Chapter Twenty One

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Chapter Twenty One

I gave the Cube one last twist, and with a flash of white light I appeared on the scene.

“Hey!” someone yelled from in the distance. “No flash photography!”

Putting the Cube in my pocket, I took a moment to look around. I was standing on the far side of a parking lot, with rows upon rows of cars parked in front of me. They were all facing the same direction, pointing toward a giant screen on the other side of the property where a shirtless, musclebound hunk was angrily storming into a church.

“Stop ze vedding!” he shouted in an accent that was somewhere between French, German, and Russian, flexing his massive pecs in the process.

“Gastontonio!” the bride gasped and swooned as her groom-to-be looked on in helpless confusion. “I thought you had amnesia and were in a coma in a Martian hospital after your battleship hit an iceberg in the Saxophonian Nebula!”

“Oh, hey!” I said. “It’s The Passionate and the Pulchritudinous! I love this movie!”

“I vas, and I did, Debwalilah, my zveet manchote enrobé de chocolat,” Gastontonio declared as a sudden gust of wind blew his long, flowing hair back dramatically. “But vhen I heard ze zquid-headed nurse say zat ze Princess of Austwalia vas getting mawwied to Hanz Quadruplebottom, I voke up in an instant!”

“But how did you get back to Earth?” Debralilah asked, swooning again for no apparent reason.

“Nuzzing could keep me avay from your zoft, electrifying embwace, my begemot meteorizmom, so I tamed ze giant wadioactive zpace buffalo of Zenguinar Five and rode it home!”

“Rider of Henries,” Opisthia whispered, Fatty extending his arm to let him whisper in my ear, “where are we?”

I blinked, almost having forgotten why I was here.

“It’s a drive-in movie theater,” I explained. “People come out and watch a movie from inside their cars.”

Reflexively, I reached up to make sure my Nasally Operated Semblance Emitter was still where it was supposed to be. As long as my N.O.S.E. was on my face, I would look just as human as everyone else.

Something Opisthia apparently wasn’t worried about.

“Incredible!” the puppet said, his tie-dye-robed monk raising him up higher so he could get a better view. “Technology has come so very far since the last time I left Jah Beryge!”

I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

“My duties running the Brotherhood do not afford me much time to go out and sightsee. That is why I cherish every opportunity I have to see the world we work so hard to protect!”

“Well, I’m pretty sure these things have been around since my parents were kids,” I said with a shrug. “Actually, I’m surprised this one is still open.”

“And these contraptions,” he asked excitedly, “they are able to move without horses?”

“Yeah, they…” I paused. “Wait, you’ve never even seen a car before? When was the last time you left that place?”

“It’s difficult to say. Perhaps…two, maybe three hundred years?”

“Guacamole turnip sandwiches,” I muttered.

“Waba jab ba-BABAJAAA!”

“Yeah, that’s one way to put…” I turned to look at him and frowned. “What?”

He shook his head. “That was not me, Rider of Henries.”

My frown deepened. Was he losing his mind? That hadn’t been a line from the movie—trust me, I pretty much had it memorized—and none of the customers had come out to angrily jabber at us, so who…

“Wabawabawabawabawaba!”

A shadow darted in between the cars in front of us.

“There it is!” Opisthia and I exclaimed at the same time.

We gave chase, winding our way between the cars as quickly as we could. Being sleek and aerodynamic, like every Hunter should be, I was able to slide in and out between the parked cars like a half-melted stick of butter. Behind me, though, I could hear grunts and curses coming from Fatty as he was forced to squeeze himself through those same gaps like an ill-tempered watermelon, shaking the vehicles and earning him a few angry—and slightly confused—reprimands from the movie goers inside.

“Wa wawawaba bababajaaaa!” the maiam babbled almost incessantly.

No matter how fast I ran, though, the shadow was quicker. It was small, maybe about the size of my head, and moved like a spider, dashing beneath cars in an effort to break my line of sight.

“Ah, er, I say, sir,” the bucktoothed, chinless, acne-ridden, spindly-legged, four and a half foot tall groom whined as Gastontonio seized Debralilah and began passionately making out with her, all while the organ continued to play and the congregation applauded. “But you have, ah, broken into my wedding uninvited and kissed my bride! This is, uh, most unorthodox, sir!”

Gastontonio wrenched his mouth away from Debralilah’s and pointed an accusatory finger at him. “Quadruplebottom, you sniveling, cowardly, good for nuzzing, toilet seat sniffing, haufen schimmeliger wattebäusche bedeckt mit ohrenschmalz! How dare you try to mawwy zis beautiful, seductive vooman? You, who do not have even a zingle ab beneath your pazzetic pecks!” He paused to flex his tree trunk-sized arms. “To zpare ze love of my life ze torture of being eternally bound to zomeone so un-beautiful, I challenge you to a duel for Debwalilah’s hand!”

“Bababa waja wabaaa—”

I skidded to a halt as the shadow ducked beneath a pickup truck, but didn’t reappear on the other side. I dropped to my hands and knees, peering beneath the truck, but it was too late.

“Meatball caviar!” I yelled, standing back up.

“Hey!” the driver yelled from inside his truck, beeping the horn. “Down in front!”

Ignoring him, I ducked back into the road that divided the parking spaces. This was one of the worst places I could imagine having to hunt down a maiam. Even disregarding the hundreds of different places it could hide, it was filled with the one thing no Hunter wanted to deal with during a hunt: people. Wide eyed, nosey, ready to call the news and blow the lid on klaonkind’s existence at a moment’s notice, people. If this had been a regular, indoor movie theater, I could have just pulled the fire alarm—or, barring that, actually set the place on fire. But out here? How was I going to find the maiam and kill it without every single one of these people seeing me?

“Did you get it?” Opisthia asked as Fatty squeezed between a Hummer and one of those old hippie vans, leaving them both rocking on their suspensions.

“I lost it,” I muttered, my cheeks turning a shade bluer.

“I did too, I’m afraid,” he said, rotating on Fatty’s wrist to look across the theater. “There are simply too many places for it to hide in a place like this. Don’t worry, though. We’ll find it.”

“Look, I’ll find it, okay?” I snapped. “Keep your underpants…on…”

I blinked when his words finally registered in my brain. He…wasn’t yelling and cursing at me the way McGus did whenever I messed up? He was actually encouraging me? I turned to look at him, but he didn’t even seem to have noticed what I’d said—unlike Fatty, who was giving me what I’m pretty sure was a death glare beneath his hood.

“Well, you’re the Hunter,” Opisthia eventually said. “Where do you think we should start looking?”

I shook myself out of my surprise and thought for a second. “It’s trying to find laughter. If the theater was showing a comedy, it’d be able to pick just about any car it wanted. But since this is a romance, its options are going to be more limited.”

“So?” Opisthia prodded me.

“So we need to find a car where people are laughing,” I concluded. “People who don’t like chick flicks, and are watching it ironically.”

“I have no idea what any of that meant,” the puppet said, “but it sounds like you have a plan. Hunt on, Rider of Henries!”

I began working my way up and down the rows of cars as quickly as I could, doing my best to stay out of view—these people had spent their hard earned cash to see the movie—while keeping my eyes peeled for the telltale rainbow haze of laughter. To my klaon eyes, laughter would be easier to see than to hear, and my ears were focused on listening for the maiam’s high pitched jabbering. The chances of it accidentally showing itself twice were slim, especially now that it knew I was chasing it, but I’d already lost it once and I couldn’t risk looking bad in front of—

“Kiss her, you fool!”

I froze as laughter rang out from somewhere nearby.

“Kiss her with your sixpack, manly man!”

Spinning around, I spotted exactly what I had been looking for: a cloud shining with every color of the rainbow hovering just above a car two rows down from my position.

“There!” I exclaimed, sprinting toward it with Fatty and Opisthia close behind.

With one hand resting on Splatsy, I dashed across the parking lot and began to knock on the driver’s side window.

“Uh, can I help you?” the driver asked, glancing from me to Opisthia.

“Hey, sorry to bother you,” I said, giving him my most innocent smile, “but by any chance have you happened to see anything weird…tonight?”

My eyes widened as a shape crawled up out of the darkness to perch on top of the speaker pole on the other side of the car. Luckily, none of the passengers saw it—they were too busy staring at me like I had a blender for a head—but it locked eyes with me in a hateful glare.

I had been half right in my earlier assessment, I realized. The maiam was, indeed, a severed head running around on a bunch of tiny legs. Its skin was gray, and its eyes were pure black, like something dredged out of your darkest half-remembered nightmares. Two rows of sharp, needle-like teeth lined its mouth, and what I had originally assumed were spider legs were actually thick black tentacles.

“Apart from some random girl banging on my window?” the driver asked, giving me a mocking smirk. “No, I can’t say that I—”

The maiam disappeared into the speaker.

“WABBAJABBA JAB WAB WABAAA!” the speaker suddenly roared at them in a crackly, staticky voice.

Everyone in the car jumped, spinning around, but of course there was nothing there for them to see.

“I don’t remember that line being in the movie,” said someone in the backseat.

“Probably just the speaker malfunctioning,” said the girl in the passenger seat. “This place is, like, five hundred years old, after all.”

“Actually,” Opisthia said, Fatty holding him out toward the car window, “that can’t be possible! The last time I left Jah Beryge was about three hundred years ago, and we didn’t have anything resembling this back then!”

“What…the…hell?” the driver muttered, his eyes going wide.

While they were all staring at what must have looked like the Ghost of Christmas Future going through a hippie and ventriloquist phase at the same time, the maiam climbed back out of the speaker. It’s hard to describe what that looked like. The maiam was way too big to fit inside it naturally, but the way it squeezed itself in through gaps almost looked like it was becoming a liquid. It quickly became solid again, though, as it regained its true size and shape, and I tensed, waiting for it to make its move.

Instead, it leaped down from the speaker and dashed across the parking lot.

“Deep fried lasagna!” I spat, vaulting over the top of the car to give chase again.

“Hey!” I heard the driver yell, but I was too focused on the maiam to listen. It was skittering across the theater on its tentacles like a rat making a beeline for its hole after stealing Thanksgiving dinner. Being the Hunter, I'm a pretty amazing runner—just like I'm amazing at everything—but no matter how much speed I forced out of my legs, that stupid little corncob always managed to stay just a couple feet out of my grasp. Feeling like a cartoon character, I ran with my arms held out, bent nearly double, until—

I ran head first into a minivan.

“Oh my God!” someone yelled. “Are you all right?”

My eyes fluttered open—when had I even closed them?—and I found myself lying on my back with a worried looking man and woman standing over me, a pair of nervous looking kids watching from inside the van, and a splitting ache inside my head.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” I said, forcing myself to sit up and dig my inhaler out of my pocket. A couple puffs later, my headache receded enough for me to remember what I had been doing a few seconds ago. Looking past the couple, I was able to see a perfectly Henry-shaped dent in their van’s hood. “Sorry about that.”

“Do you need us to call anyone?” the mom asked. “That was a pretty nasty hit you just took.”

I shook my head. “No, I'll be all…”

My voice trailed off when the maiam reappeared, this time jumping up to stand tauntingly on top of the recently Henrified minivan.

My heart fell into my stomach.

“ExcusemeI’mlateforadistraction!” I blurted out, lunging for the vehicle.

I was too slow. Again, the maiam slid into the machinery in a way that shouldn't have been possible, and all I managed to do was sprint headlong into the van a second time.

“What are you—” the dad exclaimed, but he was cut off when the van suddenly roared to life.

“Pineapple spinach dip,” I muttered.

The headlights flared, and I threw myself backwards as the van lurched forward a foot or so. A screech filled the air as the wheels fought against the parking break, keeping the possessed vehicle from running me down the way it obviously wanted to.

The faint ka-clunk of shifting gears told me it wasn't going to make that mistake twice. Its horn blared at me.

“Chad!” the mom yelled. “Lara! Whichever one of you is messing with things in the front seat, stop it right now!”

Scrambling to my feet, I peered through the windshield. Both of the children were still in the backseat—and hurrying to buckle their seatbelts like the smart kids they were. I drew Splatsy, counting on the commotion the van-maiam (vaiam?) was causing to keep anyone from seeing her expand into warhammer form. The vaiam must have recognized her, though, because its headlights seemed to narrow in anger.

“HO- HOOONNNK!” it roared at me. Then, with the squealing of rubber on concrete, the van floored its…self…and surged forward.

“High fructose corn syrup!” I yelled, dodging out of the way just in time to avoid being flattened into a klaontilla.

The vaiam hit the brakes, slamming into the back of the pickup truck in the row ahead of it. It wasn't a serious crash—I probably did more damage when I'd headbutted it earlier—but I could still see the kids inside get thrown forward violently against their seatbelts.

“Chad!” their mom screamed while their dad stood there, stunned. “Lara!”

The vaiam threw itself in reverse, spinning around until it caught sight of me. Then, with smoke rising from its tires, it came charging at me again—and suddenly, I was faced with a choice. Either I could keep dodging, which would draw the fight out and increase the chance of innocent people getting hurt with the tradeoff of me, you know, not getting run over. Or…

Making up my mind, I sprinted toward the vaiam just as it came racing toward me.

“HOOOOOONK!” it roared in fury.

I jumped at the last second, twisting in midair into a position that would lessen the impact as much as possible. At least, I hoped it would. I landed on top of its hood, bouncing off the metal and crashing into the windshield half a second later. I felt cracks spiderweb outwards from the point of impact, but it didn't break. My spine, though, I'm pretty sure was a different story.

“H…HONK?” the vaiam exclaimed, somehow managing to make a car horn sound confused. It didn't ease up on the gas, though, and kept speeding further across the parking lot. I could hear Chad and Lara screaming from inside.

“Pull over!” I yelled. “Mandatory sobriety test!”

Wiper fluid sprayed into my face. I turned away with a grunt, only to be slapped in the face with the windshield wipers.

“HO-HO-HO-HO-HONK!” the vaiam laughed.

“All right, you pickled liver smoothie,” I growled, grabbing one of the wipers and tearing it out of the windshield. Then, gripping Splatsy in both hands, I forced myself to my feet. “There's only one way to fix a car this broken. Time for some percussive maintenance!”

I swung with all my might, and the hood curled around Splatsy with a satisfying CRUNCH! The vaiam swerved, sideswiping a few other cars on both sides of the lane. While it was still reeling from the first strike, I raised Splatsy again and—

It hit the brakes, coming to a screeching halt, and I went flying off its hood. I wish I could say I managed a halfway decent superhero landing, but in all honesty I hit the ground head first and went sliding across the parking lot with my butt up in the air. I only skidded for a few painful seconds, though, and then I flipped myself back over with a snarl.

How many hunts had I been on in the past four years? More than I could count. And while they hadn't all gone smoothly, none of them had ever been this embarrassing—so of course this had to be the one time my boss was here watching me!

“I'LL POUND YOU INTO A SMART CAR!” I screamed, not caring that I had blue blood running down my face for everyone to see.

Leaping back to my feet, I sprinted over to the van and brought Splatsy down on its hood. Then I did it again, and again, and…

And why wasn't it fighting back?

“Wabababababaaaaaa!” the maiam jabbered from somewhere nearby.

I spun around just in time to see it climb up one of the thick wooden columns that supported the projection booth. I could only watch as it located a window, and crawled inside.

“Llama burgers!” I cursed, heading for the stairway that would lead me up after it. “Stupid freaking little—”

But before I could start the climb, a deep, booming voice rang out from behind me.

“BABABAWAAAAAA!”

NEXT CHAPTER 12/3/25