Cal rolled out from under the man-thing and quickly checked the cuts on his face and chest. His attacker now stood between him and the hallway. That little bit of distance between them gave the officer his first full view of the creature. It looked gaunt and emaciated, its skin dolphin gray, but it was essentially a person, albeit disfigured, and there was an intelligence in its gaze. It had no intention of letting him leave. He scanned the floor for his gun, but it had fallen into the darkness. There was no time to search. He quickly pulled out his nightstick and stood up.
“You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer!” Cal shouted. “Please, feel free to do this the hard way.”
The yellow-eyed perp smiled. Cal was perplexed when it attempted to throw a punch from ten feet away. He was more confused when the fist actually connected with his jaw. Just as his vision cleared, he could see the creature’s arm snapping back to its former proportion. This isn’t sleep deprivation, Cal thought. Whatever it was, the assailant moved like it was triple-jointed and stretched better than his wife’s yogi.
They circled, trying to decide their next move. The gray man never relinquished his position at the doorway. It didn’t run, even though the element of surprise was gone, and this worried Cal. He was much larger than his attacker, and despite its unique abilities, this thing was not as strong as he was. Something else occurred to Cal. This assailant did not match the description of the suspect. It was waiting for backup! It was stalling.
Cal lunged, swinging the nightstick hard. The man-thing ducked, avoiding the blow. Instead of bringing the nightstick back around, Cal brought the Maglite in his other hand down, smashing it into the top of the man-thing’s skull. Then he backhanded his nightstick into the assailant’s face to finish the job.
The creature crumpled to the floor, groggy with pain. Cal snapped his handcuffs around the thing’s wrists. The attacker had residue on his skin, like the sticky stuff he had touched earlier. It had an acrid organic smell. He searched the floor with his light and recovered his gun.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Cal recited. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
The officer continued reciting Miranda while shoving his prisoner into the hallway. Crossing the threshold, he caught a glimpse of someone from the corner of his eye and raised his Maglite in time to deflect a sword from cleaving him in two. Sparks flew as old steel met new steel. Cal could tell from the force of the blow that this new attacker, a bronze-skinned swordsman dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, was Mack-truck strong.
Cal pushed his prisoner down the stairs, grabbed his steel-jacketed Maglite like a rolling pin and warded off a second thrust head-on only to find himself holding half of the cleaved flashlight in each hand. Cal drove a hard kick into the assailant’s solar plexus. The swordsman went down gasping for breath. Then Cal kicked him in the head. He was going for his pistol again when the little gray man grabbed him from behind. Its arms, free of the manacles, wrapped around Cal like a snake. They continued to coil until Cal was bandaged tight, his right arm pinned underneath. Then, the gray man bit him in the neck.
Cal lunged backward, smashing into the corner of the door frame repeatedly until the arms loosened. Reaching over his own head with his left hand, Cal grabbed the gray man by the scruff of his neck, then leaned forward, pulled his attacker over him, and slammed him hard into the floor at his feet. The swordsman came at him again. Cal picked up the gray man like a shield just in time to block a thrust, which came through the gray man’s rib cage just under the heart. The man bled blue. Shocked by the act of piercing his associate, the bronze man hesitated. Cal pushed the gray man toward his friend, giving him the second he needed to pull his service revolver.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve to ambush a cop!” Cal yelled. “You guys on drugs?”
The swordsman propped his companion against the wall and pulled out his blade. The gray man coughed dark ink. He held his side where blue liquid seeped into his shirt from the wound.
“I can get an ambulance here in minutes,” Cal said. “Put down your weapons.”
“Symian will be fine,” the swordsman man said, with no indication of haste. “His kind’s constitution is different than ours. Like stabbing putty.” It did not look that way to the gray man, who was in great pain, but declined to object. The swordsman kept his weapon between himself and Cal.
“Put the weapon down!” Cal repeated.
“Time has done you justice, my captain. If you had fought this well in Aandor, the city would have never fallen.”
Cal thought the bronze man mentioned something familiar, but he had trouble wrapping his mind around all these events. Guys with swords. Gray men with blue blood that clung to ceilings and contorted like they had bones of rubber-nothing in Cal’s training had ever prepared him for this. These attackers have climbed out of a Cirque Du Soleil sideshow. Maybe the butter cookies the old lady had given him were spiked. If this was the new breed of perp, the NYPD was in serious trouble.
“We should have waited for Hesz,” the gray man said, through a fit of coughs. “Captain MacDonnell is formidable.”
“I haven’t even made lieutenant,” Cal interjected. “You morons don’t even have the right cop.”
“That’s what you think,” the gray man said in a raspy, guttural voice.
Cal was confused. Being called “captain” had a familiar ring. Aandor? Things were making less sense by the minute. This mess was just a routine call over a trespasser. But these perps knew things Cal didn’t even realize he knew until they spoke them aloud.
Cal’s eyes went wide. Oh my God! My dreams. He stood there frozen with his gun trained on them, wondering if this was a dream. Was he really still in the cruiser, dozing, as Erin blasted Tito Puente from the stereo?
Cal never heard the person creep up behind him. A hulking figure in a black fedora slapped the gun out of his hand and grabbed him by the throat. The giant’s irises were blue as a Siberian husky’s. His cold breath numbed Cal’s face. Cal punched the man in the jaw and nearly broke his hand. The giant lifted the officer off the ground with one arm and crashed him against the wall. Cal slumped to the ground against the door frame.
“Dorn said to wait for me. You are lucky to be alive,” the giant said in a voice that rolled like thunder.
“Not at all,” said the gray man. “It never even occurred to him to kill us. Thirteen years have taken the edge off the good captain.”
Spots appeared before Cal. He concentrated on the new assailant’s deep baritone voice and tried not to black out. The man had to be close to eight feet. He had a jutting jaw and heavy brows. His lips were like two fat bloodworms copulating. His nose was broad, his bottom teeth protruded, and stuck out even when his mouth was closed. They were speaking in a foreign language he never studied, yet he understood every word. The giant called them Symian and Kraten. They called him Hesz. Cal committed the names to memory.
Kraten found Cal’s wallet and pulled a photo from it. “MacDonnell has a woman,” he said, showing the picture to his cohorts. “And a brat. Many will find that very intriguing back home,” he said with a grin.