Chapter 6
One of the things I really hate about intelligent monsters and the kinds of bad guys who work for them is that they’re creepy all the time. They never give it a rest. You know, they can’t arrange a meeting at Sunny Street or Happy Fields. No, anything to do with them will be in Mount Gloomy or Darkness Alley.
Even so, I groaned under my breath as I entered the address into my GPS: Crybaby Bridge. I knew the place. MHI had caught a bubak at that site.
What is a bubak? Ah…
People joke that every small town in the US has a legend about a crybaby bridge. There’s always some story to go with it too, a dark tale of infidelity and illegitimacy, and of a baby who was born only to be killed by its mother or father, or some stranger who’d absconded with it because of its origins. The standard legend was that on certain nights, but particularly when the moon was full, you could still hear the ghost of the baby crying under the bridge.
Like most such legends, it wasn’t exactly wrong. What often happened, in fact, was a bubak, a kind of Czech boogeyman, had set up shop there. They loved to make a noise imitating a helpless infant, to lure would-be rescuers to the dark place under the bridge, where the bubak could then eat them.
While a bubak was dangerous and ugly as sin, looking like a ghoulish, green version of a scarecrow, they really weren’t that dangerous comparatively. But, yep, that was exactly where the creature who’d taken my baby wanted me to meet him.
“That bastard,” I muttered under my breath.
Two eyes on tentacles pushed out of the bag where I’d stowed Mr. Trash Bags, “Cuddle Bunny mad?”
I looked down at the tiny shoggoth, and he looked back at me with an adoring expression. I turned my eyes back on the road. “Yes. Very mad.”
I’m not going to complain about my childhood. I’m a Shackleford and there were more important things for my family than making sure a little girl has play friends. I was older than my brothers, and there had been no other kids around. Back then we didn’t even have the orc village. I remembered endless days of playing in the woods near the house, making up stories and entertaining myself, while my parents were busy with much more important business.
Again, not complaining. I’d been very able to keep myself amused. And when I was four I could read and then make up stories off the stories I read. Most of the time when I was playing alone in those woods, I’d been conquering fantasy kingdoms, exploring the wilder parts of Earth, and taking spaceships to unknown planets.
But every kid needs friends, and for the longest time when I was little, I’d thought I’d had a play friend named Mr. Trash Bags. Granted, most children’s imaginary friends didn’t look like a pile of black trash bags with lots of eyes, but I’d been a weird kid. I remembered Mr. Trash Bags very clearly, how sweet and friendly he’d been, and how he’d played all the parts I assigned him in my play scripts. He would play monster or friendly rescuer, and he’d even play stuffed animal. And it always ended in hugs.
Then one day he had just disappeared.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I had found out Mr. Trash Bags was neither imaginary nor…well, nor something you’d want around your kids.
You see, Mr. Trash Bags was a shoggoth, the manual-labor and odd-job slaves of the Old Ones. They run errands, eat people, dig tunnels, and so on. Some guy who went by the charming name of the Mad Arab said that “To look upon their hideous thousand eyes is to invite horror and the suffering of infinite madness, within tombs of blackness where the innocent are devoured for eternity.” So on and so forth.
Shoggoths are amorphous. They change shape, but they’re normally about fifteen feet across and weigh around two tons. They talk, after a fashion, but they’re never going to win any prizes for eloquence. And they eat everything.
Except Mr. Trash Bags hadn’t eaten me. For whatever reason he’d taken a liking to four-year-old Julie Shackleford. And when we’d met again, a few years ago, in a showdown between me and the death cult who commanded him, he had chosen to side with me. In payback for his treachery, Mr. Trash Bags had been burned to ash.
Well, except for this damaged little chunk that I’d found afterward, seemingly still alive.
I could have finished the job. He was a shoggoth after all. Any of my teammates would have. But Shacklefords pay their debts and don’t desert allies. However, I couldn’t just leave him free to roam. Nobody knows much about shoggoth physiology. I didn’t know if he would grow back to giant size, and if he did… Well, Mr. Trash Bags loved me personally, but he was still a shoggoth. Which meant he would go back to running errands for the Old Ones, digging tunnels, and most of all eating everything, including people. Which I couldn’t allow him to do.
So I’d frozen him.
But with all my friends gone, and me alone and facing a threat to my baby, I could use something that could run errands for me and, well…eat whoever I told him to eat. It was probably the desperation talking, but having a friendly shoggoth sounded like a great idea at the time.
As I drove toward the meet, I tried to fill in my new, tiny ally. “Cuddle Bunny is angry at people who took away my bab—her cuddle bunny.”
The two little blue eyes on tentacles crossed. “Cuddle Bunny has cuddle bunny?”
It was weird. The last time we’d spoken Mr. Trash Bags’ voice had been extremely, violently loud. Now he sounded like a cartoon character, but to be fair, Martin Hood had burned a few thousand pounds off him.
“Yes. I have a little cuddle bunny. He’s very small and helpless, and bad men took him away.” I left aside the complexities that these probably weren’t exactly men, and there was no way the guy I’d been talking to on the phone was human. But the thing was that Mr. Trash Bags had never exactly been a genius, and being frozen for years couldn’t have improved his mental performance.
I have no illusions. Shoggoths are still bad guys, the enforcers for the Old Ones, but Mr. Trash Bags loved me, and could be an enforcer for me. At least potentially. Hopefully. I was heading into a meeting with really bad guys, guys who probably wouldn’t hesitate to pull a double cross. My only ace in the hole was a hamster-sized, recently unfrozen Mr. Trash Bags. And I planned to use him.
I reached over and grabbed Mr. Trash Bags—a warm pulsating blob in my hand—and yes, he did say “whee” as I grabbed him and shoved him into the pouch which held the artifact. The blue eyes looked up at me, confused, and a tentacle reached out to pat my hand.
I looked at the GPS and left the highway at the required exit. I was driving fast and it was still going to be tight. I hated this. The kidnapper’s deadlines were keeping me reacting instead of acting. If he kept me moving, it minimized my chances of getting help, or having time to prepare, or getting anyone to the meet early. He’d given me the expected instructions: come alone, come unarmed, or else. I hate smart monsters.
“The bad men want me to give them the artifact in there. So they can give me my baby.”
“Cuddle Bunny Cuddle Bunny!” the little shoggoth squeaked.
“Right. And I’m afraid they’ll take it but not give me the baby. Or they’ll use the artifact to hurt me.”
The eyes looked slitty. “No hurt Cuddle Bunny! Or Cuddle Bunny Cuddle Bunny.”
Really, for Mr. Trash Bags this was genius. We were firmly in the realm of nuclear physics as far as Mr. Trash Bags was concerned. “We have to protect my Cuddle Bunny at all costs, or I can’t love Mr. Trash Bags anymore.”
Another eye joined the other two, and the tentacle wrapped around my wrist. “Cuddle Bunny love Mr. Trash Bags?”
“I sure do. But it is very important to me that you protect my Cuddle Bunny.” The little eyes looked so sad; I felt awful using emotional blackmail on the little eldritch abomination.
“Number 786 of Horde became exile. After failure to consume target mammals exile became Mr. Trash Bags.”
“Okay, then.”
“Protect Cuddle Bunny!” A fourth eye joined the others and they all blinked at me, which was very distracting as I drove a winding country road. “How?”
“That pouch you’re in? The bad guys will take it. You’ve got to flatten yourself so they don’t find you. When you get to the other side, if my baby is there, you protect my baby. Eat the bad guy.”
“Consume!” Then Mr. Trash Bags’ now five eyes looked confused. “Mammals too big?”
Right. He was a fraction of the mighty shoggoth he once was. “Well, you can eat their nose or something. Whatever it takes to distract them and keep my Cuddle Bunny safe.”
“Keep safe Cuddle Bunny.”
“Right. When baby is safe, you can do whatever bad stuff you want to the bad guys. As small as you are right now, ears, eyes, toes, fingers, those are all good targets.”
“Do bad stuff to bad guys.”
I kept repeating my instructions, making sure he understood that the primary mission was protecting Ray and the secondary was getting the artifact back. By the time we rounded Dead Man’s Turn—aptly named, there were lots of accidents there—leading up to the bridge, I was teaching Mr. Trash Bags my phone number and he was chanting it back to me enthusiastically.
I had no idea where they’d take my baby. In the past, the teleportation spells of the type used by the Condition had led to places around our world. Wherever the artifact wound up, I wanted him to be able to call me and tell me where to go. Once he’d memorized the phone number, he asked me what a phone was, then I had to explain that too. And how to use one.
“On box with numbers summon Cuddle Bunny. Purge. Destroy. Consume!”
“And?”
Mr. Trash Bags had to think hard. “Protect?”
“Good.”
I was so screwed.
* * *
I finally got to Crybaby Bridge. It seemed like it had taken forever, but my watch said I still had a few minutes.
The bridge was a fairly normal metal, arched one, the sort you find down a lot of country roads in Alabama. This one was pretty big, and I presumed at some point it had led from somewhere important to somewhere else important. Right now, there was an old abandoned house behind me, a straggle of farms on the other side, and trees everywhere.
Across the bridge was a woman, holding a baby in a blue blanket. I recognized Amanda Fuesting, that child stealing bitch. The blue blanket had been made by Holly during her downtime on the siege. Since quilting wasn’t in the main body of Holly’s skills, it was pretty special to her, and seeing it there just made me even angrier.
Had Amanda been a traitor all along?
At this point I didn’t trust anybody except for myself and the truckload of orcs who’d been following me, who would now be hiding out of sight. Well, I had to trust Mr. Trash Bags…kind of.
The kidnappers knew I was a shooter, so Amanda was standing on the edge of the bridge. A head shot would flip her off switch, but then she’d take my baby over the side with her. We were maybe twenty feet over the river; a drop was more than sufficient to kill poor little Ray.
I shut off the car and waited a second. Amanda didn’t move. There were good hiding spots all along the river. I could be walking into an ambush. Maybe the second they saw I had what they wanted, it would be my switch that got flipped.
Mr. Trash Bags was in the pouch with the artifact, so I stuck my hand in to check and found that he’d become as thin as the lining. He was warm, and I felt a bizarre tickle on my fingers, like he was licking them or something. When it came to shoggoths, it was better not to think too clearly about what they might be doing. I wiped what was probably spit on my pants, then got out of the car.
I started walking toward them, slowly lifting my hands, one empty, and from the other dangled the bag. My stomach hurt from the tension. “I’ve got what you want.”
Amanda stood very still, and the baby lump in the blanket didn’t move either.
“Amanda,” I said, in case she was another victim, and not a traitor. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
There was no hesitation in the response, as the thing in Amanda’s body laughed, the full, rich sound of a much larger person. “She’s only alive in the basest sense, Guardian. The process of taking over a human mind is a rather violent one. I’m afraid once I release my puppets, there’s usually not much left of their mind. This body is merely a convenient vehicle. You have no friend here, merely a negotiating partner. Now, that’s close enough.”
We were fifty feet apart.
“Did you bring the payment for your baby?”
“Hang on. I need to—”
“Too late,” the thing in Amanda’s body said. It moved fast, grabbing the baby by the ankle, and suspending him over the side of the bridge.
“No!”
It was Ray. No doubt about it. He looked unharmed and very surprised, and as the little quilted blanket Holly had made fell into the river below, Ray gave vent to a scream of outrage and fear, his little lungs laboring overtime to let me know all was not right.
“Not a step closer, Guardian. You see he is alive. Don’t make me change that. Payment. Now.”
“Stop, stop. I’ve got it.” I opened the pouch and let him see the evil thing.
“Excellent.” Ray went on crying, pumping his little arms and legs with a will, and the thing that spoke through Amanda’s body raised his voice to be heard over the wail. “Now put the rope down. When the portal forms, place the artifact inside. I must warn you—those waiting to receive it will recognize a fake.”
I threw the rope on the bridge. When it hit the metal, it began to wiggle like it had a life of its own, gradually arranging itself into a circle. When the two ends met, there was a hiss of sparks, and the part of the bridge inside the loop disappeared. It was like a window had formed. The other side was too dark to tell where it went.
I’d seen these before, even gone through them. This one was only as big around as a basketball. It made me wish I had a hand grenade to toss through to whatever greedy bastards were waiting on the other side. But it was give up the artifact or Ray, which was no choice at all. I went to drop the pouch, but then my hand wouldn’t let go.
It was as though the curse that bound me to the thing was stronger than even love for my baby. Amanda’s face contorted in a horrible, unnatural grin as I struggled to let go.
“It’s difficult being chosen. What is stronger I wonder? A desperate mother’s love or a Guardian’s curse? Hurry. This arm grows weary.”
Ray was screaming, upside down, all the blood rushing to his head. I needed to hold him and comfort him and stop his fear. My fingers were clenched so tight that my hand was shaking. I tried to tell myself it couldn’t be used to destroy the world for another five hundred years at least… Talk about kicking the can down the road.
I’ll get this back. I promise. Right now I have to save my child.
It took all my willpower to force my fingers to open and drop the artifact into the portal.
As it vanished I realized I could breathe again.
“It’s done! Give me my baby!”
“Not until I receive confirmation they have received the real thing.”
“At least turn him upright. You’re hurting him! Please. I’m begging you.”
But the thing wasn’t paying attention to me; it was like he was listening to someone else. Could this thing inhabit more than one body at a time? “Delivery confirmed… It was a pleasure doing business with you, Julie Shackleford.”
And then Amanda stepped over the edge.
Hands outstretched, I began running toward them, but horrified, I watched Ray fall, screaming, from sight.
I reacted without thought, flinging myself over the side after them.
The water wasn’t very deep right here. There was barely enough to break my fall, but then my body hit the rocks below. I came up, thrashing and spitting, searching desperately.
I’d lost my glasses on impact, but I spotted the blue blanket floating away. Then I saw Amanda, facedown…and then Ray!
He was beneath the water, unmoving, being swept along by the current.
I beat all speed records wading after him. When I grabbed hold, I lifted him out of the water, and started back toward the bank.
Thankfully he began to cry.
Stumbling, I climbed to where it was only ankle-deep, standing on slick rocks. “It’s okay! Hush, dear, hush. Ahhhh!” My leg nearly buckled when I put weight on it. I’d hit it hard on impact and not even felt it at the time. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care what I had to give up, the world included, to hold him in my arms again.
“Mommy’s here,” I tried to turn him over to examine him for injury, but he felt oddly lumpy. He was wearing the little outfit with the elephants that I’d put on him this morning, but suddenly it was like all his bones and joints were in the wrong place.
I got him turned over and found that all similarity to my son had vanished. The thing I was holding was like a hideous, hairless monkey. Its filthy claws raked down my face as its baby screams turning into something like hysterical laugher. I tried to drop it, but it clung to me and went after me, claws scratching my face, going for my eyes. I lost my footing and fell. It immediately started snapping at my face and trying to drown me. I got hold of one of its arms, now wiry strong, and tried to force it away, but it grabbed my ear with its other hand and tried to twist it off. I bit its arm. It tasted terrible, but I kept biting until it let go. I threw it away as hard as I could.
It hit with a splash, but popped right back up and loped toward me.
Even blurry, I recognized what it was now, a tokoloshe, an African water spirit, known for luring women and children to a watery death through its power of illusion. They could look and sound just like a baby, helpless and trapped, and then it would murder whoever tried to help it.
I’d been conned. Furious, I picked up a big rock out of the water, lifted it overhead, and smashed the evil little imp flat. I lifted the rock in both hands and started smashing it down, over and over. It was said a tokoloshe could curse you, an ill wish they called it. I wasn’t going to give it the chance. “Ill wish this, bastard!” Its skull splintered and cracked, gushing purple ooze.
By the time the orcs reached me, I was stomping what remained of the thing flat with my shoe. The water churned with mud and purple slime.
Shelly slid down the steep embankment and nearly fell in the mud. “No baby?”
I shook my head. “No.” My face and every bit of my exposed skin were all scratched to hell. I’d gone from terrified, to relieved, to furious, to disappointed in the span of a minute. This was exhausting. I just wanted to sit down and cry, but I wasn’t about to do that. Hell, no, I wasn’t about to do that.
He’d used a decoy. That meant Ray was still out there, and now the rat bastard had the artifact too. I didn’t know what I could do.
Neither did the orcs. Most were standing there, confused, but a couple of them had jumped off the bridge into the river—each landing far more gracefully than I had—and they’d swum after Amanda, who’d been floating off downriver.
“We follow,” Shelly said apologetically as she helped me out of the water. “We too late.”
“No. The baby was never here. I got duped.” Which just shows you that motherhood does things to people’s heads. How long had I been dealing with evil things? I should have known better.
Shelly picked my glasses out of the river and helpfully handed them over. “What do now?”
“I don’t know…” I just stood there angry, freaked out, soaked, and in pain. “I need a minute to think.”
I looked toward Amanda. A young male orc was pulling her body onto the mud. I limped over to her. I was going to have one hell of a bruise on my leg, but I’d worry about that later. I’d thought maybe I’d be able to question her, but she was obviously dead, eyes empty and staring at the sun.
Shit. I’d liked her. She’d been kind to Grandpa. But thinking of him just made me suddenly feel a lot more lost and alone.
The young orc had a short sword at his waist. I didn’t know if his life gift lay in combative arts or he was trying to emulate the infamous Edward, but he seemed pretty comfortable with the blade. And as much as I’d liked Amanda before she’d turned out to be a mind-controlled kidnapper, my number one suspect right now was the Condition, and their people often came back from the dead, and they did so quickly.
“Cut her head off.” The male looked at me funny, but I don’t think he spoke English. So I stuck my hand out toward Shelly and said, “Can I borrow a gun?”
Shelly obediently handed me a single-action Army reproduction. She was like an orcish Annie Oakley. I was almost never unarmed, but I’d followed the kidnapper’s instructions because I’d not wanted to give him an excuse to bail or hurt my son. I cocked the hammer, aimed, and shot Amanda right between the eyes.
The young male orc jumped back and gave me an angry glare, like warn me next time so I can plug my ears.
“Sorry,” I said to him as I handed Shelly back her gun. My ears were ringing too. In my defense, I had a lot of stuff on my mind.
What was I going to do now? The kidnapper still had Ray. Ray was still valuable. The kidnapper’s phone was still in my car. Maybe I could call him and offer something else. The problem there was assuming the kidnapper had sane and rational motivations, and what else could he want? I’d just stupidly given him a magical super weapon.…along with Mr. Trash Bags, who might still come through and call me…
It’s pretty sad when your best hope is a shoggoth. Then I began to panic as I realized Mr. Trash Bags had memorized my phone number, but I’d just jumped in a river. It was with great relief when I fished it out of my pocket and found it was still working. That had been close. I couldn’t imagine him calling Information.
“Flortz,” said the male orc. He was pointing at the messy bullet hole in Amanda’s forehead.
“Glowy bug,” Shelly translated helpfully.
A firefly had crawled out of the wound.
“What the hell?”
It was unusually large, shook itself in a tiny shower of blood, and then promptly flew away. The yellow light was visible until it disappeared into the trees.
Then I gasped as I remembered the other glowing firefly that had hit my windshield as we’d left Colin Wynne’s place. March is too early for fireflies, and they don’t normally glow during the day. Not in any way you can notice.
“I know what kidnapped Ray,” I said as I began climbing up the bank.
“What bad thing is?” Shelly demanded.
“An Adze.” The orcs shared a confused glance. Shelly’s googly eye turned back to me as she shrugged. They’d never heard of that. “Never mind. Take her body back to the compound, and I’m going to need what’s left of that magic rope.”
From the mists of my memory, I’d dredged up the probable creature I was dealing with. The Adze was a vampiric monster, rarely seen at all and almost never outside of Africa. The presence of fireflies and the possession fit. From what little I knew about these things, they were really bad news. An Adze was always described as powerful, cunning, and greedy.
By the time I got back on the bridge, I could hear a phone ringing. I ran over to my car and retrieved the phone the kidnapper had left me. The screen read Guardian. This asshole had never even mastered the fact that the call should say from whom it was, not whom he was calling. And yet he was smart enough to fool me. I hated my brain just then.
A booming laugh came from the phone as soon as I answered. “Did you think I ever meant to let you have your son?”
I spoke, though my lips felt like stiff cork, and my voice came out hoarse, as if I’d been running for miles and miles without a drink of water. “Is he alive?”
“Oh, yes, your spawn is alive. He is far too valuable to kill. I intend to sell him. Those who hired me didn’t care what happens to the baby. Think of it—the child of the Guardian and a Chosen? Such a thing has never happened before as far as I know. Such blood will fetch a high price at auction.” He sounded insanely pleased with his own cleverness.
My stomach lurched. I felt cold, very cold. I’d never been so cold in my entire life. My voice must have sounded just as cold, just as impersonal, as I said, “I’ll pay whatever price you want.”
“Ah, I’m afraid you can’t. You don’t deal in the currency I trade in. But someone else will. They will pay very much indeed.”
I snapped. It felt like a physical snap, like something within me had cut loose, like an overstretched cable that held me to sanity and humanity had let go. It’s not right to say I was furious. I’d left fury way behind. This was to fury as a nuclear explosion was to a slap. This was fury’s older brother, the one who looked all calm but could beat fury five ways from Monday.
And even I was surprised at how cold and composed the words came out, “Listen carefully. You think you know me, but you don’t. You don’t know what you’re messing with. I will hunt you down. I won’t just kill you. I’ll obliterate you. I’ll make you wish you’d never existed.”
I expected a snappy comeback, or that taunting laugh, but there was no sound from the phone. I finished through gritted teeth, “Enjoy what passes for life while you can, because you’ll be dead soon. I’m coming for my son.”
The line went dead.