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“Let’s roc!” shouts Tammy before glancing at me and saying, “Roc without a k.”
I blink. “Say what?”
Except my daughter has already shapeshifted into a hawk bigger than the Momvan. I’m guessing she went with the first animal that came to mind at the concept of ‘eats spiders’ and upsized it. Well, I’m not about to run back inside while a giant spider tries to bite Pax. Let’s see if this crazy haywire magic thing still works.
I thrust my arms forward and concentrate on lightning. A crackling ball of intense energy forms between my hands. The instant I think about commanding it to go introduce itself to Mr. Spider, it launches away from me with a boom that rivals a battleship cannon, blasting a massive tunnel straight through the creature’s body. Embers glow from the inner surfaces of the hole.
Paxton grabs her ears and falls to the ground. Tammy-bird shrieks in pain and cringes out of her dive bomb attack to land clumsily a few yards away from the spider. Everything gets quiet. The spider staggers to the side, its long, thin legs scrambling to keep it upright.
Tammy shakes herself off and snaps her giant beak at the creature. She gets a good hold of it, but the shadow spider isn’t fully solid. Apparently, it also tastes horrible as my daughter scoots back from it, gagging.
My ears erupt with horrible pain. A second later, total silence becomes a wash of sound like I’m surfacing up out of a pool.
Oh, crap. I blew out my eardrums. Thank the powers that be my body heals rapidly.
Tammy-bird returns to her human shape, turns to the side, and hurls her dinner
Meanwhile, the huge creature twitches, seeming to have difficulty standing back up—but it isn’t dead yet.
“Go away!” shouts Paxton. “Leave us alone!”
Her voice washes over the spider fiend, making it shudder and disintegrate into smoke.
Hmm. Odd. Kiddo doesn’t have magic as far as I know. Did she truly just ‘dispel’ the thing or did it finally succumb, you know, to the huge hole I blasted out of it?
Meh. Don’t need to know that just yet.
It occurs to me now that several car alarms are going off. Oops. That lightning ball had been seriously loud. I better not do that again… at least not in the middle of civilization. The only good thing about it is no one will mistake it for a gunshot. Even if someone does call the police, they’re going to think an electrical transformer exploded.
I run over to Paxton. “Are you okay?”
“Little deaf, but I’m not hurt.”
“Sorry.”
She sticks a finger in her right ear and wiggles it. “It’s okay. The monster is gone.”
Tammy walks up to us. “I’m really impressed, Pax. You didn’t scream and jump up on the bathroom counter.”
“Hah.” Paxton puffs at a strand of hair draped over her face. “First of all, we’re outside, silly. Second, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to.”
I pull her in close, hugging her tight. I’m honestly impressed she put herself between it and the unicorn rather than running to safety. Then again, what did she expect to do to that monster other than get herself hurt?
“If anything like that happens again, I need you to stay safe. You’re not exactly equipped to fight creatures like that.”
Paxton shivers again as the reality of what just happened undoubtedly sinks in. Yeah, she acted in the heat of the moment, driven by her love for the unicorn. No rational thought was involved with her decision. “I can protect her.”
“How?” asks Tammy, one eyebrow up.
“I dunno.” Pax flaps her other arm since I’m still hugging her. “The unicorn said that I protect her just by being close to her.”
I facepalm. Ugh. This is all I need. A situation has developed that requires Paxton to be front and center at dangerous moments. Nope. This cannot last. “First of all, I think we can all agree that the shadows have obviously found her.”
Paxton looks down. She knows what I’m going to say next.
“She needs to go home where she can be safe, sweetie,” I say. “Where we can all be safe—our neighborhood included.”
“Are we sure that her home actually is safe?” Tammy glances at me. “I mean, we don’t know anything about unicorns—or whatever these shadow things are.”
