No Hero by Jonathan Wood

already out the door, and then Clyde is too, his tweed jacket flapping behind him, and I’m not sure that Max, in his unconscious state, would really appreciate the observation. So I make my wheezing way to my feet, and stagger after them. The spot where I was stabbed burns.
    “What do you mean he’s running?” comes Tabitha’s voice in answer to some observation I don’t hear.
    I can see Clyde a dozen yards away, hand still to his earplug. Kayla is more like a hundred. She’s moving at a terrifying pace. People on the streets leap left and right. She’s heading to a parked car. Some clapped-out old thing, rust showing through the paint. The hood has been popped.
    “OK, databases gave me a hit,” Tabitha barks into my ear as I stagger forward. “Tattoo design. Mazalian spiral. South American origin. Originated circa fourteen hundred BC.”
    Kayla jumps. It’s twenty yards or more to the car. She arcs through the air. There’s a grace to her. Her arm reaches back almost lazily. Except it’s as if everything has been put on fast forward, everything moved up so fast my eye can barely follow it.
    “Mostly used for rejuvenation spells. Crop stuff.” Tabitha drones on.
    I catch up to Clyde, wheezing, bent over. He’s standing still now. No need to catch up. Game over.
    “Also altered consciousness. Sex rites. Fertility.”
    The sword sweeps through the steel of the car’s hood. It rips and splays, falls away. The bare-chested student is standing there. He staggers backwards. He’s holding the car battery.
    “And transmogrification. Of all things.”
    “Oh bugger,” Clyde groans. Then he breaks into a run.
    “Trans what?” I say. “Why are we running?”
    “Battery!” Clyde is yelling. “He’s got a car battery!”
    “Move it!” Tabitha’s yell is an electronic screech in my ear.
    Transmogrifi-what?
    I can see Kayla raising her arms. The sword doesn’t come up, though. She’s not going to strike. It’s a defensive gesture. She’s protecting her face.
    There’s a magnesium-white flare, bright and brilliant, like the birth of a star in the street before me. My vision goes white, then red, then black. I stumble back, grabbing at my eyes. And Jesus does that hurt.
    Slowly the street comes back to me, slowly it resolves. Black, to red, to blinding white. Then blurs of shape. Focus evolving out of chaos. Into chaos. People about me are down on their hands and knees, pawing about blindly. Screaming. Cursing. I rub my eyes. The car. The detached hood. A shadow shape still standing on the car’s roof. Kayla. I see Kayla. And the student, where’s...?
    Holy shit.
    There’s something where the student was. Something massive. Something growing. It’s human in shape, I’ll give it that. Squat powerful legs, broad as my chest, thickening at the thigh, ropes of muscle bursting through the jeans he was wearing. Above the waist—an inverted pyramid of flesh, each abdominal muscle a chopping board of flesh, the pectorals as wide as the hood of the car Kayla just cut away, but thicker, vault door thick. And the arms... They grow longer, knuckles strike the ground. Forearms thicker than the thighs. Biceps thicker still. Shoulder muscles like a cow’s carcass dragged over the joint. He’s colossal, ten feet tall and still going. Twelve foot now.
    And perched on the massive crossbar that is his shoulders is a curiously small head. Not the student’s head anymore. A second face.
    His hair grows as I watch, is longer, blonder now. The cheekbones lift, the chin thins, the eyes grow larger. It’s a girl’s face, a child’s face, pretty, actually, despite the monstrosity beneath. And then it twists, contorts, one side of the skull crumples, caves in, its tongue lolls out and it sneers. It roars. It bellows, from its crushed head, and the street vibrates with the sound.
    If ever there was a moment to bail, then this is it. Running and screaming are pretty much the only rational things left to do.
    So I start