Twenty-Seven
A few meters past the ‘Welcome to Camp Ferris’ sign, I stepped over some invisible threshold and the old forest lost all saturation. Derek and I were both plunged into a world of black and white.
Io’s remaining drone, which had been resting on my shoulder in the shape of a raven (I think Gabby’s comment got to her), fritzed out and dropped to the forest floor; completely inert.
Io, do you read me? I asked into the psychic ether.
No reply.
“There goes our air support,” I announced with a resigned sigh. “Hold on.”
Hannah, Selene, Euna, anyone out there?
Nada.
“Looks like we’re on our own for now,” I informed my oldest friend.
Derek swallowed nervously and pulled up his wrist-display, flipping through his digital list of spells for a second before that, too, went dark. “Fuck. My grimoire is all stored in the cloud, dude. I’m down to the spells I’ve really mastered, and that’s it.”
I winced. “Which spells have you really mastered?”
Derek took a deep breath. “Concealment charms, wards, basic telekinesis like what I used to launch you up to fight that gorgon, a handful of useless hexes and jinxes that are good for pranks, but not great against undead.”
A chuckle crept its way up from my chest and escaped before I could contain it. Derek had always had a thing for practical jokes back at Hilltop. Used to make our managers go crazy when he replaced the cleaning solution with blueberry soda from the fountain, so everything they sprayed just seemed to get stickier and less clean. Of course when offered the limitless functionality of modern magic the first thing he did was memorize a bunch of prank spells.
“What?” He asked defensively.
“Nothing, man. I’m just glad you’re still you. The rest of this world’s gone crazy. I’m some sort of super-freak mutant chosen one, there’s monsters and demons and ghosts and shit attacking our city every day, and I’ve got like seven girlfriends now. It’s just good to know that something remains unchanged. Even if it’s my idiot best friend, y’know?”
Derek smiled to himself as we continued walking. “That’s the first time you’ve called me your best friend in months, man.”
A shadow fell across my face as I remembered kneeling in the woods and raging against the sheer fuckery that is mortality. “Yeah I uh… I’ve been going through it, bud. Didn’t mean to make you feel unappreciated. Just got so caught up in the idea of losing what I had that I forgot to take the time to appreciate it, y’know?”
“All too well, my dude. Don’t sweat it. I know you’re this bigshot now with all sorts of powers and bitches, but I still remember that time you got too high and curled up in a ball in the supply closet for your whole shift talking about how you thought you could see into alternate dimensions and shit. Or that time that little grandma spilled her slushie all over your crotch and made it look like you wet yourself that whole day. Remember that? That was the day all those cheerleaders were in town for the big competition. Man, you should’ve seen your face.”
“Dude, no, you swore you’d never talk about that,” I argued, blushing bright red. I shoved him, very lightly, and he still had to use some magic to keep himself upright. We were both laughing at the memories, but then he grew very serious.
“Honestly, Ryan. It makes sense to me why you’d get overly protective over this new life you’ve made for yourself. I know how hard Hannah’s death hit you. I saw you at your lowest. Seeing you like this? I get why you stopped talking to me for so long. You had your hands full. Just… don’t forget about grabbing a beer with the boys now that you have all these bitches, okay?”
I shook my head. “I won’t forget, on one condition. Stop referring to my girls as ‘bitches.’ They’re not groupies, Derek, they’re my girlfriends.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “Oh what-ever dude. Sorry, didn’t mean to offend you and your lovers. How many are you up to now?”
I did a mental check. Tabitha came first, or Hannah I guess, either way. Plus Io and Euna, then Selene, Autumn, and now Lana. “Seven.”
Dereke whistled sharply. “Damn dude. Can’t believe it. A year ago you were a cripple working a dead-end job, getting high with me on our breaks. Now you’re this super-hero with a harem of cute girls who are falling over one another to get in your pants. Also you’re like a foot taller. That shit’s wild.” He shook his head and reached into his combat robes, pulling out a joint. “Now I know I haven’t changed. But are you still that same guy who wasn’t afraid to light up before a big rush? Cuz where we’re going, there’s going to be an awful lot of angry customers.”
I eyed the joint for a long moment, tempted, but shook my head.
“Nah. I smoked to relieve the phantom pains in my left hand. Now?” I held up my left hand and waggled the fingers. “I got better. Also, I can already see ghosts and commune with the forest sober and I don’t want to know what sort of craziness will happen if I get baked before a big battle. I might just turn into a tree or something weird, I don’t even know.”
Derek scoffed. “Fair enough man. Fine. How about after we’re done saving Eastport, will you light up with me then?”
“You have yourself a deal my dude. I think-” I froze, as a familiar sound buzzed through the forest. The Signal. The sound that drove monsters to the brink of madness. Which could only mean one thing. There was an active Emitter nearby.
A blur of motion caught my eye. Too fast even for my senses to pick up. Slowly, I turned to my left and caught sight of it again. Something big was hurtling through the trees. Something humanoid with gleaming golden wings.
“Gabby? Is that you?” I called out.
Big mistake.
A feral shriek echoed back through the trees, and the leaves all around us suddenly wafted up into the air. Derek’s eyes went wide and I saw him start to cast a warding spell, then something hit me in the back, latched onto my left shoulder, and lifted me skyward.
In a single fleeting moment the desaturated world of the forest floor vanished. In a rush of wind and color, I found myself suddenly launched dozens, then hundreds, of feet up in the air, with the old forest stretching out for miles and miles far below me.
Craning my neck upwards, I caught a glimpse of my attacker and my heart missed a beat.
Like Gabby, this angel was blessed with an utterly perfect body type. Where she differed was in coloration and choice in clothing. Notably, this angel (who I presumed must have been the infamous Michelle that I remember hearing about from Gabby’s story) looked to be much older, like a middle-aged dusky-skinned demigod (she aged like the absolute finest of wines) wearing a full set of armor and had a sheathed in between her wings made from the same materials as the mace Gabby had left in my care.
Remembering the mace helped me shake off the shock of going from having my feet firmly planted on the ground to suddenly having a bird’s eye view. I gripped the weapon firmly and swung upwards with all my might.
The golden head of the mace produced a pleasant thrum as it swung through the air, and a satisfying crunch as it connected with Michelle’s thigh.
Screeching in protest, the feral angel’s taloned feet dug into my shoulder hard enough to score deep gouges in the flesh, and then she kicked me away from her.
Still hundreds of meters in the air, I plummeted towards the earth.
Four tiny wings emerged from my wrists and ankles and I began to fall with style. Four trails of blue fairy dust bled off my extremities as I dropped. It took dozens of meters to slow my descent, but I managed to come to a shaky hover. But I was bleeding altitude by the second. These fairy wings weren’t enough to give me much in the way of flight speed or maneuverability, in fact they mainly just acted like stabilizers.
They saved me from death by terminal velocity, but now I was a sitting duck with a pissed off–and heavily armored–angel swooping around for another attack run. Glancing back up at my attacker, I saw her folding her gilded wings around her (breathtaking) body and diving attack right at me.
Taking a mental snapshot of what I was seeing, I sent off a quick SOS to Red Ryan, who I was distantly aware of being in the midst of combat. A jolt of fear ran through my body as I realized it was only a few minutes away from twilight, and Autumn had said her cure wouldn’t take full effect until midnight. If Red Ryan was in the midst of combat it meant he was likely facing down a zombie horde. Either he was on his way towards the hospital, or he was already inside and the infection had spread into the supposedly safe building where I had just sent Tabitha to give birth.
The overwhelming urge to rush to her side nearly sent me hovering towards Eastport, but with only my fairy wings to carry me there was no way I’d reach the hospital before midnight anyway.
Shaking off my fear, I realized that I was already looking after her. Red Ryan and I were one in the same, just in two different places. Anything I could do to protect Tabitha, my other self would already be doing. I needed to stay focused on the fight right in front of me.
Something told me I was extremely lucky that Michelle was out of her mind thanks to that Emitter messing with her. She came at me with wings and claws instead of that sword on her back, and that made a huge difference.
Instead of slicing through me, she was just shredding my supposedly blade-proof suit into smithereens and scratching through several layers of flesh in the process. Guess it wasn’t rated for being mauled by an angelic cougar.
Even though I was fighting in mid-air for the first time in my life, I gave as good as I got. Golden feathers rained down as I brought Gabby’s mace around to connect with Michelle over and over. I almost felt bad about marring her beautiful features, but damn those scratches stung.
Every blow we traded cost us altitude, and before I knew it the world had once again lost all saturation. With what little warning I had before we plummeted below the treeline, I rammed the mace into her stomach to get her to back off and give me a bit of space, then tried to slow myself. I missed, and smashed the golden orb right into one of her breasts.
I don’t…there’s no words to describe the howl of righteous indignation that escaped this woman. One second we were having a pleasant mid-air duel and the next she transformed into a feathery rocket pointed towards the ground and I was but the hapless victim caught between a rock and a hot milf. There was nothing fun about what happened next though.
She tackled me at terminal velocity; striking with the force of a semi and pile-driving me straight through a massive egg-shaped boulder that had probably been perfectly balanced for a couple millenia. When two supernatural beings come crashing through a giant rock however, the rock loses.
We landed on my back and skidded across rocks and dirt for several meters. Literally losing a hand didn’t hurt this bad. My skin hardened reflexively, taking on the brown coloration of bark and the scaly texture of Io’s scales as my body did its best to keep me safe, but no shit? That was an L across the board. It fucking hurt.
Opening my eyes as all of my wounds rapid-healed to find myself lying flat on my back while an incredibly attractive milf straddled me very nearly made up for the smackdown she just laid on me, and I had to admit she was probably the most attractive enemy I’d ever fought (full disclosure I had a mildly confused rage-boner going), but after that?
This bitch just signed her death warrant.
She ruined the moment by shrieking at me like a bald eagle on meth, and any lingering hesitations I had regarding ruining such a pretty face evaporated.
Without much choice left if I wanted to keep fighting (which I absolutely did) I wolfed out and backhanded her into the nearest tree trunk, pouring every iota of pain and rage behind the blow. She flew right through it and the next two trees, crashing into a fourth and stopping cold.
“Alright, you fucking bitch. Werewolf versus angel, let’s go!” I shouted, springing to my feet and rounding on her. I gave Gabby’s mace a little twirl for good measure, feeling pretty confident that if I could survive that last move I could probably tank anything she could dish out in her feral state.
Michelle got to her feet, sporting a black eye and looking like shit, honestly. Her wings puffed out, and a few loose feathers drifted away as she stumbled towards me like a drunk woman on her way back from a pitiful one night stand.
An electronic crackle resonated through the woods, and thanks to my werewolf-enhanced hearing my attention snapped right to where Derek suddenly popped up, holding up a broken Signal Emitter.
“Hey, look! I got it!” He shouted proudly. “I also found this!”
Derek held up a golden crown in his other hand.
The ring of a blade scraping its way free of a sheath sent shivers down my spine, and when I looked back at where I’d last seen her, Michelle was gone.
Ah shit.