Hurricane #23: The SUVs (Patreon)

At Sarah’s warning about the men approaching, Serrano jumped up reflexively, and banged her head hard against the now low-to-her ceiling. “Fuck.”

“You okay?” Sarah sounded amused. “Shrink first.”

The coyote-taur rubbed her head. “No. Better idea.” She spread her hands and the thunder rumbled again, lightning coursing over her fur once more.

“Dammit, Serrano!” The wolf ran for the exit.

Serrano started to say something, but the power took her hard enough this time she let out a startled moan of pleasure, barely keeping the presence of mind to shield her head with her hands as her growth burst through the ceiling. She at least doubled in height this time, which meant she had to be, what, about thirty feet tall? Forty? And about that long, too. There wasn’t much left of the leasing office to shake off her paws.

The men from the SUVs—six of them, and while they were in fact all in black suits, two of them were actually women—stared up from where they stood by their vehicles. One of the women, a vixen, took off her sunglasses, apparently her way of expressing utter shock. Four of them, including the vixen, stood watching the coyote-taur while the other two opened the SUV tailgates. She could see what Sarah had meant about attracting a crowd, too; they hadn’t dispersed as much as just stepped back, at least two dozen, probably including several of her neighbors. Would they recognize her? She could only hope being giant and four-legged would throw them off, but maybe they’d better finish this quick.

“You all work for Sark, don’t you?” She called down. “Directly for him, somehow, but you’re all from this world.”

She could tell they were listening, but they didn’t respond. Ominous hums rose in volume and pitch from both vehicles.

“I don’t know what he’s told you that he’s doing to me, but it isn’t just to me. You’re putting the whole world at risk.”

As if at an unheard signal, the four who weren’t messing around in the back of the vehicles sprang into action, opening the doors of their respective vehicles, pulling out rifles and shoulder-mounted somethings.

“Look,” Serrano snarled, “fucking listen to me instead of coming after me. You do not want to get into a fight with me now.” She raised a hand, calling down—

—nothing. She could feel the power, feel the storm, but couldn’t grab it, direct it. She blinked up at the sky quizzically, searching. No, she could get it, couldn’t she? She’d have to work harder, pull from there and there, but—

At that moment, both shoulder-mounted somethings fired.

Yelping, she reared up just as both projectiles hit her. Weighted nets. Huge weighted nets, each one big enough to cover nearly all of her—although they’d only managed to tangle up her top half down to her forepaws. That was a lot, though, without the power to grow or summon a tornado to pull the net off or—or something.

The hums from the two vehicles stopped, then became static roars, and two glowing circles appeared in front of each SUV, searing blue light. Serrano toppled over, losing her balance as if her paws had been swept out from under her. She knew this feeling: this was what Bob’s ray-gun gadget had done to her, on a far more massive scale. It took just another second for water to start streaming off her in torrents toward the circles.

Portals. They were portals to Sark’s world. For the first time, she was seeing them, right here, right out in the open. With an audience of uninvolved mortals, too. (Should she think that? Despite her size and power and bluster to Ward just a minute ago, the truth was she still felt real fucking mortal.) That meant they were scared enough to stop being circumspect. It also meant that they weren’t going to leave her in a state where she could come after them. Either dead, or drained of power to the point she couldn’t fight back—and to the point the damage to the weather system would be irreversible.

Gritting her teeth, she struggled to get to her paws. No, just get her paws under her. She didn’t know how to fight this, but she at least understood what was going on now, understood Ulohne’s power. Her power.

Some of it. Maybe.

She tried to do what she’d been doing, to pull, direct, shape. But it felt—it felt like water flowing through her fingers, like trying to hold on to a gale. The more she struggled, the heavier the weight of the nets seemed.

Then, all at once, the weight lifted. She looked around, startled. Did she—

No, it wasn’t her. Sarah stood over her, the now-giant wolf woman ripping the nets away, tangling her hands in them and hurling them toward the SUVs with a snarl. Then she stomped toward the vehicles, now trapped—along with most of the suits—in the netting.

Serrano managed to get her paws under her, spluttering. The water still poured off every inch of her, until abruptly it didn’t. The crunching under Sarah’s paws became audible: one SUV under her right foot, one under the left, both being trampled sheet-metal flat.

The coyote-taur gasped, wiping water out of her eyes. She could still see four of the suits, all trying fruitlessly to scramble away from the giant wolf.

The area became quiet except for Sarah’s heavy breathing and sirens in the distance. The agents untangled themselves from the netting, standing and looking at one another, but remained silent. They weren’t firing anything at her, at least—she didn’t know if even the most powerful pistols would do much good against her at this size, but she’d love not to have to test it.

After a few seconds, Sarah dropped into a crouch. “Look. We’re both very large, very magical, and very angry. Being cooperative would raise your slim chances of survival.”

“No,” the vixen said, looking up at the two towering canines.

“No, what?” Serrano stomped a paw. “No, you’d rather be flattened?”

“Like the two agents you’ve already killed?” That came from one of the other agents, a burly tiger who hadn’t taken his sunglasses off yet. “The only threat here is you.”

“Fuck you! It’s your group that started attacking me.” Serrano clenched a fist. “I wasn’t a threat to you at all until I started learning to use this power, and I only started that because we figured out the damage you were doing.”

“Your threat escalated earlier than we were told was likely,” the vixen admitted. “But based on our briefings, it would have happened within months. You just jumped the gun.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Sarah sighed, sitting down in the remains of the leasing office.

The vixen cleaned her sunglasses, then put them back on, facing Sarah. “And you are?”

“A faerie.”

“Aren’t faeries, uh, small and cute?” The tiger held his hands together, a few inches apart.

She leaned down, baring her teeth. “Are you saying I’m not cute?”

He hurriedly stepped back, making an undignified squeaking noise.

Snorting, the vixen turned back to Serrano. “Are you sure you’re the hero, Ms. Layotl, and Mr. Sark is the villain? Are you sure you’re not the existential threat to both this world and his? Because since you started accessing the power we’re trying to drain from you, you’ve killed seven people, including two of our agents, and caused millions of dollars in property damage.”

“I’ve only killed three people,” Serrano protested, then lowered her ears. That didn’t sound nearly as vindicating as she’d hoped.

“I killed the other three. If you’re counting the squeaky toy, he isn’t technically dead,” Sarah noted.

“I feel my point still stands.”

Serrano sighed. “Look, lady. I know damn well I can’t prove I’m not what you think I am. I mean, I don’t really understand what I can do, but the implications are fucking terrifying. All I can do is turn the question around. How can you be so damn sure you’re not working for the villain? Because you’re not draining power from me, you’re draining power through me. Do you understand what that means? What it means to take away the power of storms from the world?”

The vixen crossed her arms.

Sarah rubbed her face. “This is pointless. Just kill them and—”

“I need their fucking help to save the world!” Serrano snapped.

Sarah rolled her eyes and looked away. The vixen took off her sunglasses, though, and kept watching Serrano.

The coyote took a deep breath and looked back down at her. “No matter what rationale Sark may have given you—what he says about me—you are helping him take the energy out of the entire global weather system. Yeah, if he wins, he stops me.” Serrano raised a hand, pulling just a little on what she could feel, what she could shape. Light rain started to fall a hundred yards away, a drizzle, the sun still shining. A rainbow shimmered between the droplets. “But he also stops this. Forever. And we all get to live in the world that’s left behind. It’s going to be just as nasty, brutish and short for you as it is for everyone else.”

The tiger and vixen looked at one another, then at the other two surviving agents. Then the vixen looked back up. “What is it you think we could do for you, Ms. Layotl, even if we wanted to?”

“Tell me how to fight back. Not against you, against Sark. Against his technology. He’s going to keep coming after me—after us, the whole world—unless I can either make it impossible for him to take any more energy from us, or impossible for him to reach this branch of reality at all.”

After a few seconds, the tiger answered, sounding frustrated. “Three Lords, we’re hired goons. I make good money and this is so far over my pay grade it’s insane. Magic. Giants. Storm gods.”

“Then find out!” Sarah leaned over, spreading her hands out wide. “Stop just cosplaying private spies and do some fucking spying!”

He swallowed nervously.

The vixen frowned. “You’re asking us to be double agents.”

Serrano shifted position, thumping her forepaws down to either side of the survivors, trapping them between her body and the wreckage of their vehicles, and locked her eyes on their tiny forms. “‘Asking’ is not the word I would use.”

“Tomorrow morning, you,” Sarah pointed at the vixen, “will come back with something—anything—and ask to see Sarah Wylde at the Midtown Marriott. If there’s any hint of a trap or a double-cross…” She put a hand to her chest. “I mean, I’m expecting you to screw us, but Serrano’s the trusting type, so she’d take it very personally.”

Serrano flashed a massive, tooth-filled smile.

The vixen nodded, expression stoic, but her tail tucked between her legs.