Page 36 of Lime Gelatin and Other Monsters
“He can’t swim!” she threw back over her shoulder, no hesitation in her steps as she waded out toward the frantic splashing where, presumably, their vampire was busy drowning.
The momentary distraction cost Kyle. He caught the movement too late as the monster surged toward him. It lifted a foot and knocked him down as if he weighed no more than a plastic bowling pin. Its claws gouged into his side and thigh, pain blinding him as it began to drag him toward the river. Before it got far, strong hands hooked under his shoulders, trying keep him onshore, Vikash swearing softly beside his ear as the tug of war quickly became one-sided.
“No! You can’t have Kyle!” Vikash shouted. Were there tears in his voice? No, that couldn’t be. “No!”
The electric sparks of Vikash’s anger popped and spat along Kyle’s spine, so intense that the agony of sharp claws anchored in his flesh faded into the background. Kyle tried to relax, to let it flow through him as Vikash’s conduit and amplifier, hoping the explosion of anger would save him.
The damn monster had other ideas.
Just as Vikash’s power was gathering for a strike, several things happened that never should have in any universe. The snapping turtle’s giant beak chomped through the mesh. Its head shot forward to fasten on Vikash’s shoulder. Even as Vikash screamed, something flew out of the dark to beat at the massive turtle head above them, leather sleeves slapping hard at amphibian skin.
The badass leather jacket had dashed to Vikash’s rescue.
A ground-rattling roar ripped from the monster’s throat. It hurled the jacket and Vikash away just as Vikash fired his blast of psychic fury. The thud of Vikash hitting the side of Lloyd Hall coincided with a crackling bang that reminded Kyle of an M-80 going off in a metal trashcan.
The massive shell cracked in several places, liquid oozing through the gaps. The leg pinning Kyle exploded outward in a rain of gore and bone. With a gurgling groan, the mighty Snapping Turtle of Doom collapsed on the grass, twitching.
“Aw, man,” Kyle whispered, swallowing bile. He crawled out from under the remains of the foot and dragged himself over the lawn to Vikash. Blood trickled down his side, though it was hard to say how much was his and how much was turtle explosion.
“Kash? Give me something here. You alive?”
Nothing. Kyle reached him on all fours, dragging his injured leg. “Come on, Soren. Don’t feel so good. You’re not a very considerate magic thrower, you know. Making your human wand feel like crap. Lemme know you’re okay before I pass out.”
White teeth flashed in Vikash’s smile, though that might have been pain instead of humor. “On your knees for me. Sweet.”
Kyle struggled out of the ruins of his jacket to ball it up and place it under Vikash’s head. “Can we concentrate on the important things here? Like how bad you’re hurt?”
“Not sure. Shoulder’s either popped out or broken. Head’s swimming.” Vikash gripped his arm, maybe to make certain he was there or to keep the world still. “How’s Mr. Jacket?”
The leather jacket lay inert beside Vikash, acting inanimate, as a leather jacket should. “It doesn’t look good.”
“And the monster?”
“Er.” Kyle lay down beside Vikash because he couldn’t sit up anymore. “You appear to have blown it up from the inside out.”
“Oh. Gross.” In the silence, they could hear Carrington coughing up a lung and possibly throwing up whatever quantity of the Schuylkill he had swallowed. “Sorry about that. I just wanted to get it away from you. Not kill it.”
“Don’t think this was something the state paranormal unit could keep in a tank, Kash.”
Wolf’s voice came from somewhere nearby. Probably up on the trail. He was calling for ambulances. Good thinking. There should be several. Maybe an air evacuation.
“Jacket tried to save you,” Kyle muttered.
“Don’t let them…leave him here.”
Him? Sure. Why not?Kyle reached over Vikash and pulled the leather jacket close. “Got him. Kash?”
“Hmm.”
“You’re scary when you get mad.”
“Told you.”
Sirens wailed and howled in the distance. Ambulances. Squad cars.
“There’s mud in my ear,” Carrington’s shaky complaint reached them from the riverbank. “How is theremudin myear?”
Everything would be fine. Normal was already reasserting itself. Scary how a half-drowned vampire cop complaining about being dirty had become normal these days.
