kicking a wave up into Freyja’s face and soaking her hair straight down to the roots. Freyja gasped and shrank back, rubbing the saltwater out of her eyes as she heard the dolphin click and pat itself on the back for the jumpscare prank. It made more happy little circles, and Freyja, deciding she was already going to be cold now anyway, now that the sun had mostly set and there would be no warm light to dry off by, cast her clothes aside and swan dove into the sea after the dolphin. They made faces at each other underwater, and initiated an improvised game of patty-cake. She’d always heard dolphins and whales were extremely intelligent, but she’d never expected anything like this. This dolphin in particular seemed to have a grasp on human mannerisms and customs. A released sea park performer, maybe?
The Cetacean took her for a ride across the bay back and forth on its back, letting her cling onto its dorsal fin as a handle. It was like an organic jetski experience, practically. Freyja cackled up a storm, cheering the dolphin on and begging it to go faster. The strong sonofabitch got cheeky and took a few leaping torpedo jumps out of the bay, diving in and out in that classic dolphin jump arc, making its clicks and calls all the while. When it submerged deep, and Freyja felt the pressure, cold, and coming widowing of her oxygen reserves come into play, she released the dorsal fin and floated there underwater, midway between the surface and the dropoff into the bay bottom. The dolphin floated under her, turning around and regarding her curiously, as if trying to figure out why she let go. It did a little spin, and then started trickling out air bubbles, and tilted its head, looking as though it were inquiring if those bubbles were the issue. Freyja nodded back, and the dolphin looked befuddled, doing anxious little laps around underwater as it tried to figure out how to bridge the terrain gap between their species.
Freyja focused the golden bands around her eyes, and her night vision cut through the murk, illuminating the darkening reaches of the deeper bay in crystal clear color and definition. It was a beautiful seascape of sand and mud mounds lined with forests of vibrant kelp, great coral structures, gyrating anemone blossoms, and schools of colorful fish moving in great convoys across the subliminal ocean currents of this miniature ocean beneath the docks. She could see where the border of the biome and man’s foray into climbing upon it lay, where the pillars that supported the boardwalks above were encrusted with rugged barnacles and pulpy moss.
An idea struck Freyja, and she kicked back to the surface, her face breaking out of the water and flinging her hair back like a breaching mermaid for a moment. She took a great breath, as much air as her lungs could hold, and then submerged again. Beneath the bay, Freyja focused her core body heat into the point just under combustion from her skin, keeping the surge of her hellfire ability sealed off as a radiating body heat coming off of her in waves that warmed the immediate circle of water around her like a nice hot tub dip. She knew that the brain consumed oxygen more quickly when the body was cold, and struggling to keep every organ functioning along with just trying to keep the body oxygenated. The cold was an automatic bodily resource tax on most creatures who encountered it, siphoning energy from them bit by bit. What was hypothermia if not the body shutting down, unable to keep that vital campfire in the belly lit to sustain their life any longer? So, it stood to reason that warming herself would massively slow the rate of oxygen consumption. As a pyromancer who was untouched by her own flames unless she willed herself susceptible - as she had when it was necessary to sear her flesh closed back together - she was perfectly adapted to masterfully ration her breath underwater. Hell, for all she knew, maybe she could compete with her bottle-nosed friend here.
The dolphin felt the warm plumes circling Freyja, and sensed that she had come up with a solution to the rather small time limit she’d otherwise have to play with him in his home territory. That was a relief, because there was so much of his wonderful undersea world to show the strange specimen with the stacking nuggets. It made another little dolphin call, the sound traveling farther and stronger underwater, especially to Freyja’s enhanced ears, and they swam to the bottom together to nose through the kelp and sand banks, turning up sea dollars and other pretty shells to juggle and push around. When it got hungry, the dolphin slapped up some fish, and ordained to leave a pile for Freyja. She held her chin, wondering exactly how she could - or even if she could - eat underwater.
The whole time she was engaged with her undersea play date, her mind was thankfully off of the doom and gloom that had begun to poison it. Her conscious self began to relax, and the groundwater of her subconscious instinct and emotional resonance could begin to seep through the thinned, softened silt. Something about this atmosphere - this carefree, tranquil sense of connection and unadulterated joy - felt extremely familiar, universal even. The setting was different - she had been on dry land - but the feeling was identical. It didn’t strike her as what it was until she finally climbed her way out of the sea, back onto the dock, waving her flippered friend away and promising to come back sometime soon to play again. With his goodbye gesture, he had slapped the flat underside of his tail down into the surface, kicking up another massive splash. When it fell back from the air, the initial torrent of water thinned to a residue of sprinkling drops left hanging, almost mist-like, in the air. It reminded her of the rain. And something about the rain had been comforting.
—
Before Richie’s stay in Jail
The tunnel of tangled ivy opened into an expanse of lush jungle, tropical wildflowers, and vibrant thigh-high grasses that all seemed steeped in a strange watercolor filter, as though the wilderness became fuzzier and more indistinct at its edges. Birds cawed in the canopies overhead, and the kinds of vines Richie had taken for arboreal ropey filaments gave way into soft layers of crawling kudzu climbing the wide trunks of many redwood trees. Random palm tree tops dropped coconuts along with bananas and oranges, and a random assortment of roses, lilies, hydrangeas, and venus flytraps sprawled out across moisture-rich soil that had a color almost like volcanic rock. A thousand different incompatible features from every climate and corner of the earth coalesced into one ultimate apotheosis of the idea of a forest or jungle, like the kind of storybook wilds a child with no concept of geography or climate might imagine.
The smells were vivid beyond description; the mana-laced air smelled of honeysuckle, calming perfumes, and the musky opiate spell of milk of poppy. Richie’s head had felt heavy with the aromas, sights, and sounds - now joined by trilling cicadas and cascading waterfalls somewhere down farther - yet he had not felt overwhelmed in any unpleasant sense. His head didn’t ache, and his heart didn’t seek a frantic, desperate escape from the intensity of the jungle closing in around him. Yet, despite the negative baggage attached to the word, “sensory overload” was really the only way to describe this place. Like Richie’s mind had become a psychic, synesthetic air freshener.
Richie whistled at the breathtaking paradise all around him. He trudged through the floral brush, coming to the edge of a rolling series of green hill slopes, thinning down into a field of spring grass cut down the middle by a cool blue river. Poofy dandelions, like orbical white sheep, danced back and forth along the hills and field in the breeze. Richie couldn’t resist. He threw his hands to the sky and cried out “Woohoo!”, then threw himself tumbling down the soft hills, the grass cushioning his body like an earthen blanket of Gaia’s protection. Bits of dandelion fluff scattered into the breeze as Richie rolled to the bottom of the hill, and started jogging and leaping through the tall grass. He cut a path to the edge of the river and let awe wash over him. The waterway was much wider this close up, and a gorgeous electric blue he had only seen dye water in dreams and touched-up vacation brochures. He plucked dandelions and molded the white fuzz into little orbs, like plant matter snowballs, and set them adrift on the river, running alongside them and watching as they darted between submerged rock peaks and little whirling rapids. The river diverged in a few streams further downwater, snaking in and out of little rice paddy marshlands and mini ponds of lily pads. He passed under the swaying boughs of great willow trees that cast their dangling leaves and their shade over the river path, leaving the sun to shine through in little slotted snippets.
Eventually, the divergent flows recombined into a single river, and Richie stopped for breath on a slope of grass that looked soft and comfortable. He breathed a sigh of contentment. This place felt so much more vivid and real than anything that had come before it, as though he were a newborn in a teenager’s body, seeing the world for the first time again with virgin eyes and a pure spirit. Mist drifted even further downstream, and the sounds of cascading rapids brought Richie to the view of a shimmering rainbow streaking the length of water vapor clouding the lowlands. The cool wet air was nice and refreshing on his bare face, like liquid air conditioning.
And then, out of the shadows of exposed tree roots, a dark shape exploded across the grass, tearing tracks under its paws. Richie threw up his hands with a gasp of surprise, and was rolled under the warm, furry belly of a powerful quadruped shape. He felt hot breath on his face and flinched back against the grassy ground, only to slowly feel himself at ease as he realized the muzzle had not closed itself around his neck to rip out his jugular yet. The panting creature on top of him was a glossy black dog - no, a wolf. There was an ebony-furred wolf straddling him, tongue hanging out and looking as though it were smiling.
“Ok, tag, I’m it, I guess.” Richie said awkwardly, patting the canine’s side.
She dismounted and rolled to the side, then got up and circled Richie, trotting slowly and making inquisitive little whines. Richie sat up, dusting his arms free of stray blades of grass. “You live around here?”
The wolf sat, tilted her head, and continued panting.
“You seem happy to see someone. Lonely?” Richie stretched out his back.
He scanned the floor for a stick, found one, and picked it up, shaking it temptingly. “Want the stick, big girl? Want the stick?”
The wolf barked.
Richie tossed the stick far off with a powerful overhand throw. The wolf tore off after it - christ she was fast! In seconds, she proudly trotted back to Richie, stick clenched in her powerful lycan jaws, and dropped it at his feet.
“Not nearly satisfied, eh?” Richie chuckled. “Round 2!” he tossed the stick again, putting a spin on it this time and watching with a self-pat on the back as it curved a little at the apex of its flight before touching down in the grass again.
He changed it up in between regular tosses, and ultimately whiffed a throw where his foot caught an exposed rock, and the stick went wild into the trees and shrubs. The wolf ran off again, darting into the shadows of the jungle. After a few seconds of silence, Richie waltzed a bit closer to the treeline.
“Calling it quits already?” he implored.
A flock of solid white geese burst out of the shadows, honking indignantly as the wolf pawed at their tails, sprinting behind them, stick in jaws.
“What the fuck?!?” Richie recoiled as he was overtaken by the feathered stampede, falling on his back and suffering the indignity of avian trample marks all over his chest, arms, and face.
He sat up and spat out a mouthful of feathers, dizzied. The wolf sat at his feet again, dropping the stick in his lap, and panting with that smile on her face, tail wagging.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Next time, warn me if you’re going to bring friends.” Richie chuckled.
He tossed the stick to the opposite bank across the river, and sure enough the black wolf dove into the cool waters and dog-paddled her way across the gap, securing the fugitive stick again. She swam back, coming out of the shallows with mud and reeds stuck to the underside of her soaked coat. When they both grew tired of this, and Richie felt like his arms were going to fall off, he took to walking casually alongside the river again, curious to see how far it went, and the black wolf was content to jump into the water and swim alongside him, letting the current wash away the mud caking her stomach and paws.
The wolf smelled salt in the air first, nose audibly drawing in great gulps of air. Richie heard the thup thup motorboat paddle of her tail wagging through the water.
“The ocean!” Richie cheered, jumping as high as his legs could launch him as they both laid eyes on a glistening lagoon a few miles downstream, where the field and river began to slope again.
The sandy beach at the base of the trees was encircled on all sides by more dense jungle foliage and fringed palm trees that smelled like pine oil and vanilla.
“Wow!” Richie smiled broadly, stretching his arms out and enjoying the cool sea breeze rolling over him.
The ocean stretched on as far as the eye could see, broken up intermittently by great tropical islands and crescent-shaped peeking sand ridges. Maybe everything had just been one long bad dream - his secretive, paranoia-riddled childhood, his home’s invasion and his mother’s murder by firing squad of heavily-armed cultists, his turning out onto the streets to scrape by a living on crusts, his abduction by the bad man in the trenchcoat, the child kennel of marked sacrifices, and finally his hobo ride to a new urban jungle to do the same old same old all over again - maybe it had just been a cold nightmare that was finally melting away under the warm light of this brilliant sun. He was home, finally, and he could hear Ella’s calls to him from across the waves, at one of the islands where dinner was surely ready. He’d tell her “I’m coming, mom!” and then he’d paddle across the lagoon on a mini raft, with his new canine friend in tow. Maybe he could keep her? He always wanted a pet.
But as soon as the peak of euphoria bathed him, it just as quickly drained away. A shift in the wind set his arms into gooseflesh, and he turned to the side to see what was wrong; what was the wolf staring at?
The dog’s eyes were fixed on a multi-story painted white house with a turret room and a front porch whose ornate door hung open ominously like the hungry maw of a starving monster. Fire glowed behind the square window panes, making them look like burning demonic eyes. It was night, suddenly, dark save for the timid flickering glow of street lamps. Richie was on a sidewalk suddenly, and he could see moths fluttering around the hanging lights. They were in suburbia, a cul-de-sac somewhere smaller than a big city, and larger than a podunk town. There were other nice-enough houses on the block, harkening to a comfortable middle class neighborhood vibe. A prim and proper lawn extended from the white home with the burning eyes, and Richie thought he could see the tips of the grass blades curling away from the fire within, as if shrinking back in fear. It was very cold and windy outside, the pleasant beach gone like a melted daydream.
That wasn’t all Richie had dreamed. Seconds ago, he had been seventeen. But that couldn’t be true, it was some far-off fancy he ran away with, thinking he was a big kid finally. Richie was young, maybe six or seven, his clothes that many sizes smaller, his sneakers hardly more than baby booties. His scarf was heavy and enrapturing around his prepubescent frame, and gone was the macho comfort of his hardened abs and muscle. He was small, soft, and dangerously vulnerable again, helpless in the face of any kind of danger. But what danger was he expecting to see? Maybe the house across the street wasn’t even burning, maybe it was just a trick of the candlelight-
And then the entire house erupted, utterly engulfed in an inferno of raging flames far too violent to quell with a dozen fire trucks. The rush of the superheated air made him feel like the skin of his nose and eyelids was going to peel away, even from this far back. The hellish flames and their dark columns of churning black smoke rose high into the heavens, roasting them and polluting them with a glowing devil’s mark, like a blood moon. Richie instinctively gripped the smaller hand of the little girl next to him in his, acting the part of a dutiful big brother.
Beside Richie, a little girl, Freyja - her black hair cut just shorter than would cover her eyes, and her eyes themselves a quaint blue, devoid of their amber rings - squeezed his hand back, her other hand cupping itself across her mouth, stifling a gasp. Her eyes were beginning to moisten, on the verge of spilling silent, terrified tears. She was trembling. Richie stood his ground, but braced himself to stand between little Freyja and whatever might emerge from the burning wreck of the incinerated house if need be. All would be made clear in the next moment.
“Mama and Papa…” little Freyja said, “...they’re dead…”
She gripped the small of her back, whining.
The windows shattered to burning glass shards, and the front door was blasted off its hinges and across the street by a huge column of crimson and orange fire, and the embers that leaped from this wave struck the lawn and set it into a sea of more fire. A black wolf, like the one Richie had been with, materialized out of the burning plume, but this one was much bigger than his had been. This black wolf - streaked with zigzagging dark red lines like bloody lightning strikes, eyes glowing with predatory fire - easily the size of a large bison. Sections of the walkway cratered in under its burning paws from the combined stress of the heat and their weight. It threw its massive head to the smoky black night sky and let out a bloodcurdling howl. Within the burning house, Richie sensed Freyja’s savaged parents, their corpses still burning.
The wail of sirens joined the rumbling of the fire, and red and blue flashing lights melded into the light of the blaze. Big Freyja laid her ears back and let out a low vibrating growl that was almost an atonal bellow, and she crouched low to the ground, all four giant paws glowing red-hot. Flecks of fire flew out from between her clenched fangs, and plumes of smoke and superheated air rushed out of her nostrils like exhaust. There seemed to be a sudden dramatic wind, as the fur of her chest, shoulder blades, back, and tail were all fluttering backward in the air, ruffling itself. Richie figured it could have been the localized self-generating weather of the raging fire at Big Freyja’s back. Police cars screeched to their stops, and cops scrambled out onto the tarmac.
“Open fire!” they cried, guns drawn and blazing.
A thunderfall of bullets flew into the hellhound, and she roared and grunted pain and anger as her hackles raised. Where the ballistics struck her, Big Freyja’s fur and skin broke open into splashes of liquid fire that resealed and closed themselves, regenerating as if biological lava had cooled back into a fleshy boulder. The black dog lunged, taking hold of the men one by one one, shaking them like ragdolls in her jaws, dragging them by crunched limbs or torn shirts and belts, tossing them, and rolling them under the tread of her powerful paws. She swept her bushy tail across her body, and a wave of fire traveled along the ground, fanning out into a v shape that bridged either sidewalk and cast dancing shadows across the outer walls of neighbor’s houses. From behind the curtain of flame, Big Freyja padded and paced. Those among the first responders who hadn’t been killed or knocked out in a couple of the savage hits continued to pump rounds into the wall of fire separating them from their target. After a protracted silence, the blazing hellhound leaped out of her own firewall and pounced one of the survivors. She sunk glowing red-hot fangs into his neck, melting through the skin like butter, and ripped out his jugular. The misty gush of blood sprayed those nearby, and shrouded Big Freyja in grisly warpaint.
She knocked the pistol out of another officer’s hand, grabbed him by the face with her jaws clamped around his skull, lifted him off the ground so that she was standing on her hind legs, and shook him with such violent force that his neck was broken. She then tossed her ruined squeaky toy over a roof. The alternating red and blue lights of the cop cars were beginning to annoy her, so Big Freyja turned her profile toward one of them to face it directly. Her jaws parted, and a hellish light began to glow in the back of her throat.
“Please stop doing this!” little Freyja cried after the big dog.
Big Freyja paid her younger self no mind. A huge beach ball-sized, dense globe of red fire exploded out of the black wolf’s jaws, slamming into the cruiser with incredible speed and force. It caved the doors in instantly, punching into the interior of the car, and the engine, the sudden expansion of incredibly hot air blowing out the windshield and windows at the same time the instant inferno feeding on the seat covers crumpled the roof outward, bulging and distorting it. A few seconds later, there was a secondary explosion as the gas tank ignited, and blew the car to smithereens. A tire, literally burning rubber, flew over their heads, and the heat and explosion had been so intense that they left pitch black scorch marks stained into cracks spiderwebbed through the asphalt beneath where the cop car once stood.
Big Freyja threw her head back to the sky, caught the image of the pale glowing full moon, and howled a declaration of her unholy wrath and bloodlust, a promissory note that brutal vengeance was underway.
Richie was staring in slack-jawed awe and an undercurrent of quivering fear, not that the hellhound would suddenly spring at them, but that its rampage would go unchecked. Both she and the civilians around her were in great danger. Then, Richie noticed that little Freyja wasn't at his side, and had tugged free of his grip.
"Wait!" he called after the little girl as she ran toward Big Freyja.
The girl placed her palms on the big wolf's sides, and it snapped its head toward her, still growling.
"It's ok." little Freyja said. "I know you're scared. I'm not going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you anymore."
There were more sirens in the distance, and the drone of a chopper somewhere far off and high up. Shocked, rubbernecking neighbors had begun to creep out of their houses to gawk at the roaring fire, and the behemoth canine monster crouched before them.
"Someone call the fire Department!" Richie heard a neighbor shriek.
The flames were beginning to migrate and catch.
"Freyja!" Richie called. "It isn't safe here!"
Little Freyja was well aware. She cupped the big wolf's nose, holding her gently as she lowered her muzzle into the reassuring contact. Then Big Freyja's ears laid back, and she was looking off into the distance, beyond the open streets. Little Freyja climbed onto her wolfen counterpart's back, grabbing handfuls of loose skin and fur as reigns, and they bounded off together.
"Freyja!" Richie called.
He frantically scanned the cul de sac, spotted a child's bike left abandoned on its side in the grass, and took it, peddling as hard as his little legs could to catch up to the Freyjas.
Big Freyja bounded across a traffic intersection, leaped into a parking lot, and threw her weighty head up high, scouring a looming terraced apartment building that rose like a small skyscraper. Little Freyja held on tighter. “I think there’s a stairwell on the other side, you wouldn’t fit on the-”
Big Freyja narrowed her burning eyes, then sprinted up the concrete wall, burning claws digging tracks in the balconies and corners as she left a burning trail behind her in her wake. Little Freyja clutched tight around her wolfen counterpart’s neck, burying her face into the hot fur against the rushing wind and the immediate acrophobia.
“Do you see that?!” someone called from ground level.
People took out their cell phones and cameras, recording the unbelievable sight of this unidentified cryptid running up a straight building, impending toward the summit for reasons known only to it and its feral instinct.
At the top, Big Freyja flew high above the precipice of the condos, then descended like a sleek meteorite, crushing in the stone of the bannistered-walkway of the ceiling area. Her paw grazed an iron shutter door sealing off a concrete box - some kind of storage area, probably for maintenance - and it crumpled inward like flimsy cardboard. Rubble flew up around where her paws crashed down. Little Freyja’s hair had frizzed up, whooshed by the wind going up and down both ways. The tips of her locks fell in time with the scattered stones broken from the floor, falling back down at their feet.
“...elevator…” little Freyja said.
Big Freyja jumped onto the concrete ledge of the urban battlement, crouching there under the light of the full moon, and howled again.
Below, Richie heard the howl, and felt his gut sink.
“That way!” he said, and turned off a street toward the parking lot at the seat of the condos.
He would never make it like this, not on a child’s bicycle with only his stubby little child legs to propel him. “Come on, faster!” he cried.
Then, something began glowing a whitish blue. “Huh?”
Richie looked to his arms, rolling up his sleeves to leave them bare, and saw that his dragons were curling and coiling, hissing to him to make use of their power.
“Lend me your strength.” Richie nodded.
He threw himself, pulling a wheelie, into a busy street, ducking between frantic honking vehicles and nearly getting clipped by a semi, and pulled alongside a biker on the back of a mean-looking hog belching thick exhaust and growling like a dragon itself.
“What the?!” the biker cried out in shock, pulling hard to the right and almost touching the ground as he desperately tried to veer out of the way of striking down this child. Richie leaped from the bike, leaving it to be crushed under the tread of a displaced, runaway van, and landed on the handlebars of the biker’s ride. His dragons encircled the grip, testing the trigger, and Richie threw his head back with a surge of strength that was not his own - it was enough to break the glass visor of the biker’s helmet, and throw him off the back of his own motorcycle, tumbling across the street. Cars fanned out to barely avoid mowing the man overboard down. “Sorry! I really need this!” Richie called out timidly, throwing a pilfered wallet from earlier at the busted-up biker’s feet to give some token gesture of compensation.
Richie hit the gas and tore off, leaving a mild several-car pileup and utter confusion and chaos in his wake. The biker himself had to assume he had hit his head harder than he expected - there was no way a kid who didn’t look ten had just flung him, a grown man, off a moving bike at that kind of speed, and landed himself uninjured, right?
Richie’s dragons belched a compressed airball at an abandoned mini skate-park structure some kids had left at the corner of the condos, blowing a skateboard ramp up and laying it across the dividing wall to the lot. He revved the engine, and floored it - he flew off the ramp, feeling like a dragon catching its first wind himself, and aced the landing into the lot below. To not barrel straight into a curb and crash, he pulled a sudden donut, screeching dark rubber track marks in the tarmac, and somersaulted from the hog, running to the condos after the Freyjas. His small body, with its proportional monkey-like strength and maneuverability, scrambled up the security gate and over it.
“I’m in.” he scanned the walkways of the gated condo community, looking for access to a stairwell or an elevator. “Crud, which way?”
His dragons glowed brighter, and sniffed him in the right direction. “Got it.” he ran across a dew-slick lawn.
Atop the tower, Big Freyja pawed back and forth across the barrier between them and a forty story plunge straight down into the streets below.
“I feel a bit sick, I want off now…” little Freyja said, feet, covered in soft little footie pajamas, dangling impotently over the side of the wolf’s saddle, trying to reach the floor that was too far below her to touch. “I don’t like heights.” she said.
Big Freyja was crouched suddenly, hackles raising again. She was growling.
Freyja fell on her butt, grunted, and rubbed her tailbone as she stood up. She pat Big Freyja’s side again. “What’s wrong? What are you scared of? You don’t want more people to shoot at you, right? I’m sure if we just explain-”
Big Freyja rocked her head across the way, looking at the hurricane of helicopter blades that had levitated down into their range. A tactical combat chopper was locked onto her.
“Target sighted!” she heard the pilot affirm over radio.
Little Freyja shrank back. They don’t see me, oh no!
In the belly of the condo complex below, Richie was cursing the laggy, grinding ascent of the elevator shaft. “Dammit, I should have taken the stairs after all, but this is the only straight shot to the top from ground level! Girls, don’t do anything reckless!”
Then, as if to answer his fears, the elevator shook tremulously, lights flickering in and out like a twilight zone strobe light effect. His ears hurt, and he clamped his hands to them.
“What’s going on up there?!” he groaned.
Above, a tactical missile had been fired at Big Freyja. Little Freyja was swept into something dark, cloying, and soft. She felt stray hairs invade her eyes and nostrils, and sputtered on tufts stuck in her mouth and depositing dandruff on her tongue. There was a tremendous expulsion of heat all around her, but the comparative shielding heat of the hellhound’s burning body somehow left her uninjured. Peeking behind the shield of Big Freyja’s curled wolf tail, little Freyja saw the remnants of burning rubble and smoldering smoke streams amidst the metallic shrapnel fragments of the blown missile. Huge chunks were taken out of the protective roof barrier, blown to bits. She heard the crash as the dislodged stone blocks broke apart into more rubble at the bottom of the tower, a deadly rockslide for any civilians who happened to be passing under the shadow of the complex. Big Freyja herself was trembling as if stung by many bees, but only continued to issue forth a low growl.
“Minimal effect! Engaging gatling artillery!” the pilot declared.
“No you won’t!” little Freyja yelled back, tearing herself free of the hellhound’s tail and standing between her and the chopper. She threw her arms wide, protecting the wolf. “She doesn’t understand what’s going on! Let’s just talk this out!”
“Wh- a child? Pull back!” the pilot said, the rotating drums of his gatling guns affixed to the aircraft slowing their spin and cooling off before they could begin volleying shredding gunfire.
Big Freyja didn’t forget, and she didn’t forgive. She tossed little Freyja back up onto her back and raised her head toward the idling chopper, parting her jaws, from which sulfurous brimstone smoke and embers began to flicker and pour out, an orange glow lighting up the back of her throat. Little Freyja felt the wolf’s sides heave as she expanded her belly and esophagus to bring the fireball up into her mouth, readied to launch.
“Please don’t do it, they aren’t bad either! They’re just scared, like you are!” little Freyja desperately pleaded to the hellhound, stroking her ears and gripping the scruff of her neck solidly, as if trying to delicately steer her away. “Please, I don’t want anyone else to get hurt!”
No one ever wanted anyone to get hurt, yet that was how things always go, isn’t it? Freyja didn’t ask to be the child that made it, or carry the lost potential of the stillbirths before on her shoulders, never understanding why her own mother and father could only radiate resentment whenever they looked at her. Did they think they could talk things out when daddy jammed a broken glass bottle into her back?
You’re a freak, Freyja. You’ve always been a freak. You will never bring anything of worth to this world. You are a curse.
Then let me be a curse! the hellhound raged.
The ball of hellfire flickered and grew inside her jaws, ready to be spat with killing vigor into the steel bird that had pestered her with its little firecracker.
“Please don’t. Please?” little Freyja begged, hugging the hellhound around the neck again. “The world isn’t your enemy!”
Big Freyja narrowed her eyes at the chopper - then, slowly, begrudgingly, the fire at the back of her throat began to recede and fade, and she took a few tentative steps back, sitting on her haunches and tilting her head, appraising the intentions of the steel bird.
Within the steel bird, the pilot was hyperventilating. He had just stared painful, burning death in the face, he knew it not so deep down in his animal instinct. This was no unusual biohazard requiring a clean-up crew, this was some bastardized mashup of high-profile terrorist attack and literal satanic hell on earth, spreading with the whims of an unstable monster’s psychological state. There was no protocol for this. Yet, in another building across from the juncture, a lone sniper stood poised to take the shot.
“I have a visual on the target, clear to terminate her now, civilian human shield will be protected.” the gunman said to his superiors over radio.
A high-caliber rifle shot struck Freyja in the right side of the skull, cracking her temple. She shrank back, gritting her teeth and hissing through them from the sting, then looked back across the way to the coward taking potshots at her from afar with his little toy. She ripped a claw from her paw, letting it spill molten blood that quickly began to cool and condense into a lava-colored jelly from which a new claw would sprout, good as new. She pitched the detached claw with a powerful overhand swing, like a master baseball pitcher. The claw slammed down the barrel of the rifle, impacting it with enough kick-back that the scope of his rifle dug deep into his eye socket, caving his skull in and killing him instantly. He slumped over, bleeding, and the blood rained over the edge of the tower.
“Shit!” the chopper pilot frantically flipped the switch to begin hovering off of the platform and beat a strategic retreat.
Freyja’s bushy wolf tail, enveloping into a cotton-candy swirl of burning fur, swooped away at the chopper, setting it ablaze and spinning out of control, at least one of the propulsion blades snapped off and spinning wildly. It cleaved into the stone, burying itself into the walkway like a knife buried to the hilt in soft clay. Richie emerged from the elevator and stepped out onto the roof only in time to see the chopper roll over in hellfire, and Big Freyja - little Freyja still snug across her back, squat down over the ledge, and gauge the drop to the streets below.
“Wait!” Richie cried out, throwing out a helping hand that was far too short and far too melodramatic to actually reach anyone or anything.
Little Freyja waved goodbye to Richie slowly, resigned to ride with the hellhound till the hell beast felt she was somewhere safe, away from pursuers and predators. The demon dog jumped high into the sky, and over the side of the condo ledge.
“Oh jesus christ crackers!” Richie tore at his hair, a nervous tick he had begun to develop even so early in his development. The burning wreck of the chopper crashed and smoldering across from him spilled its mangled pilot half from the seat, and he crawled across the ground pitifully, leaving little trails of blood.
“I… need an ambulance… please, call… 911…” he coughed.
Richie screwed up his fists and felt frustrated tears leak from his face. “Don’t shoot at something if you didn't expect to get shot back! Next time, pick fights you expect you can actually finish! My friends need help, I don’t have time for you!” he growled, and tore off back down the stairwell - it would be quicker sprinting down the steps than up, and he didn’t trust the elevator not to detach altogether and drop him to his doom at this point. His sneaker slipped, and he took a nasty tumble down a flight, banging up his knee and smacking the side of his face.
“Dammit! Why am I always such a klutz when it really counts?!” he slammed his fists into the ground, at his child’s psychological limit and beginning to throw a tantrum. He didn’t know if there were any right things left to do - he just knew that he didn’t want to see the Freyjas get hurt.
Below, Big Freyja crushed a sports car underfoot, utterly. It caved in as though a ton of bricks had crashed on top. The shock absorption filtered through her fluffy, comforting warm fur, and little Freyja only felt like she had fallen a long way onto a springy trampoline - jostled, but uninjured.
“Please warn me before you do that!” she appeased her big black dog.
The wolf grunted something akin to “Mmhmm,” and then continued trotting off down the streets.
They came across a corner vending machine, lined with canned soda pops.
“Mmm, soda sounds so good right now! Do you have any quarters?” little Freyja said, hopping off and looking through her play-money purse that she had retrofitted to pass off as a working change wallet. Before she could finish fiddling with the coins though, Big Freyja simply stood on her hind legs like a bear and plunged a paw, claws outstretched, into the glass display of the vending machine hard enough to crumple the bulky dispenser in half like a broken twig, and lifted it off the ground, severing power cables. She regarded it curiously in this bipedal werewolf stance, as though trying to figure out how to separate the wheat from the chaff, or the honeycomb from the pesky bees within an assailed hive. She shook it a bit, bouncing the wrecked machine up and down on her claws, and a few cans tumbled out the bottom, spilling to the cold concrete ground and bouncing off. A few got dented, and little Freyja chided Big Freyja to be more careful - nothing was more aggravating than opening a nice fresh cold can of soda only for it to spray you in the face cause it got shaken up too much.
Big Freyja simply lifted the vending machine overhead and shook it violently, dropping dozens of soda cans into her wide-open wolf jaws, gargling their contents and crunching them down her throat with powerful fangs and jaw muscles, swallowing the soda, aluminum and all.
“That can’t be very good for you.” little Freyja said, putting a finger to her lip and staring. “Of course, soda isn’t very good for you in the first place.”
Big Freyja turned back toward the streets, growling at something, ears folded back, and started stalking off again.
“Wait, where are you going again! Wait for me!” little Freyja called, and tried to jog after the crazed hellhound.
They came to a bus stop near another series of traffic lights. Some kind of electrical issue was backing up the red-green/stop/go cycle, and drivers were getting antsy, honking belligerently as though it would correct the traffic glitch.
Big Freyja hunkered down, ears folding over completely, and her paws coming up to help clamp them shut. She was growling again, vibrating, great circles of fire half-phasing into existence around her perimeter, starting at her feet.
“What’s wrong? You don’t like all the noise, do you?” little Freyja asked.
A bus broke to a halt, making the braking sound that always reminded Freyja of a steam kettle whistling. People rose from their waiting benches and began the exodus exchange to swap with those who had found their stop. A red safety light flashed at the back of the bus, to indicate that it was stopped for a routine pickup/dropoff, and not to tailgate or crowd it. The sound of the safety light clicking back and forth like an annoying clock grabbed Big Freyja’s attention, and she turned to face the night bus, hackles raised.
“No, big girl, remember what we talked about, play nice!” Freyja desperately pet at Big Freyja’s hind. “I know traffic can be frustrating, papa hates it and he says a lot of mean things, but you don’t have to blow them up. Please!”
Hellfire began compressing into an orbital ball ready to fire like a cannon shot at the obstructive bus. Too many noisy sounds, bright flashing lights, too many gawking hairless monkeys and strange, malevolent machines. Sensory overload of the worst kind was boiling Big Freyja’s brain. Bullies, bullies the lot of them! Bullies should just go away! They should be burnt out of sight!
Little Freyja was whiplashed, barely hanging onto the back of Big Freyja as the enraged hellhound whirled around again, attention snapped instantly from the bus to the sound of another chopper - whether it was a tactical response aircraft or just an incidental helicopter running an aerial tour of the city at night for some out-of-towners was unclear - and stood upright on her hindquarters again, like a bear. Little Freyja lost her grip and slid to the bottom, stumbling backward as her footy pajama feet touched the cold sidewalk again, and she felt dizzy and out of sorts.
“Don’t be a bad girl!” Freyja begged herself.
Big Freyja parted her jaws, and little Freyja could see her fur-ringed throat bulge as pyro spheres migrated up into her mouth. She rapidly fired off a trio of massive burning globes at the annoying helicopter. They boomed like point-blank firework sendoffs, and whistled shrilly the whole while up. Big Freyja’s aim wasn’t perfect at such a far range, and the helicopter, unintentionally more likely than not, wove in between all three bursts of concentrated destructive flame. The fireballs just kept going, piercing the clouds, and punched through into the upper atmosphere or beyond for all little Freyja knew.
“Freyja!” Richie said, stumbling through the street, panting and clutching at his shoulder. “Get away from her, that monster is dangerous!”
Little Freyja shook her head emphatically, and threw herself in between them. “Can’t you see she’s scared? Everyone is gawking at her and shooting at her! What would you do if people were bullying you and you didn’t know why?”
“That’s,” Richie scratched his head, trying to figure out what to say.
A double-decker bus, waylaid by a split in the terrain where a mound of scattered rubble tore the tire from one of its wheels, leaving the bare metal to screech sparks off of the bare street, lost control and careened into Richie. His body reflexively coated itself in Level 3 dragon scales, and he survived what should have smeared him across the street, but only by the skin of his teeth. His small child body wasn’t nearly the font of durability it could be at his peak in his true age, with something approaching mid-level mastery of his Dragon Sign style, and instead, a hardened preteen was sent violently rolling and tumbling across the street, coming to a stop when his head struck the edge of a traffic island. His hands flew up to it, stars exploding across his vision, and he spasticially twitched and writhed there, brain trying to reposition itself and assess what was going on again.
“Richie, are you ok?!” Freyja asked.
Richie’s eyelids were grinding against each other. “I feel just peachy. Huh?”
His eyes opened onto a night sky that was beginning to take a cold shift, whispering down the vaporal promise of coming rain and heavy, gale-force winds. A storm was upon them. A very, very big one.
“Something’s coming from the sky.” Richie said, awestruck and paralyzed with a sedentary fugue of glitched fight-or-flight reflex.
“I smell it.” Big Freyja looked up toward the churning dark sky, nose sniffing; it picked up static charges in the air, and a musky scent of something invasive - something full of spite and eager to assert dominance.