Banished To Earth Book One(33)

“The black, it’s a gift. Leather, flannel, corduroy, the black, their black, is the only defense against these lighters.”

  “So, they dressed you?” Chase was intrigued.

    “Dressed me, more like groomed me, prepared me, years before my change. Sweet dreams of power, death dripping off my fingertips.” Her face grew dark. Her eyes watered. “The past sucks. ‘cept for the dreams. Their dreams, their promises. They were good. I finally woke up two days ago. Kinda thought something was up when blue light flooded my bedroom, just before I dozed off.”    

   Silhouette sashayed right up to them, “Okay, here’s the deal. Your little wife is off limits. I prefer bigger game anyway, and I’ll help you get tall, cute and limp as a dishrag here somewhere a little less ‘come and get me.’”

   “We should go and check on the soldiers.” Said Pry.

   Exasperated and amused, Silhouette chuckled, kneading her forehead with the heel of her left hand.

   “Okay what’s your name again?”

   “Pry.”

   “Cute name fits you. Well, Pry, they are cooked, blood boiled out of them, so I ask again why you care?”

  123

 “Some may have survived!” The little alien yelled, “Don’t you care about your own people?”

   “Don’t yell Crychee, the big ones like loud noises. Unless you’re trying to call more up, I strongly suggest you talk normally. The fact is girl, things have changed, but they have not. They can’t. They are not people anymore. We are.”

   “Well,” Chase said, “if they are not people anymore, then what are they?”

    The Huntress reached out and gently grasped Chases’ shoulder. “The Transit Authority has reclassified them as minor monsters. To them, they are nothing more than nuisance creatures. We can kill them, enslave them or just ignore them. Understand? They’ve lost their status as viable indigenous entities; obviously, their words, not mine.”

   “That can’t be right,” Chase said, jerking his shoulder away from her hand. “You’re saying I’m supposed to hunt down regular people now!”

  “If you want. But we have not been officially sanctioned to go out and kill them, but only because they don’t rate that kind of attention.”   

     He shrank away from her, as if she had sprouted horns. Point of fact, she had. “These Transit People must think they’re Gods.” He said as much to himself as to Silhouette.

    “So far as I’m concerned, they are.” She tossed out the blasphemous statement with frightening ease.  “They have the power after all. They gave, so I’m pretty sure they can take it back. I don’t know if they can’t, and I’m not about to risk it. I waited too long. I like what I got, what I am. And I want to keep it. Huh, never believed in nothing until now. They changed my mind just like they changed my body.”

   “And if our difference threatens that?”

   “Run.  Yeah, you really need my help. And I will, until I can’t.”

   “That a promise?”

  “No, that’s a warning.”

   Pry’s hair remained still as actual human hair. Even after their heated exchange, it hung and swayed at the mercy of the breeze. She took comfort in that. Maybe this Huntress was not so much a threat as she delighted in portraying.  

   “I don’t think I want your help, not if I can’t count on it,” Chase said, just before a prickly electric tingle crawled up his spine.

   A massive shift portal had just opened somewhere behind him.

124

   He saw Silhouette’s eyes widen and roll up, high up. It was as if they were climbing a skyscraper.

   Pry cowered over Tucker’s unconscious body. A new creature had arrived. It towered behind the tree line as it stomped its way toward them, ploughing through the pines and great oaks as though it was nothing more than dry grass.  

    Chase and Pry struggled to get Tucker’s tall floppy body to its feet as the tyrannosaur-like alien beast advanced on them. Standing three hundred feet tall, it made the surrounding woods and buildings look like quaint decorations on a model train set.  

    “Whoops,” Silhouette quipped, as if she were blissfully unaware of the impending threat, “Looks like we stayed too long. Want my help now? Just say yes.”

    “Yes!” Chase and Pry yelled at the same time, as they pulled at Tucker’s gangly, limp frame, expecting the Huntress to lend a hand. It was not that he was all that heavy, but floppy and unwieldy.

    She, of course, did no such thing. Incredibly, she stashed her pistol away in its back holster and snatched a knife from a sheath sewn onto the left shoulder of her cat suit, checked her hair in the blade’s mirrored surface. Satisfied with her appearance, she ran straight at the beast just as it broke the tree line and crushed an abandoned SUV at the far end of the parking lot.  

   “You want me, bite me, you ugly T-Rex wanna be!”

    The monster swung its tremendous tail, clearing the lot of any remaining vehicles, narrowly missing the struggling trio. Roaring, it bent down just as Silhouette leapt right then hopped left. Of course, her leaps were right out of a comic book, impossibly high and precise.

    Chase and Pry, still clinging to Tucker, yelled for Silhouette to run. The beast roared and snapped at her. Its massive maw was a cave; its long white teeth looked like stalagmites and stalactites.

     The mad Huntress smirked just before she flung herself between its teeth and down its throat.

   “Stupid fool!” Chase screamed, tightened his grip on Tucker and noticed pink tears streaming down Pry’s face.

125

   “She died for us.” Pry said, weeping and yanking on her charge. She wasn’t about to lose another friend.

    “At least she bought us a little time. Let’s not waste it. Over there.”  He pointed toward