A man in a bedraggled blue bunny suit stepped from the Liminal beside Nessie in a stir of lakebottom muck.
He'd searched for her for a long time.
Nessie shuddered unexpectedly as he ran his paws over her rotting old tire scales and rusty talons, saucer eyes suddenly spotlights.
He stepped back, the mechanical pariah suddenly plowing forward on her rusty track through eddies of loose trash which swirled along the bottom of Lake Augua Clara.
And stopped.
And started.
Always having wanted to ride a sea serpent, the man-rabbit, bubbles streaming from gaps in his rotting bunny suit, climbed aboard his long dead wife's creation.
Straining against rust and neglect in a drawn-out grinding squeal; Nessie slowly gathered speed.
"You've hit a dead end, Nephilim."
Head jangling with terrified Shine, Josie looked up from where she cowered on the dirty ice of Lake Augua Clara in a drift of loose snow and tiny blue feathers.
Sebastian stood just above the ice, smiling down at her in the red light of Bekka's burning house. "Oh, indeed you have!"
Whimpering, Josie scooted back, eyes fixed on the billowing halo of smoky heat radiating from him, the ice beneath her groaning.
(Uncle Mike! Aunt Raina… Fugo… anybody, HELP!)
"Did you really think you could escape me?" Sebastian inclined his narrow face, the tattered velvet folds of his long coat pooling heavily around him as he languidly crouched, putting long, pale fingers under Josie's chin, turning her face right and left, murmuring, "One of Jophiel's get, though not first generation. How utterly fucking original."
(His hand, it burns, help… Mama?)
"Jophiel, always creating wherever it goes, never looking back at what it creates."
(…anybody?)
Cars trailed behind first one and then three fire trucks, passing Sebastian's car as it idled empty on the side of the privately maintained entry road of Lake Augua Clara Estates: the Stein's big white Hummer, and Mista's battered truck, the bed full of scruffy adolescent werewolves, winding through the dark towards the burning house on the edge of Lake Augua Clara. Patador Sargent's massive wife, breathing mask glinting in the headlights, directed traffic as Officer Abbacchio, long white hair and antlers a pale blur stood beside an idly flashing squad car blocking off Bekka's parent's driveway, herding them into the now muddy section of golf course and treeline across the street.
Angels cause chaos, but demons make it personal.
And the RADS had come to witness it.
"Take a chance, chance, take chance-chance!"
ABBA's anthem gurgled tinnily around Josie as she skidded across the rotting ice, long-neglected underwater speakers blasting to life.
"Where's that coming from?" The man chasing her stopped in a billow of dark flames, eyes narrow, nostrils flaring.
"NO!" Josie screamed as something shattered the ice beneath her feet, sending her into the water.
"If you change your mind, I'm the first in line!" blared around her in a watery gurgle.
When Josie turned six, the whole found family had gone to the indoor waterpark somewhere when Uncle Mike was stationed at Miramar for her birthday before Aunt Raina got deployed on carrier duty.
Birthday or not, Josie, the smallest and most timid of the three girls, splashed contentedly in the wading pool after Uncle Mike played "Happy Birthday" for her on his guitar and stuffing herself with the messy, lopsided rainbow cupcakes Aunt Raina baked for her along with rainbow sherbet with rainbow sprinkles from the BX, watching the rest of the family get dunked by a giant water tower with a huge bucket.
That was, until Mamma, Puck, awful as usual, screamed "Happy Birthday, runt!" and shoved Josie into the wave pool when Uncle Mike and Aunt Raina had their backs turned, helping a weeping Maggie back into her Barbie swimming suit, which Uncle Mike had to swim after when the waves sucked it halfway across the pool without Maggie in it.
A weak swimmer despite Aunt Raina and Uncle Mike's best efforts in the Base swimming pool, the terrified Josie struggled unseen by the lifeguard chatting up the girl who handed out towels, only to scream when something cold and hard brushed against her legs in the water.
And there she was, face to face with an animatronic sea serpent named George.
Her only thought as he rose dripping above her, mechanical snaggle-toothed grin and all, was that he'd eat her and that would be the end of it!
Josie shrieked, frantically doggie paddling away from the rubbery monstrosity only to sink, yanked backwards by the artificial waves, which flipped her upside down so she smacked her face on the rough bottom of the wave pool, the current dragging her across the bottom of the pool, certain that this was the end until she was fished sobbing out of the water by the pimply teenaged life guard, who was loudly pissed that yet another set of parents had neglected their kids.
What the hell was going on here?
Ruined Amina Muaddi's forgotten, State Rep. Barleycorn's embarrassing daughter turned as a fire truck rumbled past, noticing for the first time the RADS gathering just within the tree line behind the golf course across the road, the trees near the interstate a roaring mass of flames.
Eyes glittered in the gathering night, blue, green, orange and purple.
She'd resented them even before they came out way before she had – their outrageous bodies, their bizarre shapes and sizes, their special needs, their very difference… disgusting!
Soot stained face a mask of confident disdain, Marlene slowly scanned the treeline. There was Mista and his flea-bitten posse, crouched, no, huddled together, that loser Narancia crouched beside the dowdy Ms. Nix, holding onto her tacky hippie skirt – who wears skirts like that these days?
She didn't realize that the hopelessly hippie Ms. Nix was one.
Heedlessly sucking his thumb, Narancia knelt, leaning heavily against the Special Services teacher's knees, eyes huge, Ms. Nix absently running her black nailed fingers through his unruly black curls, eyes fixed on the lake… There! There was the bitch who started all this crap, Frankie Stein along with her family— God, who wears green like that? Oooo, would you look at that, Cleo's burying her face in her silver fox of a father's shoulder –CUNT!
There were others: Officer Abbacchio with his ugly chicken feet directing traffic as the firefighters tried to put out the remains of Bekka's tasteless house, Clawdeen and her tacky home-made thrift store fashion statements – gag!
A loud boom, a white flash from the lake, and another wave of heat blew Marlene's hair back. Adjusting her elastic ponytail a la Ariana Grande, Marlene glanced over her shoulder – the conflagration on the lake had just expanded, the RADS silently moving back further in among the snow-covered branches, eyes glazed with terror.
She stepped back as a wailing Bekka and her sow of a mother was ushered into an ambulance along with equally fat Mindy. Why did she put up with this? Marlene looked back up at the trees and what they held… and looked, really looked at the RADS huddled there, suddenly realizing she had more in common with the RADS than she'd ever had with the Normies.
Not being able to go into a club restroom without checking first after that last beating… the catcalls… the jeers that she was just a boy in a dress and all the surgery in the world wouldn't… never being able to be who she was in public without knowing that somebody would… Marlene swayed only to freeze when a large greenish black hand settled on her shoulder, firmly turning Marlene so that she faced the lake.