Critical Failures III (Caverns and Creatures Book 3), page 16
“That’s the one.”
“Right!” said Mordred. “So the party spent about thirty minutes checking for traps on the door, but what they didn’t know was that the bandits had rigged up little mines all over the dungeon floor!”
“Those stupid fuckers!” Stacy’s laughter was obnoxiously loud, like a horse being tickled. Strangely enough, it seemed genuine. How much had she had to drink?
Mordred laughed like an asthmatic pig. “I’m so happy you came and met me here. I’m really having a nice time.”
“Me, too,” said Stacy. Again, she sounded troublingly sincere. Tim felt little pangs of what might have been jealousy nibble at his insides. Or maybe he was just still hungry.
“If you’ll excuse me,” said Mordred. “I need to use the restroom.”
Perfect.
“Wait!” said Stacy, a hint of panic in her voice. “Before you go, answer a question for me, would you?”
“Of course!”
“What’s your favorite C&C race?”
What the fuck kind of question was that? Why wouldn’t she just let him go for a piss so that Tim could get the hell out of there? It was almost as if she was intentionally… Tim looked up at the wall behind him. Right next to him was a door which read “MEN”.
Shit.
Tim needed a distraction. There was too much ground to cover between himself and the front entrance. Mordred would spot him for sure if he got up.
The waiter whose path Tim had crossed a few minutes ago was approaching Mordred and Stacy’s table with a large tray. Tim grabbed a pepper shaker from off the top of the wine barrel and unscrewed the lid until it was almost completely off.
“I’ve always been partial to elves,” said Mordred. “They’re a reflection of how I see myself. Proud, strong, and noble, yet gentle enough to –”
Tim stood up and hurled the pepper shaker as hard as he could, hitting the waiter square in the temple.
“Wha!” said the waiter. The tray, along with Mordred and Stacy’s dinner, crashed to the floor. The three of them were engulfed in a cloud of pepper.
“Oh my God!” cried Stacy. “It’s in my eyes!”
“I can’t see!” cried Mordred.
With the entire restaurant focused on them, Tim walked casually to the front of the restaurant and out the door.
“IED,” he said to himself. “Thanks for the idea, Mordred.”
Chapter 20
Katherine flapped as hard as she could, but she wasn’t gaining on Ginfizzle at all. He swooped around trees, and over and under branches, constantly and haphazardly changing directions. It was all Katherine could do just to keep up. Both of them, however, were getting farther and farther away from Cooper. The sound of him crashing through the forest behind them had faded away to nothing.
There was no point in catching Ginfizzle if Cooper wasn’t there to bag him. All they’d be able to do is beat the shit out of one another until they both needed to feed again. In her as yet brief experience as a vampire, Katherine wasn’t fully aware of all of her own weaknesses. In the event that Ginfizzle, being from a place where vampires exist, should be more knowledgeable about such things, Katherine felt safer with Cooper to back her up.
“Fuck you!” she tried to shout at Ginfizzle, but it only came out as a high-pitched squeal, giving her a sharp mental image of the surrounding pine trees. She turned around to go and find Cooper.
She was fortunate she discontinued the chase when she did. When she finally found Cooper, he had slowed down to a jog, but was headed in the wrong direction. Stupid as he was, he couldn’t be faulted for this one. As much as Ginfizzle had been twisting and turning, it was a wonder that Katherine was able to find Cooper at all. She swooped down to meet him.
When Cooper saw her, he cocked back a fist.
Huh? Katherine hovered a safe distance out of Cooper’s punching range.
“Which one are you?” he panted out.
Oh, right.
Katherine changed into her half-elf form. Cooper collapsed face-first into the dirt and farted like a deflating balloon.
“Come on, Cooper,” said Katherine. “We can’t give up now. He’s hurt, and we’re right on top of him!”
“I’m fucking exhausted,” said Cooper. “I haven’t slept in like two days.” He closed his eyes. “I… can’t… run… one… more… single… fucking… step.” He looked as though he was forcing himself to stay awake long enough to finish the sentence.
“Then I’ll carry you.”
Cooper grunted out a hollow laugh and opened one eye. “How are you going to fight a vampire with a sleeping half-orc in your arms?”
“Who said anything about using my arms?” Katherine decided it was time to try out a new form. She’d seen Millard do it, so she knew she had the power inside her. She focused her mind. Like a bat, only bigger.
Instead of shrinking as her body changed, this time she grew. She could feel the muscles and bones stretch thin as her arms elongated. Her fingers grew at twice the speed, stretching the skin between them into great webbed wings. Her thumbs didn’t grow, but their nails grew into thick, hooked claws. Coarse bristles of black fur burst out of every pore of her skin.
When the transformation was done, Katherine stood uncomfortably on feet that weren’t made for standing. She looked down at Cooper. He looked so little now. She let out a roaring screech, like a lion going through puberty. Compared to her normal bat form, the mental picture echolocating in her mind right now was positively HiDef.
Cooper opened his eyes and looked at her. He sat bolt upright. “Jesus, I’m awake! No, wait… am I awake?” He slapped himself repeatedly in the face. “Wake up, God damn you! Wake up!”
Katherine flapped her enormous, black wings, lifting herself off the ground and creating a cloud of dirt and fallen leaves. She hovered over Cooper and opened her giant, clawed feet.
Cooper stood up. “Katherine?”
Katherine screeched again, making a token effort to try not to be terrifying. From the look on Cooper’s face, she hadn’t succeeded.
“I think I’ve got a second wind,” said Cooper, starting to jog.
They didn’t have time to goof around. Katherine swooped down and grabbed Cooper by the shoulders. Flapping with all of her supernatural might, shaking the surrounding trees, she lifted Cooper off of the ground. Once she knew it was possible, it became easier. She climbed through the air and erupted out of the treetops.
“FUCK YES!” said Cooper, who had obviously reconsidered his feelings about being grabbed by a giant bat.
Katherine beat her wings harder, climbing farther up into the night, until the area below her resembled a map. The air was thinner up here, which meant she had to flap harder, but it was also refreshingly cooler, which was worth some extra flapping. The lights in the distance to her right would be Biloxi. She could even recognize a few of the casinos from here. Straight ahead of her was D’Iberville, as evidenced by Target, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and the Olive Garden.
She looked down to try to pinpoint where she had broken off her chase with Ginfizzle. It was hard to say. Down below was nothing but trees. She made her best guess and flew down for a closer look. The tree cover was thick, but broken frequently enough by creeks, country roads, and developed property, that Ginfizzle should have been easy enough to spot soon enough.
“There!” said Cooper, pointing his big gun down at a seemingly innocuous patch of forest. A little farther along, a dog raced across a road like it had just seen the devil himself. It was just an ordinary black lab. As far as she knew, vampires didn’t have the ability to turn into domestic breeds of dog, and this one was too small to be a – And then she saw it. The biggest wolf she’d ever seen in her life exploded out from the trees, not even touching the road as it bounded across in one stride and grabbed the lab by the back like a golden retriever might grab a duck. It was a monster of a wolf. Katherine guessed it was even bigger than a horse. She’d have to remember this for her own repertoire.
The lab gave a brief cry of pain before the giant wolf clamped its jaws together and shook its head. Katherine plunged down while the wolf lapped up the dead dog’s blood. It would be a challenge to stuff an animal this big into the Bag of Holding, but if they could get close enough without being detected, well… they’d cross that bridge when they came to it.
A gunshot rang out. Bark exploded off the trunk of a pine tree about ten feet away from the wolf.
Goddammit, Cooper.
The startled wolf looked up at them, teeth bared and muzzle covered in blood.
Katherine, unable to reprimand Cooper the conventional way, let out a frustrated shriek.
“I’m sorry!” said Cooper. “It’s hard to aim when you’re holding my arms!”
Ginfizzle growled but chose to dart off into the woods again rather than stay and fight.
Katherine descended the rest of the way to the site of the carnage, letting go of Cooper a good ten feet before she touched the ground herself.
“Fuck!” said Cooper as he fell. When he crashed to the ground, the gun went off.
Shit! She had only meant to give him a little payback for being stupid. She hadn’t meant to make him shoot himself. She morphed back into a half-elf.
“Cooper! Are you okay?”
Cooper stood up and patted himself down. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not hurt.”
Katherine punched him in the face.
“What the fuck was that for!” said Cooper.
“We almost had him!” cried Katherine. “All you had to do was keep quiet for a few more seconds!”
“Well we’re still right on his ass,” said Cooper. “Why did you stop?”
“Damage control,” said Katherine. It was only a half truth. She wasn’t about to let the rest of that fresh, warm blood go to waste. She got down on her hands and knees and sucked on one of the gaping wounds Ginfizzle had left in the dog, gulping down the hot, salty liquid. When she’d had her fill, she picked the dog up and smashed its head into the tree Cooper had shot. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then licked the blood off like a cat cleaning herself.
She turned to Cooper. “Ready?”
Cooper stared back at her, dead-eyed and open-mouthed. If she didn’t know any better, Katherine would have sworn the gun stuffed down the front of his pants had two barrels.
“You keep that in your pants, understand?” said Katherine.
Cooper nodded. It was hard to make out in the dark, but she thought he might have been blushing. Fucking weirdo. She turned into a giant bat again, picked up Cooper, and continued the chase.
Ginfizzle wasn’t hard to spot now that Katherine knew what she was looking for and had narrowed his location down a more specific area. She followed a path of shaking trees, barking dogs, and the occasional human scream. He was running faster than she could fly. If it came down to it, she could ditch Cooper and take on the form of a big wolf herself, but she hoped that, if she could chase him out onto Promenade Parkway, he might get hit by a truck or something.
No such luck. Ginfizzle had obviously learned his lesson about traffic safety when he got hit by a car earlier that evening. He stopped just short of the busy four lane road. The two deer which were running away from him weren’t so road savvy.
An SUV, no doubt distracted by the massive wolf running out of the forest, didn’t even try to brake before plowing right into one of the deer. The other deer was narrowly missed by a red pick-up truck, which swerved across the center line into oncoming traffic. Tires screeched. Cars on both sides of the parkway crashed into one another, but with a twenty-five mile-per-hour speed limit, Katherine guessed that everyone but that first deer would be walking away. Ginfizzle jumped on top of the stopped cars as he crossed over into the Dick’s Sporting Goods parking lot.
Most of the motorists were too shocked to scream. They merely pointed and stared at the giant wolf running rampant through their city. They managed to find their voices, however, when Katherine and Cooper flew past them. Their screams screwed with her echolocation, and she began to get disoriented.
“Take that, you hairy son of a bitch!” shouted Cooper, firing off three shots as Katherine lost control of where she was flying. They crashed into a lamp post and fell to the hard, unforgiving concrete.
Katherine took on her half-elven form and stood up. Judging by the darkened Olive Garden sign raining down a shower of sparks across the street and the blaring car alarm in the Dick’s Sporting Goods parking lot, she guessed she could account for at least two of Cooper’s shots.
“What the fuck just happened?” said Cooper. “Did you get high on that dog blood?”
Katherine lifted Cooper off the ground by the throat and slammed him into the side of a parked van. Her voice shook as she spoke. “I just want to rip your stupid face off!”
“Wha?” Cooper croaked through his collapsing trachea.
Katherine let him go and snatched the gun out of his hand. She waved it in his face. “I thought I told you to keep this in your pants!”
Cooper took a few deep breaths. “Oh,” he laughed shallowly. “You meant the gun.”
“Are you fucking retarded!” shouted Katherine. She threw the gun through the windshield of a nearby car. “WHAT THE FUCK ELSE WOULD I MEAN?”
“I thought you meant… um… Hey, where’s Jizzfiddle?”
A series of screams came out of the sporting goods store. Katherine looked in that direction. Two soccer moms were sitting on the pavement outside the store next to their overturned shopping bags, like they had just been pushed over.
Katherine and Cooper looked at each other. “Dick’s!”
Chapter 21
Stacy, Mordred, and their waiter, Josh, spent a few minutes hacking and coughing until the pepper cloud began to dissipate.
“I’m so, so sorry!” said Josh, rubbing the side of his head. “Some homeless kid’s got it in for me tonight.”
“Homeless kid?” said Mordred.
Stacy didn’t like the doubt in Mordred’s voice. She thought it best to corroborate the waiter’s story. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I saw this on the news. It’s a new trend. The little street urchins are storming into restaurants, stealing food, and assaulting the wait staff.”
“Why?” asked Josh. His eyes were watery, making the question sound like he was genuinely distraught about the plight of suburban family restaurants. But it was probably just the pepper lingering in his eyes.
Stacy shrugged. “Dunno. Something about the one percent?”
“But I’m just a –”
“Would you mind getting me another drink?” said Stacy. Mine’s got a layer of pepper on top.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Josh. “And I’ll put your order in again and be right back to clean up the mess.”
Stacy gave him a friendly, tight-lipped smile and a wink. Her own eyes still stung pretty bad.
“I’m going to head to the bathroom now,” said Mordred. “Maybe rinse my eyes out.”
Stacy didn’t know how long her next drink was going to be, so she tried to skim the pepper off the top of her current one. She had actually been having a good time before Tim showed up. Sure, Mordred was a big dork, but there was something adorable about how passionate he was about his little game.
What the hell had Tim come inside the restaurant for? He was supposed to be covering the entrance. The little control freak probably didn’t trust her not to screw this up. She would laugh at the irony of that later, when her eyes weren’t full of pepper.
To be fair though, Tim’s shenanigans had been entertaining as well, but Stacy was hungry, and determined not to fill up on breadsticks and salad. She scowled down at her chicken parmesan on the floor. Her stomach grumbled. The food smelled better than she would have liked to admit.
She eyed a piece of chicken resting atop another piece of chicken, and therefore technically not touching the floor. She was strongly considering reaching a new low in her life when she heard the screech of tires outside. She looked out the window. Cars were crashing into each other on Promenade Parkway. She was about to write it off as drunks when she noticed a giant, gray wolf lurking in the shadows on the other side of the road. The thing was bigger than her apartment. It could only mean one thing. More of her new friends were close by.
Diners at nearby tables gasped.
“Look at that!”
“What is it?”
“Quick, get your camera!”
The wolf crossed the street on top of the cars. A few seconds later, a huge bat flew after the wolf, carrying a guy in a Papa Joe’s uniform. He looked like the big one… Connor, was it? Whatever his name was, he was waving around a big Dirty Harry gun. Stacy wondered if she’d lost her ability to be surprised.
“What’s all the commotion?”
Stacy jumped and turned away from the window. Mordred was rubbing his eyes and being careful not to step in any of the spilled food on his way back to their table.
Stacy stood up, positioning herself between him and the window. “Oh nothing,” she said. “Just a little traffic accident outside. Nothing to –”
A series of loud, booming gunshots rang out. The lights in the restaurant dimmed as the crackle of electricity rained down a shower of sparks outside the front windows.
Those patrons who had been pressing against the windows trying to snap a picture with their cell phones now dove onto the floor. Stacy and Mordred squatted down over their spilled dinner.
Stacy felt a strong urge to abort her mission. She couldn’t keep Mordred from hearing about the chaos going on outside, and he was bound to suspect that the timing of their date and said chaos was more than just a coincidence.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she said.
Mordred gave her a strange look but nodded silently. The wheels were already turning.
Stacy stood but remained stooping as she walked to the ladies room, taking what cover she could from any more potential errant bullets. Her gut told her to run for the exit and put all of this behind her, but her brain reminded her that there was a huge fucking wolf out there.
She ducked into the ladies room and frowned at her disheveled, flushed reflection in the mirror. Calm down, Stacy. Think. She fumbled through her purse for her pack of stale Virginia Slims. Her hands shook as she flicked the lighter. Just as she got a flame going, one of the stalls opened, scaring the shit out of her.
