“I’m Jason Powers. I hunt monsters, and most of the time I know what I’m doing. Please, do not try this sort of thing at home.”
—Jason Powers (Monster Slayer disclaimer)
“You know, we do that warning at the start of every show, but I have to think that if viewers have monsters in their homes, they’ve got bigger problems than a bunch of ivory tower lawyers.”
—Jason Powers (interview, Adventure Channel Magazine)
LEIF WOKE TO SEE three kneeling blobs watching what felt like an invisible elephant stepping on his head. As his awareness returned, he recognized the elephant to be a mere savage headache, and one of the blobs took the appearance of the radiant Tracy Wallace. Flanking her were two men of whom he was decidedly less enamored. The glower coming out of the man with the eye patch gave Leif the impression that the feeling was mutual.
Leif groaned a greeting that failed to coalesce into any sort of verbal form before he finally managed, “What happened?” The last thing he remembered were razorwings swarming him. The fact that he wasn’t dead left two options. He picked one. “Am I a hero?”
To his disappointment, Tracy didn’t return his smile—if in fact that was what he had managed to do with his face. At the moment, his muscles were a bit wrapped up in contract negotiations with his brain.
“If you were a hero,” Tracy said, “wouldn’t that make you an ‘idiot risking your life’?”
Leif admired the way she brought back his previous words to bite him. He smiled weakly and tried to charm it up a notch or two. “Yeah, but you seem to go for the idiot type.”
“You’re not a hero, Mr. Karlson.”
“Though y’are an idiot, I’d wager,” said the one-eyed man.
Hey neat, Leif suddenly registered: a one-eyed man! It struck him that he had overheard the man’s name once earlier, but it hadn’t managed to stick. “I asked you to call me Leif?”
“And I asked you to stop following me. Hold up your end and I’ll hold up mine.”
He let that battle go for the moment, turning instead to a newly stitched gash on his forearm. “Er, what did happen, exactly?”
“Before or after you decided to stalk her?” the one-eyed man asked.
“I’m not stalking her, I’m—” Fine, maybe he was stalking her. Before he could ask what business it was of One-Eye’s, the other man—who Leif was fairly certain was named Ian, or Rupert, or maybe Bill—spoke up.
“You got hit with razorwing spit. Do you know what razorwings are?”
Leif sincerely hoped he managed an adequately derisive stare. “Oh, gee, maybe those things in the news all the time that attacked us just a bit ago? I wonder.”
“Charming fellow. Yes. You fell, hit your head, and suffered a few minor lacerations. I’ve stitched up some of the deeper ones for you. Nothing you won’t recover from.”
The one-eyed man grinned. “Hope ya got insurance.”
“That was about an hour ago,” Tracy added. “Jason saved you, actually.”
“Oh, my hero,” Leif muttered.
“He’s fine, by the way.”
Jealousy twisted the knife a bit. “Yeah, I figured from the way you’re all not sobbing.”
“We fixed you up,” Tracy continued, “so now you'll return the favor: Where’s your car or whatever? You’re driving back and sending a tow truck.”
“And not coming back with it,” One-Eye added.
The other guy shook his head. “He has to come back with it so the driver knows where to find us. There’s not exactly a house number hereabouts.”
“What’s wrong with your SUV?" Leif asked. "Or is it Jason’s? It’s awfully big. What’s he compensating for, I wonder?”
“Some razorwings exploded under the engine. It’s not going anywhere.”
“Yeah, thanks for that, by the way,” One-Eye added again.
“Ah,” Leif said. “You want to know where my car is?” He pointed at the SUV. “I stowed away in the back.”
“You stowed away in the—” Tracy glared at One-Eye.
“Heh. Wondered what that box was.”
Leif rated One-Eye a little higher on the likeability scale.
“Great,” Tracy went on, “it’s worse than I thought. What the hell’s your problem? You thought I’d suddenly swoon at the gesture, or were you just hoping to steal a pair of my—”
“You were leaving. It was the first thing I could think of!”
“What about just taking ‘no’ at face value?”
Leif felt flushed and hoped it was merely an after-effect of the poison. All he’d really thought about was how much he had to have her, and that if he let her leave, that’d be the end of it. Grand gestures seemed the way to go. Eventually her anger would subside and she’d realize how much he must care, right? She’d come around.
That was always how it worked in the few romantic comedies he’d had the misfortune of sitting through, anyway. It was stupid, but he couldn’t stop himself.
Regardless, he didn’t want to have this discussion in front of the other two.
“Look,” he said, “just—I can’t just walk all the way back now, can I? Not alone with those things still out there.”
One-Eye smirked. “Could give him a laser pointer, send him off.”
“We’re not sending him off by himself.” It was Jason, speaking up from where he lay on a half-shredded sleeping bag. Leif was sorry to see him sporting a few wounds of his own. It made the guy look all the more heroic. “After those things attacked? Then what, we kick a puppy?”
“I’m not a—”
“At the very least not until he’s had time to rest,” added the man whom Leif rather hoped was a doctor.
Jason shook his head. “Why send him back at all? Guy’s got guts. Maybe we can work him into the episode.”
“Oh, great, sidekick to a steroid addict. Yay me.”
Jason laughed. “Watch the cracks, guy. I’m the only one on your side here.”
Tracy shook her head. “Insurance would have a fit. Geez, what a night.”
Something about the way the whole group waited on her next word struck Leif as very sexy. Strange that so much about her struck him that way, so much that he hadn’t even noticed on their first meeting. Well, maybe not that strange, considering the fact that he had a conversation with a god right before he met her. Was this Apollo’s doing? Still, why question a good feeling?
“Okay,” Tracy said finally, “you can stay.” She swiftly pointed a finger at Leif's sudden beaming expression. “I hear one thing about how attractive I am, how much I should give you a chance, or how damn much you admire me, I’ll stake you to the ground with catnip around your neck, understand?”
“She’s hot when she gets forceful, isn’t she, Leif?” Jason said.
Tracy’s finger shot toward Jason. “Goes for you too, Powers.”
Leif smirked. Maybe she didn’t like the guy that much, after all?
“Tomorrow he stays here while we film,” she finished.
“Then you’ll have to tie me up, ’cause I’ll just follow you,” Leif warned before he could stop himself.
“Wasn’t kidding about the catnip, Mr. Karlson.”
“Hey, no points for honesty? I’m serious. I’m not staying here.”
“We could tie you up in the SUV,” Tracy suggested.
Leif winked. “Kinky.”
“Hey!” One-Eye burst, grabbing him by the collar. Leif’s vision shuddered from the jostling. “Shut yer damn mouth and treat the woman with a bit of—”
Tracy grabbed One-Eye’s arm. Her fatigued sigh alone seemed enough to stop the man mid-recrimination.
“Dave,” she said (Leif at this point coincidentally recalled that One-Eye’s name was Dave), “let the half-drugged, helpless idiot go.”
“He was mouthin’ off.” He let go, nonetheless. Leif’s vision continued to wobble, also nonetheless.
“My problem, not yours.”
“Ah, let him come along, Tracy. He can stay behind the camera,” Jason said.
Dave grunted. “Far behind it.”
“Fine.” Jason grinned. “He can stay back with Tracy and the doctor.”
Leif smiled. “Fine by me.”
Dave scowled. “Now wait a damn minute.”
“Might I suggest,” the doctor began, “that we all get some sleep now and leave the bickering about just where Mr. Karlson shall walk for the morning? Dangerous monsters are not to be confronted with half a night’s sleep if the show’s hero is to survive to season two.”
“Doc’s right,” Jason said. “The hero needs his rest!”
Tracy sighed. “Yeah, the doctor’s right. Standard watch order while the razorwings are out there. Mr. Karlson will take Jason’s slot so he can rest up.”
Dave slowly grinned and poked Leif in the shoulder. “I’ll be sure to wake ya in plenty of time.”
Leif smirked. “Do you have to keep watch twice as long because of the, ah . . . ?” He tapped his eye.
“No, I just kick twice as many skinny butts to make up for it. Get me?”
“. . . Okay, g’night, then!” Leif had a better comeback, but for once his mind was quick enough to shut his mouth. He lay down, instantly comfortable and far too weakened from the poison to really care what he was lying on or why that owl was looking at him so intently.
The following day, the group of five moved with a purpose through the rocky hills and sparse trees. The purpose differed for each person, of course, save for “don’t get killed”. At least that’s what Thalia assumed as she traveled invisibly behind them. Leif had repeatedly suggested that Jason might have a death wish, though Thalia sensed in the TV star only the supreme confidence and love of attention that befitted any halfway-decent hero. Calm, focused, and wearing a snug vest of modern body armor, he led the group into the hills as if he knew precisely where he was going.
He didn’t, of course, but he was at least confident admitting so to the camera as they traveled.
Leif mostly kept quiet while the camera was out. The rest of the time, he wouldn’t shut up, and the others did their best to ignore him. Jason seemed focused on the path and trials ahead; the doctor, lugging along the narrow bundle of a collapsible medical cot, was plainly preoccupied by his own nerves; and Tracy and Dave were busy getting shots or doggedly not responding to all but Leif’s most direct inquiries.
It didn’t really help. Thalia wondered how Leif was supposed to play a part in Zeus’s resurrection. If Apollo hadn’t foreseen it, she wouldn’t have believed it possible. On the other hand, the young man had at least managed to crack Jason and, to a lesser extent, Tracy. (At one point Jason grabbed Leif by the arm and pulled him in front of the camera to introduce him to the viewers. Tracy protested at first, but then loudly observed that Leif could always be edited out of the footage later.) Perhaps Leif was fated to inspire Zeus to will himself back to life for the sheer purpose of telling the young man to shut up? Beyond that, Leif didn’t seem up to what Apollo required of him at all.
“So you’ve got a gun or something hidden under that riot gear you’re wearing, right?” Leif asked after a time. “You can’t possibly just use the sword.”
Jason glanced at him, amused. “Knives too. Crossbow now and then. But no guns on this show.”
“Well, not on the show, but come on, you can’t be going after these things without one. Sure, Rule of Cool and everything, but what happens when you run into something you can’t handle? You can’t just judo-chop it in a nerve cluster and ram a sword through it. No one’d think less of you for softening it up with a few bullets offscreen. Just another thing she could ‘edit out,’ I’d think.”
“I’d think less of me.”
“We run an honest show, Mr. Karlson, despite what you seem determined to see,” Tracy said.
“Uh-huh. Well, just give the signal when you need to pull the gun and I’ll turn away so you can stay all hero-like.”
Jason turned to Leif with a smile that he proudly displayed to Dave’s camera. “Haven’t met the monster yet that’s been able to kill me.”
“Ooh, impressive. Most people who aren’t dead yet can’t say that.”
Jason unsheathed his sword for a punctuating blade flourish. “Right you are!”
Thalia’s smirk matched Leif’s. Tracy just shook her head and turned away such that Leif was able to get a good ogling of her bum without anyone else noticing.
Not for the first time since Leif dashed off in a mad pursuit of Tracy, Thalia wondered at the source of his feelings. After observing him the day he first met the woman, Urania and Melpomene said nothing about any sort of attraction. Then again, attraction wasn’t their area, so it was possible they just hadn’t noticed. Come to think of it, as Muse of comedy and science fiction, realistic romantic attraction wasn’t really Thalia’s expertise either. (The closest she came to it was dealing with romantic comedies, which she’d be the first to admit had little or no basis in real romantic relationships.) So perhaps she wasn’t the best one to judge.
Yet it did seem . . . strange. Odd behavior, or merely an aspect of his character previously unseen? She wondered what Calliope would have made of it, had Thalia not agreed to take her turn watching Leif today. (She hadn’t felt much like flying back home anyway, and the break from musing was nice enough. Plus Calliope promised her a favor in exchange.)
They continued over rocky, scrub-covered terrain, passing in and out of what few shadows the light tree cover afforded.
“How much farther, you figure?” Leif asked after a while.
Jason kept walking. “Don’t know. No sign of tracks yet. That rise up ahead might hide a cave, so that’s where I’m making for.” He said it again for the camera at Tracy’s suggestion, with a couple manly huffs of exertion for flavor.
“What if the monster isn’t there? You could be hiking around all day and not find anything.”
Tracy heaved a sigh. “You’re perfectly welcome to go back to base camp, Mr. Karlson. Encouraged, even.”
“No, I’ll stick with you. Just seems like a big hike and hassle for nothing, though. Assuming you do find it, what do you figure’ll be in its lair?”
Jason clambered up a rock for a look around and then turned to help Dave up. “The beast will be there, eventually. Kind of the point here.”
“No, I mean what else? It’s got a lair, and the lair’s your objective. This isn’t some random encounter with a wandering monster like last night, so the lair has to have something of interest in it, right?” Everyone else was too busy scrambling up the rock to try to hide their disinclination to answer. “There’s always some sort of reward in places like that.”
Jason played to the camera as he helped Leif up. “Ridding the world of monsters is its own reward.”
“Yes, that’s why we’re doing this all on TV!”
“Don’t talk to the camera, Mr. Karlson.”
It wasn’t such an outrageous thought, Thalia considered. Monsters did tend to be attracted to nodes of power. Such nodes had their own special ways of luring things of value, one way or another. It was no accident, for example, that a little patch of Nevada desert had turned into one of the top destinations for vacationers to turn over their money. (Ships and planes that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle were the unfortunate example of what happened when similar phenomena were buried beneath large quantities of water.) Thalia could sense no nearby location of comparable magnitude, but smaller nodes were everywhere, and she was no expert. Most monsters were far more sensitive.
Growing bored with shadowing, Thalia flew up toward the rise herself. Indeed, it did hold a cave—of sorts. It wasn’t so much a cave as a smallish canyon that wound its narrow way into the rock to a wider section in the middle, which itself connected via another narrow passage to a second wide section at the end with no further exits. Each wider section featured shallow openings barely sheltered by rocky overhangs. Animal bones lay scattered about, picked clean by nature and whatever had brought them there in the first place.
Flying a bit higher, she spotted the hero’s quarry hunched atop the thirty-foot wall of the canyon's middle section. For the moment, the creature’s gaze was elsewhere.
Invisible to the creature, Thalia made a close pass to study it. By the design, she judged it to be Athena’s work, at least primarily, though she noted the beast’s armored hide wasn’t entirely without flaws, especially on the left side.
Thalia wondered if the goddess herself would show up to see one of her creations tested. Immortals sometimes did, if they were aware it was being hunted, and they were either particularly proud or had a bet riding. She saw no invisible gods lurking about, but then that wasn’t her area of expertise, either. The Muse backed off and settled atop the canyon entrance to await the others.
Leif’s babbling heralded their arrival. “If you do manage to kill it,” he was saying, “make sure you remember to take the head off. These things are never dead until you take the head off. And maybe set it on fire.”
“Quiet! . . . And I have done this before, you know.”
“Just saying.” Leif didn’t lower his voice one bit. “And it’s when things are completely quiet that it’s staring down at you from above, so just remember that too.”
Jason held up his hand to silence him again. Leif actually complied and then looked expectantly toward the top of the canyon. He was looking straight through Thalia, though she doubted he realized it. She toyed with springing down to startle them all but deemed it not funny enough to blow her cover and risk a slashing.
Jason took a tiny, headband-mounted camera from Dave. “Stay here.”
Leif gave what Thalia suspected was the cheesiest thumbs-up he could manage. After waiting for Dave to set up for a shot of the entrance, Jason drew his sword, crept into the canyon, and disappeared behind the first bend.
“So this is where he takes the gun out, huh?” Leif whispered. Apart from him, Thalia was the only one who smiled. As it was one of her smiles, she counted it a shame that no one could see it.
Well, screw that! Enough invisibility. She was a glorious kestrel falcon a few moments later, and a few moments after that she had winged her way after Jason.
The creature, she noticed, was gone.
Jason took a few minutes to explore the full length of the canyon. Caution guided him, albeit figuratively. (Thalia had never met an actual incarnation of Caution and was disinclined to believe one existed, but she was on a first-name basis with Death—Doug—and occasionally had breakfast with Sleep, and so she felt she oughtn’t rule anything out.) Nevertheless, Jason found nothing alive save for a few wildflowers.
“Creature!” he called in admirable abandonment of the advantage of surprise. “Show yourself!”
The creature, if it was still around to hear him, was unwilling to shed the same advantage so easily. Nothing answered.
He cast a suspicious glance upward at Thalia, who took a moment to show off her current plumage and give a falcon’s call of encouragement. The hero studied her. His hand shifted toward a dagger at his belt and he appeared ready to throw it. If he mistook her for a hideous monster, support from her quarter was going right out the window.
Again, figuratively speaking.
Jason appeared to abandon the idea. He turned around and, with one last look at the end of the canyon, made his way back to the others. Thalia followed and landed on a rock behind the camera.
“No contact so far,” he said. His eyes remained alert, his body tensed. “But there’s a nest of some sort, plenty of bones. Just no creature. Might be out hunting.”
“Maybe it’s out filming a cable show of its own,” Leif suggested.
Jason scanned the top of the canyon. “Could be hiding. Maybe I startled it. Could be . . . stalking us.”
“You want to set up here?” Tracy asked. “We could get some wide shots of you waiting. Might be a good spot to do a voice-over later talking about . . . oh, I dunno, something. We can figure that out later.”
Jason nodded. “It’s bound to return sometime.”
“No, no, no.” Leif said. “I thought you’ve done this before?”
Jason’s only response was a grin for the camera’s benefit.
Leif continued. “You’re supposed to relax your guard! Tempt fate! Say something like, ‘Well, guess it’s not home! Break out the sandwiches!’ Something like that.”
Perhaps humoring him, Jason waited a few seconds. Nothing came of it, though the wind did tousle Jason’s hair in what might have been a heroic fashion.
“Could check up top there,” Dave suggested. “Turns out to be clear, be a great place to set up a shot for when it does show.”
“Clever as always, Dave,” said Jason, apparently looking for the best place to climb. “I was just thinking that myself.”
Leif was undeterred. “Well you can’t just—You have to say it’s safe or something; that’s always when the monster attacks. It’s like Murphy’s Law or irony or whatever! How can you be on TV and know so little about it?”
Jason laughed.
“Say it, Jason,” Tracy suggested with a mocking smirk at Leif. “I just got an idea for that voice-over. Something about this hunt being especially challenging because you have to put up with our guest.”
Jason rolled his eyes with a grin. “I guess it is not home,” he intoned. “Whatever shall we do?” They all waited, but still nothing came of it. The wind ceased tousling Jason’s hair to instead flutter about them with a mocking pleasantness.
“You’re not doing it right.” Leif took a few steps toward the camera. “Looks like he scared it off. It’s gotta be miles away by now.”
Everyone waited, if only to think of a suitable smart-assed remark. The wind finally gave up, blowing off elsewhere to harass some tumbleweeds.
Tracy broke the silence. “Did we bring sandwiches?”
Jason sheathed his sword and patted Leif’s shoulder. “Thanks for trying, kid, but things don’t work that way.”
The creature barreled into Jason without further nonsense. Man and monster tumbled into a clump of sagebrush. Teeth snapped on armor, metal unsheathed, and the fight was on.
“The sword!” Leif smacked his forehead. “He had to put away the sword! I knew I forgot something!”
Tracy pulled at Leif’s shoulders. “Get back!” The four retreated behind Thalia’s rock, watching and filming as Jason took firm hold of the monster and kicked it off him with a yell. It tumbled away, regained its squat footing with its shelled back to the camera, and shrieked.
“C’mon, Jason. C’mon, get up,” Tracy whispered. “We need a shot of the thing’s face . . .”
“Not very big, is it?” Leif asked.
Jason hurled himself from his back to standing with a single kick of both legs, sword brandished impressively. The creature shrieked louder, and Thalia regretted choosing an animal form that lacked arms she could use to cover her ears. The monster continued, backing off a few steps, its low, flat body swaying from side to side as if daring the hero to attack or to flee.
Jason did neither. Sword held out protectively before him, he circled around and positioned himself to one side of the shot. The creature turned with him, growling low, its face coming into view.
“Huh,” Tracy observed. “Well, that’s . . . kind of man-sized, right?”
“Maybe you can give it bigger arms in post-production,” Leif suggested.
The thing’s stubby forearms were, indeed, terribly unimpressive. The creature itself appeared to be the monstrous offspring of a frog and a turtle: its back broad and armored, its hind legs long and bent under it. They were thicker than would be found on a frog of similar size, except that a frog of similar size would be roughly the size of a large washing machine. Each hind leg ended in terrible claws that squeezed into the dirt as the creature waited for Jason to make a move. Its turtle-esque head growled through teeth that, while certainly large, looked more suited to grinding flour than rending flesh.
Such distinctions make little difference to anyone who has ever had their head crushed in a flour mill, of course, and neither did they make a difference to Jason. He dodged and feinted, sword still held defensively as he tested the creature’s reactions and, very likely, drew out the moment just a bit for future viewers’ benefit. After about thirty seconds of this, the creature ceased growling and drew back its thick, round head to blink in what was likely either curiosity or amusement.
“Aww,” Leif cooed.
“Almost rather cute, isn’t it?” observed the doctor.
“Uh-huh,” Tracy said. “We’ll need to edit that bit out, or we’ll be getting e-mails.” She stood, hands cupped to her mouth. “Kill it, Jason!”
Leif turned a surprised look in her direction.
“What?” she asked. “We got the snarl shot. He’ll take enough time to make it interesting.”
“You’re gorgeous when you’re ruthless, you know.”
“Didn’t know, don’t care.”
Jason charged in, sword swinging. The creature snarled again and jumped back—but not fast enough. The blade glanced harmlessly off the side of the shell as it turned. Jason guided the rebound around into an upward slash along its underbelly.
It was Jason’s turn to be too slow; before he could make contact, powerful legs launched the beast up along the outer wall of the canyon. It found purchase on the rock, scrambled madly, and then disappeared up over the top, its entire body shifting colors to match the rock, like a chameleon on speed.
Jason withdrew cautiously back to the camera, his eyes on the cliff. “It’s trying to lure me into the canyon. Clearly it’s a trap.” Clearly he was narrating. “We have a saying on Monster Slayer: ‘The first step in avoiding a trap is knowing of its existence.’”
Leif balked at the others. “So Frank Herbert stole that from you guys, then,” he whispered. “And ah, shouldn’t the second step be, ya know, not walking into the trap? Anyone tell him that part?”
No one answered. With a tilt of his head that Dave took as a signal to follow with the camera, Jason crept toward the canyon entrance.
Thalia took to the sky herself. She really shouldn’t leave Leif completely, but then she was a Muse, not a fighter. If the beast chose to attack him, there wasn’t much she could do aside from trying to blind it with her robes. Besides, she was starting to think it could be Jason who had something to do with Zeus’s resurrection. He was the classic Herculean hero: strong, determined, and not weighed down by too much intelligence. (Clever had its place but didn’t always do what it was told, after all.) She circled the area, watching everyone with falcon’s eyes.
Jason entered the wide section at the middle of the canyon and paused, trailed by the one-eyed cameraman. Both were looking upward at the top of the canyon walls.
Unfortunately, Jason was looking upward in the exact wrong direction when the monster peered down over the edge and launched itself straight at him. The hero somehow reacted in time, barely, whirling to one side just before the beast would have tackled him. Sharper than it looked, the edge of the monster’s shell sliced across his outer thigh, and the impact sent them both to the ground in a cloud of dust. The sword flew from its owner’s grip and rang against a rock.
“I’m all right!” he called to Dave.
He didn’t look particularly all right, Thalia thought. Though he got to his feet almost as fast as the creature itself, an ugly wound flowed red beneath his now torn and dirty pants. Thalia winced in sympathy; they were very nice pants.
Pressing its advantage, the monster launched itself at Jason’s head. With no time to recover the sword, Jason could only throw himself to the ground. His attacker sailed over him, latched on to the rock wall, and then turned and sprang back before Jason was even halfway up. Again the hero dodged in a barely controlled rolling fall that took him farther from his weapon, narrowly avoiding the monster’s strike. It landed this time near Dave, who struggled to backpedal without losing the shot.
The monster, however, in what was likely an unintended bit of professionalism, ignored the cameraman completely and focused entirely on Jason. It sprang at him again, too widely in its haste. Jason needed only to be sure he didn’t collide with it as he rushed with a laugh to regain his weapon, and the fight was even once more.
For a time the two combatants regarded each other across the bone-strewn canyon floor, each sizing the other up or just waiting for the other to make a mistake. Jason’s face hardened in concentration, studying the creature until he seemed to realize that such a thing looks very dull on camera. He twirled his sword in the sunlight with a flourish as impressive as it was pointless, then grabbed a knife from his belt and hurled it into the creature’s neck.
The beast gave a violent cry, staggered back just a moment, and then yanked its head down into the shell to snap the blade off against its armored collar. Jason stepped forward, sword raised. Before he could close the distance, the monster reared up on its hind legs and stretched its midsection until it stood a furious eight feet high. From under its shell unfolded powerful arms. Previously hidden, they were thrice the length and thickness of the smaller pair, with serrated chitin on the outer edges. The monster spread them wide and hurled ear-splitting shrieks at Jason as if to say, “Look! I have more arms!” or perhaps simply, “Ouch.” (Monster shrieks, like prophetic visions, are difficult to translate.)
“Tell me you got that!” Jason called to Dave.
“No, I had my head up my ass! Camera’s on! Camera’s pointed! Hell, man, why people always gotta ask that?!”
“Seemed like the thing to ask?”
“Just kill the damn thing!”
Jason charged, sword swinging in a two-handed grip that put the monster on the defensive. He struck against the chitin of its arms, knocking them away so he could slash at the thing’s chest. The blade did as much damage to the thick hide as nails to a chalkboard, with twice the spine-jagging sound.
The beast roared and swung both arms for Jason’s head. Jason ducked the first, whirled away from the second, and swung high and fruitlessly for the beast's head in return.
“Skin’s thicker than it looks!” he shouted.
Thalia thought it looked plenty thick enough already, except for that one thin spot she noticed earlier . . .
Man and beast clashed anew, striking, slashing, blocking, dodging. Once more the monster sprang up the canyon wall, greater arms folding in before it clambered up over the top.
Thalia wondered how long it would take for Jason to see the left-side vulnerability she’d spotted on her first inspection. Maybe his eyesight wasn’t as keen. She was a lesser immortal and using a falcon’s vision to boot, after all. Below, Jason waited for the monster to come back down. Thalia could just make out the camouflaged beast stalking around atop the canyon wall, hiding beyond the rim. She took the moment to fly down and alight on a crag beside Jason.
“Wait! Wait!” she croaked. Ugh, falcons had lousy voices. Ah, well, couldn’t be helped. “Your chance is rising! Look for the hollow of the left breast as he dives and turns above you!”
Jason blinked at the talking falcon before him and cast a surprised glance at the camera before returning his watch to the cliffs above. To his credit, he appeared otherwise unfazed.
“Talking birds,” Jason muttered to himself. “New one. Thanks but no thanks, little falcon! No hero ever took advice from a bird!”
Leif, Tracy, and the doctor crept into the area in time to see a falcon rolling its eyes at Jason and taking off again. Leif opened his mouth immediately.
“Where is it?”
The only response was Jason's dismissive wave and three shushes from the others. Jason pointed up to the canyon top, drove his sword point into the ground, and rolled his sleeves up.
“Ooh, this is going to be a good ep,” Tracy whispered. “But if he dies, I’ll kill him.”
Jason scooped up a handful of rocks and flung them one by one at various places along the top of the canyon wall. Everyone else took cover as some of the rocks bounced back down with splintering cracks.
The beast appeared atop the edge of one side and sailed down at Jason. He spotted it, dodged left as it passed, and then hurled half the remaining rocks at its head with a battle cry that was either wordless or poorly enunciated. The rocks bounced off the back of its shell moments before it turned to face him. Jason continued to throw, one at a time now, backpedaling and aiming for the head. Each bounced harmlessly off the monster’s armor.
Even so, few creatures will suffer the indignity of being hit with rocks if they can help it. This one shrieked in rapid succession, unfolded its greater arms again, and knocked the thrown stones away. Jason hurled his last at the monster’s feet and rushed it. Too caught up in trying to block the low throw, the creature didn’t realize Jason was charging until the brave and crazy mortal latched on to the thing’s left arm. Swiftly gaining a firm grip, Jason continued past the beast to wrench its arm back with all his weight and momentum. It toppled backward, taking Jason with it and half trapping him beneath. Thalia gasped as the pants sustained another terrible ripping in the struggle.
Dave rushed forward, camera pointed. (So shocked were the others that no one thought to ask him if he got that, so there was no way to tell if he had.)
Ragged squeals tore out of the creature as the two wrestled in a tangle of grasping limbs and dust. The beast thrashed its free arm about in an effort to swing back and hit Jason, who was himself yelling in exertion and pain as the thing’s weight ground what it could of him against the rough earth.
Then somehow Jason managed to turn himself perpendicular to the creature’s body. The jagged shell edge loomed perilously close to his legs. He did his best to distract the creature from this fact by repeatedly ramming it in the head with a thick-booted heel. Its angry cries were soon muffled by the thing’s own shell as it pulled its head down as far as it could go and threw up the other arm to block.
The beast’s thrashing slowed while it tried to defend itself and sought to stand again. Jason was faster; he drove the soles of his boots against the side of its body, knees bent. He clutched the thing’s left arm in both of his and shoved with his feet as if trying to uproot a tree. The creature screamed and grabbed for Jason with a right arm that, while thick and strong, just didn’t quite bend at the angle required to reach him. Jason yanked further, straining against muscle and credulity as the beast bucked like a bull trying to throw a rider. It finally succeeded in launching Jason on a brief airborne journey into the canyon wall, where his head cracked against the rock.
He slumped to the ground and lay still.
The monster’s triumphant cries rose further in a violent crescendo upon noticing that the dislodged hero had torn off its arm as he went. The tiny arm shielded the gaping socket hole left behind by the larger one. Renewed shrieks drove higher, higher, and then slowly came back down as the beast stood there, reeling . . . or perhaps catching its breath. Everyone watched, awestruck, just waiting for the moment when it would finally lose enough blood and topple over.
For what were likely purely selfish reasons, the beast refused to cooperate.
Dave panned back and forth between the creature and Jason’s body while the other three quietly backed the hell away.
“You know, traditionally, ripping the arm off something like that’ll kill it, no questions asked,” Leif said. “What, no one’s read Beowulf?”
Tracy ignored him. Her own gaze mirrored the camera movements as the monster shrieked and turned toward Jason’s body. “Doctor?”
From what Thalia could tell, save for some blind and half-hearted reaching for his collapsible cot bundle, the doctor was rather frozen in place. The beast took a few more steps toward where Jason lay defenseless.
Tracy scooped up a few stones of her own. “Doctor!” she tried again, whipping a stone right into the back of the monster’s knee. With a cry of pain, it spun around to face them, head out, eyes blazing and fixed on Tracy.
“Tracy, get back!” Leif tried, but she only hurled another stone. The creature ducked it and charged at her.
“Aaaaaaugh!” Leif’s scream was either cowardly or courageous. He threw himself between them, arms held up to protect himself, a statue of unwilling heroism.
“Leif, get out of the way!”
“No!” he yelled at the creature. It was Tracy to whom he’d spoken, but conversational eye contact fails to be a priority when a giant, angry turtle-frog is bearing down on you.
Perhaps the creature might have been amused enough to fall over laughing at such a display were it not filled with the pain of a torn-off limb. As it was, its hesitation was brief. For only a fraction of a second did it stop to regard Leif’s fearful bravery (the way a Buick might regard a possum)before continuing forward with a wild cry, its one good arm raised to strike the defenseless mortal.
It occurred to Thalia that, were this a television program, this would make an ideal spot to go to commercial.