Chapter 2
Periwinkle
Istare after the fleeing humans as the anxious glow fades from my hair. “At least… they assumed we’re aliens and not monsters? And they’re running in the direction we wanted them to go.”
Mirage nods vigorously. “Might as well look on the bright side!”
One of Rollick’s assistants who helped usher some of the humans out of the buildings stops near us with an expression like he swallowed a lemon whole. “Rollick isn’t going to be happy about this.”
“There isn’t really anything about this situation to make anyone happy,” I point out. “What’s the point in hiding our shadowkind powers when the whole city’s flooded with weirdness? They can’t be mad at us after we help them get out of the disaster safely, can they?”
On second thought, maybe I don’t want that question answered. But if the choice is keep our powers hidden while the humans turn into mutated synchronized swimmers or risk them realizing they’ve been saved by monsters while actually saving them, I’ll take the latter.
Jonah turns to Mirage, his expression tensing as if he’s coming to a similar conclusion. “Mirage, you can use your supernatural skills to downplay our weirdness, right?”
The fox shifter twirls his hand, and the piranha-bear spins like a ballerina before lumbering off in the direction he pointed it. “I can make them focus on what they really really want that’s down the street. Even if it’s not quite what they think it is.”
“That’ll do.”
Hail’s jaw clenches. “You want us to fling around our powers in front of the mortals? Maybe fox boy can deflect some of the panic, but we’re talking about a whole city full of humans.”
I set my hands on my hips. “Let the glass be half full for once! We’re not going to meet even a tenth of all those humans.
And if they start freaking out, then we’ll figure out a new plan.
Right now, I’d just like us to get on with the plan of Getting The Humans Out Of This Place Before It Turns Them Into Surrealist Art. ”
Raze gives a sharp huff. “I agree. There isn’t much point in us even trying to help them if we aren’t going to use the advantages we have. Now let’s get going.” He gives his massive, sinewy frame a shake. “This stuff feels like dried mud that won’t flake off.”
That doesn’t sound any more pleasant than cold porridge.
I point down the street in the direction we were headed. “Let’s get some more humans out of here!”
We set off with renewed vigor, aiming our calls to flee at the windows all along that street and the next. Raze tackles another huge shadowkind creature that charges into our midst, and Hail walls off a few smaller ones in temporary door-free igloos.
There still isn’t a whole lot I can add to the evacuation efforts with my powers, so I stick to cheerleading, which is more my forte anyway.
I smile and wave to the humans poking their heads out and emerging onto the sidewalks.
“It’ll be okay! Just a brand-new kind of flood.
Very exciting, but better to watch it from outside the city than inside, all right? ”
I’m not sure how much they believe me, and several gape at Raze’s abrupt shows of strength and the flashes of ice Hail casts out. But with a few whirls of Mirage’s bushy tails, they seem to forget all about our monstrous strangeness—including those tails—and drift off toward the edges of the city.
It isn’t just the humans who go. Many of them squeeze out of the doorways clutching pet cats or with dogs trotting at their heels. The cats just peer at us with their ears laid flat, but barking bounces between the buildings.
“Don’t let them go chasing after any squirrels!” I holler after them. “They might not be the kind of squirrels you’re used to.”
Hail halts in his tracks. “What the fuck is that rodent up to?”
A vole-like creature with a ridge of spikes down its back is hurling itself at the wall of a nearby building. Its body smacks against the bricks to no effect. After the first few batterings we witness, it lets out a disgruntled huff and starts scrabbling at the bricks with its claws.
I frown. “It seems like it really wants to go inside. What’s so exciting in there?” I cock my head, contemplating the building, but it looks like a perfectly regular apartment complex to me. I wouldn’t have thought any shadowkind creatures were in the rental market.
As he watches, Raze’s forehead furrows. “It’s kind of like Viscera, isn’t it? Smacking and shredding everything around. Except… she was a lot better at it.”
I guess we should be grateful that the spiky vole is nowhere near as talented in the destruction department as that higher shadowkind was.
The comments the rogue woman made echo through my head—all her talk about the city drawing her in and then shutting her out…
A shriek carries from around the corner. We dash over to find a woman poised on the threshold of her building’s lobby—gaping at the front step which is swiveling as if on a hinge. One corner sprouts upward in a concrete bramble.
Raze leaps over and smashes the cement fixture with a slam of his fist. The woman flinches backward as if she finds his assistance as distressing as the shifting concrete, but the flow of her neighbors behind her brings her stumbling out into the street.
“Get out of the flood!” I shout. “There’s safety outside the city! Just keep walking as quickly as you can, and your limbs should stay where they’re supposed to be.”
The humans don’t look especially comforted by my reassurance, but they get moving anyway.
Another small shadowkind creature slithers across the road toward us, its round pink tongue slurping at the shadows and its furry torso rustling against the asphalt. Two puffy feet protrude partway down its body, adding a lurch to its progress with every few winds of its body.
Dodging it, I continue our foray down this new street. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! It’s no good staying—you can’t shut out shadows. We’ll do what we can to send the weird ones back where they came from!”
Hail lets out a flat laugh. “Don’t make promises we can’t keep.”
“I said we’d do what we can. I didn’t say it’d work.”
But I really hope it does. With every block we traverse and every new cluster of humans we send hurrying out of the city, the gloom of the shadowy atmosphere wears at me. The porridge is congealing.
What if we end up stuck in this stuff? Who’s going to dig us out?
I grit my teeth against the ache creeping up my ankles and keep walking.
At the next cross-street, Jonah jerks to a stop with a strangled sound. Mirage leaps to his side first and shivers before tutting his tongue. “That’s not playing nice. Hail might need to put that one on ice.”
“What?” Hail demands, striding over. He and I come into view of the full scene at the same time.
My gut lurches. A shadowkind creature like a scaly, eight-legged rat is squirming inside the carcass of what used to be a sheepdog. The dog’s head lolls against the road. Its shaggy fur is drenched red around the gouge that runs down the middle of its belly.
The shadowkind creature is drenched too even as it tries to cuddle up to its victim’s innards. Its razor claws rake through more flesh as it snuggles deeper.
It doesn’t look as if it wants to eat the animal. The faint emotional vibes it’s giving off taste oddly warm and sweet, like melted toffee. Like it wanted to show its devotion by getting up close and personal—and that was a little too close for its target’s comfort.
More humans are venturing out into the street farther down. Raze scoops up the corpse-creature combo and tosses them under a parked van that’s starting to slump on its tires.
“What was that?” a man calls over.
I paste my smile back on. “Nothing to worry about! Just a few hitches with the new atmosphere. We’ll get them cleared up as quickly as we can!”
As Mirage ushers the current crowd of humans onward, a damp flick against my ankle brings my gaze snapping down.
The furry, bipedal snake has followed me. Before I can react, it twines around my calf. With those two clumsy paws, it manages to catch hold of the bottom of my dress and scramble up to wrap its tail around my arm next.
I wince and move to shake it off, but it blinks eyes that are way too wide and pleading to belong on a snake’s face at me. With an emphatic wriggle, it flings itself up to my shoulder and slurps its puppy-ish tongue across my jaw.
Jonah is staring at me now. A choked sound bursts from his throat. “Um, Peri, are you adopting a new pet?”
“I think it might have adopted me.” I grasp the furry but sinuous body and try to peel the creature off, but it lets out a whine that’s as puppy-ish as its tongue. The waft of eagerness to please, tangy with desperation like well-sugared grapefruit, washes over me.
I’m probably a sucker, but I find myself saying, “Maybe I should hold on to it. There might be something different about the creatures coming from this new version of the rift. Rollick will want to study them.”
Hail clicks his own tongue chidingly. “You just don’t like to make anything sad.”
“At least it’s not burrowing into anyone’s intestines.”
For now, I add silently. Let’s hope never.
A beast that seems much more inclined toward intestine removal hurtles out of a building a couple of blocks ahead of us with a reverberating roar. Its arrival provokes a chorus of human screams.
Raze mutters a curse vehement enough that I wonder if I should cover my new snake-puppy’s ears—does it even have ears?—and charges off to deal with the actual monster.
As the rest of us rush after him, my heart thumps. Could I generate another ring of light like the one that surrounded Viscera to stop her from committing any more city-smashing? Maybe I could stretch it around each group of humans to fend off any danger?
But that first ring required all of my men concentrating alongside me. I’m not sure that’s the most practical use of our current manpower.
Especially since having Raze simply heave the aggressive creature away while Hail freezes its legs solid seems to solve the problem pretty efficiently.
The humans keep stampeding down the street anyway. A few more shrieks ring out when my new self-declared pet lifts his fuzzy serpentine face from my shoulder to peer at the people passing by.
“He’s just curious!” I tell them. “He’s a nice one.”
On the wake of their sprint down the street, another figure materializes on the sidewalk across from us.
Rollick peers after the fleeing humans with one eyebrow arched and then contemplates the rest of our surroundings, including the blended rhino-bat creature that’s currently snorting at its legs in their new icicle-esque state.
“It looks like you’ve been dealing with quite a few not-nice ones,” the demon remarks in his usual droll tone.
Despite his emotional control, tension streams off him like black coffee poured to overflowing.
“Good to see the humans are moving in the right direction, though. Those few, anyway.” He lifts his chin toward the half-frozen beast. “You’ve been showing your powers in front of them? ”
“We had to,” I insist. “It’d be too hard to protect the mortals otherwise. Even with that… It’s taking too long.”
My gaze veers toward the vast sprawl of the city ahead of us. We’ve barely penetrated the suburbs.
One of Rollick’s assistants who’s continued trailing behind us pipes up. “I tried to tell them you wouldn’t approve—”
I spin toward him, setting my hands on my hips. “Well, I don’t approve of all the humans drowning in some weird rift’s shadow-vomit.”
Rollick sounds as if he’s stifled a guffaw. “And it’s a good thing I don’t either. Desperate times… We can feed them some kind of story afterward. They’ll probably be too bewildered to trust their memories anyway.”
Jonah clears his throat. “Should we keep going, then? It seems like the rift is up overhead now—is there any sign of it sucking the flood back in like it did the smaller ones before?”
“No. Not yet.” His former boss hesitates for a moment—a very un-Rollick-like thing to do. Even the demon’s confidence has been shaken.
He drags in a breath. “Keep sending off as many mortals as you can. And I think I’d better summon some assistance.”
He gestures to his assistant. “Get me the numbers for every shadowkind contact I have in a hundred-mile radius. We’re calling them all in.”