Northward
“Shady, TV room. Now,” I hissed, grabbing the Wendigo’s sauce-covered face.
“TV room circle!” she agreed, but didn’t move.
The doorbell rang again. “Ash? I know you’re in there. Your Jeep’s in the driveway.” North yelled.
“Shit.” I grabbed Shady, hauling her toward the den by the antlers. “Important Princess business: watch TV and be quiet.”
“QUIET CIRCLE! BEEP—”
I clamped my hand over her mouth. She licked my palm.
“Silent circles. Very important silent circles,” I whispered sternly.
She nodded solemnly, silver eyes wide. I shoved her into the TV room, cranked the volume on some nature documentary about penguins, and quickly locked the door. Then the hallway door. Then the kitchen door for good measure.
“PENGUIN CIRCLES!” I heard her shout through three sets of doors. “ACCEPTABLE BIRDS!”
I grabbed my house keys and stepped outside, pulling the thick front door shut behind me with a click.
North stood on my porch in a black peacoat, black tank top and dark jeans, gray eyes scanning my face. The porch light caught shiny purple streaks in her dark hair, making them shimmer like oil slicks.
A car was parked in the driveway. It looked like a 1930s Packard, all swooping fenders and chrome details, deep black color and shaded windows. The kind of car Al Capone would have enjoyed.
“You didn’t text me,” she said without preamble.
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “Sort of preoccupied with the whole alien invasion thing. Been watching TV all day. Sup?”
“Sup?!” North arched an eyebrow at me. “That’s your response. You’re all alone in a mansion that’s practically falling apart, in the middle of nowhere, during an alien invasion…and you’re going with ‘sup’?”
“Uhhhh…” I shrugged, trying to look casual while listening for any Shady-related noises from inside the house. “What else am I supposed to say? ‘Hello, thanks for checking if the aliens murdered me yet?’”
“That’d be a good start.” She crossed her arms, the movement making silver rings on her fingers reflect the dying light barely breaking through the rainstorm clouds overhead. “Do you have any idea what’s happening in town? People are losing their minds.”
“‘Bout the aliens?”
“Yes. About everything. The Morrison’s hardware store got cleaned out of generators. Gas stations are limiting fuel to ten gallons a person. Walgreens is already out of batteries, bottled water and…” she paused, “toilet paper, because apparently that’s still the best panic-buy option even during an alien invasion. Yumland’s getting emptied out too and I didn’t happen to spot you or your… dog stocking up there.”
From deep within the house came a muffled “COME BACK, BESTEST CIRCLE! I NEED MY EMPEROR PENGUIN!”
North’s eyes flashed to the sound. “You’ve got company?”
“Only the tube,” I lied. “Documentary ‘bout penguins.”
She studied my face with an uncomfortably perceptive look.
“Say, do you worry about every random customer you give your phone number to?” I deflected.
“I don’t give my number to random customers,” she said flatly, “I gave it to you. The new guy who just inherited a creepy-ass fire-hazard-central mansion.”
“You think that I’m going to accidentally set my house on fire or something due to alien-invasion related anxiety?”
“I think that if anything happens the fire department or the police won’t come,” she said. “Also I didn’t simply come here to check if you were alive.”
“Oh?”
North shifted on the spot. “Things are getting bad out there, Ash. Not here in Cascade, we’re too small and remote, isolated by mountain roads. But Portland? Seattle? The big cities are effed hard. People are panicking and breaking into stores, stealing supplies. The power grid’s already struggling in some areas. Water treatment and nuclear power plants are running on skeleton screws because half the workers fled.”
“Eh. The aliens haven’t actually murdered anyone who isn’t an uncooperative president,” I pointed out.
“Yet,” North stated. “Panicked idiots don’t care about the ‘yet’. They see warships in orbit, giant crystal centipedes and animal soldiers with guns and they lose their minds. Hell, the USA government’s barely functional size the Vice President signed the surrender declaration to the Frontenachii Dominion. Supply chains are breaking down. It’s only been less than a day since they’ve dropped the moon on us. Give it a week or two and the entire nation will catch fire.”
“And?”
“And… I want you to come with me.”
“To… where?”
“To my family’s place.”
“Love to, but can’t. I’ll manage.”
“Will you?” She stepped closer and I caught a tang of metallic… something beneath her flowery perfume. Blood… perhaps? “You’ve got no supplies, no backup power, no way to defend yourself if things go sideways. The nearest neighbour is miles away.”
“I said I’ll manage,” I insisted.
“Come on,” she pressed on. “My family has a farm in the mountains. A generator, a well with clean water, enough food stockpiled to last years. Even an old family bunker my paranoid grandad built during the Cold War.”
“Very generous,” I commented. “Alas, I can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
“I just moved in. I’ve got stuff to do.”
“What stuff?!”
“Work stuff… I gotta find work.”
“You’re job hunting… during an alien invasion?” North’s gray eyes narrowed. “Or perhaps something else?”
“DOCUMENTARY PENGUIN EMPIRE! BEEP BEEP! Where did Emperor go? HUNGRY CIRCLE NEEDS MORE PASTA!” Shady yelled unhelpfully.
North tensed up. “That does NOT sound like a documentary.”
“GoTube documentaries have weird joke narration sometimes.”
“Ash,” her voice dropped to a low growl. “I’m fucking trying to save you, damn it. My family… We’re prepared for this kind of thing. Always have been. We have resources. Connections. You don’t have to weather this alone.”
“Thanks, but I’m good here.”
“You are not listening.” She grabbed my wrist where Shady had bruised it. I winced, and she noticed, her fingers tracing the purple marks. “Wait. Shit. Someone did this to you. Someone… very strong.”
“Nah.” I pulled my hand back. “I’m a clumsy guy with lots of renovations on my plate. A rope caught me.”
“These look like thumb prints.” She stepped even closer, close enough that I could see flecks of crystallized silver dancing in her gray eyes. “What are you hiding, Ash?”
“Nothing. I simply prefer to stay here. By myself,” I lied.
“Even if the power goes out? Even if the water stops? Even if those antlered fucks…” She gestured vaguely skyward where we both knew alien ships orbited. “Decide to start harvesting people at random?”
“Even then.”
Her jaw tightened. “You’re being verrrry stupid.”
“Maybe. Still staying.”
“I’m trying to save your life!”
“I did not ask you to.”
She stared at me evaluatingly. “Fine. I tried being nice to you, mageling. Emerge e sarcophago. Pacifica canem nigram.”
I blinked as she inexplicably switched to Latin, her voice resonating unnaturally across the clearing like a gunshot.
The doors of the black car opened. Four men stepped out, and immediately, every instinct I had screamed wrong.
They wore suits, all black with thin pinstripes, complete with fedoras tilted at identical angles. But it was their faces that made my skin crawl. They looked human the way a mannequin looks human. All the right features in all the right places, but something fundamental was missing. Their skin was too wrinkly, like plastic stretched over a frame. Their expressions were fixed in identical eerie smiles, eyes hidden by reflective, round glasses.
Each carried a Thompson submachine gun, the old Chicago Typewriter style.
North moved faster than I could say ‘what the fuck’, kicking my feet out from under me. As my face and chest slammed into the wooden porch, her knee dug into my back, my hands pulled back.
Handcuffs snapped over my wrists.
A dark shadow erupted from the side of the house like a freight train made of fury and antlers, the side door flying out into the woods. Shady moved faster than I’d ever seen her move, even faster than when she’d grabbed my tablet in the shower. One moment the four suited men were raising their Tommy guns, the next they were… pieces.
Black fluid, blood that was too dark and too thick to be human, splattered across the driveway. An arm still clutching a Tommy gun went cartwheeling into the hedges. A fedora rolled across the driveway, its owner’s head nowhere in sight. Wet tearing sounds mixed with unnatural bubbling and hissing noises, like someone feeding a variety of furniture and fluids into a wood chipper.
North yelped above me as seven feet of enraged cryptid princess reached us.
My female assailant flew off me kicked by a dark furry foot, her body obliterating the wooden balustrade. She hit the gravel hard, rolling twice before Shady pounced off the porch landing atop the vampire girl.
“UNACCEPTABLE CIRCLE!” Shady roared, her massive jaws closing around North’s throat. A low, rumbling growl vibrated through the air, making the remaining intact windows rattle.
“Shady, stop!” I wheezed, struggling to my knees, handcuffs rattling on my wrists. My body throbbed and protested where it was slammed into the wooden porch. “Don’t kill her!”
“BAD CIRCLE MESS EMPEROR!” Shady snarled around North’s neck, not loosening her dark clawed grip. “VERY BAD! BEEP! BEEP! REQUIRED!”
I limped off the porch, nearly tripping over a torn leg.
The “men” weren’t bleeding like humans. Their black ichor steamed in the evening air, smelling of rot, copper and some chemical, perhaps antifreeze.
“Damn it. Should have brought more thralls,” North hissed through clenched teeth, gray eyes flashing in the gloom. Actually flashing, like a cat’s, but the wrong color entirely. Pure silver.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Fat raindrops began to fall, mixing with the black blood on the gravel, creating oil-slick rainbows in the dying light.
“Thralls?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. “You’re actually a vampire? Fucking Count Chocula over here, trying to do what? Thrall me up too?”
“VAMPIRE CIRCLE!” Shady announced, tail swishing aggressively.
North stared at Shady, taking in the full… somehow currently ten feet of muscle, antlers, and barely contained violence pinning her down. “What the fuck?”
“Meet my lovely roommate,” I said. “She’s very protective.”
“That’s not an undead construct.”
“Never said she was.”
“I don’t…” North panted, looking shocked and sullen. “…Understand. Why… is a Wendigo Omnid protecting a human? That… doesn’t make any sense.”
“You don’t get to ask questions, Miss Chocula,” I said. “I’m the one who asks questions and you better answer truthfully or my Wendoggo will chew your pretty face right off. She can smell lies with her thought-catching hooks. Each lie adds an inch of teeth digging in. Right Shades?”
“CIRCLE EMPEROR PROTECT. CHOCULA TASTY. NOM!” Shady growled, skull-head with pure white teeth closing like a vice, claws digging deeper, piercing skin.
North gulped, silver, sparkly blood welling up where Wendigo canines and claws dug in.
“A-ask y-your question t-then,” she let out. “I… I won’t lie! P-p-promise! I know that these fuckers can pull thoughts from anyone’s head!”
“Why did you just try to abduct me?”
“The… my glamour…” North let out, trembling. “You can clearly see through… glamours. You said I was a vampire. Mundane humans d-don’t notice these things!”
“BAD CIRCLE!” Shady stated, drooling on North’s face. “EMPEROR MINE! NO VAMPIRE CIRCLES ALLOWED!”
Rain was coming down harder now, soaking through my shirt, washing the black blood into dark rivers that ran toward the storm drains. One of the thralls twitched, trying to crawl towards its master, the body missing everything below the ribcage.
Shady’s long tail whipped out like a gunshot, jet-black feathers turning to jagged blades, reducing it to scattered parts with a wet crunch.
“Your thralls,” I said, “What are they?”
“Undead constructs,” North admitted. “Recently deceased corpses, preserved with formaldehyde and animated with my blood.”
“SMOOSHED CIRCLES!” Shady confirmed. “PASTA SAUCE EVERYWHERE!”
“You were actually going to kidnap me?” I asked.
“Recruit,” North corrected. “My family needs people with unique abilities. Humans who can see through glamours and command constructs are incredibly rare. Valuable magelings. Especially now with the Frontenachii fleet parked in orbit.”
“So the whole ‘come to our mountain bunker’ thing…”
“We do have a bunker.” She tried to move, but Shady’s claws tightened incrementally. “I really was trying to do this the nice way first. The invasion complicated things. Made my family… concerned… scared even.”
“What are vampires doing in Cascade?” I asked. “What’s with the Latin? You from Transylvania or something?”
“No. We… we’re refugees from a dying world.”
“How’d you get here?”
“We used a gateway artifact to go through a randomly generated gate s-sequence.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since 1922.”
“I see. Why does the Frontenachii invasion concern you?”
“The fuck do you mean why?!” North choked, silver eyes flashing at Shady. “This is why. Look at her!”
“Be more specific please,” I ordered. “Don’t answer a question with a question. What are you and why do the Omnids frighten you?”
“Ugh. We’re… crystalline-organic life. Mages. Omnids are little gods… demons with Syntropic Fractal Engine hearts. They can’t be stopped, can’t be reasoned with. The Frontenachii see everything as a resource like the pradavarian mercs whom they bind with blood contracts, or snacks like humans, or an… an infestation that must be c-collected from their… crops.”
“You’re an infestation, then? What kind? Be specific.”
“Ye-yes. C-crystalline fungi. We… we grow inside humans.”
“So if you infect a human what happens?”
“A crystalline organic network will very slowly bloom and grow in the bitten human, make them… tougher, faster, smarter… makes the infected human live forever… halt all aging and stop decay.”
“Sounds swank. Any downsides?”
“Sunlight disrupts our thoughts. The yellow sun of this planet is too bright. Makes it hard to think, like it’s screaming all the time, unless it’s cloudy and dark like it is now.”
“Hard SQUARES!” Shady announced in North’s voice. “EMPEROR, I NOM CHOCULA? VAMPIRES ARE FOOD CIRCLE! VERY NUTRITIOUS!”
“No, Shades, I’d like to interrogate her. No chewing on the vampire.”
“EMPEROR INTERROGATE! BEEP! CHOCULA ANSWERS! Princess nom!”
North choked, eyes widened further. “Princess… Oh fuck. Oh fuck me sideways. She’s the… the Frontenachii—”
I didn’t say anything, but North had already made the dire conclusion, potentially recognizing the distinctive stars sprinkled on Shady’s cheeks, forehead and antlers as shown in the broadcast.
“Slayer,” North breathed. “You’re harboring their missing Princess. That’s why you didn’t want to leave. You… You’re… The Emperor of Earth… that was you on TV?!”
“EMPEROR BEST CIRCLE!” Shady confirmed.
“Fuck my life. This is so much worse than I thought,” North sobbed out.
“What did you think, exactly?”
“That you, like your grandparents, had some minor power,” North confessed. “Value. Maybe a little domain. Astral sight!”
“And this is worse, how?”
“You… you’ve somehow enthralled the Frontenachii Princess to serve you!”
“Somehow?”
“Somehow. Perhaps, a unique artifact or incredibly high level Charisma magic? I don’t know! You don’t smell or look like an Archmage from beyond the stars. Abyss, what sort of an abomination are you?!”
“I’m the Emperor of Earth,” I replied simply. “And I am not content with xenomorphs like you infesting my planet without asking.”
Author’s note
