Gremlin Night Dale Smith (comprehension books txt) 📖

binding spell on the fox. If he did, the Trickster would be free.

The other gremlins had stopped dancing. They squirmed in their golden lassos, fighting Rudy’s spell.

The swollen silver middle of his spell bulged even more, and I looked away, squeezing my eyes shut.

Spells were usually silent, or perhaps had a faint hum or crackle to them. It was a rare spell that made any sort of noise.

Not this time.

Maybe it was all the chaos from the gremlins. Maybe it was the ferocious amount of mana his casting consumed, or the complexity of maintaining three spells at once, or perhaps the sheer power embodied in the binding spell fighting to control the trickster fox.

Whatever it was, the boom made me jump and clutch at my ears.

Car alarms wailed in the nearby parking lot.

I opened my eyes. Silver sparks rained down. Rudy staggered back, arms flailing but failing to keep him from landing on his butt.

“Gotcha!” I whispered, and then took a deep, ragged breath, and a second. The sparks spattered against the pavement.

Beyond them, the purple and blue mana cloud descended.

Rudy chanted in English. “Come to me, mana, come to me, and be the blood that pumps through the body of my spells.”

I’d never heard anything quite like that spell.

But then again, I wasn’t a wizard.

I reached out with my hand, fingers twiddling, summoning a binding spell.

Rudy flicked his wrist, and my spell went awry. A chorus of maniacal laughter exploded.

More flashes of light, illuminating all the human faces staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed from the train.

Metal snapped and banged, and the train cars jerked and toppled to one side. The wheels had literally come off.

“I have loosed the gremlins of chaos!” Rudy shouted.

One train wheel bounced away from the track, rolling wobbly toward us.

The gremlins pranced about, their manic laughter echoing off the train cars alongside the screaming chorus of car alarms.

I whirled back to face him, but he was sprinting toward a brick maintenance shack twenty yards away.

“Running away,” I shouted. “No, you don’t!” I dashed after him.

He stopped at the door, turned and brandished the staff at me. “I don’t have time for insects like you.” He smacked the staff’s butt against the pavement. A loud bang reverberated and I flew backwards, hitting the ground hard, knocking the wind out of me.

I groaned and sat up, in time to see him raise his staff at the shed’s door. He made a pass in the air. The door swung open. A shining corridor stretched ahead of him to a room somewhere else. He stepped through the door. For an instant, his image stretched and then the shining corridor vanished, replaced by the interior of the shed, lit by an overhead light, which began flickering, then went out with a loud “pop!”

My jaw tightened. Somehow, Rudy knew about the teleportal network. He’d used it as readily as any R.U.N.E. sorcerer-agent.

How did he know about it? R.U.N.E. kept the teleportal network a closely guarded secret. Only R.U.N.E. agents knew about it. Yet, Rudy went straight for the teleportal. I didn’t even know about that particular one. No one knew all of them, for security reasons.

Dazed would-be party goers stumbled out of the uncoupled cars and staggered across the train yard. Gremlins pranced in a conga line, high-pitched freaky laughter echoing off the train cars. A nearby railroad crossing started up, the warning bell running way too slow, the lights flashing green rather than red.

A gremlin skidded to a stop in front of me, and grinned, needle-sharp teeth gleaming wickedly.

It reached out and tapped a clawed finger against my head.

The world tilted and I went to my knees. The gremlin scurried off.

“Hee-hee hee-heeeeeee!” The gremlin’s triumphant laughter stretched out, reverberating off the train cars and parked vehicles.

I rolled onto my back.

The fox sat beside me.

“I don’t have much time,” the little voice said. “I’ll be more fully a prisoner again in a moment.”

“Prisoner?” I asked. I couldn’t think straight. What did it mean, prisoner?

“No time,” the fox spoke for the first time. “Use the brains the gods gave you, and figure out this little puzzle.”

I groaned and sat up, rubbing my head. Nothing like cracking your skull on pavement, then have a gremlin mess with it afterwards. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see straight again.

“You are talking directly to me,” I told the fox, and shook my head. Ow. That had been a bad idea.

“Because I’m only very partly a prisoner for this brief moment. Let’s stay on track, shall we?”

A sparkling rainbow of color swirled above me. This was worse than a shopping mall at Christmas time. Ironically, it was Christmas time. I giggled. Yeah, my head definitely needed looking at.

“It has chosen you,” the fox said.

I had no idea what he meant, but that didn’t stop the rainbow fountain from descending in a swirling prism of light. I do choose you. I knew that high-pitched voice, I was sure of it. It rang in my already ringing head, but I knew it. I’d been sad when it had left.

“It needs to choose a new form,” the fox said.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Hey, not me.”

The fox laughed. “It’s not your choice to make.”

I raised a hand, tried to think of a spell to conjure, and failed.

Something black floated in front of me, an inky black spot about the size of my fist. It smelled like fear and the night.

The black inky fist-sized shadow hovered just inches from my face.

It was some kind of shadow manifestation.

I need a place to reside, it said, and darted onto my hip.

Cold washed out from my hip. My bones ached.

“Hey, what gives?” I shouted.

I need an anchor.

The thing squelched against my flank. It was a slug-like thing.

A shadow slug.

“Not so fast,” I said.

We can work together. Soon to be forgotten previous did try to help you, but this self can do better.

“What previous—” I stopped cold. Started to shake my head to clear it, but the throbbing stopped me. No,