Touched by an Alien

got into the other one. Thankfully, they worked like golf carts. “Maybe we can ram it or something.”
    “You’re insane,” Reader said with a laugh. “I think you and Jeff might be the perfect couple.”
    “Maybe. What do you all use for weapons against these things?” We were driving side by side, and while the speed of the carts wasn’t all that fast, we had to shout.
    “Can’t use tanks and artillery here, so nothing.”
    “Nothing?? What kills these things, besides my pen?”
    “Depends. This one’s in control, so it’s hard to say.”
    We got closer, and Reader braked, hard. I followed his lead but ended up ahead of him. “What’s wrong?”
    Reader looked pale. “It’s Mephistopheles.”

CHAPTER 10
    “WHO’S MEPHISTOPHELES? You mean like Faust’s devil?”
    Reader nodded and pointed to the superbeing who was stomping around the tarmac. We were close enough to see that he was trying to stomp on people—and two of those people were Christopher and my mother.
    I took a closer look. We were near what looked like the air freight section, and there were floodlights all over the place, so seeing was easy. The superbeing was big, easily twelve feet tall, which made me wonder how he got around New York without tanks and artillery showing up on a daily basis. He resembled a huge faun, with a goat body for the lower half and a human torso and head. His arms looked human, but his fingers ended in claws, similar to those of the dead superbeing I’d seen at the warehouse. He had huge bat wings and they, like the rest of him, were blood red. The hair covering his lower body was also this color. Curling horns came out of his forehead, and his face wasn’t all that pleasant to look at—not ugly, but so far from human and contorted with so much hatred your eyes just wanted to look away.
    “So, you know this thing?”
    “Yeah. He’s the strongest of the in-control superbeings.” Reader sounded totally freaked out. “We need some weapons.”
    “Which we don’t have, unless they’re invisible.” I started to wonder if pacifists ran this operation. Maybe we were supposed to talk the monster out of killing my mother.
    Martini and Gower were there now. As near as I could tell, this just meant Mr. Mephistopheles was getting a chance to stomp more people I knew, because I didn’t see them producing a gun or any other kind of weapon. They were just running around the thing, like Christopher and the other guys in Armani who were there. I counted seven, not including Martini and Gower.
    “Ram the legs with the carts.” I started mine up again and headed toward the monster. This was, I admitted as I “raced” along at about fifteen miles per hour, not the greatest plan. But it seemed better than running around aimlessly.
    I checked over my shoulder, Reader was right behind me. Good. He might be scared but he was willing to do something.
    I hooked my purse over my neck so I wouldn’t lose it. As we got closer, I could hear the monster—he was talking.
    At least, I thought it was language. It wasn’t something I understood, though I got the impression the A-C crew did because they seemed to be reacting to whatever it was Mephistopheles snarled at them.
    My mother spotted me. She and Christopher were together; he had hold of her hand, and they were dodging the hooves. But when she saw me, she stopped, pulled away from Christopher, and stood still. Then she started shouting at the monster. “Hey! Ugly! Over here!”
    I thought she was insane, until I realized that she’d figured out what Reader and I were trying to do and was working as a distraction, so the monster wouldn’t turn around.
    She got Mephistopheles’ attention. I had a feeling he was after her more than any of the A-C crew anyway. She backed away, but he was coming for her. As she moved I saw she still had her purse, too, over her neck just like me. She reached inside it and pulled out a gun.
    Reader and I were close to the hooves now, and we both put the pedal down. For these carts, it meant we might have hit seventeen miles an hour now. Whoo hoo. But it couldn’t hurt and might help.
    I hit the right hoof first, and Reader hit the left a couple of seconds later. It didn’t knock Mephistopheles down, but it did shove him off-balance. He started teetering. I decided getting out might be a good idea, and Reader seemed to agree. We both jumped at the same time.
    This left the carts on their own. They stopped, which turned out to be a