Monsters Read online

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Titles by P.S. Power

  Young Ancients:

  (Tor)

  The Builder

  Knight Esquire

  Knight of the Realm

  Ambassador

  Counselor

  Slave Line

  (Timon)

  The Dark Half of the Sun

  Dead End:

  A Very Good Man

  A Very Good Neighbor

  A Very Good Thing

  A Very Dark Place

  Keeley Thomson:

  Demon Girl

  Keelzabub

  Mistress of Souls

  *Christmas of the Vampire

  (Related Universe Novella)

  Gwen Farris:

  Abominations

  Monsters

  The Infected:

  Proxy

  Gabriel

  Cast Iron

  Proxy: Reunions

  The Lament:

  Without Rhythm

  Other Places:

  Shortcuts

  Stand Alone Titles by P.S. Power

  Crayons

  Unrelenting Terror

  Monsters

  By

  P.S. Power

  Chapter one

  The Special Service combat armor was just as hot and uncomfortable to wear as Gwen had figured it would be, causing sweat to drip down her face uncomfortably before she even moved. The other Westmorlands, including her friend Bethany, walked around in theirs easily, making noise only from the deep footfalls, or the occasional clank of dull silver metal from a hand or leg rubbing against more of the same. They were covered from head to toe in the stuff, all identical, except for height. They didn’t even have badges on so you could tell them apart. They didn’t need them it seemed.

  Sweat dripped down her forehead making her eyes sting a bit, which was annoying. The only air Gwen had was let in through a small mouth plate, a grating that let in some light as well, but it didn’t help her see much. So far she was totally blind except her ability to get a vague impression of her chest and feet. That... and the legs and torsos of the people clomping around yelling, at least when they passed in front of her.

  It wasn’t that they were screaming at her like marine corps drill instructors, not really, they were just trying to call out helpful instructions and knew she couldn’t hear them yet. Finally she caught on to the overall idea when Beth hit her armor on the left shoulder to get her attention, which made only a single dull thump that didn’t ring, metal armor or not.

  “It’s like charging a crystal! Just focus on any part of it and it will bring up the basic radiative effectives. It’s built in, so just charge and keep doing it!” It was a shout, since the armor muffled everything greatly until it was powered up, which was part of the built in protection.

  The magical armor.

  The very idea nearly blew her mind, even though she used magical items every day in this place, and had for months. It made her wonder, for about the fiftieth time in the last few days, if she’d just lost it and gone totally insane. Misplaced her mind somewhere along the line for real and taken to living in a fantasy instead. After all, she woke up one day in a new body, in another world, where she was rich, good looking and had magical abilities? OK, she didn’t know how to use that magic very much at all yet and almost everyone else had some too, but she was still at the top of the food chain that way, being naturally very powerful at it. After a life of being at the very bottom of almost everything anyone cared about.

  It was close enough to what she’d have dreamed up for herself if given a choice that Gwen had to keep in mind the fact that she might just truly be insane. As in it could be something that was more than just a passing consideration or response to a new and unlikely situation.

  If so, it was still way better than what she’d had before. Sure, this world was a bit strange, like something out of a Victorian fantasy novel written by someone on acid, but most of the people had been nice enough to her. Even the jerks here were more polite in general than the people from back home. One of the nicest people she’d met in this place had been the man that stabbed her in the heart when she’d first been stolen from her own world. A thing that she’d survived… which didn’t lend itself overly to the idea of her being sane, did it? Who got stabbed in the freaking heart and just shrugged it off like that? No more than a few weeks of real healing either, thanks to the technology of the place.

  At least it all seemed real, which was a good sign. Hallucinations didn’t have that kind of feeling of reality over the long haul did they? They didn’t hold that much clarity and purpose. Not that she knew of. Then, psychology had been an interest of hers, but just a hobby, not a career. Still, she didn’t think that visual hallucinations tended to persist like these would have had too. Unless it hadn’t really been months and was just a dream? That would be odd, but could happen, she thought. If so, she really hoped she didn’t wake up anytime soon. Her real life sucked compared to this.

  Taking a moment to focus, she tried to pretend she was charging an airships main drive crystal. That was something she’d gotten pretty good at in the last months, having had a lot of practice at it. The girl who’s body she was in… her make believe parents now, owned a massive shipping concern and had needed some help, so she’d pitched in for a while. It made sense, because this place didn’t even have television and their version of radio kind of blew chunks, which meant finding things to keep herself busy was a must. Work fit the bill nicely, when she could find something that everyone would let her try to do.

  The world snapped into view as if she wasn’t wearing a helmet suddenly. A flash of light and the whole thing seemed to vanish, except for the minimal fresh air coming in. It was kind of a neat design as far as most of her senses went. She could still feel the heat though, which was oppressive enough to get her attention. Apparently it had never occurred to anyone to design a cooling system for these things. It was a real flaw too, since it meant that you could only wear the armor for an hour or two in battle before climbing out of it. Stay in longer and you risked heat stroke.

  Then, these people didn’t have air conditioning either. Not even refrigerators. They used ice boxes instead. If she could figure out how to do it, she was totally going to be inventing something like that. Get someone else to do it at any rate. It wasn’t like she knew enough to use the technological magic of this place to do anything that advanced. Not yet. It was hard for her to learn new things here, because she couldn’t just openly go to school like everyone else. She was supposed to already know everything, which would make her asking the wrong questions sound really weird and give the whole thing away.

  There had to be a way though. Get a library card or something.

  “Got it.” She half yelled the words, able to see the three armored suits in front of her clearly now.

  Looking down she noticed once again how different her armor was compared to the bland sameness of the Westmorlands in front of her. It had a slightly pearl sheen to the metallic blue color. Fancy, compared to the others, and meant only to show she wasn’t one of them. Her badge after a fashion. The same basic shape, of course, without any indication that she was a girl other than her height, which was about five-ten in the suit, compared to the five-seven of Katherine Vernor’s body without it. Her body now. She had to remember that she was Katherine now, as far as world was concerned.

  Not because anyone would blame her for having stolen the body. No one had even ever hinted at that at all, though the idea of being falsely accused had occurred to her a few times. No, it was because word of her body, as messed up and broken as it had been, having been stolen in another world would ruin Katherine’s family. They owned one of the largest goods shipping concerns in the world, wealthy and powerful, bu
t also needed. It would be a problem if they lost everything, causing hundreds of thousands to lose their jobs and potentially putting a crimp in the economics of half the planet for years. A lot of people knew the secret of who she was, but oddly almost all of them had kept their mouths shut tight on the idea.

  Because she’d asked them too. The odd part there was that most of them thought that was something almost heroic of her, keeping the thing quiet and lying like she was to protect others.

  Even her new parents, Ethyl and Robert Vernor, had offered to let her take the whole thing public if she felt bound to, by social duty or her own moral code, even though they didn’t know what that might entail when they said it. Ready to lose everything so that they wouldn’t make her feel uneasy, or as if she owed them anything. Then, after she told them she wouldn’t be doing that, since she couldn’t blame them for the actions of someone else, they’d both gone out of their way to treat her like she was actually their own flesh and blood. It was literally true, but Gwen wouldn’t have blamed them for ignoring her, or just throwing money at the problem and shuffling her off alone somewhere.

  Instead they’d been the closest thing she had to real parents in a long time. Not that hers hadn’t meant well, but with all her disfigurements and health problems… well, her real mom and dad had kind of learned to ignore her when they could get away with it. It was a rough way to grow up, kind of cut off from the world like she had been, but it had sort of worked out.

  This situation was so much better for her now though. She really hoped she wasn’t insane.

  She even got a new job, so that she could help hunt down the woman behind her having been nearly sacrificed like she had been. Debussey. Professor Erin Debussey. It was a shame that the woman had turned out to be evil, since Gwen had kind of liked her, before she’d found out about the whole attempted murder portion of events. They could have been friends… except for the thing where she wanted to open up the voidic planes and let the old gods flood in, destroying the world. Gwen had just gotten there and things were going pretty well so far, so naturally she wasn’t huge on the idea of that kind of thing. OK, the woman didn’t seem to think they’d actually trash it all, but really, had she never seen a movie at all? Of course they’d destroy everything. Probably after killing her first.

  They didn’t have movies in this new world though. No TV either. Just the telesar, which was basically radio, if it were all put together by conservative talk show hosts fresh out of college. Entertainment was a lot different than what she was accustomed to. They had books, but she hadn’t gotten a lot of chance to read yet. She’d had to try and assimilate as fast as possible, to keep up her charade of being Katherine instead, which meant being around others, to learn their ways. As it was currently, she kind of thought most of the people around her that she didn’t know about everything just thought she was weird, rather than the victim of body theft, but that could change in seconds if she made too many mistakes. The press in this new place would have a field day with that kind of thing, since even the regular news was basically all about catty name calling and finger pointing rather than reporting facts.

  “Good. No need to yell now then. That was a bit faster than I thought you’d manage to tell the truth. Figured we’d be standing here shouting at you for hours.”

  Darrick Westmorland’s voice sounded crisp and slightly British, like they all did here, even though it was technically where the United States was in her world. Right now she was in the area that Maine was, geographically. She thought so at least, from the maps she’d seen. It might have been closer to Vermont. She really wasn’t positive, geography hadn’t been something she’d spent a lot of time on before. It really came down to the fact that she’d never figured on traveling a lot, since it was hard for her to go out of the house most days. The area was pretty enough though, not built up at all, surrounded by green trees and more plants than she’d seen close up before in her life.

  Darrick was in charge of her training, since he didn’t mind being an asshole if he had to be to get her to perform, but the other two considered themselves her friends. He’d chuckled when he said that to her, even though he’d used more genteel language, but it was nice to hear anyway. Not that the man didn’t consider her a friend, but that both Bethany and Heather did. It was kind of a big deal, the older, very fit and hard looking man being put in charge of her like this, since he was kind of the head of the Special Service and sent on assignment here by the King himself, which was a really big deal. That was basically like the Secret Service from back home, she figured. The elite guard.

  “Now, I want you to maintain your current focus and imagine yourself as standing behind the armor you wear, please. I know it sounds odd, but it’s part of the control structure. Once you have that, try to imagine pushing it forward. That should get you to walk.” The voice wasn’t mean, but it sounded smug and slightly condescending. Gwen was good at telling when people thought she just couldn’t do things. She’d had a lifetime of practice learning how to tell that sort of thing.

  It pissed her off. She didn’t let it show though, even on her hidden face. Never let the bastards see they were getting to you. It was something she’d learned from childhood that had served her well enough through her life. Instead she just kept pushing energy out by focusing on the metal just in front of her eyes and did what he said. It was simple enough to imagine standing behind herself, since she had a good ability to visualize things, but the pushing didn’t work at all. After several seconds of it she swallowed hard, starting to feel embarrassed.

  “Um, not working too well yet.” She said, trying not to sound like a complete moron or totally helpless. She couldn’t stand feeling that way. It showed, in that her breathing became louder as she tried to make herself move, pushing harder.

  Nothing happened at all. Not even a twitch.

  After a minute Darrick’s helmet bobbed a little, nodding at her.

  “Keep working on it. Given everything, I didn’t expect you to do this instantly. You have some disadvantages to overcome after all.” The voice wasn’t smug and didn’t gloat this time, not in tone. It was just a statement of fact.

  Gwen heard it as pissy anyway, expecting the man to lord her failure over her. Jerk. Saying that she had disadvantages? She’d show him a disadvantage… just as soon as she could figure out how to move. Frustration grew massively, flooding her mind, making her want to lash out at the man that was mocking her, even as she knew for a fact that he probably wasn’t really. He wanted her to do well. In fact he probably needed her to. If she didn’t they’d have a hole in the guard duty they were supposed to be performing. The King himself had said that Gwen was a member of the Special Service now, so she had to wear the armor and at least be able to walk around, even if she couldn’t instantly master fighting in it.

  “Right.” She muttered the word, understanding that no one else would get why she said it, and was about to try and concentrate even harder, really wishing this set of armor had a control unit like a videogame would. She’d played a lot of those, and been decent at them, having put in a lot of spare time there. Some of her favorites even had tech armor, sort of like what she wore right now. If it were a game like that, she’d just be able to move the control foreword and it would work.

  She lost herself in the fantasy of it, remembering how it felt to hold the controls, to push the joystick and get an instant response. She was shocked when the suit took three steps towards the man in front of her, nearly causing her to walk into the man. Pulling the mental control joystick back she moved back to her starting position.

  “Oops, sorry. Not trying to run over you or anything.” There was a bit of triumph in her voice, but she didn’t expect praise for doing it. Everyone else could walk after all, it wasn’t some huge event. That was a good place to come from apparently, since she didn’t get any praise from Darrick at all. Instead the voice that came sounded kind of ticked off for some reason, clipped and cold, even thought the words themselves
were polite.

  “Follow me then… Miss Farris.” Without warning, the man spun and started walking towards the back wall of the large, nearly empty warehouse space. It was made of unfinished wood, well weathered and in need of repair in several places, with a dull stone floor that looked like granite blocks. The inside wasn’t clean, but it was just from dust and dirt having collected, not actual trash and filth.

  Pushing the imaginary control a bit she started to follow, guiding herself just like she would in a game. Darrick didn’t do anything extraordinary, he just walked a circuit of the space, looking back at her with his blank gray face, a vague oval of a mouth being the only feature of note. It was off-putting and alien, not like a human was inside at all. At least her face was that pretty blue color. That was just to mark her as not being a Westmorland though. She didn’t care, but a lot of people in this new world seemed to want to be as distant from them as possible, even though most of them had been pretty nice to her personally.

  The suit in front of her snorted, sounding a bit upset for some reason. Frustrated because she wasn’t failing as much as he thought she should be? That was kind of a dick attitude, if it was what he meant by the sound. Gwen smiled though. If he was displeased by that, then she’d make a point of really ticking him off.