Brom - The Child Thief

“DROP YOUR WEAPONSNOW! ” Sergeant Wilson shouted again and fired his revolver twice in the air. The crowd stopped then, breaking apart, clumping largely into two main groups. All eyes, all those strange eyes, fell on him and the half-dozen officers around him. In the sudden pause, the wails, screams, and groans of the wounded, the maimed, and the dying filled the air.

“What the good goddamn is going on?” the sergeant said as he surveyed the blood and gore, the severed limbs, the dozens of bodies writhing about on the ground. Men? No, he realized. Look at their skin, their horns. Monsters? The sergeant decided that was the best description: monsters decked out in armor and rags, carrying swords, axes, and spears. They were backing away from the small people. Wait. Are those—? No, they can’t be. Yes, kids! Those are kids. Wild kids wielding swords and spears of their own, and —he lost his train of thought. “What the hell is that?” He pointed at some sort of huge, goat-headed beast. It had actual horns curving out of the side of its skull and was carrying a tree limb as though it weighed no more than a baseball bat. Blood and what looked like part of someone’s scalp hung from the end of the limb.

A white flash caught the sergeant’s attention and there, on the far bank, three little girls knelt over a prone body, their hands and mouths drenched in black gore. “Holy fucking shit!” And, just as the sergeant was ready to call it a night, he saw a green woman standing, yes, standing on the water and looking at him like she would eat his liver.

“Mother Mary Jesus all to fuck and back!” he cried. This didn’t make any sense, none of it. Not a bit. We’re in some deep shit here, the sergeant thought and shared a quick, fretful look with the other officers, then glanced back toward the ferry terminal. Where was backup? Where the fuck were the ESU team, the special response guys, the dudes with the heavy calibers? He hit his mic. “Need backup now!” he called, trying to keep the nerves out of his voice. “East side of Battery Park. Men down. Multiple armed suspects! Need backup right now! Right fucking now! ”

All at once, several of the monster men began to walk away, rather casually even, like they’d just decided they didn’t want to play anymore. “HOLD UP!” the sergeant yelled, pointing his gun from one creature to the next. “EVERYONE JUST SIT TIGHT!”

But no one was listening. The black-skinned men continued to withdraw, slipping away into the park in small groups and clusters.

“What d’we do, Sarge?” one of the officers asked while jabbing his gun at the monsters as though to ward them off.

The sarge didn’t answer. He had no idea. This shit hadn’t been in the manual. He only knew he couldn’t let these guys get away. Gonna have to shoot someone. Gonna have to start blasting these creeps away . He squared his sights on a man wielding an ax, began to squeeze the trigger, when he noticed something weird, weirder even than all these monsters and little devils. The pond…it was glowing !

He lowered his gun for a better look. His brow furrowed. What the hell? Some sort of radiant mist was forming on the top of the pond.

Chemical agents? The sergeant’s skin prickled. He’d slept through most of the lectures on bioterrorism, but had perked up once they’d started talking about the effects of chemical and biological attacks on the human organism. And the one thing he had learned was that he had no desire to spit up dissolving lung tissue or drown in his own body fluids.

The sergeant started backing away. Then something weirder happened (his definition of weird was expanding by the second) that made him forget all about chemical agents. There was something in this mist, lots of somethings. He heard sounds, strange, eerie echoes, like women weeping and children singing, caught sight of shadowy, eyeless children with pumpkin-size heads and deformed mouths that peeled back, exposing rows of prickly teeth, and crawling up behind them hunchbacked women with emaciated arms and legs, shriveled flesh and black holes for eyes, their distended abdomens swollen and pulsing, giant stingers dripping black, viscous goop protruding from the tips of their sagging breasts. They extended their arms to him, smiling sweetly, inviting him to dance.

The sergeant turned to run and ran right into a member of the special response unit. Behind the specialist was a squad of at least twenty well-armed ESU team members, hard, well-trained men who knew their business.

“What’s going on—” the specialist started, but the sergeant didn’t have time to answer questions. The sergeant had to go, had a doctor’s appointment, needed to feed his goldfish, left his toaster oven on, something . The sergeant hauled ass out of there, leaving behind one very bewildered ESU squad.

A moment later, right about the time the swarm of disembodied heads flew screeching past, and the naked old women with the scabby raven heads started to dance merrily around the squad, to weave their cold fingers along their necks and scalps, the special response unit turned tail and followed the sergeant rapidly from the vicinity.

The Mist blanketed the park in a luminescent silvery glow, muting the shouting men, blaring horns, even the sirens. Peter felt as though he were in a dream; the whimpering and groaning of the wounded and dying echoing along with the sad song of the Mist.

The Mist? The Mist could mean only one thing. The Lady’s alive! Peter thought. There in the pond. She must be in the pond!

The pond’s glow faded, slowly returning to black. Peter jerked his swords free from the dead Flesh-eater at his feet, not even bothering to wipe the blood off, just shoving the blades back in their scabbards as he sprinted for the pond. He pushed past two wounded Flesh-eaters—supporting each other as they hobbled away—giving them not so much as a glance, focused only on the pond—on the Lady .

“Where is she?” Peter whispered, scanning the pool. He needed to find her, needed to see for himself that she was indeed alive. He saw Danny, standing knee-deep in the pond, the rope still tied around his middle. The rope was taut and sank below the water. Peter leaped into the pond, splashed out to Danny, and grabbed the rope, following hand over hand until he found the Lady. He gently pulled her to the surface, cradling her.

Peter saw her face, her half-open eyes—blank and lifeless, completely void of any color—then saw the angry gash in her collar. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “No. No.” He pulled her to shore and laid her on the bank.

She slowly opened her eyes and smiled at Peter. “Mabon, you found me.” She touched his cheek.

The witch was there, beside them. “No Modron, you silly teat. It’s just the boy. Your Mabon is dust and bones.” She took the Lady’s hand in hers. “Now, no more gibbering. Concentrate on your wound.”

The Lady’s eyes closed. She seemed to stop breathing altogether.

“Do something,” Peter said to the witch. “Please, do something.”

“Oh, stop your blubbering,” the witch said. “There’s little I can do. Avallach gave his healing touch to Modron, not me.” She sneered. “Little bright and sparkly here was always his favorite. Look, she’s stopped the bleeding at least.”