Chapter 8
Raze
The overflowing rift doesn’t look any prettier at its back end. The thick, dark atmosphere still drapes over the nearby buildings—big houses on bigger lawns in this apparently more upscale suburb—like a haze of watery mud.
Peri wipes her hands together and glances around. There’s no one else in sight except for one of Rollick’s assistants who came along to monitor her experiment. That’s why we trekked all the way around the city to conduct it.
The demon figured it’d be better for her to make the attempt far away from the human refugee camp and the soldiers now marching among them.
He phrased it as if he was concerned about how their presence might distract her. I can’t help wondering if he’s also a little worried about her powers going haywire the way they used to and blasting a whole bunch of the mortal beings we’ve been trying to save.
Peri’s control has gotten so much better, but the collapsed rift has thrown us all for a loop. I can’t totally blame Rollick for wanting to be careful.
From the quivers of nervousness mixed with the aura of hope Peri gives off, she’s picked up on his other possible reasons too. She sucks her lower lip under her teeth and then drags in a breath, setting her shoulders in a determined stance that makes my heart twinge with affection.
She might be short and soft, but my Glowbug is a force to be reckoned with.
She walks right up to the misty edge of the rift’s deluge. No living beings show on the other side either, not even the warped creatures that’ve spilled out of the rift from the shadow realm. But I’m here if any of them decide they want to take a piece out of the woman I love.
My hands flex at my sides, ready to release my claws.
“All right,” Peri says with even more than her usual good cheer. “Let’s do this!”
She holds out her hands toward the shadowy haze. A gentle smile curves her lips, tugging at my heart even more.
Her voice comes out as soft as the rest of her. “We’re glad you want to be part of this world. We’d like to be able to work together. You have so much power and passion. It could be a really great partnership.”
Rollick’s assistant arches her eyebrows. She flicks her gaze toward me. “Is she trying to clean the rift up or take it on a date?”
I scowl back at the shadowkind woman. “This is how her power works. She has to focus on how much she cares.”
The assistant’s expression remains skeptical, but thankfully her hushed comment doesn’t appear to have rattled Peri. The turquoise glow that’s now the usual color of her power has lit up on her palms.
She holds her hands out farther, and the glow expands. It washes into the mass of shadows, wavering and glittering as if caught in currents we couldn’t see before.
I watch the edges of the mass, checking whether it’s eased back or retracted at all. If Peri can convince the rift to suck all this noxious darkness back inside, to commune with the mortal world in some less harmful way, the catastrophe could be over just like that.
I don’t see the border of its deluge budge at all, though.
Peri inhales again with a little shakiness to the sound. She pours out even more of her turquoise glow, but sweat has started to bead on her forehead. A tremor runs through her stance.
My claws pop out even though this isn’t a threat I can tackle with brute force. I grit my teeth against the urge to tell her to stop.
I shouldn’t distract her. She can tell when she’s worn herself out.
That doesn’t mean I like seeing it, though.
Peri appears to make a conscious effort to loosen her posture before her body can tense up. The glow emanating off her starts to ebb all the same. It dwindles and contracts, both fading away and absorbing back into her form.
A sigh tumbles over her lips. She cocks her head, examining the haze in front of her. “It hasn’t moved one bit. I guess it’s really stuck on this spot.”
She lets out a short giggle, but I can’t feel any real amusement in the connection between us.
I step closer to join her. “It does look different, though.”
With the afterburn of the glow lingering in my eyes, it’s hard to compare the patch of shadowy stuff in front of us to how it looked before.
But it’s definitely not quite as muddy looking as I remember—as if it’s been watered down even more.
A patch maybe fifty feet across and long has a much paler quality than the sludgy darkness farther out around it.
Like the way she thinned the mess before, except on a somewhat larger scale.
Peri gives a more genuine laugh. “I brightened its day. I guess that’s a start. I think… Does it seem calmer to you too?”
I study the patch in front of us and then the thicker darkness I can make out beyond it. There is a sort of stillness to the nearby area that contrasts with the sense of drifting fog I get from the rest of the mess.
“Brightened it up and brought it peace,” I say, giving her shoulder an encouraging squeeze.
“It’s still here, though,” Rollick’s assistant mutters. She stalks up to the border and pokes a pen at the haze as if she thinks she can prod the filmy atmosphere. “I don’t think the humans are going to be satisfied with just having their home not quite so swallowed in shadows.”
Peri lifts her chin. “It was a start. Maybe I can settle the shadows down completely if I keep trying.”
I nod. “That’s right. It’s only her first attempt.”
At the same time, I can’t help taking in the immense sprawl of the city before us. How many attempts will Peri have to make if she’s going to clean up even one neighborhood? Will her peacemaking effect last or will the thicker shadows creep back in while she recovers her energy?
Why is this ridiculous rift so intent on melding with the mortal realm anyway? Maybe we can convince it that everything it’s heard was false advertising. Start up a smear campaign. The mortal realm sucks. Burning sun, chaotic plants—who needs all that? Shadows rule! Let’s stick to our own side.
Somehow I don’t think it’ll be that easy.
I give Peri a gentle tug as I turn away from the mass of shadows. “We should get back to Rollick and give our report. Maybe he’ll have other—”
I stall in my tracks, my muscles going rigid.
Maybe a dozen humans are standing farther down the street behind us, pressed close together and watching with alternately wide or narrowed eyes. Several are holding splintered boards, baseball bats, or golf clubs.
It takes me a second to recognize that they’re not looking to play some strange game of sports merged with construction. They’re holding the objects like weapons.
My defensive instincts kick in with a jolt of adrenaline. I loom taller, my shoulders flexing.
The humans are pointing at Peri. One waves his golf club our way. “It’s one of those aliens! All glowing like she’s about to go nuclear. We’ve got to stop them before they fuck up our city even more.”
Aliens? Rollick’s assistant doesn’t look surprised. I guess we did start talking about the supposed terrorists being from outer space. But we didn’t mean us.
Maybe Rollick’s been encouraging the otherworldly part of the story among the humans who don’t already know what we are.
Does the demon really believe we can still contain the knowledge of our existence? What, is he going to wipe out the entire army regiment once they’ve finished relocating the refugees?
Actually, knowing him, I could almost believe he will.
But how is it better for the humans to think we’re aliens than to see us as monsters? Other than, I guess, they’re more used to the idea of aliens potentially coming and leaving in peace.
Peri holds up her no-longer-glowing hands. “Everything’s okay! I’m trying to fix the problem, not make it worse.”
“That’s just what an invading alien force would say,” another human snaps, wielding her baseball bat.
With those words, the humans surge toward us, eyes flashing, weapons raised. I can sense the violence in every angle of their bodies.
A rush of red blazes through my mind. No thoughts remain but the impulse to protect the woman I love at all costs.
With a snarl, I leap in front of her. My lips pull back to bare my teeth, where my reptilian fangs now jut from my gums. It’s only because of a faint twinge of shame and the distant knowledge that Peri would be upset if I massacred these people that I keep my shielding contacts in place over my deadly irises.
“Holy shit!” a man barks, drawing up short. “It’s a fucking invasion, all right. We can’t let them take what’s ours!”
My intent, as much as I had one, was to scare them off. Instead, they hurtle forward even more aggressively—just this time the aggression is directed at me rather than Peri.
That’s a small step up, but it triggers the animalistic side of my brain even harder.
One human is hurling his broken board at my head. Another swings his bat at my ribs. My limbs lash out, my elbow sending an attacker flying across a nearby lawn, my clenched hand pummeling another in the gut so he doubles over.
“Raze!” Peri cries out. “Let’s just go!”
Her anxiety swirls into my panicked rage, sending my own emotions spiking higher. More of the humans are aiming their makeshift weapons at me, looking to batter me as if I’m a birthday pinata and they’ve forgotten how to take turns.
My claws slash across one woman’s face before she can break my nose with her golf club. Another figure flings himself onto my back, and my nerves go completely haywire.
With a snarl, I hurl him onto the ground and gouge straight through his throat. I whirl around, my contacts disintegrating, ready to sear all the rest of them.
A voice breaks through my rage. “No! They’re going to stop now, Raze. You can stop too.”
Peri’s plea and the gush of blood starkly scarlet against the asphalt jolt me back to the present. The meaty iron scent saturates the air, but there’s nothing appealing about it even to my carnivorous appetites.
That man wasn’t a meal. He was just a scared, misinformed mortal trying to protect his home.
Shrieks and yelps are reverberating from the few humans in the bunch still standing. They’re stumbling backward, a couple of them ducking to help their injured companions scramble away.
“He killed Wayne! Tore him right open.”
I sway on my feet, guilt and fury colliding inside me like I’ve been walloped over the head with a frying pan. A small hand slips around my arm.
Peri tugs me away. “You can’t help him now. Let’s move into the shadows.”
Yes. That’s what I should have done to begin with. Why did I go on the attack instead of just escaping?
I dive with Peri into the nearest patch of darkness. As we rush around the edge of the city, Rollick’s assistant keeps up a persistent muttering behind us. “He’s not going to like this. Oh, no, not at all.”
My shame burns hotter. Peri’s presence sidles close to me, exuding reassurance even though I can detect some distress underneath.
“They attacked you first. You were defending yourself. Anyone would have reacted like that.”
But she didn’t. She hates even upsetting people. Killing them?
The only reason she’ll forgive me is because she hates feeling my pain over it.
How many more humans would I have killed if she hadn’t been here to break through my furious stupor? Did I even really protect her when I’ve probably just made human-monster relations a thousand times worse?
If she’s the only thing stopping me from going off the rails… can I really say I’m anything more than a monster?