Polterheist(31)

What happened next was confusing and very quick, though it all seemed to occur in slow motion at the time.

The nice man turned away from the stage, so that his back was to me and the bear, and waved to someone in the distance-his spouse, I assumed. At that moment, Karaoke Bear broke out of his mechanical pattern and came to horrible, menacing life. The bear suddenly crouched down, sprouted claws, and grew fangs.

The children who were gathered near the platform saw the transformation and started rumbling in frightened confusion. Karaoke Bear's normally benign expression was a ferocious snarl, and his plastic brown eyes were now red and glowing.

I froze with startled fear and dropped my microphone, staring in stunned horror at the bear.

Apart from the scared children right by the platform, the audience seemed a little puzzled, but not alarmed. With Karaoke Bear crouched down on the little stage, most people couldn't see him now. They seemed to assume the kids were squealing because the bear had over-balanced during his mechanical dance and fallen down.

Karaoke Bear's predatory gaze zeroed in on the nice gentleman who was looking across the store, waving a hand as he tried to catch his wife's attention. The man's back was to the possessed bear, with its dripping fangs and sinisterly glowing eyes.

"Mister! Watch out!" I shouted.

The man started to turn my direction, still not seeing the bear. He looked puzzled rather than alarmed.

The bear lunged for him.

Without thinking, I did a sort of flying dropkick to knock the man out of the leaping bear's path while the children near us screamed. I had never executed a move like that before. It's amazing what a combination of mortal terror and adrenaline can accomplish on short notice.

I hit the floor with a heavy thud and rolled over a few times, carried by my own momentum. People were startled into panicky reaction all around me, and I was trampled by the feet of shoppers fleeing the scene.

I lay there for a moment, winded and dazed.

A woman was screaming, "Carlos! Carlos!"

Then I realized that I might be next on the possessed bear's menu, and I scrambled to my feet, heart pounding with shock and fear.

Karaoke Bear was lying on the stage, as if he had keeled over. He looked normal now, except for the fact that smoke was rising from his garishly clad little body. I stared warily at the bear for a moment, but he didn't move at all. Whatever force had invaded the apparatus was gone. Around his platform, to my relief, the cluster of Christmas trees still looked completely innocuous and inanimate.

I turned to examine the gentleman into whom I had just flown feet first. He was lying motionless on the floor nearby. Shoving my way past a few confused and curious bystanders, I stumbled over to him, stepping on the blue stocking cap and pointy ears that had fallen off during my tumble to the floor, and sank to my knees. I grabbed his shoulder and bent over him, trying to see his face.

"Mister! Mister? Are you okay?" I asked urgently.

He groaned, conscious but dazed.

"Carlos!" a woman screeched right behind me.

I flinched and started to turn around, but something heavy hit me in the head.

"Ow!" I collapsed on top of the man, instinctively shielding my skull from the additional blows that were raining down on me now.

"No! No! No!" the woman was shrieking.

Confused, startled, and in pain, I was trying to shield the man from this attack, too. He was struggling beneath my sprawled weight, conscious but disoriented, while someone continued beating the crap out of me with a solid object.

I think that's her purse.

"Let him go! Let him go!" the woman shrieked.

Then I heard a man's voice. A familiar one. "Jesus Christ! What the hell?"

"Let go!" the woman shouted, still clobbering me.

I'm gonna kill her, I decided.

I took an instinctive guess at where her legs would be and lashed out with one foot. I connected with a satisfying thud-but instead of the woman, I heard that familiar male voice howl in pain.

"OW! Goddamn it!"

Oops.

"Connor!" the woman cried, then hit me again.

"Stop! STOP!" he shouted at her. "What are you doing?"

There was a scuffle, and the pummeling on my head finally ceased. I lay there breathing hard, not sure it was safe to look up yet.

"Let me go!" the woman insisted. "That lunatic is trying to kill your father!"

Oh, no . . .

"Mom, will you let me handle this?" Lopez snapped.

The struggling man beneath me spoke a few breathless words in Spanish. Lopez responded in the same language. I heard him call the man "papá."

Shit.

A pair of strong hands grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me to my feet. I faced Lopez and his beautiful, redheaded mother.

Lying on the ground at my feet, Mr. Lopez said in frantic confusion, "What happened? What's going on? Perrito! Qué pasa?"

"No one really knows, Pop." Lopez gave a heavy sigh. "Hello, Dreidel. I assume there's a perfectly logical explanation for all this?"
                       
       
           



       
13





She wore just enough eye makeup to flatter her wide eyes, which were long-lashed and very blue . . .

He'd certainly inherited his eyes from her. You could see it easily when they were side by side like this.

Holy crap, I thought, recognizing the customer from the cosmetics section of the store who'd identified me as a dangerous lunatic even before she'd subsequently seen me drop-kick her husband.

Lopez's mother.

I'd always had a feeling that I might not want to meet her. Now I was sure.

Fine-boned, fair-skinned, and elegant in her sensible coat, she thumped her son with the same purse she'd been using to clobber me. "Don't just stand there," she said to him. "Arrest her!"

"Mom, will you please-"

"He can't arrest her," said an interested spectator, stepping on my foot as he moved closer to us. "You need a cop for that."

"Ow," I said, trying to free my foot.

"I am a cop." Unaware I was being stepped on, Lopez tightened his grasp on my shoulders when he felt me trying to wriggle away. "Now move along, folks. Nothing to see here. The fun's all over."

A few people ignored this, clearly hoping there'd be more violence. But most of the jostling crowd started to melt away, including the guy standing on my foot, carried along on the tide of busy shoppers rapidly passing through this area.

I asked Lopez hopefully, "Can I go now, too?"

"You were supposed to be upstairs," he said accusingly to me. "You were assigned to the fourth floor for the rest of the shift!"

"You know this madwoman?" his mother demanded. "Is she someone you've arrested before?"

Still holding me by the shoulders, Lopez gave me a sharp shake. "What are you doing down here? You weren't supposed to be here."

"I got reassigned. Stop that!" I jerked myself out of his grasp before he could shake me again. As I staggered backward, I accidentally kicked his father, still on the floor, who groaned in reaction.

"Oh, nice," Lopez said to me in exasperation.

"Carlos!" Mrs. Lopez shoved me aside and knelt beside her prone husband. "Are you all right?"

I looked down at the couple, thinking it was just as well that Lopez and I weren't dating. It could never work out between us. Not after this.

"What happened?" Mr. Lopez asked again.

"This crazy person attacked you!"

"What?" he said.

"I did not attack him," I protested. "I was trying to . . . to . . ." I glanced at the performance platform, where Karaoke Bear lay innocently on his side.

Trying to rescue him from the possessed ravening bear might not sound entirely sane, I realized.

"Trying to . . . ?" Lopez prodded.

"Protect him," I finished feebly. "I thought he was in danger."

"Of course," Lopez said, to no one in particular.

"Protect him?" Mrs. Lopez raged. "Protect him? You kicked him in the head-"

"No, no, it wasn't my head, querida," Carlos Lopez said placatingly, trying to sit up. "The young lady hit my shoulder."

"Lady? Lady?" his wife repeated in outrage.

"Ah!" The gray-haired man winced as his aches and pains started introducing themselves. "And my jaw, too, I think."

"What are you people still doing here?" Lopez said to the few remaining stragglers who'd stuck around to see what else might happen. "Go about your business. Now."

He didn't even have to show them his badge. They did what he told them to do. I envied him that handy skill.

"I'm very sorry, sir," I said, reaching out to help Carlos Lopez off the floor.

His wife slapped away my hands. "Don't touch him!"

Their son looked up at the ceiling and prayed, "God, please let this be just a nightmare. If You're truly merciful, then any minute now, I'll wake up in a cold sweat and vow never again to eat a chili dog so late at night . . ."

As Mrs. Lopez helped her husband rise shakily to his feet, she informed me shrilly, "I intend to press charges!"

Two security guards shoved their way through the crowd of shoppers still entering and exiting the building, finally arriving on the scene after being alerted to the commotion. Given how rarely we saw security around here during an emergency, I was starting to think that Fenster's would be a good place to commit a murder.