Scorched Earth Read online

  Simon struggled to one foot. He held the side of his face; a bruise was already forming above his cheek. He moved his jaw to make sure it still worked. It did, but not without a considerable amount of pain.

  He got his other foot under him and straightened up. He turned to face the lizard.

  The monster flicked his heavy tail, hard. It caught Simon in the ribs, and he went back down.

  The werelizard approached Virgil again, murder reflecting from his wet, black eyes. Virgil abandoned the failing shields and reached out for Gladys. The wooden ball zoomed back toward him from across the lot. Just as it approached, the lizard reached out his left hand without looking and snatched it out of the air. Gladys worked hard to break free, yanking the lizard’s arm back and forth, but the creature held it tightly and wouldn’t let it escape.

  Virgil only had one play left. He had left his manacle in the car, but he didn’t need it at this range. He closed up his right hand into a fist and felt the burning magic fill it from his gut. It filled his hand with light. He held up the fist and opened it, grunting with the effort of pushing out every ounce of magic he could muster.

  But as soon as the spark left his hand, it evaporated into the air, dissolving in a puff of steam, and doing absolutely zero damage to the oncoming monster.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Virgil muttered.

  Simon was still on his hands and knees, grasping his side and taking labored, measured breaths. The werelizard was upon Virgil now, towering above him. The monster cracked his knuckles, and his tongue shot out and ran a lap around his lips. “I hope you hate thissss asss much assss I’m going to enjoy it,” the lizard said. Then he raised both fists high in the air and brought them screaming down at Virgil’s head.

  Virgil closed his eyes and waited for the impact.

  But the impact didn’t come.

  He heard the werelizard give a soft whimper. Virgil cracked open one eyelid and peeked out. The lizard was shrinking, his muscles deflating and losing their green hue. His scales spread out, connected, and smoothed over until they were just skin. His long snout pushed back in on itself and melted into a nose; his black eyes shrank in a pool of blue, and just like that, the creature had irises in his eyes.

  The werelizard had transformed back into a human man.

  He was older, probably in his forties, with gray lines streaking through his brown hair. He was small, too, scrawny; he was probably taller than Virgil and Simon both, but skinner than either of them.

  He crumpled to the ground, the ends of his ripped, tattered clothes fluttering out over his arms and legs.

  Behind him, standing with a mixed look of annoyance and pride on her face, was Abby.

  “You can send one of the most powerful demons in history back to hell, but you can’t take down a herpetomorph?”

  Virgil blinked up at her. “What’s a herpetomorph?”

  Abby walked around the crumpled man and reached down. She took Virgil’s hand and helped him to his feet. “A man who morphs into a lizard.”

  “Oh, you mean a werelizard.”

  “They’re called herpetomorphs,” she said.

  Virgil looked down at the man with disgust. “Ew, he changes into herpes too?”

  Abby rolled her eyes. Magnified as they were by her glasses, the effect was pretty impressive. “No, idiot. Lizards are herptiles. The study of lizards is herpetology. Someone who changes into a lizard is a herpetomorph.”

  Virgil squinted at her. “Sounds like herpes,” he said.

  Abby sighed and walked away to go check on Simon. Virgil looked down and visually inspected the herpetomorph. “Hey,” he said, nudging the man with his toe. “You dead?”

  The man groaned, but didn’t get up.

  Abby slipped her glove back onto her hand, reached down, and grabbed Simon’s arm. “You okay?” she asked, helping him to his feet.

  “I don’t think anything’s broken,” he replied, holding his side and wincing. His cheek was swollen, and his ribs probably would be too, for a while, but otherwise he was okay. “How’d you do that?” he asked.

  “I found his humanity, and I reflected it back to him,” she said casually, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

  “I thought that’s how you scrambled people’s brains.”

  “That’s if I close a continuous empathetic loop. I only sent the herpetomorph’s empathy back once.”

  Simon nodded and pretended to understand. “Mm,” he said.

  “He turns into herpes,” Virgil explained happily, hearing Abby say his new favorite word again. “I think he’s coming to.”

  Simon and Abby joined Virgil, and the three of them stood over the thin man on the ground. He groaned, and he blinked groggily as he struggled to open his eyes against the sun. “Where—what happened?” he asked. He looked down at his ripped shirt and his torn pants. Then his head drooped, and he rubbed his temples with his thumbs. “Not again,” he muttered.

  “It’s okay,” Abby said, crouching down and speaking softly. “You didn’t hurt anyone. Not here, anyway.”

  “I’m pretty hurt,” Simon pouted, but Abby shot daggers in his direction, and he closed his mouth. She had empathized with the herpetomorph, and while the lizard-monster was a vicious, cruel beast, the human inside was kind and good-natured, and heavy with guilt over his counterpart’s destructive, sometimes murderous actions.

  “Come back and see us once a month,” Abby said. “I think I can help you keep the lizard at bay.” She reached into her back pocket, retrieved a business card, and handed it over to him.

  “‘Dark Matter Investigations,’” he read out loud. “‘Simon Dark and Virgil Matter. Heroes of Templar. Defeaters of Evil. Practitioners of Kinesthetic Magic.’” He looked up at them, confused. “What is this?”

  “It sounds kind of dorky when you hear it out loud like that,” Simon frowned.

  Virgil slugged him on his shoulder. “Are you kidding me? It sounds awesome!” he beamed.

  Abby ignored them both and directed her words at the herpetomorph. “We take care of hexes, curses, and black magic transformations. Give us a call to set up an appointment; we’ll float your goodness to the top and keep the lizard buried. Cool?”

  The man looked startled, as if he had been in a dark closet and someone had just turned on the lights, but he nodded, and he tucked the business card into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said quietly. He struggled to his feet with Abby’s help. “Thank you,” he said again, more forcefully, looking her in the eye. Then he looked around, dazed and disoriented, and shambled across the parking lot and around the corner of the building, shaking out his right arm and flexing his fingers, as if they felt somehow alien to the rest of his body.

  Virgil smiled confidently as he watched the man go. “I don’t want to come off like a braggart, but man. We are good at this.”

  “Well, Abby’s good at this,” Simon pointed out, rubbing his cheek.

  “Hey, we didn’t die,” Virgil pointed out. “That’s pretty good.”

  “Thanks for the help,” Simon said to Abby, blushing.

  “You guys are lucky I was so close.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Virgil said suspiciously, rubbing his chin, “what are you doing here?”

  “I was at the office, and I saw you dummies get outmatched from across the street.”

  “Our office is across the street?” Virgil asked, spinning around and craning his neck at the line of buildings across the road. “Where?”

  Simon stepped up and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He pointed proudly to a unit at the end of a strip mall on the far side of the block. “That,” he said happily, “is the new home of Dark Matter.”

  Virgil’s eyes locked on his new office. His smile faded. His heart sank.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he said.

 
Chapter 3

  “Come on, Virg! Isn’t it great?”

  Virgil looked around the room. He wasn’t feeling Simon’s excitement. “I don’t think ‘great’ is the first word that comes to mind…”

  In fact, the first word that came to Virgil’s mind was “laundry.” The room was filled with about two dozen washing machines and clothes dryers, and there was a faded yellow sign hanging above the door that read SOAPS ‘N SUDS.

  “This isn’t an office. This is a laundromat.”

  “It was a laundromat,” Simon corrected him, still sounding excited for reasons that Virgil couldn’t quite put his finger on. “But now it’s an office!” He sauntered out to the middle of the room and spread his arms wide. “This’ll be great! It’s affordable, it’s functional. It’s just what we need. We’ll get some desks, some chairs, we’ll hang our own sign…we’re in business!”

  But Virgil stared at him, incredulous. “Simon! It’s a laundromat.”

  “No, Virgil, it’s not!”

  “There are washing machines everywhere.”

  Simon frowned. He had to concede that point. “They’re going to be taken out sometime next week. The place just closed a few days ago, and there was a mix-up with the truck. But soon they’ll be gone, and we’ll have the whole place to ourselves, and hey—in the meantime, they left everything hooked up, so you get free laundry.”

  Virgil closed his eyes and shook his head. “First of all, it’s not free laundry, the machines are coin-operated.”

  “But we have the keys to the coin boxes, so we’re just paying ourselves.”

  “And also,” Virgil said, ignoring him, “unless you’re going to drag a laundry bag all the way across town from our apartment instead of doing laundry in the machines we usually use in the basement of our own building, the only possible clothes I can imagine that you would wash here are the ones that you wear to work. And I am not going into business with you if you take clients in your underwear,” Virgil said, crossing his arms. “I am firm on that point.”

  “No one’s doing anything in their underwear,” Abby said, stepping between them. “Virgil, you’re right, it’s a laundromat, but it’s also in your price range.”

  “The bounce house was in our price range,” Virgil muttered.

  Abby ignored him and pressed on. “You haven’t actually made any money yet, so until you start drumming up some business, this is what you can afford.”

  “And only because of Llewyn’s allowance,” Simon added.

  Virgil groaned. “I really wish you’d stop calling it an allowance. And you know, we could afford a better place if put some of that grandpa drive-thru money of yours to work…” His eyes glinted with mischief.

  “I need that money to cover your half of the rent on our apartment,” Simon shot back.

  “Hmpf,” Virgil grunted. “Fair point.”

  “So you make do here. For now. And if you want a better building in a better neighborhood, you’d better start handing out some of these.” Abby picked up a stack of business cards from the top of one of the washing machines and shoved it into Virgil’s hand. “I won’t be there every time to do it for you. I have a real job. One that actually gives me a paycheck.”

  Virgil stuck the cards into his pocket. “All right, all right, leave Squeezy Cheez out of it,” he grumbled. He crossed his arms and skulked around the room, inspecting the place. The building was old. Very old. The white linoleum on the floor had faded to a sickly yellow, and it was peeling in most places. A few of the tiles had come up altogether, leaving a rough patch of dried mortar showing between the other squares. There were some cabinets near the back, made of a cheap, flimsy wood. They were covered with the tacky residue of decades’ worth of laundry detergent spills. The washing machines and dryers themselves looked like they had originally been purchased from a showroom in the 1950s.

  Still, it wasn’t without its charm…

  “We could film a killer horror movie in here,” he decided aloud.

  “That’s the spirit,” Simon said cheerfully. “I was going to make it a surprise, but since you’ve just turned into such a paragon of positivity, I’m going to go ahead and tell you: I took some of my ‘grandpa’ money and bought us a sign! A real sign! I had a professional design it and everything.” Simon could hardly contain his pride. His chest puffed out, and the tips of his ears tinged pink. “It should be here on Monday.”

  Virgil found himself impressed. “Wow. That’s really cool, Simon. Thanks for doing that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Simon smiled.

  “And, look, it comes with a TV,” Abby said. She picked up a remote from a table near the wall and clicked on a small television that was propped up on a high shelf suspended from the ceiling by two cheap-looking chains. It was an old TV set, and the screen took a few seconds to warm up after Abby turned it on. Slowly, a fuzzy picture faded into view.

  “Yeah, I guess this’ll be okay,” Virgil decided, completing his inspection of the room. “A couple of rugs, the right feng shui, this whole place will...” He stopped talking when he looked at Simon and Abby and realized they were completely ignoring him. They were both staring up at the television, their jaws set in exactly the same hard way. “You guys, what—?” he began. But he didn’t finish the question. He didn’t need to.

  All his questions were answered when he looked up at the horror that was unfolding on live TV.

  Chapter 4

  “Just to be clear, we all saw the same thing, right?” Virgil called out, climbing into the passenger seat of the 6000LE. “My eyes aren’t making things up?”

  “We saw it,” Simon confirmed, sliding in behind the wheel. “I’m not sure I believe it, but yeah, we saw it.”

  “I’ll see you guys over there,” Abby said, hopping up into her pickup. She tore out of the parking lot, loose asphalt gravel flying from her tires and pelting the dumpster that was parked next to their building. She tore out into the street, took a hard right, and disappeared around the corner.

  “Great, now she’s going to beat us there, and we’ll never hear the end of it,” Virgil sighed. Truth be told, it didn’t really feel like the right time to be making jokes…but making jokes was a whole lot better than trying to process what he’d seen on TV.

  The channel had been set to the local news. In the foreground, the reporter was talking into the camera, trying to maintain her composure, but she kept peeking over her shoulder, and every time she did, she lost track of her words, and dead space filled the airwaves until the people in the studio nudged her and asked her to keep describing what she was seeing.

  She was standing in front of the football field at West Templar High School. There were players on the field, high school boys wearing practice jerseys for a weekend scrimmage, probably going over failed plays from the previous night’s game. Though to say that they were on the field wasn’t exactly right. They were actually suspended above the field, all three dozen or so of them, floating anywhere from three feet to ten feet above the grass.

  Most of the boys were clustered together near the far end of the field, a few yards from the end zone. They must have been working on a goal line play when whatever it was that hit them, hit them.

  And the thing that had hit them was still there.

  The players were all suspended over the grass, but they weren’t just hovering; they had been lifted off the field. Each player had a bright tree-branch-sized bolt of lightning through his chest. Each branch zigzagged across the field, extending from the players’ torsos and meeting in the center of the field, near the fifty-yard line, joining a massive column of electricity that had shot down from a strange nest of purplish-gold clouds overhead.

  The reporter on the television had described what had happened, though she didn’t quite seem to believe it. The purple clouds had gathered quickly, and everyone in the surrounding neighborhood had seen th
em. They were so odd-looking, so unique, that many of the folks near the high school had stepped out of their cars and their houses to marvel at them and get a better look. And as they watched, the center of the clouds opened up, and the bright column of light touched down, as quickly as lightning, striking the football field. But unlike lightning, the column of energy didn’t flash, strike, and retreat. This one flashed, struck, and remained in place. Energy from the cloud hummed and vibrated along the column, and then the bolts of lightning shot out from the column, one for each player. The bolts zapped through their pads, shooting through their chests like swords through paper. Once the lightning had run them through, the players’ eyes glowed with bright energy, and white light radiated from their fingers. The energy column looked like a thick tree trunk with thirty lightning branches that were heavy with the fruit of light-up humans.

  Then the branches raised themselves up, lifting the football players with them, until they were suspended above the ground.

  But none of that was the worst part.

  The worst part, even though it was hard to tell given the graininess of the television reception, was that the boys who had been impaled by the lightning still seemed to be alive and in an extraordinary amount of pain.

  “Quick question,” Virgil said as Simon careened around a corner, zooming toward the interstate that would deposit them less than a mile from the high school. “What’s our plan, here?”

  “I don’t know,” Simon admitted, tightening his grip on the wheel. The 6000LE flashed past the cars on their right and on their left as Simon weaved in and out of the lanes. “We have to try something.”

  Virgil considered their options. “We could try frying the cloud.”

  “We could,” Simon said. “With all the energy it’s forcing down, we might just be making it stronger.”

  “Yeah,” Virgil said quietly.

  “Do you think Gladys could interrupt the smaller lightning bolts? Like, if you throw her at one of the branches, do you think it might break the beam?”