Hurricane #32: The Basement (Patreon)

“Down!” Agent Ward yelled, simultaneously with a sharp cry of pain from Irsaw. Serrano and Mrs. Webb pressed themselves back against the railing, away from the door on the next landing, the mouse guiding the hyena down as well.

Sarah didn’t take Ward’s advice. The wolf raised her hands, a shimmer like heat haze rippling through the air. Sparks burst like fireworks against the shimmering as bullets hit and bounced off.

Ward didn’t take her own advice, either, pistol already drawn. When she squeezed off three shots in rapid succession, they went through the forcefield, met with two screams in rapid succession.

“How bad is it?” Serrano slid up to Webb and Irsaw.

“Just a—mmf!—just a graze, Miss Layotl,” Irsaw got out through gritted teeth. The hyena’s shoulder was bleeding freely.

“Technically, yes,” the mouse murmured, “but even so.” She quickly opened the hyena’s briefcase, getting out the spray-on treatment they’d used on Ward this morning.

Serrano glanced down the staircase. Ward and Sarah had reached the lower landing; Sarah urgently motioned for the coyote to follow.

“We’ll be along shortly. Go.”

Taking a deep breath, Serrano nodded to Webb and sprinted down the staircase.

The men Ward had shot were both wolves; one—the one who wasn’t clearly dead—looked familiar. The landing door was closed again, Sarah and Ward standing by it warily.

“They’re going to be waiting for us, yeah?” Serrano murmured.

Both of them nodded. Ward glanced to Sarah, speaking just above a whisper. “Can you use that shield magic to protect us?”

“I can, and Serrano can do some storm goddess stuff.”

Serrano furrowed her brows. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Lightning, hail, teeny little tornados, I don’t know.”

“How about you just shrink people and I step on them.”

Sarah waved a hand. “Fine.”

“You two terrify me,” Ward said flatly.

Serrano snorted. “So does the mouse. For someone who’s terrified all the fucking time, you’re a great shot.”

The vixen’s voice remained deadpan. “Terror keeps me focused.”

Webb and Irsaw came down the stairs to stand with the others. The hyena forced an encouraging smile that lapsed back into a pained grimace.

Serrano’s ears skewed. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“I don’t think I have the choice not to be, Miss Layotl. Are we ready?”

“As we’ll ever be.” She looked at Sarah.

The wolf nodded, and the shield spell shimmered into place again. Ward gripped her pistol. Serrano reached for the door—

Before her hand touched it, a crack sounded from the other side, a smoking hole as big as a golf ball appearing near the handle. “Shit.” She all but leapt backward. Everyone else followed suit.

Another few holes appeared quickly, cracking and sizzling noises intensifying. It took another second at most before bolts of energy lanced through the ruined door—and through the magical shield.

“They have fucking blasters?” Serrano yelled.

Sarah waved her hands furiously, focusing on the shield. The blaster bolts started crackling against it without going through, but each hit shook the shimmering forcefield like a tent in gale force wind.

“Blast back,” Ward snapped, squeezing off a shot through one of the holes and, miraculously, being rewarded with a scream.

“I don’t have—”

“You have lightning!”

“That’s not—” Wait, was it how it worked? Could she just…

Closing her eyes, Serrano tried to feel the weather, the wind, the promise of rain and thunder. How could she do that here? It hadn’t been that difficult in the apartment leasing office, though, had it? Air was air was air. She just needed…needed to gather the storms…

She needed to gather the storms in her.

Taking a deep, slow breath, Serrano exhaled, then breathed in again, feeling a vortex in her lungs, filling her torso. Her hair whipped around from the wind’s force, her fur lifting from static energy as the charge inside her built up. Thunder rumbled.

Grinning wildly, she opened her eyes, raised her arms, and let go.

The blasts of lightning left everyone, even Serrano, momentarily blind and deaf, shredding what was left of the door and the three people behind it, flashing down the hallway beyond it. Ceiling lights exploded in a ferocious series of sparks, but the fires the lightning started—paper, doors, carpeting, even walls—left more than enough illumination to see by.

Everyone around Serrano stared. “Goodness,” Irsaw breathed. Even Sarah looked startled.

After a moment, Ward stepped gingerly over a molten slag of metal, gun held in front of her. “I suppose that’s literally what I asked for,” she muttered. “Why do you have two extra legs again?”

Serrano trotted forward as it started raining. Was that her? No, the sprinklers had come on. “That just happens when I use magic.” She hadn’t even noticed her shorts ripping off this time, although she’d deliberately chosen a thin, ratty pair. Assuming the world survived, she might need to build up a collection from thrift stores or something. She looked around at the destruction. “I should figure out how to rein this in a little.”

“Good idea.”

The basement level—what was left of it—clearly had gone through a quick, almost comical retrofit. Now-scorched walls had the grey, quasi-industrial look of cubicles, barely rising halfway to the eighteen-foot ceiling. Maybe it was the connection to storms, somehow, but she could feel the electricity surrounding her, the power running through cables against the building’s real walls, up to an air conditioning unit, across to computer racks. Were they connected to the quantum router? Was it really a router?

Irsaw had their detecting gadget out already, waving it back and forth. “There’s unusual energy, not dissimilar from the device I pulled out of your apartment.” The hyena pointed with their free hand after a second toward the computer racks. “There.” They pointed toward an open door. “And there.”

Ward turned her attention toward the door. Irsaw quickly walked past Serrano toward the wall, detector held out as if it were as much a weapon as the vixen’s pistol. Perhaps it was.

Serrano glanced back at Mrs. Webb and Sarah. She could hear urgently whispering voices, too low to make out. “We’re about to have company again.”

“Then let’s be ready.” The wolf stepped up to her, motioning after Irsaw; Mrs. Webb nodded and followed Ward.

A much louder, low-pitched thrum started, echoing all around them. The walls started to vibrate. Footsteps started running toward them.

Serrano’s ears lowered. “What—”

Men charged through the door Ward and Webb were approaching, men in black suits very much like Ward’s agents. But they weren’t wolves or tigers or predators at all. They were—what had Sarah called them?—they were humans. Humans with guns, rifles, more elaborate Irsaw-esque gadgets.

“Fuck you, you fragile furless little flowers,” she snarled, raising her hands again. This time, she didn’t let out the lightning—she let out the tornado.

One of the men got off a shot—just a fraction of a second too late, the bullet ricocheting over Serrano’s head as the whirlwind roared into the midst of the group. Three flew up into the air, spinning violently, slamming into the ceiling, knocking down walls. She could hear Sarge let out a frightened bark somewhere. Good. She wanted him to know she was coming for him.

Where had his voice come from? Over there. She directed the wind—

The miniature tornado in the room’s center didn’t respond. If anything, it slowly moved in the opposite direction. What the hell? She felt like—like she’d just—

“I don’t like that look,” Sarah yelled over the wind.

“I don’t have the connection.” Serrano’s voice rose angrily. “I can’t fucking feel it. Feel her.”

Irsaw raised their detector again. “The firewall Agent Ward mentioned?”

Serrano stomped a forepaw in frustration. “How can you block divine magic? The wind’s still there! I’m still a taur! I’m still—”

Lightning crackled around all of them, but this time it wasn’t her. Blue-white flashes arced across, through, Serrano’s body, and she screamed. She didn’t even feel it when she fell over onto her side. All she could feel was the electric shock, like she’d stuck her face in a socket and couldn’t pull it out.

Two more humans had appeared, keeping as much distance as the increasingly debris-filled space allowed, holding out plain black boxes that looked less like weapons than multimeters. Sarge stood between them, wide-eyed and panting. As he glared down at the fallen coyote-taur, other humans with guns appeared—pistols, a rifle, and what looked like a damn crossbow.

“I didn’t know how much of this whole story was bullshit.” Sarge looked around, shaking his head. “Not that I have the whole story, or even want the whole story. But I can see why these freaks are scared of you.” He glanced at one of the humans. “No offense.”

“None taken, talking wolf in a zoot suit,” the human replied.

“Yeah, fair enough.”

Serrano winced, trying to sit up, but she couldn’t get any of her muscles to work. It felt like all of them were trying to cramp up at once. “Nnngh…you…fuckwit…”

“Shut the hell up, Ronni.” He pointed at her accusingly. “You couldn’t just put up with a few nightmares, you had to start trying to take control of it all, because of course you did. Always your way or the highway.” He waved a hand. “This Sark guy’s saving his world and ours from whatever the hell you’re becoming, and if you’d just kept your nose out of shit, he’d have been able to save you, too. Instead, you’ve been fuckin’ smashing up buildings and stomping people and Three Lords knows what else.”

“He is…he is not saving…our world,” Irsaw gasped. The hyena had managed to sit up, but was wincing in pain; their detector had exploded, leaving visible burns on their paws. “You’re being used.”

“Yeah, pardon me if I don’t take your word on that.” Sarge gestured to Mrs. Webb and Sarah. “Be ready to zap those two again. The mouse is like a damn supervillain, and the wolf is—oh, shit.”

Sarah had risen to her paws. It looked like the electricity weapons hadn’t incapacitated her as much as pissed her off. “Yeah, the wolf is definitely ‘oh, shit,’” she growled. She snapped her fingers, and the two men with the black boxes abruptly shrank to doll-size, the boxes clattering to the ground.

The human with the crossbow fired. Sarah turned quickly, as if getting ready to catch it like she’d caught the bullets the unlucky Bob had fired at her, but instead her eyes widened in shock. The bolt had gone through her hand, into her chest.

“Yeah, we know about faeries and cold iron.” Sarge’s voice was flat.

Sarah’s glare toward him was venomous, but increasingly unsteady. She turned to Serrano, opened her mouth as if to speak, then collapsed like a string had been cut.

Serrano still could barely move, but she managed a whimper that turned into a rising howl.