Chapter 14

Wayne peered at the clock, confused. It was a cuckoo clock, kitschy but otherwise unremarkable by the looks of it, way back in a corner of the store and high up by the ceiling. The little bird was popping out of the doors and making its noise as it had been for the past five minutes. It didn’t even make sense that it would chime now, it wasn’t even the top of the hour.

When it first started going off it was just one little “cuckoo!” and Wayne barely heard it. But then it went off again a minute later and then twice shortly after that. Now it was going constantly, even speeding up. Wayne was worried that the clock’s mechanism was going to break itself.

The more he thought about it, the more Wayne was sure that he’d never heard the cuckoo clock ever going off before. Maybe Benedict had tried to fix it with only modest success. The non-stop cuckooing was driving him crazy though so Wayne was looking for a way to put a stop to it. He preferred not to get destructive, but it could come to that.

Wayne turned around to find Ben and ask him about it and started as he saw that Ben was right behind him. He was about to open his mouth when he saw the look on Ben’s face. His eyes had gone wide and his little glasses threatened to pop off his nose. His lips were actually trembling.

“Ben ... is everything all right,” Wayne asked.

Benedict’s eyes seemed to pull back into focus and settled on Wayne. He cleared his throat.

“No, my dear boy. You must get away as fast as you can.”

“Are you sure--”

Benedict interrupted. “Away! Now!”

Wayne didn’t need to be told three times.

Cameron shivered in the cool storeroom air. Now a naked human and cowering in a corner, Cameron wouldn’t stand out too much from the crowd. After waiting at least fifteen minutes the alarm had stopped and the sounds of panic had died away. It was getting a little too quiet. Did he hear a radio crackle out front? Cameron approached the door on his hands and knees.

“Oh my god there’s a MONSTER IN THERE!” he yelled, pushing the door open and staying out of sight. As long as they didn’t shoot right away he should be all right. It was eerily quiet in the main corridor. No sounds came from the rest of the mall.

A police bullhorn squawked. “Please evacuate the store immediately, we’re covering all the exits.”

Cameron grabbed some sweatpants and a shirt off a rack, threw them on, and adopted an appropriately panicked expression. He ran to the front of the store to find three officers wielding handguns in an arc around the store entrance with piss-your-pants frightened expressions on their faces. Behind them, running down the hall to join them, were several more officers with the words “Animal Control” emblazoned on their shirts. There were no other people around. The crowd had apparently all been evacuated.

The officer with the bullhorn lowered the mic and motioned for him to get out of the store.

“Just get out of here,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “We’ll take care of it. There’s a medic station outside if you’re injured.”

Cameron hoped that the injury station was just a precaution. He hadn’t caused any injuries, right? He ran out of the store and down the hall, leaving the police to watch the store front. He wondered how long they would stay there until they realized the creature was gone.

Outside was pandemonium. Everyone was running this way and that, trying to get to their cars. The blare of car horns filled the air as cars jammed the narrow lanes. Cameron smelled smoke and saw to his left that two cars trying to leave had gotten in an accident. One of the vehicles, a minivan, was on fire. A mom and her two kids stood on the curb nearby, watching their car burn with a sort of helpless calm.

An ambulance was parked nearby and a tarp had been strung between it and a small tree. That was the medic station, Cameron guessed.

There were only a few police officers running around, apparently trying to block of roads and set up a perimeter of some sort. Under the sound of the car horns, Cameron could make out the sounds of more sirens on the way.

Cameron took one last glance around but it was clear there’d be no way to find either Lana, or her men, or Raven. He found his bike unharmed and unlocked it. He maneuvered through the jam of cars easily and in seconds he was back on the road, passing a convoy of ambulances, police cars, and even a SWAT vehicle.

Nearing town he heard more sirens, but was surprised when a fire truck passed him going the same way. The truck took the next right, the same way he was going. Cameron rounded the corner and looked up. A column of smoke was filling the sky. It billowed and pulsed, tinged with red like a beating heart. At the base of the column was the building that housed Old Ben’s Magick Within Reach.

(End Act 3)