Just some forewarning: this chapter (as well as future ones) has explicit mentions of body horror. I mean, it's not like Relle's arm just healed overnight, and she was far from the only one strapped to those researchers' operating tables. Just wanted to let you know what's ahead. Okay, onward!
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RECAP:
"So, the 'hero' finally returns," a voice sneered behind her, and, like floating through a dream, Relle spun to face the familiar foe.
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The ground began to tremble again, but that could have been a fly buzzing off for all the effect it had on the person floating before Relle Phantom. Russolo, the magician ghost, leveled a hot glare the teen's way and clutched at the wide cuff around his arm. A tiny voice in the back of her mind laughed wryly at the idea of a restraint the self-proclaimed "master of escape" couldn't get out of. Then again, she was in no position to judge when the wind could easily whistle between the exposed bones of her left forearm.
"You've got a lot of nerve showing your face here again, Relle," Russolo continued in a venomous sneer. "I suppose you figured it was easiest to let these filthy breathers take care of your problems for you!"
"How the fuck can you say that?" she shot back before she could stop herself. Angry heat pooled in her middle and threatened to boil higher and higher. "I was just as much a victim as you were!"
He scoffed and lifted the hem of his stained and tattered dress shirt to show off the bottom portion of a fresh Y-incision along the length of his torso. Even without a mortician's standard clamps to hold the walls of flesh apart, his dark green organs were all too visibly writhing inside of him. Russolo's expression turned stormy when he ground out between grit teeth, "I doubt that."
Relle's eyes immediately widened and she lurched away, both hands pressed against her mouth to hold back the urge to retch. Okay, that made her arm look tame in comparison, she had to admit. "Oh, god...!"
Seeing her reaction made Russolo grin wickedly despite himself. He opened his mouth to say more, but another enraged roar split the sky as Dora took off charging on her hind legs. Her goal was clear: she wanted to follow the ghosts fleeing through the city, maybe to escape the same way they thought they were going to. She didn't get terribly far, though, before yet another surprise rose up from the rubble to claw at her tail and try to seize it.
A sleek, black dragon with violet scales on its underside and triangular spinal plates to the tip of its barbed tail had appeared. On its head were two small black horns flanked by a pair of larger, twisted green ones. Its neck was longer and slender while its wings, though struggling to extend for takeoff, were much larger and stronger than Dora's. To tie it all together, an identical gold amulet set with an emerald centerpiece hung from its neck, where it clashed starkly against the dragon's rather gothic color palette.
The black dragon groaned with the beginnings of a roar and swiped at Dora's tail only to come up empty and tumble forward onto its front. Dora took off like a shot from a cannon toward the edge of downtown without a thought for the dragon picking itself up behind her. Before she could see much else, Relle whipped back around to address Russolo, who was entranced by the sight and hovered with a visibly slack jaw.
"Look, I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you and the others, alright? Just get to the portal and get out of here before they catch you again," she barked with a sweeping gesture toward the lake. "I've got bigger problems right now."
She didn't give him a chance to reply before she stepped onto a fast-forward tile and zipped away. Above all else, her mind screamed at her to get to Dora before the other dragon could do something to her. The coven was on their way and would be arriving to help the humans at any minute, which would mean one fewer distraction for her.
And, of course, it was too naive of her to think she could just do what needed to be done and call it good. Down on the ground, Relle spotted movement ahead and slowed her pace to get a more thorough look. A middle-aged man with his leg in a cast shuffled as fast as he could while a little boy no older than seven or eight clung to his father's hand. The bulk of the crowds had long since moved on, leaving these two to struggle along at a snail's pace in search of shelter. Relle felt her molars ache when she ground them together, but then she was sliding down a sharp decline on her tiles to alight on the asphalt in front of them.
"Here, I've got you," she said and held out her gloved hands for them to take. The father seemed reluctant to accept her help, but his son gasped with delight and immediately grabbed her right hand.
"You came back! I knew you would!" he said, the picture of unfounded confidence.
The boy tugged his father forward, and he soon accepted her other hand. "Thank you, Relle," he said softly, and she smiled in kind.
It was hard not to flinch at the way they both stared at the injury on her arm. A fair amount of her concentration was needed for what she was about to do, so she simply said, "Keep your eyes closed. It'll help with the vertigo." The son readily did as he was told while the father took an extra second to convince himself to follow her directions.
Relle felt the heat in her core flare up in response to her command to teleport. The three of them reappeared several blocks back the way she had come before teleporting again. They flickered in and out of reality in rapid succession until they had caught up with the edge of the mobs. One last teleportation later, and Relle let go of their hands amidst several close clusters of terrified and nervous people. Another of those sirens specific to her ecto-signature started to wail from the street corner a few yards away.
"Thank you for helping us!" the little boy exclaimed over the sound of the siren, and Relle beamed down at him while trying to not let her eyes mist over.
"You're welcome," she responded gently.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled with the knowledge that hundreds of pairs of eyes were on her now. She turned to see a wall of faces many rows deep cautiously crowding closer and closer. Countless phone cameras were trained on her, too. After drawing her left arm close to her chest and tossing her right arm to the side, Relle cleared her throat. "Hey, let's not let people fall behind! Got it?"
Then she teleported a dozen feet into the air and set down on a new tile. Before taking off, she added, "Please find shelter, and take care of each other!"
As she resumed her pace toward the approaching pair of dragons, a high-pitched sound gave her reason to pause and look back. Were... Were some of the citizens cheering for her? A few lifted their hands high to wave while their words blended into a mesh until all that was left was a feeling of appreciation and well wishes. Relle Phantom felt a pang in her core, and she lifted a gloved hand to wave back before continuing to run.
That little detour had already cost her precious time to act on Dora and the other dragon's actions, and now they were within city limits. If she didn't do something fast, the damage could be indescribable.
~*~
"Ramón, your goal is to find groups of survivors and escort them to safe locations," Ricardo said without taking his eyes off of the road ahead. Their borrowed SUV was easily at capacity with everyone crowded in together, not that there was much they could do about that. He tried to drive as quickly and smoothly as possible, but the city streets were in desperate need of repairs after more than a month of taking constant beatings. Fleeting images of people rushing toward the suburbs flew past the tinted windows. "Terese, Olivia, you both are staying with Ramón and doing what he says. Prioritize removing obstacles and watching each others' backs at all times." Ramón grinned with triumph at the way his sisters bit back their complaints.
"AJ, I want you and Ari with me while I try to keep these people calm," their father continued as he swerved around a particularly deep crater in the asphalt and heard several teens yelp when inertia threw them side to side. "I-- put on your seat belts already! Moons above, you're all too old to-- rrgh, never mind, we're almost there." Joaquín bit his lower lip to suppress a smirk threatening to spread across his face at such a fatherly outburst.
"Joaquín, since you know the city best and have a lot of energy, you'll be scoping out the danger from a safe distance and coordinating to the rest of us." Ricardo sent him a sidelong glance as he watched from the passenger seat. "There are a lot of ghosts in the area, and we'll need to know what's coming."
"I can do that," he agreed with a nod. "But I also need to find someone right away, like I said."
"Right, right, right. Caesar, did you bring any locating catalysts?"
From behind the driver's seat, Caesar rummaged through his robe's pockets and pulled out a small bundle of what looked like herbs and a few tiny sticks tied together with silver thread. "I did!"
"Miguel, go with him to find Joaquín's friend. Stick together. Understand?"
"Nooo problem," Miguel answered, breezy as if he had simply been given instructions to bring home the right brand of milk from the supermarket.
In what felt like absolutely no time at all, they turned onto a narrow street between two office buildings and parked with just enough space to open the doors on both sides. They were within the limits of what would be considered downtown, but the panic and crowds hadn't quite reached their location just yet. Ricardo felt dread for his sensitive hearing sit cold and heavy in the pit of his stomach.
Just before his children could split into their respective teams, he gathered everyone together behind the car and spoke in a serious but mellow tone. "I don't want any of you doing anything reckless while we're here. I love you all, and the last thing I ever want to see is any of you get hurt. Please, above all else, protect each other."
He could see by their expressions that his message was well-received. On that note, it was time to get to work. Caesar snagged Joaquín by the hood of his robe before he could run off too far. "Hey, I need your friend's full name and what she looks like."
"Oh, right, duh," Joaquín said and thumped the side of his head. "Saoirse Minha Mahadeo. She's a couple inches taller than me, has dark brown skin, pink tourmaline eyes, and wears a hijab. Really pretty."
"Okay, that works," Caesar cut in before he could start waxing poetic about her beauty, not that it wasn't deserved. "Saoirse Minha Mahadeo. Miguel, light it up for me."
The spell catalyst was pressed into Miguel's hands, where it instantly began to smoke and curl in on itself. As soon as the silver thread caught fire, it burned away so quickly that blinking would make an onlooker miss it. A thin tendril of blue-grey smoke wafted into the air and started to drift opposite to the way the light breezes around them blew. For good measure, Miguel summoned his familiar and held Ringo up to let the rabbit catch the scent. Then the familiar sprang into action and took off with Caesar and Miguel hot on his fluffy little tail. Joaquín watched them turn a corner and vanish before also snapping back to his own task.
"Here goes nothing," he muttered and began searching for the telltale buzz of his magic flowing as naturally as the blood in his veins. A surge of warmth flooded through every part of Joaquín. He flexed his hands in and out of fists a few times and then took off for the other side of the empty street, where an even narrower alley waited. Not unlike in a video game, he launched toward one wall, spun immediately to jump at the opposite side, and continued like that until one final jump had him rolling to his feet on the roof of the two-story brick building. Before he could second-guess himself, Joaquín raced toward the next building over and climbed the window sills with the aid of his familiars for extra purchase. He was out of sight in seconds, racing over the rooftops in his search for a prime vantage point to keep watch.
Ricardo, wide-eyed and a little slack-jawed, turned to send Ariadna a confused and undeniably impressed look. His eldest daughter, in turn, grinned and shrugged her shoulders. "Parkour," was all she said.
~*~
The smell of smoke was nothing new to Saoirse's senses. You don't date a half-ghost with a fire-based core without growing desensitized to it after a while. Yet, when she sniffed a particularly deep inhale while she struggled to keep her tears to herself, she lifted her head and furrowed her brow. Blinking until her eyesight was clear again, she noticed a thread of bluish haze wafting into her cell. Her heart skipped a beat (was it Camry trying to send her a signal?) before plummeting to the bottom of her ribs (no, something nearby had probably caught fire) to then start pounding painfully fast (was the fire going to spread and burn her to death, trapped and with no chance of escape?).
Though she turned her head to one side, her next inhale sucked in more of the smoke and made her lungs seize. 'Ugh, what is that? Smells like a burning greenhouse' Saoirse thought in disdain.
Less than a block away, Ringo turned a sudden ninety-degree corner and forced Miguel and Caesar to struggle to keep up. As soon as they rounded the corner, Caesar nearly tripped over his own foot when he reeled from the surprise. "Jail?" he yelled in Spanish to Miguel, who had pulled ahead without a hitch.
"I don't know!" his younger brother called back. "It's your spell!"
"My spell works perfectly! It's your familiar!"
Miguel pulled open the front door and let Ringo dart through first, allowing Caesar to catch up. "Ringo's doing an amazing job. Aren't ya, buddy?" The brown rabbit hopped an extra hop across the scuffed linoleum floor to show he agreed. "There, see?"
"Alright, alright," Caesar groaned and pulled his gloves on for good measure. "Don't leave fingerprints. This is the last place we'd want them to be."
"Ah, shit," Miguel mumbled and wiped down the door handle with the sleeve of his black cloak. His gloves were on a moment later, and the two brothers continued to follow Ringo deeper into the eerily silent building.
Constant rumbles and roars were easily audible through the sturdy walls, but the sounds of uncontrolled chaos were the only indications of life anywhere. No receptionists manned the front counter, and doors were haphazardly left to swing open up and down the halls. Caesar grimaced and adjusted his hood to further shield his face from any overhead cameras that might still be running. He and Miguel soon caught up to Ringo, who kicked over and over at a closed door with a mechanism that indicated they needed some kind of key card and passcode to get in.
Miguel squinted through the thin sliver of reinforced glass set into the door and could just barely make out movement on the other side. "Well, here we are. What now?"
The ground shook yet again, and the electric lights began to flicker rapidly. Caesar put a hand to his chin, then cupped both hands over his lips and whispered a chant too softly for anyone without a hearing conduit to catch. He chanted for all of fifteen seconds, during which he fought to maintain his focus amidst another brewing earthquake, and then released the breaths gathered between his palms. With a quick, guiding puff of air, his spell settled on the steel hardware holding the door closed and locked from within. There was suddenly an acrid smell and sizzling sound, and before Miguel could even blink his watering eyes, Caesar threw a mighty kick at the spot just below the handle.
The door resisted his first assault but caved at the second and flew open with enough force to slam against the wall. Inside her cell, Avery shrieked in surprise and then froze in what was clearly a pose betraying her intention to break herself out. But, to her confusion, the two figures in front of her weren't police officers at all. Both were amorphous and shrouded in shadows that obscured their faces from her entirely.
"What the--?" she started to say only for them to breeze past without paying her an ounce of attention. "H-Hey, wait a second!"
Ringo bounded down the hall and skidded to a halt in front of the cell at the end of the row. His size allowed him to slip through the bars easily and hunker down just a few feet in front of the cell's sole occupant, who stared at him in nothing short of bewilderment. The two witches were not far behind and received a similar response.
Saoirse shrank back but couldn't go anywhere with the wall pressing up behind her. "Who are--?"
"Saoirse Minha Mahadeo?" the taller of the dark shapes asked. A quick gesture from the shorter one called the rabbit back to their side, where it vanished immediately. "That's you, right?"
"How do you know my name?" she responded, tense as a piano wire.
She wasn't crazy, right? Was this really happening?
Neither one bothered to answer her question as the taller said something in rapid, fluent Spanish to the shorter, who left to-- she guessed-- stand watch in case any officers appeared. Saoirse could only watch as the figure before her held a gloved hand out and a vibrant blue-and-black frog materialized out of thin air in his palm. He said something to it, and the frog leaped onto the lock of the cell, which began to buckle and melt under her touch.
"...Huh," the figure said to himself and drew her attention back to him. "He said you'd be wearing a hijab."
She sent him an odd look at that and rose to her feet. Her joints protested weakly after being held in the same curled-up position for so long. "You're a witch, right? How do you know my name?"
Before he could say anything, the frog croaked shortly and jumped onto the front of his cloak. He grabbed one of the bars to pull, and the cell door swung open without any hesitation. "Let's just get out of here, okay?"
Saoirse eyed him warily as she walked out of the cell and started to follow him down the hall. The other hazy witch stood in the open doorway and said something she didn't understand as they rounded the bend. The taller witch snorted and gestured for him to lead the way back out.
"Saoirse, you're out!" Avery gasped, her chrysocolla eyes wide as saucers amidst a flurry of loose, curly hair. Her ponytail must have frizzed up and begun falling apart in her effort to break out. Of course, all that effort got her was a set of bruised knuckles and countless aching joints.
"Can you break her out, too?" Saoirse asked the two witches, who turned to look back at her. She couldn't parse out their expressions with the magical shield covering each of them, but she assumed they were at least a little bit skeptical of her request. "Please, it's dangerous to be trapped like this when something bad is happening out there."
The taller witch's shoulders lifted and fell, and the poison dart frog reappeared to start melting the lock on Avery's cell. With that taken care of, the scientist blurted out a rushed "Thanks!" and bolted out the door as fast as her legs could carry her. "Come on, Saoirse! We gotta find our stuff!"
"Do you even know where you're going?" Saoirse responded, but got no answer. Avery was already preoccupied with throwing open cupboards and drawers of a storage room for holding evidence and personal affects belonging to detainees. When Saoirse caught up to her, the two witches following along a bit more slowly, she had to wonder just how Avery knew exactly where to find her things. That didn't pose a pleasant picture in her mind, though she chastised herself for judging when she realized that she was now hardly any better.
"We need to go, before anyone shows up," Miguel hissed to Caesar, who nodded in agreement and turned to face Saoirse.
Except she wasn't there, but inside the storage room to help Avery search. "Hey, isn't it more important that we get out of here first?" Caesar pointedly called to them.
"Not without my stuff!" Avery shot back. She let out a wordless sound of triumph and tossed Saoirse a navy blue scarf, which she caught and swiftly wrapped around her hair. Without the time and utensils to secure it correctly, she had little choice but to let it hang a bit looser than she would have liked and just focus on the task at hand. Once she was decent again, Avery tossed Saoirse her confiscated cell phone for her to stuff into her back pocket.
The ground's rumbling suddenly grew in intensity, and drawers started to fall off their tracks without the two ladies' help. A metal storage rack set against a wall toppled over with a jarring clang, scattering its load of uncatalogued items to every corner of the room. Avery choked loudly when a hand seized the back of her shirt and pulled her into the hall without warning. "Come on, that's enough!" Saoirse insisted.
"We need to go now!" Miguel suddenly shrieked. He stood on the threshold of the station's front doors, which now sported fractures in the emblazoned plexiglass panels. With the doors propped open, the cacophony of sirens, crashes, roars, screams, and total chaos were undeniably loud. When the other three approached and gradually got a better look at the outside world, they were able to see what had the younger witch so tense and nervous; over the rooftops of several blocks' worth of buildings, a bright blue and green dragon's head opened its mouth and roared a jet of acid-green flame down the street ahead of it. Closing in behind the blue dragon, a black and purple one surged forward to grab at the back of its neck. It missed its mark and stumbled into a storefront that buckled like a pop can under its weight. The resulting reverberations threw the group of four to their knees.
"Those are dragons," Caesar said, too stunned to properly emote everything he was feeling-- not the least of which was excitement easily overshadowed by confusion and fear. "Those are dragons."
"We gotta get back to Dad!" Miguel said in Spanish before taking off without another word. Caesar had little choice but to follow, and after sharing a quick glance, Saoirse and Avery did the same.
As they ran down the barren, trembling streets, both witches kept their eyes peeled and their spells and weapons at the ready. "Hey, hey!" Saoirse shouted when they and Avery started to pull too far ahead and leave her behind. "Wait up!"
With a roll of his pinfire opal eyes, Miguel doubled back and took charge of staying close to her side. "Thank you," she panted, already running out of breath. Needless to say, her current habits weren't exactly conducive to getting much exercise. "I never got your name, by the way."
"...Miguel," he said after a second to wrestle with his better judgment. Witches were trained from birth to guard all personal information at any cost, but if she was a friend of Joaquín and already knew witches existed, then it couldn't be that bad if he at least shared their names, right? "And that's Caesar."
"Nice-- to meet you," Saoirse gasped out, then shifted to look forward. "Where are we-- going-- exactly?"
"Anywhere better than here!" was his wry answer. At their backs, the blue dragon let out another roar and swung her broad, spiked tail. The top of a defenseless brick building broke under the sudden impact and tumbled end over end through the air only to crash into the street in front of the jail. The asphalt shattered and rained down chunks of debris in every direction.
Yeah, just about anywhere would be better than there.
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Before anyone asks, there's a reason why Caesar used Meya to melt the cell locks but not the lock on the door to the holding area. She's faster when using his magic for him, sure, but he specifically needed to reach the hardware inside the door, so he used a verbal spell and his breath to reach the tiny, narrow space. Meya can't shrink, and the space between the door and the jamb is too small for her to fit, so she wouldn't have been able to do anything. Okay, that's enough from me. Thanks for reading! See you in the next chapter!