24

Ed could run farther and faster than any human being, and panic pushed her beyond her ordinary limits. A jellyfish nearly scooped her up in its tentacles. An albino alligator man tried to grab her from a sewer drain. And a small pack of goblins tried to pounce and devour her, only to be left behind in her mad panicky dash. She ran down the street without ever looking back, oblivious to most of the cryptos appearing spontaneously around her, never giving a second thought to them once she was past them.

She just ran.

Somehow, Judy got ahead of her. Ed stopped so abruptly, she fell off-balance and skidded across the street. A speeding car being attacked by a purple people-eater nearly drove over her. It swerved at the last minute to plow through a fence and into a car parked in a driveway.

The neighborhood was in chaos. Cryptobiologicals of myth and legend, many forgotten even by those with the power to remember, were everywhere now. Hairy and scaly creatures of all shapes and sizes were busy fighting each other, chasing humans, or just engaging in general destruction. A two-hundred-pound saber-toothed woodchuck toppled a utility pole with one bite. The power went out, and only the half-moon and aura of the city lit the neighborhood.

“Golly.”

A voice spoke in the dimness.

“Give me the stone.”

Ed thought it was Lotus at first. It sounded a lot like her. Not the voice itself, but the tone, the quiet, assured quality that went with it. But it was Judy, who materialized before Ed. Judy hadn’t changed in any real way. She still looked the same, but an aura of power covered her.

“Give me the stone,” she repeated.

Lotus had trained Ed well, but Judy reminded Ed so much of Lotus that she tried to hand over the stone. It didn’t budge, remaining suspended in space.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” said Lotus, who appeared opposite Judy.

Ed tried to give it to Lotus, but the stone refused to move. Ed released it, and it hovered in place, exactly between Lotus and Judy. Static electricity put a tingle in Ed’s skin and made her hair frizz. Lotus and Judy moved in unison, matching each other step for step, gesture for gesture. They held out their hands. Green and white lightning surged from the stone and into their palms.

The earth rumbled. Terror seized the nearby cryptos. Ed was nearly trampled by a fleeing minotaur. A raging whirlwind swirled around Lotus, Judy, and the stone. Gravity went weird and Ed was drawn toward the storm. A three-headed hellhound dug its claws into the street, but the force ripped it free. The cyclone snatched up the crypto and disintegrated the helpless hound. Chunks of asphalt, fence planks, clumps of grass and dirt, and unfortunate cryptos were swallowed by the storm. Debris was flung in all directions, and what didn’t get thrown out of the storm was consumed by it. Ed grabbed ahold of an SUV door handle as she was lifted off her feet.

The last few inches between the two women and the stone were the hardest. The stone went through a rainbow of colors. Golden lines, hidden runes of ancient power, formed on the women’s flesh.

Monster and Chester stopped at the edge of the gravity anomaly. Monster leaned back and braced himself to avoid being swept up into the void. Chester clung to Monster’s leg.

The world trembled as if it might shake apart. Car alarms blared. Every house and streetlight came on spontaneously and burned bright enough to turn the night into day for a few seconds before exploding.

“So what do we do now, boss?” shouted Chester over the howling winds and grumbling earth.

Monster didn’t have an answer.

Judy and Lotus touched the stone at the same moment. The whirlwind instantly vanished. The ground ceased rumbling, and the stone went black as the runes faded from its face. The force Monster had been resisting faded, and he fell over.

Judy and Lotus stared into each other’s eyes in the eerie quiet. The runes rose off their skin and whirled around them, struggling for dominance.

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” asked Chester.

“Bad,” said Monster.

A residual connection to the stone remained with him, and he could sense the struggle raging beneath the surface of the universe as Lotus and Judy fought for control. Under the right circumstances, this could be a battle of equals, a stalemate lasting until the end of time. But they weren’t equals. Not quite.

Lotus had the edge. She wasn’t so easily shed. The stone still feared her, couldn’t stop feeding her. Judy had interrupted that flow of power, but it was only a temporary disruption. The balance would shift. Lotus would take control, and she would hijack Judy’s momentary oneness with the universe to fulfill her agenda.

“If we can separate Lotus, we might be able to break the stalemate,” said Monster.

The wind kicked up, and a slight tremor churned the broken asphalt. Judy and Lotus glowed, but Lotus shone just a little brighter. Monster picked his way across the uneven ground.

Ed stepped in the way. “I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t let you interfere. Mrs. Lotus wouldn’t—”

He put his hand on her shoulder. The spark passed between them. Ed whinnied as she ripped out of her clothes and reverted to her equine form. She reared up and bolted down the street.

Transforming Ed had used up the last of the magic the stone had given Monster. He retreated as the gathering power caused the sky to burn while the asphalt glowed beneath Judy and Lotus’s feet. Monster was scarlet now, immune to heat. Either a parting gift from the stone or a lucky break.

“What’s wrong?” asked Chester.

“What am I doing? I gotta be crazy.”

Monster backed away.

“But what about Judy?” said Chester.

“What about me?” replied Monster. “This is her destiny. I’m just some dumbass who got swept up in it.”

“You can’t just run away.”

“Sure I can.”

He turned, but Chester jumped in his path. “Damn it, Monster. You have to stop doing this.”

Monster glanced over his shoulder. Judy and Lotus boiled with power. Nearby fences and lawns caught fire. Chester withered and crinkled at the edges.

“Is this how you want to keep living your life?” asked Chester. “Always making the same mistake, always listening to the instinct of the moment?”

Monster tried to speak, but Chester held up his tattered and smoking hand.

“Let me finish. I don’t know how much longer this body will hold out.

“I’ve been coming to this universe for a long time now, and in all this time, I’ve seen some very stupid behavior. But then I reminded myself that you’re just bags of meat doing the best you can with what you’ve got. And from that perspective I guess you’re doing all right, even if mostly driven by the same selfish instincts that compel all blobs of marginally sentient protoplasm. It’s just what you are, and I try not to judge you for it.”

The fingers on Chester’s right hand started burning. He tore off the limb, tossing it away before the fire could spread.

“You are the most shortsighted, impulsive, and self-centered blob of protoplasm I have ever met. But here’s your chance, Monster. It’s time to prove that you aren’t just one bad decision after another, that you can do what needs to be done when it comes right down to it. It’s time to be more than just a human being looking out for himself. Or you can be just another blob of protoplasm. It’s your call.”

Chester burst into flame. “Damn it, that stings.” He burned away.

Judy and Lotus were ablaze now. White fire danced along their bodies. They weren’t burning, but nothing else could get close without being overwhelmed by the heat.

Though immune to normal heat, Monster was sweating. Every sensible instinct told him to run, even though there was nowhere to go. Chester could abandon his body and retreat to a safe other-dimensional distance. But Monster wasn’t a parahuman immigrant. He was stuck here in this universe, and whatever happened between Lotus and Judy would affect the whole thing.

He wasn’t important. He knew that. He was just some guy caught in a battle between titans. He didn’t see how he could affect that battle either way. It would be smarter to just ride it out and hope for the best.

The fire erupted in a tower of white hot flame. Monster wasn’t blinded by the light, but he shielded his eyes by reflex. In the heart of the column of fire, the silhouettes of Judy and Lotus stood locked in their standoff.

Monster hesitated, unable to either flee or go forward.

He ran through his choices. He could throw himself into the flames and do something. He wasn’t sure what, but he didn’t have time to think that far ahead. Or he could just hide and ride it out.

Chester had been right. That was what Monster always did. He just went with the flow, let life and circumstances push him around. It hadn’t been working out very well, but in this case, going against that instinct probably meant being incinerated in the magical pyre that sealed Judy and Lotus away from the rest of the universe.

He stuck his hand into the pyre. His scarlet skin darkened but didn’t burn. He pulled it out and inspected the limb. Still solid. Moist with sweat, but otherwise not a blackened stump.

“Man or protoplasm,” he mumbled. “Which is it, Monster?”

In the heart of the fire, Judy’s knees wobbled, and a ripple ran through the universe as reality was rewritten. Whiskers sprouted on his face, and fur grew along his arms. He ran his fingers across his pointed ears.

He lowered his head and plunged into the flames before he could talk himself out of it. Though the unnatural heat was stifling, he wasn’t blasted into ashes. He kept his eyes on his goal. Every step was harder than the last as his feet sank into the street, a sea of boiling tar. He had to keep moving or else he’d sink up to his knees. Halfway there, his shoes got stuck, but his shrinking feet slipped loose. His suddenly large clothes fell off as he became a scarlet cat. Lighter and faster, he danced across the sticky tar even as his mind became foggy. But he kept reminding himself that he had to reach Lotus. Even after every other human thought disappeared, he managed to hold on to that one. Claws extended, he hurled himself onto Lotus’s leg just as the tar threatened to drag him under.

Lotus was unaccustomed to pain, having not experienced it in several millennia. But the stone’s protection was gone, and the scratching, biting, hissing feline climbing up her leg took her completely by surprise. Shrieking, she released the stone and whirled, beating at Monster as he sank his fangs into her rump.

The tower of flame disappeared and the sea of tar instantly cooled into an uneven black plain. Judy and the stone burned brighter.

Lotus finally succeeded in detaching the Monster, who was a cat in mind and body now. He hissed and spat, arching his back and raising his hackles. She pointed at him, blasting a stream of fire. It disintegrated before reaching him.

She tried again, but nothing happened. A chill breeze swept over her, and Lotus shivered.

Judy held the stone under her arm.

“That’s mine!” shouted Lotus. “How dare you!”

She charged like a slathering beast. Judy made a small gesture. Barely a flick of the wrist. The tar liquefied under Lotus and sucked her under. She was up to her waist before it turned solid again.

Lotus leaned forward and continued to claw at the air with her hands.

“You can’t have it! You can’t control it! Give it to me before the power drives you mad and you ruin everything!”

Purring, Monster rubbed against Judy’s leg.

“It’s over,” said Judy to Lotus. “Can’t you see that?”

“No! It’s never over! There is a way to things, a natural order! The stone and I are one. We always have been.”

“Not anymore.”

Lotus went limp. She struggled to hold herself together, but she was a parasite without a host. She raised a trembling arm as she stared with burning eyes at the stone. Then the fire fizzled and Lotus disappeared, back to the formless nothingness from which she had been spawned.

Judy felt the universe all around her. A surge of revitalizing power flooded into it as everything that Lotus had been holding on to returned to the stone. There wasn’t much time. Only a few seconds before the alignment would fail and Judy’s perfect communion with the stone would end.

She willed the destruction gone, and the neighborhood was restored. There was no flash, no divine thunder. It was just fixed.

Monster mewed at her feet. Judy scratched him on the head, and she willed him to become whatever he wanted. Human or cat—it was his choice.

Naked, scarlet, and furless, he squatted beside her. He stood and didn’t bother to cover himself. He was just happy to be human again.

“Did we win?”

“We won,” she replied. “Though it isn’t quite over.”

She held the stone before her. Even without the perfect attunement, she would become the most powerful being in the universe if she held on to it. She felt the stone object to this arrangement, but it couldn’t stop her. Nothing could. This power was hers now, and it would take at least another billion years before the stone could try to take it away. And even that wasn’t guaranteed to work.

It was only fair. Her life had been a mess because of what the stone had made her into. She didn’t need to hold the power forever. Just a few years to make up for the annoyances she’d suffered in the name of the greater good. Wasn’t she owed at least a decade of near omnipotence? Maybe two. Was a century really that big a deal in the grand scale of time? She could give it back after she’d indulged herself for a millennium or two, and everything would work out fine in the end.

The stone filled Judy’s mind with a billion years’ worth of memories, of the long, long life of the last creature to covet its power above all else. The power the stone offered wasn’t really good for anything. It could transform every person into a cat, move planets, create universes. But for a human being, it was worthless, a glittering bauble that granted immortality and awesome power but nothing of practical value.

Lotus had lived for ages, but she hadn’t really lived at all. A life span of billions of years, existing for no other reason than to keep existing. That wasn’t living, and Judy should know. That had been Judy’s life for as long as she could remember. Because until today, that was the best she could hope for.

But now it was time for things to change.

Judy threw the stone in the air. It hurtled upward and onward. Now that Lotus was gone, the stone was free to return to its original unformed state. It disappeared in a flash.

She felt human again. And maybe really alive for the first time.

“Is it over?” asked Monster as he slipped into his pants.

“No,” she replied. “It’s only just beginning.”