Demon Hunters: Last Class

Episode 42: Lyric and Toni- Somnolent

~~Toni~~

My chest burned as I sucked down lungfuls of Purell's foul tie-dye cloud. Through watery eyes, I felt around blindly. Gasping, I prayed I didn't touch something slimy and bristling with spikes. I needed to find my burnt girl and our doll and Larry, not one of those inkmen. Those Manon holograms had said horrible things before they'd vanished.

You don't deserve friends or a family. You don't deserve to be happy. You're a poor, insignificant and unimportant piece of trash.

Maybe I didn't deserve my friends, but they were mine and they were stuck with me. I needed to find them.

My hand touched a slim arm and I ducked as Di tried to hit me with a spinning backhand.

"It's me!" I said, dodging a snap kick.

"Sorry," she said with unsettling calm. "The paint is in my eyes, I can't see more than a small circle."

"Di! Toni!" It was Lyric.

By the time we found her, the paint cloud had thinned to the point we could see as if through a silk curtain. More than a dozen puddles of tar burned, and patches of the woods were on fire. Purell was gone, so was her psychotic minion and her evil holograms. They'd left behind the dead boys and Dean Reed. Blair and Mario had vanished when the fighting started.

"Good for them," I whispered.

"What was that?" Di asked, staring at the breach in the wall.

"Nothing... How bad is that big old crack."

"Black and a dozen other mages before him, placed enchantments on the stones and the mortar that protected the school and its students. That hole is in the physical masonry, but it's also in the magic."

She must have recognized the look of confusion on my face because she shook her head.

"It's really bad. Larry can explain it better."

"Where is he anyway?" I didn't see his body among the dead. I wouldn't have been able to bear it if I saw that goofy nerd in the dirt.

"The shadows took him," Lyric said.

She knelt over Reed's body. The woman's eyes stared off at nothing, her throat crushed. Staring down at her, I saw McClintock in that dark place. He'd been half eaten by holy water, but equally as dead. I shook my head to get rid of the image.

"Larry!" I shouted. The effort hurt my throat, but I called for him again. "Larry Plopper, come back!" I walked over to where I'd last seen him. "Come back, damn you."

"We have to get back and warn them that the protective magic has been broken."

Di had already started a spell circle and when she finished began to speak magic words. She called up a wall of stone and closed the hole.

"That won't hold, but it will slow them down. Let's go."

"What about Larry?" I asked.

"If this is like the previous incident, there's no way of knowing where he is... or how long he'll be there. We have to think about the rest of the school."

I knew she was right, but I didn't want her to be.

"Can we take them back with us?" Lyric asked, her voice cracking. "Reed knew my dad..."

"Damn it, Larry."

I walked over and scooped up Reed's body. She felt light as if, with the absence of all the angry looks and sharp responses, her shell was emptied. There was nothing left of what animated her body inside of the husk. The Dean was dead, McClintock was dead, those hunters, the boys from Bastard Cohort, those smoking puddles of tar. All dead. Even Larry might be dead.