I raced after the Crib carrying the Propheros away from me. Travis weighed it down so his feet brushed against the car roofs in the parking lot as its wings flapped hard, trying to gain more momentum to propel it upward.
Sprinting after it, I followed until I was close enough. I leapt onto the hood of a van, then up and over the roof. I surged off the van with all the power I possessed, flying into the air. I got my shot. I took a swipe at the Crib. Its wing tore under my blade. The demon shrieked and lost air as black blood spurted from half a wing. Travis fell onto a car with a hard thud and metallic clang. He rolled off with a guttural groan and crawled under the vehicle.
Good man, I thought with relief.
The Crib’s descent was slow but sure. Then it smacked across several cars like a pebble skimming a pond before it dropped out of sight. It wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.
“Thank the gods,” I said to myself in a prayer of gratitude. Yet my body was stiff with an unnamed urgency.
“Calan,” Emma called out.
I turned around to see her running for her life, two Cribs gaining on her.
“Emma, run toward me,” I shouted, racing straight at her.
I was six feet away when one spindly mottled hand grabbed ahold of her hood and jerked her back and down. Emma gagged and choked as she was slammed onto her rear. A few more steps and I cut off the arm holding her hood. The Crib howled and flew away. The other Crib dive bombed me and clawed at my face with its dirty jagged nails, digging into the flesh of my cheek and scraping up until warm blood seeped out of my stinging wounds.
I couldn’t get a good swing at it as the Crib hovered just over my head and behind me. It pulled out a chunk of my hair out and aimed to drive those same jagged, dirty fingernails down at my eyes this time. I had no leverage to stop it from blinding me.
The body of the Crib jerked with a pronouncedthump,slamming into the back of my head. Athwackthis time and the demon tumbled mid-air over my head into a large silver truck, cracking the windshield on impact.
Turning, I found Krystan, now in a bulky zebra, faux-fur coat that hit the tops of her high boots, panting. Her eyes looked like they might pop out of her head. She wielded a baseball bat tarnished by a smudge of black ichor. Demon blood.
“What in the hell was that? Am I dreaming? Is this a dream?” She looked dazed, and a pitch of hysteria wavered in her voice.
“Krystan, duck,” Emma screamed just as the Crib with the amputated arm dropped from the sky and grabbed Krystan’s hair. On instinct, she dropped the bat and reached for her hair as it abruptly pulled her several feet off the ground.
I had it this time. I jumped up on the nearest car and plunged the sword straight through the Crib’s chest. It screeched in agony. Krystan dropped the two feet back to the ground, landing in a crouch. She rubbed the top of her head. The Crib spewed black blood from its mouth. I dodged most of it but some of it spattered against my ear. It fell back onto another car, wings spread out as it took its last breath.
From behind me, I heard the same thwacking sound as before, only to find Emma had picked up the bat and was mercilessly beating the last Crib into a bloody black pulp on the asphalt.
She yelled with every swing of the bat. “Don’t you ever come after my friends, you big, ugly baby monster. I’ll show you who you’re messing with.”
Krystan came to stand next to me, still rubbing the top of her head. She watched Emma with me for a moment as we stood in awe of her fury. Then Krystan shrugged at me as if to say, it should have known better than to mess with Emma. I returned a look of silent agreement.
Krystan’s boots hurriedly clip-clopped over to Emma. “Sweetie, sweetie, that’s enough. The big bad baby is dead. Ya done good.” She gently tried to extract the now ichor-covered bat away from Emma whose shoulders heaved up and down from the exertion of the beating she just gave.
“Travis,” I yelled. Seeing that Krystan and Emma were okay I realized I had to make sure the Propheros was unharmed. “Travis,” I ran back toward the car I’d seen him disappear under. Spotting his unmoving feet beneath the vehicle, an icy block of fear weighed down my chest.
Dropping down to the ground, I found Travis looking up at me with bug-wide eyes from under the car, still breathing and seemingly unharmed.
“Okay,” he said softly, “So I think I’d like to stick with you. If you don’t mind me tagging along.”
A laugh of relief escaped me as I dropped my head and reached to pat him on the shoulder before helping him out from under the car.
We walked back over to the girls. Krystan’s arm was thrown over Emma. Krystan said in a shaky voice, “Okay, so when you all let me believe you were running from the mafia, we all meant to say.…”
Emma looked up at her apologetically. “We are being chased by evil spirits and demonic forces.”
“Ah-huh, so this has nothing to do with all the psychedelic drugs I tried last month. That’s reassuring. Sort of-” Krystan muttered to herself while pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead. “I need a drink. I need many drinks. I need enough to drinks to kill all the little brain cells that just witnessed and retained what happened.” Then she glared at Travis. “And this is all somehow Travis’s fault.”
“What?” Travis said, throwing his hands up and waving them in fierce denial. “I did not do this. I just wanted to try a new whiskey today and took too freaking long to decide. Some mist-like ghost thingy came after us. I think its superman’s fault here.” He pointed at me.
Emma’s words were sharp. “Yet again, Travis, not a great way to treat the guy who saved our asses twice in one day.”
“Yeah, Travis,” Krystan said, eyeing the now soiled broad sword I still held at my side. “Don’t forget to give me props for saving your greasy ass too.”
Travis ignored her and looked at me, nervous now. “You know what I mean, man. Seriously now, I’m gonna be like white on rice with you. I will do whatever you tell me to, Yoda.”
