Chapter 44 - Earthquake?

  I shot upward as fast as I could. The extra Strength I’d picked up was helping lift the crab more easily. I could feel the drain on my mana was less than on the one I’d lifted before. Even so, it was a massive drain, and I wasn’t going to be able to maintain altitude for long.

  As we sped skyward, I glanced down to make sure the retreating police were still okay. If they were in trouble, I’d have to come up with a new plan, fast.

  But the cops were fine. The three bands defending the stairs were already linking up with one another as they moved north toward the rest of their forces. The crabs were still in what passed for ‘hot pursuit,’ but they just weren’t fast. Their armor was impressive, but they weren’t going to set any land speed records.

  I shifted my position so I was directly under the crab. It couldn’t reach me, but its legs wriggled and squirmed madly as it tried to break free from my grip. I pushed my Flight to the limit, arcing high over the buildings and then sort of gliding downward from there. All I had left were dregs of mana, but by triggering brief bursts of Flight, I slowed our fall enough so I was pretty sure both of us would survive the impact.

  At the last minute, I poured every iota of mana I had left into my Flight, pushing against the ground with the power as hard as I could. In spite of my best efforts, the grassy spot below that I’d picked for a landing was still coming up with alarming speed. I braced myself as best I could…

  We hit the ground with way more force than I’d hoped. The impact drove my legs into the dirt up to my knees. I grunted with the pain as my knees creaked, trying to support all the weight slamming into me from above. The crab was dazed, legs still moving wildly, but now it was close enough to the ground for those legs to find purchase. It staggered forward a couple of feet before collapsing into the dirt in front of me.

  The crab tried to stand and about halfway managed it before falling over again.

  I gave it a grin. Exhausted as I was, dizzy from the mana loss and hurting from the impact, watching a giant crab stagger around was still one of the funniest things I’d ever seen.

  “Dude, you’ve got my sympathies,” I said.

  The crab turned to face me, claws clacking. But just like before, it didn’t look like it wanted to fight. It wasn’t advancing and attacking with those massive claws. It held them between us defensively instead. Everything I was seeing told me this was a frightened wild animal that just wanted to get away.

  I didn’t want to kill the crab if I could avoid it. I know, I was being a mush, but the thing was scared. Terrified, really. If I killed it I’d get a brand new tier five crystal, and I was sure that would be helpful. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, not when it was obviously alone and scared.

  “Okay, buddy,” I said. I stepped out of the holes in the dirt I’d made with my rough landing and held my hands out toward the crab, palms facing it. I tried to look as friendly and placating as possible. “That’s the Charles River behind you. It’s brackish, and the lobsters are coming from the ocean, not the river, so you ought to be safe there for a while at least.”

  The crab looked where I was pointing. It took a single step toward the river and then froze in its tracks, still with those eye stalks locked on me. The crab had a big streak across its top shell where some spell or attack had gouged a chunk out. I mentally named the thing ‘Streaky’ for the unusual marking.

  “Yeah, you can go, Streaky,” I said. I made a shooing motion with my hands. “Go on. Be free. But don’t ever let me see you attacking a human, you get me? You can eat all the sea monsters you want, but if you attack humans, I’m going to have to stop you.”

  I had absolutely no clue if it understood me or not, but something in those big, strange eyes told me that it was getting enough from my words, tone, or whatever. It scuttled closer to the river. I made more shooing motions with my hands and it rushed off, plunging into the water and then jetting away into the middle of the river.

  “God, I hope that was the right call,” I said as I stood there watching it swim away. If that crab went and killed someone after I’d let it go, that would be on me. Any harm that creature did from here on out would be on my conscience. That was part of the problem with having all of this power: it wasn’t just my life hanging in the balance anymore. The decisions I made impacted a lot of other people, too.

  I’d just have to keep making them as best I could. Yeah, I’d risked everything to collect some dead bodies from the subway—but that won me Alex’s friendship. I’d taken a massive chance rushing off to save Emmy. Both times, actually! That kid was a trouble magnet for sure. I had to believe saving her had been the right thing to do, too.

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  Now I’d rescued one of the crabs attacking the city. If I told Alex that, he’d laugh and call me nuts, and maybe he was right. I just had to hope that showing kindness and compassion where I could was still right, because that’s who I was, and I wasn’t about to let this new world change me on the inside the same way it had on the outside.

  I wobbled a bit as another wave of dizziness crashed over me. My mana was coming back, but it was happening slowly. I needed time to recover, but my friends needed my help sooner than that. I set off at a run back toward the fighting. At first I kept myself close to the ground, just to make sure my balance was still steady. But as my mana pool refilled and the dizziness went away, I returned to the leaping that carried me so swiftly toward the bridge when I was rushing to save Emmy.

  This time I was even stronger. The leaps that had carried me fifteen feet before were lifting me over twenty feet in the air now, and bringing me thirty feet forward with each bound. As I landed each time, I pushed off again, jumping back into the air.

  Refugees were everywhere. I passed the nonstop crowd flowing toward the bridge as I bounded back up the hill toward the battle. Somewhere in the middle of all those people were Emmy and Maggie. Like everyone else, they were trying to make their way someplace safe, but that didn’t exist anymore, not really. There would be monsters on the other side of the river, too. If the lobsters won the battle for downtown, I doubted they’d stop there. The world we lived in was changed, and I had a hunch it wasn’t going back to how things had been anytime soon.

  I pushed myself harder, taking an entire block in a single bound. That landing was a little rough on my ankles and knees. I cracked the pavement and sent shooting pains up both legs when I landed. Shaking it off, I took two steps and bounded forward another time. I was almost back to the top of the hill again.

  Straight ahead of me I spotted the police captain I’d spoken with earlier. MacGregor was the guy’s name. He was surrounded by a group of police, issuing orders to one after another. Then they’d rush off to carry whatever message he’d sent them with.

  I used my Flight power to carry me the last little bit toward him, figuring a proper landing would be more impressive than a stumbling halt after one of my leaps. It was important that I looked impressive, too. If I wanted to be taken seriously by this man, if I wanted him to listen to what I had to say, then he needed to know just how much stronger I was than everyone else around him.

  The landing was flawless. I dropped to the ground three feet in front of him, then took the last two steps with a hand outstretched. MacGregor recognized me and shook my hand.

  “Castle, right? I’ve been hearing more about your help. Thanks for getting my people out of the deathtrap those stairs turned into,” MacGregor said.

  “Glad to help, sir,” I replied. “What’s the plan right now?”

  I needed to know what they were doing so I could figure out where I’d best fit in and how I could maximize the amount of help I could provide.

  “Right now, we’re just trying to hold them at the top of Cambridge Street,” he replied. “If we can keep them away from MGH and Beacon Hill a little longer, that gives more people time to escape.”

  “You’re not trying to retake downtown, then?” I asked. I wasn’t surprised. The police simply didn’t have the numbers to do that, especially not with the crabs in play. But I had ideas for that.

  MacGregor shook his head and confirmed my thoughts. “No. We don’t have the manpower for that. Although with what I’m hearing about you, maybe that isn’t true anymore?”

  I shrugged. “I’m happy to help how I can. Listen, I have two pieces of intel I need to pass along.”

  “I’m all ears, but make it fast. I need to stay on top of keeping my people organized. If they slip around us, a lot of people are going to die.”

  “Understood,” I said. “First bit: the crabs seem to be domesticated or something. If you take out their handlers, they may stop fighting. I had one run away when I took down the lobsters guiding it.”

  “That is good news,” MacGregor said. “I’ll make sure to pass the word. What’s the other bit?”

  I hesitated a moment, because I wasn’t sure exactly what it was I’d seen when I flew up to scout the city. “The lobsters are up to something out there. I don’t know what it is, but I saw them building things at three different locations around town.”

  “Forts, maybe?” MacGregor asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. They might have been towers, maybe? But they didn’t look sturdy enough to be fortifications. I only saw them at a distance while I was scouting them from high in the air. If you want, I can take a closer look…”

  “No, I think we need you here more than scouting something that might or might not be critical to the enemy actions,” MacGregor said. “With you here, I think we can hold this position pretty near indefinitely. If we can keep them back for at least a couple of hours, that will give the civilians plenty of time to make their way north and west. We need to think of the people who can’t fight for themselves.”

  Again I had that gut feeling that pretty soon everyone was going to have to learn to fight for themselves. Exceptions were going to be a rare thing. When monsters were everywhere, being a vanilla human without magic was a veritable death sentence. But I kept my mouth shut. If I was right, we’d all find that out soon enough.

  I was more worried about not checking on those weird constructs. Whatever they were, I had a feeling the lobster army wouldn’t have committed so many troops to building and defending them if they weren’t important. I was about to open my mouth and say that when the ground shook underfoot.

  “Earthquake? Here?” I said aloud.

  Then it shook again, this time hard enough that people stumbled and the pavement groaned underfoot.

  Boston didn’t get earthquakes, not normally anyway. This was something else. Something new, and probably something magical.

  I glanced at the police captain, locking eyes.

  “Go,” he said, nodding. “Find out what the hell that was and report back.”

  “On it!” I said. Then I shot skyward.