Chapter Seventeen
The Museum of Natural History tour started with the Ancient Dinosaur Hall. An exhibit filled with the fossilized remains of extinct dinosaurs. Hothar and I really enjoyed looking at the life-sized skeletons. The kids not so much.
Thor whined, “Where dinosaurs?”
“Right here. These are their bones,” I replied.
Unimpressed, Haki grumbled, “No like.”
A flash flood of water suddenly cascaded down a three-story mountain filled with plants of Mesozoic era, replicas of horned dinosaurs, an armadillo-like critter and a weird looking crocodile.
Thor clapped his hands. “Do again. Do again.”
“I think it would be wise to take them to see the animatronic dinosaurs now,” Hothar said.
“I agree.”
“Birdie!” Thor cried and vanished from Hothar’s arms.
“Holy crap!” I looked around frantically. “Where’d he go?”
Hothar glanced down at his bracelet and groaned.
“What? Rodan soldiers? Legionnaires? Earth First?”
“No.” Hothar pointed to a soaring pterosaur with a twenty-four-foot wing span gliding from one side of the room to the other.
My heart began to pound in fear. Thor was sitting on its back and the pterosaur was a good thirty feet off the ground. “No! No! No! Bad baby.”
“Wheeee! Ride birdie,” Thor chortled.
“Me ride. Me ride.” Haki shot webbing at the pterosaur. Thwipth! Splat!
Before I could grab the baby Tabor, he had zipped up the strand of spider silk and was sitting on pterosaur’s wing. “We are so dead.”
Using his best mean warrior’s voice, Hothar commanded, “Teleport down here. Now!”
“No wanna.” Thor and Haki said in unison.
Parenthood sucked. I flashed Thor an image of the triceratops. “See, it looks like your stuffed toy, only bigger.”
“Where?” Thor surveyed the room.
Haki bounced up and down. “Me see. Me see.”
“There’s a T-Rex too. Come on down and we’ll take you to see them,” I promised.
Poof! Thor was gone.
“Oh, crap! Where is he now?”
“In there.” Hothar gestured to the display of animatronic dinosaurs in the next room.
“Haki come here,” I called.
Thwipth! Splat! A string of webbing hit the doorway. Wheeee! The little brat swung into the other room and smacked into an elderly woman’s forehead.
Haki clung to her head.
Granny’s screams of horror rose over the dinosaurs’ hoots, roars and bellows. “Spider! Get it off! Get it off! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Get it off! Help! It’s a big fucking spider! Someone please help me!”
“Dung duty is started to look pretty damn good,” I groused.
Hothar nodded. “Yes, and on a remote space station where no children are allowed.”
A young, skinny security guard darted into the room.
“Kill it! Kill it!” The woman demanded, smacking at her head with her purse.
Haki easily dodged her blows. “Why she make silly noise?”
“Because she’s afraid of spiders. Now get off her,” I ordered.
“Kay.” Haki skittered down the elderly woman’s back.
The guard tried to stomp on him.
With a pretty scary battle cry, Thor teleported in front of his friend and jabbed at the security guard’s legs with his sword. “No hurt Haki.”
“Go! I’ll circle around them.”
Hothar vanished and popped in behind the guard. I ran like my life depended on it. And it did. Talree would kill us if anything happened to Thor.
Haki spat web balls at granny and the security guard. Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! The force of the impact knocked them back into Hothar. They fell to the floor in a tangle of arms, legs and webbing.
“Get your hand off my breast, you little pervert,” the elderly woman shouted.
The security guard squeaked, “My balls! Your knee is squashing my balls.”
“Holy crap!” Before I could pull out Shrek’s pam spray, a jerk in a velociraptor costume jumped out at me. Grrraaawr! Grrraaawr! Grrraaawr!
My temper flared to life. “Get out of my way!”
Grrraaawr! Grrraaawr! Grrraaawr! The velociraptor blocked me repeatedly.
“You were warned.” I hurled the moron out of the way. To my astonishment, his costume caught on the T-Rex’s fanged lined mouth as it opened to roar. Huh? What were the odds of that happening? The actor shrieked as the mouth started to close. The dinosaur’s muffled roar blended with velociraptor’s grrraaawr.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a bunch of security guards and cops were heading our way. We were so screwed. I sprayed the hell out of Hothar, the struggling old woman and crying guard. I exhaled a long breath as the webbing melted away. “How do we explain this to the cops?”
Hothar jumped to his feet. “We don’t. We get the children and leave.”
“Works for me. Where are the little darlings?”
“Riding the triceratops. I will collect them,” Hothar said and vanished.
The security guard rolled around on the floor clutching his private parts.
I helped the shaken old woman to her feet. “If you have any cooking spray at home, it’ll clean off the rest of the spider silk.”
“Does that creature belong to you?” Her voice was full of rage.
It took everything I had not to laugh at the piece of webbing dangling from her nose. “No ma’am, he doesn’t.”
“You’re lying.” She turned to the guard who was still holding his man parts. “I want her arrested.”
The guard groaned, “For what?”
“Assault.”
“I didn’t assault you,” I retorted.
“Your pet spider did.”
I plastered a polite smile on my face when all I wanted to do was smack her a good one. “He’s a Tabor, not a spider and if he had bitten you, you would be dead.”
“Ah ha! He does belong to you,” she exclaimed.
“No. He doesn’t. He has a mother and father and a whole slew of siblings. If you have a problem, take it up with Central Command.”
“I most certainly will!” The elderly woman stormed off.
The guard’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. “Sorry ma’am, but I need a doctor.” He hobbled from the room.
I glanced around. Thankfully, the other security guards and cops were working on freeing the idiot in the velociraptor costume.
Hothar linked with me. “I have them.”
“Thank God.” Prickles shot up my back. “Incoming hostiles. Get the kids back to the base.”
“I will not leave without you,” Hothar countered.
“Go! I’m a weapon, remember? Our first duty is to protect the children.”
“Do not engage the enemy until I return,” Hothar instructed and teleported.
Easier said than done.
“Casey Jones! I know you’re here. This time there is no escape,” the Supreme One’s horror movie voice reverberated around the museum.
I took a quick peek. The Supreme One in all her storm trooper glory stood in the middle of the Ancient Dinosaur Hall. I flashed Hothar the image. “How in the hell did General Douglas escape?”
“I will ask,” Hothar replied.
The murdering harpy screeched, “You destroyed my life. Now I destroy yours.”
“Yada. Yada. Yada,” I mumbled under my breath.
The cops ran past me with their guns drawn.
Slipping behind a replica of an ancient palm tree, I noticed the Supreme One was posed dramatically between the tyrannosaurus and camarasaurus skeletons. Standing at attention behind her were Legionnaires and Earth First soldiers.
“Drop your weapons,” a cop shouted.
The Legionnaires went into their dance routine. “Waewae tama-nur-ra. Waewae tama-nur-ra. Waewae tama-nur-ra.”
“Drop your weapons,” the cop shouted again.
Yeah, like that was going to work.
The Legionnaires kept dancing.
The Earth First soldiers raised their weapons.
Summoning my telekinesis, I blasted the fossils and smiled as thousands of pounds of bone fell on top of the Supreme One and her minions.
“We appreciate your help, Siren Jones,” the cop said with a relieved grin.
“Oh, it was my pleasure. Let’s disarm these idiots, before they do something stupid.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The cops began confiscating weapons.
I scooped up a laser pistol and walked over to the Supreme One. A jagged bone protruded through her shoulder. “T-boned by a Jurassic cow. How fitting. Like my cousin Ethan likes to say: ‘Mess with the best, die like the rest’.”
“No matter how long it takes, I will kill you,” General Douglas rasped.
“Nah, the dead don’t present much of a challenge. Zarek promised Adan he could eat you. A fitting death for a traitor.”
The museum curator ran into the room, took one look at the jumble of bones and fainted.
That wasn’t good.
Immense power crashed through the museum as Zarek, Voss, Hothar and a shitload of warriors teleported in.
I smiled at them. “Relax, guys. I have the Supreme One in custody.”
Zarek’s gaze slowly surveyed the carnage and settled on the Supreme One buried beneath a mound of fossils. “This was not one of my better decisions. Hothar take your mate back to the base and try not to destroy it.”
“Yes, my lord,” Hothar scooped me up and teleported.