Free Successors by Felicia Jedlicka Page B

been a call to arms for her wayward enemies.
    They turned to face her. Six little triangular green faces, each more angry than the next. They hissed, chittered, and screeched before leaping up and over the counters. All but one scattered, taking so little of their abominable smell with them.
    The remaining critter sat on the counter by the stove hissing at her. Denying her claim to the kitchen and the food therein contained.
    “You want this, you little bastard?” She flaunted the chips at him. “Come get it!” She moved sideways and tossed the two bags out the open front door.
    The goblin screamed in displeasure, but didn't move from his perch. Cori dusted off her hands and moved back into her newly established territory.
    “Don't like that?” She popped open the fridge and found its contents similarly diminished. She pulled out the jelly. “I bet you didn't even know what was in here.” She opened the jar, courtesy of her opposable thumb, and waved the jelly around. The creature leaned forward and sniffed the air. 
    “You want that? Go get it.” She tossed it out the front door. She came back to the kitchen and searched the cupboards. “Wait til I find the peanut butter. That is going to blow your mind.”
    She found the peanut butter, safely ensconced in a critter proof jar. She pulled it out and turned to exhibit it, but she had to duck to avoid another object being thrown at her. It hit the wood cabinet above her with a solid thwack and stuck.
    Cori looked up at the potential headache and found an eight inch chef's knife embedded in the wood, inches from her skull. She looked back at the goblin hopping up and down gleefully on the island. An entire wood block of knives was only inches from his clawed fingertips.
    She screeched and ducked again, avoiding the continued onslaught of his cutlery ammunition. After narrowly escaping the loss of an ear, she surrendered the front line, and retreated to safer ground.
    He had won the battle, but not the war.
     
     
     
    14
    Even before the first official section, the hot humid air bathed them with the smell of a cattle yard. As they continued on, the smell was joined by sporadic brays, cackles, and shrills that echoed through the high ceilings.
    “This is our animal sanctuary,” Danato said loudly over the animal outcries. “These creatures are either animal mixes or humanoid-to-animal mixes. Either way, the only way to maintain them is through zoological standards. We take as much care feeding and tending to these creatures as a zookeeper would a cage full of lions, maybe more.”
    Ethan had thought the creatures in the basement were strange, but the animals here looked like lab experiments gone wrong. From folklore to mythology, this place was definitely the sum total of Dr. Moreau’s wet dreams and then some.
    After they moved through a dizzying arrangement of metal and glass enclosures, they slipped through an air lock. On the other side, the air became notably more humid. The jungle hullabaloo was replaced by the deafening hum of water pumps. The manure smell was a fragrant memory compared to the dead fish smell that lingered in this section. Ethan raised his hand to his nose, defending against the upheaval of his breakfast.
    “These are obviously our water-bound serpents and sprites,” Danato said. “There are a few mermaids and mermen in this area. They won’t come out while I’m here. They are tricksters, though, so don’t make any assumptions when you’re in here. I would much prefer to have them on the fourth floor, but we don’t want to move the water system. Anyway, mermaids are a generalized term for us as well. The type you are familiar with are seductive sprites, while the type I am familiar with… well, let’s just go back to the part where I said all the inmates here are human killers.”
    They walked between cylinder aquariums that reached ten feet tall, and up to fifteen feet in diameter. He saw several mermaids, or sprites as Danato