Banished To Earth Book One (18)

Chapter 11

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    Sometime after Chase stroked Pry’s tender cheek with his fingertips, another ‘early arrival’ was tracing the depth and shape of her faint footprints on the pebbly shoreline of the silvery lake where they first met. Lingering DNA ‘shadows’, completely invisible to the unchanged eyes of normal humans, stood out like road flares to any recently changed Hunters.

   This new Hunter was a brick wall of a man. He filled out his black corduroy jeans and shirt with a body more like concrete blocks knotted together with a logging chain than human flesh. But then he wasn’t merely human anymore.    

   He was Grant Stayner, finally savoring the change he had been promised in a dream when he was just a skinny little boy.

   His time had come. Promise kept. No one would ever push him around again. Scrawny no more. Bullied no more. It was payback time. And the world owed him big.  

   It was his world now, his to take, anyway. Killing this first monster would be his initiation into that new world, a world he was determined to conquer, another promise made, a promise he had made to himself long ago.    

   He ran his thick fingers through his black mane, his heavy boots cracking pebbles as he scoured the area for any hint of his prey and hopefully the fading remnants of a fresh shift portal.

    He had already discovered two shredded bodies. After carefully studying their razor-thin lacerations, he determined this thing must be something the Authority called a Crychee. They were all female, all deadly, especially toward aggressive men, and he prided himself on his aggression. This should be fun.

    Its entry into the Earth was, of course, a shift portal, but it was too decayed to be of much use, except to alert him of its arrival and pinpoint the entry location.

    Not sensing its presence, he rightly assumed it had shifted somewhere else, but where? The remnants of a recent shift portal could well take him straight to its lair. It was only a matter of finding it.

   Flattening his hands against the air as if he were feeling his way through darkness, he slowly walked through the area until something buzzed against his fingertips.

  “Gotcha!”

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   “Sir, sir. This is a crime scene; you’ll need to vacate the premises immediately.

   The new Hunter dropped his hands, slowly turning his face toward the interruption. “Vacate the premises.” Grant's tone was dripping with disdain. “Big words make you feel like a big man.” Grant muttered just loud enough to be heard. He looked over and saw a neatly uniformed Park Ranger picking his way across the rocky shoreline toward him.

“Where’s your crime tape?” Grant snorted.

“In my right-hand, sir. As I said, you need to leave.”

“Ah, no. Got things to do, very important things, and you’re impeding my investigation.”

“F.B.I.?”

“Not hardly.”

“I’m not asking, I’m telling…”

  “You’re telling.” Grant chuckled. “This would be a good time for you to toddle along and forget everything you saw. Run along, while you can. I’m being nice.”

The Ranger pulled out his cell phone.

   “Nope,” said Grant, a split second before he lunged at the ranger with such speed that he disappeared for a moment.

   A millisecond later, he was hoisting the ranger up like a rag doll. He dangled for a moment, trying to break Grant's grip on his shirt and jacket, but it was like trying to break a metal weld.

    Struggling to draw his pistol, Grant tossed him into the lake like a paper cup before he could get off a shot.

   “Swim away, boy.” He didn’t; instead, he sloshed toward Grant through the chest-deep water, then pulled his gun. “Stop. I’m placing you under arrest.”

    “No. You’re not,” Grant bent down, snatched up a pebble and flicked it at the Ranger. It hit his forehead with such force that it bore through his skull and his brain and exploded from the back of his head. Blood, bone and grey matter spewed out half a second before his lifeless body crumpled into the water. Grant grunted, “My first kill was supposed to be you, Crychee, not some dumb tree cop! Now. Where was I? Oh yeah, I just found your last shift portal, and it's daisy fresh…

Chapter 12

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    Beth awoke with a start. “What a crazy dream,” she muttered, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and slowly realizing it was no dream. “Nikki!” She pleaded as she rolled over and found her little girl sound asleep in someone else’s bed.

   “Wake up, baby. Mommy wants to see your big, beautiful eyes.” What she really wanted was to make sure her baby was still alive.

    They had just spent the night with a monster from outer space who had already confessed to killing two men, albeit rapists, and her mutant husband. The fact was, she had yet to admit she was secretly pleased by Pry’s confession; besides, neither of her hosts struck her as being an actual threat to her or Nikki. The real threat was the fact that this was all real. Her world, as messy and hard as it was, was gone. Her reality was not real anymore.

    It all seemed like a blur now, but one thing she could clearly remember was the smile on Nikki’s face. Pry had put that smile there. How could such a sweet, childlike creature as Pry be anything less than a trusted friend and powerful protector? Beth would cling to the certainty that she could not.

    “My big bootiful eyes?” Nikki asked as she rolled over and gave her Mother a sweet, silly grin. “You never talk like that. Is it because we’re in somebody else's house? You don’t have to put on hairs.”

    “Airs, baby, not hairs. Besides, your eyes are beautiful.  I should tell you things like that all the time, especially now.”

   “Oh, now that it’s the end of the world.” She poked her head up and looked around. Everything looks the same to me, sun’s shining and my tummy’s making funny noises like it does every morning. Everything is starting up all over again, just like always. I don’t see no end, just another beginning. What’s the end of the world ‘spose to look like anyway?”

   Beth basked in her daughter's innocence for a few lovely moments, grabbed her up and planted a sweet, wet kiss on her little forehead.

“Thank you, baby. If I were a bird, you’d be my wings.”

“There you go again talkin’ funny. I’m hungry what’s for breakfast.”
“Come on, my little jelly belly,” Beth teased as she tickled Nikki’s tummy, scooped her up and out of the bed. “Let’s go see what we can scramble up.”

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“Eggs,” Nikki replied, deadpanned as a skillet.

“Oh, you little butter beanie, “Said Beth as she tickled the little girl's belly.

“No, you’re a butter beanie,” Nikki squealed when Beth laid her down and got dressed.