The Marshal of Magic - Big Trouble an urban fantasy excerpt

BIG TROUBLE - excerpt

"Elvis?"

"Yeah Marshal?"

I hooked a thumb through my belt and tried not to crap myself. It wasn't easy. I mean, I'd fought Trolls before. And won. Mostly.

But this.

This was something else.

"Did she just turn a Bigfoot into a Zombie?"

"Sasquatch."

"Isn't that what I said?"

"They prefer you call them Sasquatch. Bigfoot is demeaning."

"Ghost, I'm not arguing semantics during a magical battle," I warned him.

"We're not in a battle Marshal. It's just a line of Sasquatch zombies coming our way."

I took a deep breath. It was enough to keep the ghost of my former watcher in the moment. I didn't want him diving into the swiss cheese of his memories and getting lost in there while I might need him.

"Anyone done that before?" I tried to steer him back on course.

"Done what?"

Sigh.

"Turn a Bigfoot into a zombie?"

"They prefer you call them Sasquatch."

Second sigh. Then a third.

"Are you okay, Marshal? You're breathing kind of hard."

"I'm fine Elvis."

"It's okay if you're not. I just remembered something about the Sasquatch Zombies."

"That it would be easier to call them Saszom's? Quatchbies?"

"No. They're not the lumbering brand of zombies."

A roar shook the trees, picked up by a dozen more, then what sounded like hundreds. A panther screaming, a high pitched woman's yell that lanced through to the bone and turned whatever lump of bravery inside to a quivering mist of jelly.

"They're feral, Marshal," the ghost drifted up. "Feral fast."

And then they moved.

Lightning fast.

A grizzley bear can be nine to twelve feet tall and run toward you at thirty miles an hour.

A Bigfoot zombie can be as tall, and move a little faster than that.

"Sasquatch," Elvis corrected.

You're supposed to play dead with bear.

I thought that sounded like a stupid plan.

"Thanks for your help," I shot back over my shoulder as I ran between the trees. Elvis bobbed on the end of his tether behind me, slipping through the tree trunks I had to dodge.

Pounding footsteps sounded around me. Roars, grunts, zombie groans made all the more horrible by the slobbering slathering grunts that went with it.

I zigged left.

I zagged right.

I shot bolts of force over my shoulder. I called on the sprites, nymphs and whoever I could think of while the blood pounded in my ear and the growling gained on me.

I cast for undergrowth. I cast for rain. I cast for a meteor to rocket out of the sky and obliterate the monsters chasing me.

None of it worked because as fast as I could think, the spell's weren't complete.

And I felt the oppressive weight of counter spells on the forest.

Someone was blocking me.

Blocking all the magic in the woods, like a blanket over the area I was running in.

The Bigfeet were gaining.

"Sasquatch!" Elvis screamed.

"I know!" I screamed back.

Turns out, he was warning me.

Turns out, magic won't work under an oppression spell and wouldn't have helped anyway.

Because one of the twelve foot creatures stepped out from behind a tree, leaned forward and clotheslined me.

My face stopped.

My nose busted.

My feet kept going down the slight incline and I slammed on my back.

The starbursts in my eyes were lovely, beautiful sparkles of incandescent blues and purples as I tried to breath, the roaring around me closing in.

Hot fetid breath rolled over my face as a head came into focus.

"What big teeth you have," I gasped.

A wolf straddled my chest, six inch canines dripping slobber on my leather bomber.

"Get up you idiot," a two foot tall woman riding in a saddle on the wolf's back snapped.

The wolf bit my jacket and lifted me up.

"Trippy," I said.

"Get on," the little woman said.

She was dressed in furs and deerskin, holding a four foot spear with a razor iron tip.

"On what?"

I was still loopy.

The Sasquatch that took me out was on its stomach, a second wolf with a second little person riding it tearing into its spine with a crunching wet sound.

"Idiot," the other one grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the wolf.

I slipped a leg over its back and settled in behind the saddle. The creature was tall enough that my feet barely touched the ground, like riding a small horse.

"Hang on, dumb ass," she chucked the leather string around the wolf's neck and it took off through the trees.

I just thought the Sasquatch and bears were fast.

The wolf showed me I had no idea what I was talking about.

Thoughts?

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