A Maze of Glass, Chapter Nine, Pt. 3
Seo-yeon shouted something in Korean. Sung-ho shouted something in Korean.
Hyun-jung shouted, “There’s two motherfuckers!”
And Zoe un-froze.
Omar shuddered on the basement floor; Zoe sprinted the stairs up to the crash of combat. She banged through the door and into the stretch of foyer connecting dining room to kitchen. Someone screamed in the kitchen, something clattered to the tiles. Zoe spun into the room sidearm-first, thumb on the safety and index finger on the trigger guard.
Seo-yeon swung a broad iron pan at a shimmering shadow in front of her. The thing moved swiftly, climbing the wall and swooping down, and Seo-yeon yelped and backpedaled, swinging wild. The shadow gained mass, clawed grooves in the cast iron as it arc’d close. Sung-ho tossed a flashlight to Hyun-jung—who wore just-back-from-a-show goth-punk merch as an outfit entire—and grabbed another from under the sink for himself. A second shadow-assassin dove at him. Sung-ho rolled to the side; the shade became solid just in time to rake claws over the tiles Sung-ho had occupied seconds earlier.
Hyun-jung muttered a combat-drowned sentence and threw a hand to the sky. Her flashlight sizzled, blowing, and a bright orb spun out of its melting mass. The orb blinked and erupted, shredding every shadow in the room into brightness.
The twin shades howled, forced to take material form as all darkness died.
Zoe hadn’t known that Hyun-jung was a born witch. The realization froze her for a second.
She’d only met a couple born-paranormatives in her entire life. Or…well, more than she’d thought…
A snarling monster swiped at her, claws ripping fabric from her knife-resistant jacket. She leapt back from her epiphany hesitation and thumbed off the safety on her sidearm. The inky-blurry darkness lunged toward her. She opened fire.
In her periphery, Sung-ho sprinted away from an attacking assassin. He stumbled as it struck him, tossing his own flashlight toward Hyun-jung. Sung-ho groaned, limping and listing, putting the kitchen island between himself and his physics-defying assailant.
More leather and armor ripped from her jacket as the shadow slammed into her. Gushes of faint light geysered from exit wounds, darkness fighting to scab them shut again. It groaned and lowed, its shoulder catching her waist, one multi-jointed arm kinking around her to scratch and slice. She thrashed in its vice-grip and kicked at the body below her waist.
She pressed the gunbarrel against the back of the thing and emptied the rest of the mag.
It plowed into the mood-lit foyer howling. It reared, half-halted, and she flew from its shoulder and thunked full-body against the door. Something broke in the doorframe, something ached in her back. She landed on her side and rolled. The monster roared, bleeding light. She reached for her spare mag…
Her eyes widened. She’d forgotten to grab her spare mag.
She scrambled. The monster wail-whimpered and listed to one side, its blurry silhouette melting with light. It lashed out with a gooey arm but barely glanced her. The blow flipped her onto her back but little else. She kicked and threw herself into the air, landing on her feet. Their grapple had dragged them into the foyer, away from the shouts and bright flashes glaring the kitchen. Zoe broadened her stance. Pointed her empty gun at the monster.
The monster de-materialized, sacrificing its light-eaten limb to join with the foyer dimness. It swam the darkness through the mail slot and fled. Its half-gone arm stayed behind, slowly disintegrating.
Zoe rushed back to the kitchen in time to see the battle ending there, as well.
Somehow, they’d used the flashlight-orb cantrip to adhere a bulb-bright mote of magic to the monster’s flesh. As it sizzled and boiled against the shadow’s skin, the shade searched for darker refuge. But no refuge existed. Zoe blockaded its only hope. It staggered her way and she knocked it back. Rainbow prisms and shafts and beams of color and the lack thereof ate the monster away like some kind of cancer in stop-motion fast forward. It wailed and shrieked, its whole existence devoured in seconds.
Zoe rushed back down to the basement.
Omar shuddered on his sleeping bag. His muscles twitched and shivered, his face crawled with tics and sputter. He hissed. His fingers kinked at the knuckles; his eyes bulged and rove beneath their lids.
Zoe ran for him.
His spine arched, his sternum lifting skywards. “Eats — the — veil!” Omar shouted.
Dropping her pistol somewhere, she fell to her knees at his side.
“Tear-rip, pull curtain, behold, every story!”
Zoe’s heart skipped a beat.
Omar collapsed back to the cushioned bedroll, shuddering, grinding his teeth. Zoe grabbed his face, his temples under her fingers.
She started whispering. She lost syllabic rhythm for a second, so much exertion catching up to her, and heaved a throat-tearing gasp to catch up again. She imagined the needletip of an adrenaline syringe. She almost reached <> but—
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