Hellforged

That stiff hair—I had an idea. “Do you have any hairspray with you?”



She actually reached up a hand to check her hairstyle.



“No, for me. I need hairspray.” It sprayed, it was sticky. It might work like Glitch Gone. Or it might not. But it was the only idea I had. “It could fix the plane.”



She looked at me the way people look at a scary-crazy seatmate, but just then the plane dropped with another stomach-lurching jolt. “My purse! It’s in my purse.” She scrabbled around under the seat in front of her. “Oh, no! It spilled.”



Pens and lipsticks rolled around our feet, along with gum, a cell phone, a makeup compact, keys—no hairspray. I bent over to get another look and whacked heads with her. I couldn’t see the hairspray anywhere.



“What are you looking for?” Kane asked.



“Hairspray. I think I can use it to draw the Glitch out of the instrument panel.”



He went up the aisle on his hands and knees, peering under seats. A woman screamed when he lunged toward her. “Got it!”



He tossed the bottle back to me. I grabbed it from the air and shoved it into the front pocket of my jeans. Then I unclipped my seatbelt and started up the aisle.



It was like trying to walk with one foot on each side of the fault line during an earthquake. Kane had the right idea; I dropped to all fours. I met him a few feet up the aisle. “Vicky,” he said, looking into my eyes. “If you can’t—”



“No. No good-byes. I’ll stop it.” I wasn’t sure how, armed with nothing more than three ounces of hairspray, but I was not going to let Pryce kill all these people. I brushed my lips against Kane’s and crawled past him.



It was rough going. The plane would dive, and I’d slide or tumble or somersault forward, banging into seats, legs, junk that had fallen into the aisle. Then it’d rock violently the other way, making moving forward like climbing a cliff. I grabbed the seat legs and pulled myself forward with my arms.



Somehow, I made it to the front of the plane. A flight attendant was strapped into a seat by the cockpit door. She clutched the sides of her head; panic contorted her features.



“Get me into the cockpit,” I said.



“You can’t go in there. Federal regulations prohibit—” The plane lurched, and her scream cut off her words. I slid forward, whacking my head on the cockpit door with a bang. I started banging with my fists, too. “Let me in! I can stop the Glitch!”



The door remained closed.



“Stop it,” the flight attendant hissed. “They’re trying to keep this plane in the air.”



“So am I.” I climbed to my knees. I closed my eyes and thought of strength—eight-hundred-pound gorillas, elephants, the Incredible Hulk. Not enough concentration to shift, but enough to bulk up my arm. Strength surged into me. I made a fist and hit the door, right above the lock. The door buckled. I drew back and hit it again, and then once more. The lock gave way. I yanked the door open.



Two pilots sat at an instrument panel that shot sparks like Fourth of July fireworks. The pilot on the left wrestled with the controls. The one on the right aimed a gun at me. Or tried to—the way the plane jumped around, it was impossible to keep steady. “Get out!” he yelled.



“I can help!” I yelled back, grabbing the door frame to keep from sliding away as the plane bucked upward. “A Glitch is a demon. I kill demons!”



His eyes narrowed, and I thought he was going to shoot. I got ready to duck in case by some fluke he got lucky. Instead, he lowered the gun. “It’s a … demon?”



“A Glitch. They hate technology.” Understatement of the year.



He must have decided that anything was worth trying, because he motioned me in. I crawled into the cockpit and braced myself against the wall. The view outside the windshield was dizzying—sea, sky, sea, sky—as the plane seesawed. I focused on the instrument panel. A fountain of sparks shot from its center, showing the Glitch’s location. I dug the hairspray from my pocket and leaned forward.



“Is that hairspray?” The copilot clearly thought he’d let a lunatic into the cockpit.



“This? Um, no,” I lied. “It’s a magical Glitch-fighting elixir. I put it in a hairspray bottle to get it through security. You never know when a Glitch might strike.”



Aiming at the sparks, I pumped a dozen quick squirts at the instrument panel, praying it would work.



I held my breath. Nothing changed.



Then a blast of sparks erupted from the instrument panel, and the plane took a nose dive.



“Shit!” shouted the pilot. “I can’t hold it!” We screamed straight toward the ocean. The plane shuddered like it was breaking apart.



With a loud pop and a stink of ozone, grapes, and rotten fish, the Glitch sprang from the instrument panel. It landed in the lap of the copilot, who screamed and shook as a couple thousand Glitch-volts zapped him. The demon slashed the man’s face with its claws and ran from cockpit. I nailed it with more hairspray as it leapt over me. It howled with rage and took off down the aisle.



The pilot pulled the plane out of its dive. Slowly, groaning, the plane began to climb.



I ran after the Glitch.



The hairspray had forced the Glitch to materialize in daylight, and it wasn’t happy about that. It leapt around the cabin, landing on seatbacks, on the floor, on people’s heads, trying to avoid the light that streamed in through the windows. Its skin smoked where sunlight touched it, giving off an odor of charred Glitch-flesh.



A woman screamed when the Glitch landed on the back of her seat and grabbed her head with its claws. Electricity sizzled over her skin.



“Open your shade!” I yelled. “It can’t take sunlight!”



Shades flew up along both sides of the plane. The Glitch jumped toward the center row, clawing at people’s ankles as it scrabbled under a seat.



“Over here!” a man called. “What the hell is that thing?”



“The Glitch that was making the plane fall—don’t let it spit at you! And watch out for its claws.” I ran to him, kicking debris out of my way. I had to make sure it didn’t re-infest the controls.



I dived to the floor by the row of seats where the Glitch was hiding—and flinched away as a wad of spit sailed out. But not fast enough. The spit landed in my hair and stung my scalp. Damn. I hate getting Glitch spit in my hair. The Glitch snapped and swiped its claws at me, but its movements were restricted by the limited space under the seats. Passengers had barricaded it in with bags and coats and laptops and anything else within reach. Its only way out was the narrow opening I was watching. The demon convulsed, hawking up another wad of spit.



This Glitch wasn’t trying to escape; it was guarding its hiding place. I squirted more hairspray at it and considered. If the Glitch stayed trapped, it couldn’t jump back into the stabilization system. The hairspray seemed to work better than that damn expensive Glitch Gone; I’d never seen a Glitch stay in physical form for so long. The extreme stickiness that did its thing for Ms. Iron Hair’s helmet head kept the Glitch from shifting into its energy form.



Another wad of spit flew out. It missed, and I nailed the Glitch with more squirts. The trouble was, I didn’t know how long the hairspray’s effect would last. And even under the seats, there were plenty of places where the Glitch could go if it switched to its energy form—laptops, cell phones, all the electronic gadgets people carry with them on long flights. Even the aircraft’s entertainment system. It was too risky. We were still over the ocean. We had to fly far enough to land somewhere, and there was no way to stay in the air safely with a Glitch on the plane.



I’d have given anything for a simple bronze knife. A fast stick and it’d be over. I squirted the Glitch, then shook the bottle. The hairspray was getting low. As I rose to my knees, another wad of smelly spit shot past me, splatting against the arm of a seat a couple of rows back.



“Does anyone have anything that’s bronze?” I called. “A pin? Bracelet? Cuff links?”



People stared at me. I probably looked crazy—although I was getting used to that, especially with a sticky purple lump of Glitch spit in my hair.



“Bronze kills demons. It’ll get rid of this Glitch so it can’t crash the plane.”



A buzz went up and down the rows of seats as people asked their neighbors for bronze. I dropped to the floor again to keep an eye on the Glitch and gave it another spritz.



“Here,” said the man who’d pointed out the Glitch. “Will any of this work?”



I kneeled up and he poured a pile of costume jewelry into my hands. Bronze obviously wasn’t on this season’s list of must-have fashion accessories. People had donated gold, gold-plated stuff, even silver, but not a single piece was bronze.



I dropped back down and recoiled as a claw struck, missing my face by a quarter inch. I pressed the pump on the spray bottle. Nothing came out. I unscrewed the top and flung what little was left onto the Glitch. I was out of time. Evening sunlight slanted through the windows, but it wouldn’t for much longer.



I pulled off my leather jacket and wrapped it around my hand to get some insulation against the Glitch’s electrical field. I put my face within striking range. A claw swiped at me. Moving fast, I grabbed the demon’s hand and pulled.



The Glitch howled with rage and lobbed wads of spit at me. The man in the seat next to me reached down to help and got a nasty shock before I could warn him away. Electricity sizzled through the jacket and buzzed up my arm. The leather smoked. The Glitch grabbed at the seat legs with its free hand, but I was stronger. I kept pulling. The Glitch let go and launched itself at me, attacking with claws and teeth. Slashes of electrifying pain tore through my face and arms, but I hung on. The man saw what I was doing and called for a leather jacket. Someone tossed him one. He wrapped it around both hands and hugged the Glitch. A third person joined us.



“Help me get it in the sunlight,” I said, and we made our way down the aisle with the struggling, screeching Glitch to a patch of sun a little longer than the demon’s body. We lowered it to the floor, smack in the middle of the light patch, and held it there. It fought and squirmed and howled and spit, but we kept it pinned.