Demons and Druids Read online

  “More drones for the hive,” she said in a voice that was raspier and scarier than ever. Then she strode off to join the rest of the staff on the workshop floor. “Woman’s work is never done,” she muttered.

  Chapter 39

  AN HOUR LATER, I’d gotten no more answers or any glimpses of Willy. And what Beta had said at the apartment building was still bothering me. Too many of us. There might be a handful of surly-looking goons here—sorry, flame weavers—but he’d made it sound like he had a dangerous personal army.

  The answer was clear to me: B. Faust might be Beta’s factory, but it wasn’t his official headquarters. Not even close.

  Finally I saw two of the workers leaving the factory floor, the grizzled woman and a tall, balding man who looked like he could be Homer Simpson’s brother. Between them was a wheelbarrow hauling a huge bin full of parts. They took it out through a back door.

  I crawled across the roof to watch as they emerged behind the building and began lifting the pieces into an unmarked, coal-black delivery truck backed up to a loading dock.

  When they took the wheelbarrow back inside, I let myself down onto the roof of the truck, then onto its cargo bay. I didn’t know where they were taking this stuff, but I wanted to find out as much as I could about it.

  It wouldn’t be long before they came back with another load, and there wasn’t anywhere to hide unless I felt like being crushed under two tons of steel.

  Well, wait a minute. Maybe that wasn’t such a terrible idea.

  I sat on top of the pile, pulled my legs up to my chest, and closed my eyes, feeling the cold, hard metal beneath me, the way the iron molecules stacked and nested in one another like oranges jammed into a crate. It was a particularly difficult morph, but I was stoked and motivated with real anger at Beta now, and a few seconds later, I clattered to the floor of the cargo bay. I’d changed myself. I was now a curved steel bar on the top of a pile of similar pieces.

  Minutes later, the flame weavers returned and dumped another cartload of parts into the truck—right on top of me.

  “Let’s get going,” said the male in a low growl. “He’s expecting these for tonight. We do not want to disappoint Phosphorius Beta.”

  Chapter 40

  THE CLANKING OF METAL was deafening. Going to an AC/DC concert would have been more relaxing than riding in the back of this truck. I’m no librarian, but after a while the enforced, cocoonlike silence of a reading room was starting to seem attractive.

  The truck made three stops, and at each one I felt more parts being dumped on top of me. If I hadn’t been made of manganese steel, the same thing they make bulldozer blades out of, I would have been as flat as a pancake by now.

  I don’t know how far we went. Maybe fifty miles or more. It was quiet and dark for a long while in the back of the truck, and then suddenly we were surrounded by clanking, bustling, crackling sounds that got louder and louder and louder. It sounded like we were riding an elevator into a mineshaft that was traveling deep into the bowels of the earth.

  We stopped about halfway to China, it seemed, and the cargo bay’s rolling door opened with a clatter. Voices and stomping feet filled the truck, and I was picked up and flung through the air.

  “’Bout time you got here,” I heard a deep voice say. “Tonight’s the big night.”

  Chapter 41

  WHEN I WAS AWAY from the main source of the light, I changed back to my regular form, and—bang!—promptly smacked my head on something.

  It turned out I was crammed into an industrial-sized washing machine that was big enough to hold me and all the metal keeping me company, but not by much. The walls of the washtub were discolored and spotted with rust.

  There was an overpoweringly rancid smell in the air and, breathing through my mouth, I shrank back as best I could and took a peek out through the machine’s door. I wasn’t underground, as I’d thought.

  And I didn’t like what I saw. For miles, it seemed, the landscape was made up entirely of piles and piles of trash, with hundreds of human silhouettes moving among them. On the piles burned thousands of fires, all swaying with the same terrible rhythm, as if under the control of a single beating heart. Suddenly I knew what I was up against, something I could never hope to beat.

  Now I knew what Beta had meant by “too many of us.” The evil spawning here seemed infinite. There could be a million of him at this dump alone.

  If things keep going this way, I’m gonna be toast before long, I thought. Burnt black and to a crisp, smoking like a chimney.

  With perfect timing, the universe—or maybe it was my father, or maybe it was Beta—decided to play a cruel joke on me. Regardless, I knew that when I got around to telling this story someday, Joe would say it was a really good one.

  Because right at that minute, the washing machine turned on.

  And I was about to be smashed to pieces.

  Chapter 42

  WELL, if this adventure didn’t get me an alien, I would at least come out of it brand-spankin’-clean, I thought, silently slumping down in the barrel of the washing machine.

  As it turns out, my potential bloodbath was more like a nuclear-powered water massage than a spin in a clothing washer full of metal bars. A regular human probably wouldn’t have survived the pressure, but Alparians have a pretty tough hide.

  I heard voices approaching and didn’t waste a second before I focused entirely on returning to bar form. It wasn’t long before three flame weavers in overalls opened the machine door and began loading the metal pieces into what looked like a mine cart that ran on rails.

  They had barely started, though, when I heard a massive, roaring boom sweep through the dump, shaking the ground so much that some of the workers actually fell over like tenpins after a strike in bowling. I could see human figures running through thousands of fires toward the highest piles of garbage.

  Now was my chance! I rolled out of the machine and across the shadowy aisle between two rows of stacked tires. The ground was still trembling, so no one would find it odd that something was skittering across the ground toward the site of the explosion.

  At least I thought no one would notice. I was wrong.

  One worker (I couldn’t make out if it was male or female as I rolled faster and faster in the dim light) was far more interested in an errant piece of metal than in the freaking earthquake that seemed to be going on.

  Maintaining bar form was hard enough, but rolling at top speed on top of that? Dizzyingly exhausting. After the world’s weirdest mini chase scene, I felt the worker’s hand swipe me from the ground just as I heard the voice.

  “You dumb piece of junk!” she grumbled. “Relax. It’s Dana.”

  Chapter 43

  YOU KNOW how crazy I am about Dana? Enough to actually charge a rod of metal with emotion. Just in case you thought inanimate objects have no emotions, think again.

  I wanted to kill her and hug her at the same time. As I was still a rod, I couldn’t do either one. She dashed with me in hand to the other side of a junked car—a French make called a Peugeot—and pried the door open. She slid into the backseat, where I returned to human form.

  “You weren’t supposed to come with me,” was the first thing out of my mouth. “This is way too dangerous, Dana. And how did you—I mean, I didn’t—”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Daniel. Something big is about to happen.” She edged up to the opposite window to get a better view of the madness, and I followed. Now we were looking out on a circle cleared in the middle of the garbage, a circle as wide as a football field.

  Opposite where we were, the ground dropped away, and I was surprised to see the ocean on the other side; we were on the coast somewhere.

  In the middle of this improvised stadium of trash was a gigantic misshapen metal structure that looked like the result of a fight between a giant squid and a monster truck. It was the source of the vibrations that were shaking everything for a mile around.

  I recognized it instantly. I’d read
its description many times in The List’s file on Beta. The multitentacled monster before me was a Cyndarian spaceship.

  Suddenly the vibrations became even more powerful. It looked like it was ready for takeoff.

  Bits of garbage began to topple from the piles, and the Peugeot was rained on by ash, pieces of plastic, rusty circuit boards. The ship tried to lift off, but for some reason it couldn’t. The force of the flames pushing through its own rockets was literally tearing it apart.

  There was a horrendous sound like Godzilla scraping his nails on a chalkboard, and the ship actually keeled to one side. The crowds shied away now, drawing back into the shelter of the trash piles.

  And then there was a shattering explosion, like nothing I’d ever heard before. Blue flames, blowing gaping holes in the sides of the spaceship, shot into the air about a half mile.

  When the smoke cleared, I could still see the ship, looking more like a used firecracker now. And pouring out of hundreds of holes was its cargo.

  The “fuel” that Beta was sending home wasn’t oil, or coal, it turned out. It was, well, everything I loved about Terra Firma, stuffed into a cold metal container. Lush green trees, with their trunks, leaves, branches, spilled out onto the ground. Mixed in were what must have been hundreds of tons of flowers, bushes, grasses of all kinds.

  And then I saw the passengers.

  I could see rows of cages, with animals of all kinds imprisoned inside—dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits, foxes, horses. And then there was a cacophony of sound coming from inside the damaged metal shell. Flocks of birds flew out of one hole, where the vibrations had shaken open some cage doors. The birds circled the ship, squawking in the air.

  I clenched my fists in fury. Inside that ship was a nature documentary’s worth of plants and animals, and it was abundantly clear what Beta wanted with them. All of the wonderful life that Earth had to offer was nothing more to him than fuel.

  Chapter 44

  THE GHOSTLY FLAMES from the burning piles had gathered, risen, and snaked around the dump to witness the collapse. Now they roared high into the air, and burst apart into hundreds of smaller flames that darted around the base of the broken ship.

  Then a rustling, crackling voice swept through the dump.

  “The Alien Hunter is here. He is close by. Find him. NOW! BRING HIM TO ME DEAD OR ALIVE! WHOEVER BRINGS ME DANIEL X WILL GLOW FOR ETERNITY!”

  The workers scattered at the command, fanning out through the narrow aisles of the dump.

  “See why you needed me here, Daniel?” Dana said.

  “No,” I told her angrily. “This is about me, not you.”

  “I’m part of you. We’re a part of each other. It’s all the same.”

  “Just… disappear, Dana! Disappear!”

  We’d wasted precious moments with our argument, because Beta had embarked on his own search. I guess he wanted to glow for eternity, too.

  His flames had abandoned ship and spread through the dump, each fire stream covering more ground in a few seconds than a human could in an hour.

  “Okay, Daniel,” said Dana. “This is the part where you disappear us and then, like, create a rainstorm or something major to take out this maniac.”

  “Got it.”

  But I couldn’t. I tried, and tried again.

  I wanted to howl with frustration. I’d just gone metal a few times like it was nothing.

  I didn’t have time for a Plan B before we heard a knocking at the window. We hunched down in the car’s backseat, trying to make ourselves as invisible as possible, but we couldn’t escape Beta’s voice.

  “I know you’re in there, Dan—Dana—Daniel… come out, come out, whoever you are!”

  When I looked up, all I could see were rainbows of fire: orange, yellow, green, red, covering every window, enveloping the entire car.

  Chapter 45

  SO I GUESS YOU’D CALL THIS a really bad emergency situation. A mind-and-body blower.

  Right in front of me, hovering outside the rear window, was an indistinct shadow in the middle of the flames—like a face. The Dark Heart.

  “License and registration, please.” I could just make out his malicious, self-satisfied grin.

  I made a mental note that, if I ever got my driver’s license (and right now, the prospect didn’t seem very likely), I would never buy a Peugeot. Too many bad memories.

  Like maybe I died in one?

  I gripped Dana’s hand, but my face wouldn’t cooperate with my grand plan to show no fear. She knew, she had to know, that fire was like my kryptonite.

  There was an incredible sense of heat on my skin, a heat I hadn’t felt since I was three years old and preparing to die for the first time.

  “Is it hot in here, or is it just—me?” Dana whispered.

  “Oh, it’s me,” interrupted Beta. “And in a moment you’ll know firsthand just how hot I can be.”

  “Can we talk for a minute first, Beta?” Maybe I could buy just enough time to get Dana to disappear. And I had questions.

  “About what? About how you seem to have a habit of hiding behind your friends? Using them as human shields? Ha! Daniel, you’re truly the most cowardly Alien Hunter I’ve ever met. You’d embarrass your father… were he alive today.”

  “You didn’t know my father. Leave him out of this.”

  “Didn’t know him? Alas, not true. Your parents had me over to dinner on their last day, in fact. They made some fine potpies, I must say. I fairly devoured them whole!”

  If his manic ramblings hadn’t shell-shocked me, Beta’s evil peel of laughter would have. The flames roared louder than ever, and the car’s side mirrors were actually melting. The glass would be next.

  And then… well, it didn’t take a Nobel Prize–winning physicist to figure out what would happen after the glass was gone.

  Chapter 46

  BY MY CALCULATIONS, Beta would burn through the car’s exterior in a minute or less, and that would be it for me and Dana. Which would also mean no more Joe, Willy, or Emma. No more Mom, Dad, and Pork Chop. No more List of Alien Outlaws. And eventually, no more Earth as we know it.

  I couldn’t let that happen without a fight. But I didn’t have anywhere to escape to. Beta was burning the car from all sides.

  I tried every transformation I could think of; I tried teleporting, which I’d achieved on a few rare occasions. Even if I could make a hole in the roof, or the floor of the car, I would be traveling right through the fire. I could possibly coat myself in carbon dioxide, but how long would that last?

  Minutes?

  Seconds?

  Could I do the same thing for Dana at the same time?

  There was a whiplike snap as the safety glass next to me cracked all the way across. Then tongues of flame began to lick through the glass, reaching out for me like Beta’s not-so-fickle fingers of death.

  “Nowhere for you to go now, Daniel. I hope you prefer cremation over burial. I can’t really offer you the latter option. Ha ha ha.”

  Okay, time travel. Now would be a great time for that to kick in, I thought. I’d rewind things a little, get out of this car, run away, get a job doing something a little safer—like deep-sea oil drilling. My father had said that emotion was the “on” switch…

  So I did the most obvious thing that any normal teenage guy would do.

  I kissed the girl I was crazy for. And I wouldn’t stop—until I teleported, time-traveled, or died. Whatever happened, I knew this was the right thing to do.

  Then the whole rear window fell away in a single piece. Beta reared back, ready to swoop in and incinerate me in a single blazing inferno.

  I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, said a prayer.

  Chapter 47

  IN MY MIND, I saw my father the day he died, felt the last hug my mother had ever given me, heard their voices chatting upstairs in the kitchen, unaware that The Prayer was fast approaching, that the happy life we had known was about to go up in flames, along with our strangely idyllic Kansas farmhouse.


  In a way, I had been born out of that fire. It had forced me to become the Alien Hunter I was today. Maybe it was only appropriate that fire would kill me, too. Maybe this was my fate from the very beginning.

  Speaking of which, maybe I’m already dead.

  Chapter 48

  I COULDN’T FEEL the heat anymore, or the car’s springs poking through the backseat. I couldn’t hear Dana panting with anxiety. And I couldn’t hear Beta’s crackling, hellish voice taunting me, either.

  I opened my eyes… to see that I was lying on a gravel driveway in front of a very familiar white mailbox. Set back from it a little ways was a sunlit farmhouse. There was no mistaking it.

  “Well, Toto,” I said under my breath as I stood up, “I’ve got a sneaking feeling we’re not in jolly old England anymore.”

  Unless this was heaven, or hell, or purgatory, or nirvana—I wasn’t ruling anything out at this point—I was back in Kansas, at the very house where I’d spent the first three peaceful and wonderful years of my life.

  This place was so full of history for me, and I felt like I was drowning in the thoughts, feelings, and memories that were flooding into my mind. I took a deep breath and asked myself how this could have happened.

  My father had mentioned holes in time, created by powerful events. Well, I guess what had happened at the dump might qualify. But how had I ended up here? The only powerful event that happened at this house in Kansas was—

  Before the thought had even finished, I took off running at full speed toward the house.

  And that’s when I heard the first shots.

  No! Please! Not again! Please—not again!