Fernando stepped forward, hands raised in a gesture of surrender that unfortunately looked less like a peace offering and more like he was trying to catch an invisible beach ball.
"Mr. Krazynski, please," Fernando pleaded, his voice cracking against the acoustics of the alleyway. "This is a gross miscalculation. We are not enemies. The structural damage to the base was a byproduct of a Class-5 demonic manifestation, not malice. If we could just discuss this like reasonable—"
"Shut the fuck up!"
The command rippled through the stagnant air, a shriek that rattled the loose trash on the ground. Kraz stepped closer, boots crunching on broken glass, face twisted into a mask of wounded pride and pure rage.
"You don't get to lecture me on structural integrity, traitor," Kraz spat, leveling a shaking finger at Fernando. "You brought them into my house. You let outsiders see where I sleep. You embarrassed me in front of my crew."
"Nobody saw anything," Jude interjected, keeping his bow lowered but the string taut, eyes tracking the two lackeys flanking their boss. "Kraz, listen to me. There's something much worse than us hunting this neighborhood right now. If you start this fight, you're wasting energy you're going to need when he shows up."
Kraz laughed a shrill, high-pitched sound that bounced off the brick walls like a pinball.
"You think I'm scared of your little ghost story? I'm the Bug Emperor. I am the apex predator of the 215 area code." He snapped his fingers, a wet, decisive sound like a twig breaking in mud. "Kill them."
The standoff collapsed into violence without the courtesy of a bell.
"Gun!" Jude yelled.
Kevin, the one with the rash and the twitchy eyes, fumbled a sawed-off hunting rifle from his baggy cargo pants. He didn't bother aiming, just pointed the barrel in the general direction of Jude's chest and squeezed the trigger.
BANG.
The sound was a thunderclap in the narrow space, slamming against Jude's eardrums hard enough to make them ring.
Days of getting thrashed by Bob in damp alleyways overrode Jude's panic. He dropped, knees scraping against the grit of the pavement as he slid behind the rusted bulk of the dumpster. The bullet chipped the brick wall exactly where his head had been a microsecond before, showering his hair in red dust.
"Greta, take the boss! Fern, suppress the minions!" Jude commanded, rolling back to his feet and snapping an arrow onto the string.
"On it," Greta roared.
Greta launched. The Wyrmmaker materialized in her hands, trailing violet light as she charged straight down the center of the alley, ignoring the lackeys entirely to focus on Kraz's ridiculous fur jacket.
Fernando hesitated for a split second, looking at his former employer with a mix of guilt and terror, then gritted his teeth.
"I am sorry, sir."
He thrust his palms forward, but instead of the white-hot plasma that had melted the factory floor, he opted for a concussive heat wave; a wall of distorted air designed to knock Kraz off his feet without vaporizing him entirely.
"Oh no you don't, four-eyes!"
Gator stepped into the path. The man in the wrestling mask wasn't holding a pool noodle this time, he was wielding a stolen firefighter's nozzle hooked up to a massive backpack tank.
FWOOSH.
A high-pressure jet of water slammed into Fernando's heat wave. Physics took over with violent enthusiasm: the rapid cooling of superheated air created an instant explosion of steam, filling the center of the alley with a dense, blinding fog. The humidity spiked until breathing felt like drowning in a sauna.
"I cannot see!" Fernando coughed, waving his hands uselessly against the oppressive whiteout. "The humidity is interfering with my glasses!"
"Marco Polo, bitch!" Gator yelled, charging into the steam.
Jude ignored the chaos in the center, focusing on the immediate threat. Kevin was racking the slide on the rifle with clumsy, frantic hands. Ch-clack.
"Stop moving!" Kevin shrieked, aiming wildly at the dumpster. "Why won't you stand still?"
"Because you're trying to shoot me, dude!"
Jude drew the string of the Celestial Bow. Killing Kevin wasn't the play; the guy was an idiot, not a demon. Jude aimed low, exhaling to steady his hands, visualizing the path through the rusted gap in the dumpster.
He released.
The arrow of hard light curved, banking around the metal obstacle like a guided missile.
Twang. Thwack.
The arrow slammed into the barrel of the rifle just as Kevin pulled the trigger. The kinetic impact jerked the gun upward, sending the shot wide to blast a jagged hole in the second-story window of the auto-body shop. Glass rained down onto the asphalt like hail.
"My gun!" Kevin whined, dropping the weapon as the vibrations numbed his hands.
"Stay down!" Jude sprinted forward, closing the distance while Kevin fumbled for a backup weapon, a tube sock full of pennies.
Jude didn't bother with his blades. He swung the solid arch of the golden bow like a staff, sweeping Kevin's legs out from under him. The Vyper hit the ground hard, the penny-sock flying out of his hand and bursting open on impact, scattering loose change across the wet asphalt.
"Stay," Jude ordered, aiming a fresh arrow at Kevin's nose.
"Okay! Okay!" Kevin curled into a ball, covering his face with both arms. "I'm staying! I have low blood sugar anyway! I wasn't supposed to be here!"
In the center of the steam cloud, the main event was going poorly for the challenger.
Greta swung the Wyrmmaker with enough force to cleave a sedan in half, aiming for Kraz's shoulder, a strike designed to shatter a collarbone and end the conversation immediately. She expected a dodge, or maybe some sort of psychic blast.
She didn't expect him to just take it.
CLANG.
The sound wasn't flesh tearing, it was the ring of a sledgehammer hitting a tank. The shockwave traveled up the axe handle, vibrating Greta's bones all the way to her teeth and nearly tearing the weapon from her grip.
As the steam swirled away on the wind, it revealed Kraz standing his ground. His fur coat lay in tatters around his ankles, revealing something far worse underneath.
"Oh, that's disgusting," Greta breathed.
Kraz hadn't just put on armor. He had become armor.
His arms were encased in thick, overlapping plates of dark purple chitin that looked like the exoskeleton of a massive beetle. The substance was slick, wet, and pulsating slightly, smelling of vinegar and ozone. The plates extended up his neck, covering his jaw and forming a jagged, crown-like ridge over his forehead.
"You think an axe scares me?" Kraz's voice was distorted now, buzzing with a dual resonance like a wasp trapped in a jar. "I am evolution."
He backhanded her.
It was a collision with a biological wrecking ball. Greta didn't have time to block before the chitinous fist caught her in the chest.
"OOF—"
The air left her lungs instantly. She was lifted off her feet and thrown ten feet backward, crashing into the brick wall of the auto shop before sliding down in a heap, gasping and clutching her ribs.
"Greta!" Jude yelled, turning his head.
"Eyes on the prize, angel boy!"
Jude spun back just in time to see a spray of dark, needle-like projectiles flying at his face. Kraz had extended his other arm, the chitin plates on his forearm shifting and opening like vents. From the gaps, he fired three-inch barbs of hardened organic matter.
Jude brought the bow up, expanding the hard light into a makeshift shield.
Tik-tik-tik-tik.
The spikes slammed into the barrier, cracking the light. One slipped through, grazing Jude's cheek with a sting that was hot and immediate.
"He shoots bugs?" Jude muttered, wiping blood from his face. "What the hell is in the water in Kensington?"
"Bio-projectile generation!" Fernando yelled from somewhere in the mist. "It was in his P.I.T. assessment file! He creates calcified organic matter from his own body mass! It is disgusting but highly effective!"
"Fern, stop narrating and melt him!" Greta wheezed, using the axe to pull herself upright against the wall.
"I am trying!" Fernando screamed back. "But I am currently moist!"
Gator had Fernando pinned behind a pile of old tires, spraying him with the high-pressure hose every time the student tried to peek out.
"Get washed, nerd!" Gator cheered, clearly having the time of his life.
"This is undignified!" Fernando sputtered, wiping water from his fogged glasses. "I am being hosed like a misbehaving dog!"
Kraz ignored his minions, stalking toward Greta with jerky, twitching movements like a stop-motion monster. The purple armor clicked and chittered as he moved, leaking greenish fluid onto the pavement with every step.
"You broke my base," Kraz hissed, raising a spiked fist. "You broke my reputation. And now I'm going to break your spine."
Greta spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the pavement and grinned, crimson staining her teeth.
"You look like an eggplant with an STD."
Kraz roared a guttural, shrill screech, and lunged.
Greta rolled to the right, barely avoiding the punch that pulverized the brickwork where she'd been standing. She scrambled backward, putting distance between them while forcing air into her bruised lungs.
"Jude!" she yelled. "Plan B! He's tankier than he looks!"
"Working on it!"
Jude glared at Kevin, who was still cowering on the ground, methodically counting his scattered pennies like they might save his life.
"Don't move."
Jude turned his aim toward Kraz. Standard arrows were bouncing off that shell—he needed penetration. He twisted his grip on the bowstring, condensing the light into a spiraling drill-bit shape.
Piercing Shot.
He released. The arrow screamed through the air, spinning like a turbine, and slammed into the center of Kraz's back.
CRACK.
It didn't go through, but it shattered the outer layer of the chitin plate. Kraz stumbled forward, screeching in pain as green hemolymph oozed from the crack in his armor.
"GODDAMN IT!" Kraz screamed, spinning around. His eyes were entirely black now, voids where the whites should be. "YOU FUCKER!"
He pointed both arms at Jude, vents opening wide.
"Scatter shot!"
"Move!" Greta tackled Jude just as Kraz unleashed a hail of spikes. They clattered against the dumpster and embedded themselves inches deep into the brick and steel as the two hunters landed in a heap on the wet asphalt.
"He's strong as hell," Jude panted, untangling his limbs from Greta's. "Why is he living in a basement if he can do all this?"
"Glass cannon," Greta said, wincing as she touched her ribs. "Or glass tank. Whatever. He's tough, but he's unstable. Look at him."
Jude looked.
Kraz was panting heavily, the purple armor pulsating rapidly while steam rose from his skin. The biological cost of the transformation was catching up; he was overheating inside his own suit.
"He can't sustain the shell," Jude realized. "He's cooking himself from the inside." He turned toward the tires. "Fern! We need heat! Overload him!"
"I am pinned!" Fernando wailed. "The water pressure is significant!"
Jude exchanged a look with Greta.
"Cover me. I'm getting the hose."
"Don't die," Greta grunted. She grabbed the Wyrmmaker and charged Kraz again, screaming a war cry to draw his fire.
Jude sprinted toward the tires. Gator was laughing, spraying water blindly over the barricade with the joy of someone who had finally found his calling in life.
"Take a shower, dork!"
Jude didn't shoot. He slid on the wet pavement, coming in low under the stream of water, grabbing the fire hose with his left hand and Gator's mask with his right.
"That's enough of that."
He yanked the hose upward while sweeping Gator's leg, flipping the Vyper backward so the heavy tank on his back slammed into the ground with a metallic clang. Jude snatched the nozzle, pointed it away from Fernando, and shut the valve.
"Fern! You're clear! Cook the bug!"
Fernando scrambled to his feet, shivering violently as the weight of his waterlogged sweater dragged at his shoulders. His hair was plastered to his forehead, framing eyes that burned with sudden, indignant fury behind fogged lenses.
He looked at Kraz, who was currently trying to crush Greta's skull with a pincer-covered hand.
"I…" Fernando took a deep breath. Steam was already rising from his wet clothes. "I am not a dork."
He slammed his hands together.
CLAP.
He didn't throw a fireball or a beam. He simply expanded his thermal aura, projecting pure ambient heat directly into the center of the alley. The temperature spiked from fifty degrees to two hundred in a heartbeat, the puddles on the ground hissing and evaporating into nothing.
And Kraz began to scream.
The purple chitin armor wasn't designed for extreme heat—it was biological, reacting like a lobster thrown into a pot. The plates turned bright, angry red, boiling the human underneath.
"HOT! HOT! HOT!" Kraz shrieked, flailing his arms as the armor cracked and flaked off in chunks, revealing burned, raw skin beneath.
"Get him now!" Fernando yelled, his voice straining as he maintained the heat bubble.
Greta didn't hesitate.
She stepped in, planted her feet, and swung the Wyrmmaker with everything she had left, using the flat of the axe head rather than the blade.
WHAM.
She hit Kraz square in the chest. The Bug Emperor flew backward, his armor disintegrating into purple dust, and crashed into the pile of trash bags where Steve was already sleeping off his concussion.
Crump.
Silence fell over the alley.
Gator groaned on the ground next to his tank. Kevin was still covering his face and counting pennies. Kraz twitched in the trash, steaming gently.
Fernando released the heat and slumped against the tires, panting heavily.
"That… was sufficient."
Jude lowered his bow, chest heaving as he surveyed the carnage.
"Well," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "That's one way to kill a cockroach."
"I think I cracked a rib," Greta muttered, leaning on her axe for support. She looked down at Kraz's twitching form. "If he wakes up, I'm hitting him again."
Jude walked over to the trash pile.
Kraz was conscious, but barely; his eyes rolled back in his head as he mumbled through cracked, heat-blistered lips.
"My kingdom…" Kraz whimpered. "My beautiful carapace…"
Greta wasn't in the mood for a eulogy.
She reached down, grabbed the ruined lapels of what remained of his fur coat, and hauled him up until his toes dragged in the grime.
"Save the poetry," she snarled, shaking him hard enough to make his head wobble. "Where is he? Where is Caligo?"
Kraz's eyes darted around the alley, landing on the glowing edge of the Wyrmmaker, then Jude's drawn bow, then Fernando's disappointed, waterlogged face. The panic finally overrode the narcissism.
"I don't know," Kraz gibbered, his voice pitching up. "I don't know who the fuck you're talking about."
"I'm going to gut you like a fish if you don't start talking," Greta threatened, raising a fist that still glimmered with violet light.
"No!" Kraz shrieked, squeezing his eyes shut. "Get back! Personal space!"
His chest heaved. Then it cracked.
There was no magical buildup, no glowing aura. Just a sickening, wet tearing sound as four jagged purple limbs exploded outward from his sternum. They were calcified, skeletal spikes, thick as tree branches and dripping with green fluid.
"Whoa!" Jude shielded his face.
The limbs slammed into the trio with the force of a battering ram, launching them backward. Jude hit the dumpster with a grunt. Greta skidded across the wet pavement. Fernando toppled over the tire pile with an undignified squeak.
Kraz didn't press the attack.
He flipped over.
The new limbs acted like hydraulic pistons, lifting his body off the ground. He looked like a grotesque, human-torsoed spider made of bone and failed ambition.
"Tactical withdrawal!" Kraz screamed, his voice warbling as he scuttled sideways up the alley wall. "The Emperor chooses his battles! This is a strategic pivot!"
He skittered over the unconscious form of Gator, snagging the large man by his belt with a lower claw. As he passed Kevin, he scooped the penny-counter up by the back of his cargo shorts.
"We're leaving!" Kraz announced, looking upside down from the wall, face red and sweating. "But do not think this is defeat! This is mercy! I am sparing you!"
"You're running away!" Greta yelled, scrambling to her feet and grabbing a piece of loose brick. She hurled it at him, but Kraz was already rounding the corner of the roof, his "legs" clattering against the masonry.
"I am flanking you from a distance!" Kraz's voice faded as he disappeared over the skyline. "You have made a powerful enemy today! The Vypers strike when you least expect—ow, watch the leg, Kevin!"
Silence rushed back into the alley, heavy and smelling of ozone and wet trash.
Jude rubbed his lower back, staring at the roofline where the man-spider had vanished.
"Okay," he exhaled, checking his teeth with his tongue to make sure none were loose. "What the fuck was that?"
Fernando pushed himself up from behind the tires, adjusting his glasses, which were now hanging off one ear. He looked profoundly embarrassed.
"That was the Emergency Evasion Protocol," Fernando explained quietly. "He calls it the 'Spider-Boy Maneuver.' I told him it was copyright infringement. He did not care."
"That was your boss?" Greta asked, wiping slime off her jacket. "That guy? The one who just turned into a table and ran away?"
"He has layers," Fernando sighed, wringing out his sleeve. "He is a very complicated individual."
"He's a psycho," Greta corrected. "And why is he even hunting us? We didn't do anything to him except exist in his general vicinity."
Jude walked over to where Kraz had been lying. The trash bags were covered in purple dust from the disintegrated armor. He crouched down, touching the residue. It was cold and slightly sticky.
"It doesn't make sense," Jude said slowly. "He claimed he was here because we embarrassed him. But Kraz is an ego-maniac. He wouldn't risk his life fighting three people who almost killed a demon lord just for clout."
"He looked pretty cocky to me," Greta muttered, holstering her axe.
"Before the legs came out. When I asked about Caligo." Jude stood up, brushing the dust off his fingers. "He was shaking, Greta. He said he didn't know anything about him, but I don't buy it."
Jude looked at Fernando. "Fern, be honest. Would Kraz ever take orders from someone else? Even a demon?"
Fernando frowned, considering the question seriously.
"Kraz? Taking orders?" He shook his head. "It is highly unlikely. His psychological profile is ninety percent narcissism. He fired our last logistics coordinator for suggesting he wear a helmet during missions. He believes he is the main character of reality itself. Subservience is not in his vocabulary."
"Exactly," Jude said. "So if he is taking orders, he's being forced. Or controlled."
"You think Caligo is puppeting him?" Greta laughed, a harsh bark of sound. "Please. Caligo rips people apart for fun. He doesn't hire temp workers. If Kraz annoyed him, Caligo would've just turned him into a smear on the pavement."
"The logic is sound," Fernando agreed reluctantly. "Caligo is an apex predator. Kraz is… an appetizer. Why would a demon lord use a proxy when he could simply kill us himself?"
"Because he's playing with us," Jude insisted, though doubt was creeping into his voice. "Testing us. Wearing us down before the main event."
"Or," Greta countered, "Kraz is just a dickhead who saw a chance to be relevant again and took it. Let's not overthink this. The cockroach is gone. The demon is gone. We're standing in an alley that smells like a swamp."
She was right. They'd hit a dead end. Kraz was a distraction, a weird side-quest that had burned their energy and yielded zero intel on the actual threat.
"We're wasting daylight," Greta said, checking her phone. "If Caligo isn't here, he could be anywhere in the city. Standing around isn't going to find him."
"We should split up," Jude suggested, much as he hated the idea. "Cover more ground. I'll take West Philly. Greta, you sweep South. Fern, go dry off and monitor the police scanners. If anyone spots a guy with no arms or a giant bug-man, we converge."
"Dividing our forces is statistically dangerous," Fernando worried.
"So is standing here waiting for Kraz to come back with reinforcements," Greta replied. "I'm in. Call if you see anything weird. Well, weirder than usual."
They drifted apart, the adrenaline fading into the dull ache of bruises and fatigue.
Greta headed toward the subway, favoring her left side. Fernando started walking toward the bus stop, leaving a trail of water droplets behind him. Jude lingered for a moment, staring at the purple dust on the ground.
He was scared, Jude thought. Kraz was scared of something worse than us.
But what?
QUAKER UNIVERSITY — JUDE'S DORM ROOM7:47 PM
The room was quiet.
The sun had gone down hours ago, leaving the small, cramped space bathed in the orange glow of the streetlights outside. It was messy in the way college rooms always were; clothes piled on the chair, textbooks scattered across the floor, an empty pizza box on the unmade bed.
On the cheap particle-board desk, sitting next to a stack of unread Economics notes, was the black obsidian cube that Seraphile had given Jude.
He had left it behind. In the rush to get to Natalia's apartment, and then the frantic trip to North Philly, it had been forgotten, dismissed as a paperweight that didn't work.
It sat there in the silence, dark and inert.
Then a light pulsed in its center.
Beep.
Soft at first. A faint, rhythmic green glow.
Beep.
The pulse quickened. The light shifted from green to amber.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The cube vibrated against the wood of the desk, slowly inching toward the edge. The light turned a deep, angry red.
Something was close.
Something was here.