Welcome to October!! Our flash fiction picture is pretty weird, and who handles weird? Well Shay and Josie do. Not well, but they’re all we have. Enjoy!

Shay ran through the pouring rain chasing . . . shit she wasn’t sure what she was chasing. She’s seen its handiwork or, at least, what it left behind. Body parts and blood, lots and lots of blood. Enough blood that Shay was fairly certain they were missing bodies. Josie had almost thrown up when Shay had told her that. Then had gritted her teeth, and got to work trying to track the thing. At least, Shay hoped it was only one. Yeah, best not to tell Josie there might be more. A whole bunch more.

A beeping went off in her ear and she touched the device. “Yeah, what do you have for me?”

“Depending on how you look at it,” Josie said, “you’re on the right track. In fact, you should be coming up to the . . . whatever, soon. Oh, and the agency sent in a clean up team. Not that there was much to clean up.”

“Thanks,” Shay said and signed off. Okay, so she was on the things trail. Great. Yeah, but what to do once she caught it? She didn’t have a plan for that yet. Her one big plan, the summoning spell had been a spectacular failure of epic proportions. She’d lit up the sky and exhausted herself for a big old zero. Unless what or who she was summoning didn’t exist anymore. That was a possibility. The spell was old. Really old.

Shay slid to a halt as she peered through the driving rain at the figure standing at the mouth of a well-lit alley. Without thought, Shay took a step back. She wasn’t sure why, but knew the person, thing, whatever was wrong. Like down in the pit, crawl up from the ooze wrong. It didn’t do anything. In fact, if she didn’t know better she’d assume it was a human being, but she knew it wasn’t. From its spindly legs to the weirdly proportioned body it wasn’t even close to human.

Slowly, it rotated its head until it was staring straight at Shay. The it smiled. And kept smiling until the face almost split in two displaying rows of razor fangs.

Shay spread her arms wide and willed magic into her hands. Blue flame licked from her finger tips and she hoped like hell she had enough juice to cause it some kind of harm. If not, she knew she was dead.

Spinning its body, the thing charged at her. Shay shoved blue flame toward the thing and it staggered, but didn’t stop. Fuck. She pushed more power at it and the thing stumbled back, growling and snapping like an angry dog. Shay’s body began to shake and her power reserves began to wane.

“Die, motherfucker,” Shay screamed at it as her power abruptly died. Now she was the one who stumbled back, exhausted down to her bones.

The thing rolled slowly to its knees and began to rise as Shay prepared to run. Not the best plan, but the only one she had the brain power to come up with.

As it forced itself to its feet, an arrow struck it in the face. Then another and another. They were flying in faster than Shay could keep track of, but by the time the monster had gone down it was covered in bolts.

A black form separated itself from the darkness and approached her. “Are you well, lady?”

The voice was deep, so deep, and vibrated through her body. He wasn’t speaking any language she knew, but Shay could understand him. Yep, didn’t have enough energy to figure that out.

“I’m . . . not, I’m not,” Shay said, shaking her head to clear her brain. “I’m flaming out.”

He placed an arm around her and she realized just how big he was. Damn he was big. Then she was flying. Flying? Really?

“I’m carrying you,” the deep voice rumbled against her ear. “We need to get you someplace safe.”

Shay wanted to tell him to call her team. Call Josie, but before she could do anything she was out.

Now go check out what my friend Bronwyn did with the pic.