Iron Inheritance (22 page)

“Trust me,” he said, his voice deep and resolute, his hand tapping a beat in the air—counting the thuds that sloshed the puddle from side to side.

I grasped Josh’s tensed forearm, the muscles underneath pulsating quicker and quicker.

“Now!” We lunged to the right.

A metal-on-metal screech cut through the air as I landed on my side, gravel digging into my skin. I looked back at two holes punched through the Jeep’s doors. Another otherworldly bison roar bellowed through the air, and the whole car bucked as the doors bent.

“It’s stuck?” I said, dumfounded.

Josh nodded. “By its horns.”

The holes grew bigger with each passing moment. Bone pried and twisted the metal.

“You can see it now? What is it?” I said.

“Minotaur…sort of.” Josh cocked his head to the side for a better look. “Essence is flowing through its whole body. Hmm.”

My eyes bulged, and the side of my neck held the beat of my pulse. “
What?
”

“That Jeep’s not going to hold it much longer. Think we can play the matador one more time?”

I laughed despite the panic screaming in my mind, and in that instant, some of my sight came back. The beast still had its wings wrapped around its body, but black liquid twisted and writhed like blood through its veins.

I was really going to regret this.

“Toro toro!” I sprang forward and ran to the far side of the parking lot.

Josh’s eyes widened like he had been kidding. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan? What plan?” I spun around in a desperate search for something, anything—

A block wall. That could work.

Josh caught my eye and nodded. “How do you feel about going 100 mph?

“What?”

“I could run us both out of here at the last second. Lot less diving into asphalt.” He raised an eyebrow.

I nodded and slung one arm around his neck, his thick arms cradling my back and legs. Normally, I would have scoffed at this, punched a guy in the gut just for suggesting it, but Josh had already shown that he knew I didn’t need his help. This wasn’t a hand-out to some poor, weak woman.

It was a simple fact: super speed couldn’t hurt right now.

The butterflies in my stomach might have helped a bit too.

“Toro!” He grinned and squeezed me closer to him, my lips pointing toward his cheek as I clasped both arms around his neck.

Nate’s Jeep skidded ten feet into the light pole and was still. The beast turned, finally free, and stared at us.

I think.

Hoofmarks dug into the asphalt.

“Five seconds,” Josh mumbled.

It roared and came straight at me, the darkness under its skin swirling and spitting, gliding just above the ground with thunder pounding through the earth.

“Three, two—”

The world blurred in the span of a millisecond and my stomach came up into my throat. We stopped five feet away, Nate suddenly appearing where we had stood.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Nate grunted, his arms stretched above his head three feet apart.

“You really take the bull by the horns.” Josh grinned and set me down. My legs wobbled slightly as the world continued to spin.

“Oh, shut up,” Nate spat, his feet sliding back two feet.

The darkness became more concentrated in what I assumed was the beast’s head. It writhed like the demon essence I’d seen on the subway, except much bigger.

“So are you going to take it from here?” Josh continued. “We were going to let it smash its head on some concrete, but your plan seems to be working.”

Nate skidded back another four feet, his toes digging through the asphalt and leaving bits of shoe behind. “A little h—”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Josh grinned again, his large red hammer suddenly appearing in his hand.

“Eve, get Ria and get out of here,” said Nate suddenly, his arms bending, sweat dripping down his face. His hair was being blown back repeatedly by stinking hot breaths. The beast let out another below of rage that shook the ground.

“Just tell me where to hit it.” I stepped closer. There was no way I was running away to let him get trampled.

“No!” Nate twisted his whole body, lifted his hands over his head, and smashed the invisible beast into the ground like a pro wrestler.

The ground shook and sprayed gravel up at me.

“Dang. Guardians are stronger than I thought,” Josh said and disappeared, his hammer smashing into the sides of the beast like a high-speed whack-a-mole mallet.

“Get Ria,” Nate huffed, his arms seeming to press the horns down into the ground even as he started to go pale.

I set my jaw and started toward the other end of the parking lot—the brick liquor store just fifty feet away—when the beast revealed its true form. Wings unfurled from around its body twelve feet on each side. Black scales like chain mail wrapped around the legs and torso, huge muscles shifting underneath, every tendon a bridge cable. Its front legs grew talons at the end instead of hooves and left deep scratches in the ground. The black horns that Nate clutched were spiraled and finished with needle-thin points. Puffs of steam pumped out of its snout even in the warm night air.

Great. It
was
a Minotaur.

And a lizard and a bat and a dragon.

Cloudy gray eyes turned to me as I ran. It reared up on its hind legs and lifted Nate fifteen feet in the air. Unwilling to let go, he flipped around and dangled parallel with the beast’s scaly, winged back. Josh continued to hit it, now darting in and out of its underbelly, but his attack did little but make the beast annoyed.

“Nate!” Ria ran down the front steps of the liquor store toward the creature.

Miranda, Freddy, and the store clerk stood by the windows, transfixed.

“Ria, wait!” I stretched out my hand, almost to her.

The beast turned quickly and knocked her to the ground with its wing.

“Ria!” I shouted, getting to her just as she skidded against the ground, her hand and leg instantly bloody from catching her fall.

My heart beat out of my chest, and the monster let out a roar, its talons clutching at its neck as it spun around and around. Nate had his green whip wrapped around its neck and hung from the other end like a rope swing.

It continued to scratch at its throat, shrieking and stomping the ground to dust, before it extended its wings fully. With a single beat, it lifted into the air and rose exponentially higher with each subsequent rep before disappearing into a thin gray cloud two hundred feet up.

Ria screamed her throat raw, staring up at the sky as I propped her up and carried her back to the Jeep. They could still get away if they left now. “Come on.” I waved Freddy and Miranda out, but before they could make it down the steps, a feeling unknotted in the pit of my stomach as a fuzzy picture slowly filtered up through my spine into the back of my head. “Watch out!”

I pushed Ria’s legs into her chest and pressed her against the outer wall of one of the Jeep’s tires, spreading my body around hers as much as possible to get the brunt of whatever was coming.

Rocks and fire.

The demon hit the ground like a glowing red cannon ball. The gravel parking lot exploded with molten pebbles and rocks. They pecked and peeled my back and arms. I held in a scream until my lungs burned, long past when it ended. Fine dust settled in my hair and on my raw back. I heard Nate’s weak voice. He was near us, closer than the beast.

“Josh,” he said. “It won’t last long. Get them out.”

“Nate. Are you ok? Where are you?” Ria slid out from under me.

Boom!
The ground rumbled.

I struggled to my feet.

BOOM! A vibration ran up into my shins.

I turned around and saw Josh standing near the beast’s head, jumping up, and thumping his hammer into its skull with everything he had.

I started toward him. The beast was already stirring, its front talons scratching the ground to pull it up to its full height.

Ria stuck her hand in Nate’s, kneeling down next to him, close enough to the monster to be hurt again.

Enough of this.

I ran as fast as I could, my hands pumping up and down and leaving streaks of blue light in the air as my heart thumped. At the last moment I pounded my foot into the loose pavement and sprang into the air, landing on the scaly, winged back just as Josh hammered its skull into the asphalt.

Before it could get back up, I smashed my fist between two scales, past the beast’s rocky under-flesh and into its neck.

It yowled in anguish as its whole body pressed into the ground with the force of the hit. Its vertebrae rippled down and then back up.

“Eve, hold on to it. Don’t let it go,” Nate called, on his feet now.

Ria stood behind him, her hand on her mouth in surprise.

I felt it—something gooey and cold. I made a fist and held on.

“Now pull it out,” Josh said, standing back, his arms hanging at his side like they were lead weights.

I tried to gently slide my hand out of the goop of bone and tissue, but the thing in my hand squirmed and held tight to its host. I took another deep breath, and blue light enveloped my whole body—everything in my vision fiery blue.

Another roar echoed until my fist slipped free with the black, thumping darkness in tow. The demon’s body slumped down like a machine without power, and the scales under my feet started to move.

“Eve, get down!” Nate yelled.

I leapt off, and the scales I’d been standing on began to retract as the whole body shriveled and compacted on itself. When I looked back it was completely gone, a light fog hovering over the ground for a moment and then quickly evaporating into the night.

“Keep holding,” Nate said tensely, staring at my hand.

I looked down and recognized the black mass of demon essence, similar to the one Josh and I had caught, but much larger. I squeezed tighter, but it didn’t squirm, only thumped a faint heartbeat.

“Hmm.” Nate cocked his head to the side, his khaki shirt scorched black and so brittle it might crumble in the wind. There wasn’t one scratch on his skin though. “It’s tamer than I thought.”

Yeah, because that’s the weirdest part of all this.

“I didn’t know you’d learned to use your essence as a shield,” said Miranda, suddenly at my side, eyes wide with curiosity.

“That’s awesome,” said Freddy, standing next to Ria and already starting to heal her. In the distance, on the front steps of the store, I saw the store clerk lying on the steps, unconscious but otherwise unharmed.

Didn’t these people just see us fight a minotaur? How was me being able to hold this thing the most interesting thing?

“Shield? Why would I need a shield?” My hand was still swathed in blue light, but the rest of my body seemed to have returned to its normal human hue, at least according to
my
eyes.

“Because that demon would try to possess you if you touched it with your bare hands,” said Nate.

I looked at my hand and then at Josh. He kept his eyes on the darkness.

Back in the subway I thought—

“Here, hand it to me,” Nate said.

I turned my hand over and loosened my grip, feeling strangely emotional as I did, like I wanted to cry and yell at the same time.

The moment it touched Nate’s green hand, the darkness squirmed violently. “Whoa, guess it doesn’t like me.” His fist jerked back and forth with a mind of its own.

A wild look came over Josh’s eyes as he stepped up closer to us. He was as unscathed as Nate—not a single scratch on him. “Tracker,” he said, turning first to me and then the rest of the group.

Nate inhaled and clenched his jaw. “We should go back to headquarters. It’s not safe for her to be out here now. Morales—”

“They’re attacking her now,” Josh said wildly, angrily. “She can handle herself—you saw what she just did. She should know who’s responsible.”

I repeated the word “tracker” over and over again in my mind. “Wait, this thing can lead to…?” The gears clicked together in my head.

“To whoever summoned it.” Josh nodded, a wildfire burning in his stormy blue eyes.

“Let’s go,” I said definitively. This was my chance. I already knew they were coming after me. The last demon had said his master would return, that’d he’d find me. But maybe if I could get there first, surprise them when they expected this Minotaur-dragon to kill me, I could find out exactly who the master was.

What are you, some detective? You’re eighteen and can barely—

Fight demons? Lift a car over my head? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

“This isn’t what you think.” Nate’s eyes followed mine. “It could lead us anywhere, come from anywhere. The bottom of the ocean, the center of a mountain, another continent for all we know.”

“Then I hope the Jeep can fly,” I said, already walking back. “For that matter, I hope it can run at all.” Aside from the puncture holes in the doors, several of the windows had been cracked, and much of the paint had been scratched away.

Freddy and Miranda didn’t waver at all but followed after me, Freddy already stretching out his hands to heal my back with a catchy, snapping rhythm. The only thing he couldn’t heal was my dress, unfortunately.

“We can’t.” Nate shook his head. “I’m taking you back where it’s safe.”

I squared my shoulders and turned toward him, blue essence evaporating off of me again like my body couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. It seemed to get easier to see the more out of control I felt.

“I’m doing this,” I said and grabbed the demon essence from his struggling hand. It immediately calmed down.

I walked back to the Jeep and got in. Everyone but Nate followed. I looked over at Josh as he sat down in the driver’s seat and nodded. I hoped I was making the right decision and that this didn’t lead to some Aqua Man episode, cool as that might be.

Nate opened the driver’s door and slid in, pushing Josh to the middle seat. “There’s no way I’m letting you drive my baby again,” he said as he closed the door. Light from one of the puncture holes streamed in on his leg.

“Wait, what about her?” I said, looking at the unconscious store clerk lying just outside the store.

“Listen,” said Freddy.

Sirens suddenly became apparent, maybe a minute away.