After she'd put a mountain ridge between her and the haunted town, Marina slowed her flight to a hover and performed deep breathing exercises to slow her heart rate.

  She shivered, thinking back on the few interactions she'd had with the occult. Occasionally, at the end of her thirty-six-hour shifts, when her mind was frayed by exhaustion, Marina would start to see the restless spirits of the freshly dead, suffocated by ash and reduced to unrecognizable cinders, standing woefully over their still-burning corpses. They could capture you, not intentionally, she didn't think, but their despair could act like a snare around your heel, keeping you still when you needed not to be.

  She'd nearly died twice like that, once frozen by the sight of one mid-flight, only managing to dodge out of the way of an explosion of gas seconds before it would have been fatal. Another time, she'd heard the wails of a terrified mother screaming for her child in the way only a mother could. The sound had cut through the roar of flames coming from inside an active inferno past a wall of flames. Her physical exhaustion had saved her that day; her mind was almost seized by the need to help, but she'd simply not had it in her to keep pushing. She'd made a hard call then – the hard call – the kind no firefighter wanted to make. The next day, after a night's rest, she realized that any woman who could have survived in the flames would not have needed her help to escape, and that it would have been impossible for a human voice to be louder than the wildfire in that instance. Returning to the spot, she'd found a grim sight – an incinerated car with two melted lumps in the shape of infant car seats in the back. She'd worked with an illusionist friend for weeks after that, training herself to recognize auditory hallucinations purely so she could know when not to engage.

  Surviving as a Licensed Special Responder meant knowing your limits and staying in your lane. Ghosts? Not her lane.

  Once the pounding of her heart was no longer deafening, Marina closed her eyes and focused her attention on the shifting currents interacting with her ears. She'd developed this trick to navigate when blinded by clouds of black smoke, but in the past she'd only had to isolate CAL FIRE sirens. This was a bit different. Instead of sorting through the noise, she amplified everything, searching for anything that could only be attributed to civilization, cars, voices, or—

  Helicopters - military, if she wasn't mistaken. Perfect, military pilots were usually accustomed to working with fliers. Hopefully, they'd have a few seconds to give her directions, and if not, she could follow them somewhere populated.

  Marina rocketed towards the choppers, quickly hitting her max speed of just below Mach 1. She was tired, physically and emotionally, but the idea that she might finally have somewhere to sit down soon was better than any warm cup of coffee.

  Had the sound of heavy caliber machinegun fire accompanied the initial sounds of the helicopters, she might have reconsidered approaching, but it was too late – Marina could see the choppers now, and her pride wouldn't let her leave them to their work. This very much was her lane.

  There were two of them, big, fortified, and heavily armed gunships in pursuit of, hopefully, something and not someone. Marina had never had an actual super fight before, and she wasn't trying to pop her cherry in her current state.

  One of the choppers was flying in a jagged line behind its quarry, firing off thunderous quick bursts, while the other circled ahead to try and cut whatever it was off. The latter started liberally laying down suppressing fire, the tracer rounds intermixed in its ammo looking almost like a red-hot laser beam shredding the tree line apart. Lift-Off found herself clenching her jaw at just the sheer noise of the guns. She could feel them in her bones, and she was still a good ways off.

  Getting closer, she was, in short order, relieved and then horrified to find that the target wasn't human after all. She still couldn't see the thing, even as it knocked trees down in its haste, but after another quick burst of machinegun fire, there was an angry YOWL of a cat. If the guns had been loud, this was unthinkable. The sound alone almost batted her out of the sky, and the raw psychic rage of the creature temporarily whited out her vision as the most ancient parts of her brain threatened catatonia. She wasn't alone, either; both helicopter pilots reacted chaotically.

  The chopper that had struck the cat pulled up and away. It veered and tilted to one side with such violence that the soldier operating one of the smaller mounted machine guns was thrown clear, left dangling out of the vehicle by a tethered harness. The other dove down almost straight down to only two hundred feet or so above the canopy before the pilot managed to get control back. That was close enough, unfortunately.

  A goddamn bus-sized mountain lion cleared the distance with such speed that it blurred – no, amended her brain in the scant few seconds it had, it was a blur; some kind of super-camouflage, she assumed. The monster came into focus moments before the strike, visibly pregnant, claws extended, and yellowed fangs flashing in the afternoon light. Marina, still reeling from the psychic yowl, watched in horror as the lion sheared through the bottom fuselage like paper and caught briefly onto a section of landing gear, dragging the helicopter down twenty feet and sending it into a wild tailspin before ripping the steel clean off.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Instincts honed by years of working side-by-side with firefighting aircraft kicked in, clearing the remainder of the mind-warping fear from her brain. Marina rushed forward, gathering a dense pocket of air as she did. She used the almost liquid-thick air like a pillow, cushioning the blow as she bodily tackled the side of the gunship. The 'air-bag' maneuver did the trick in that it kept her alive and sensate, but even still, the force of a spinning and falling armored helicopter slamming into her was keenly felt across her side and face. More than a few bones broke on impact.

  The plummeting gunship was heavier than she could comfortably pick up, but she didn't need to; she was well accustomed to how these machines generated lift. Gritting through the pain, Marina mirrored, corrected, and then amplified the force generated by the spinning blades. Together, she and the helicopter produced an incredible updraft, taking them higher with such speed that she felt more than heard steel fittings groan in protest. Behind and below her, the roar of machineguns splintered apart living wood as the other chopper covered their retreat, spitting everything it had in the approximate location of the mountain lion.

  One of the soldiers was gracious enough to help pull her inside once she'd stabilized their flight. Her body protested her continued refusal to sit down and get some sleep, and she could actively feel the bruises forming on her entire right side. Seeing the shape she was in, two soldiers wasted no time in manhandling her into a seat and strapping her down. Another attached a spare headset to her.

  "She's on comms," said the man with the headset. "You good?" he said to her, looking concerned at her left cheek.

  "I'm alright." Marina coughed and clutched at her ribs. "Nothing serious, at least."

  The men were skeptical but sagged with relief at her words, simply glad she was okay enough to speak. There was a pause as the crew of the helicopter looked around, double and triple-checking that despite all reasonable expectations, everyone was still alive. The realization of what had just happened struck two of them to the floor.

  "WOOO! Ho-ly shit! Hahahahaha!" The pilot burst into laughter, throwing her head back. "Oh my fuck, I thought that was it for us! Did you see that thing? Jesus." She turned quickly to look back at Marina. "Are you real? Hey, someone tell me she's real, and this isn't some kind of fucked up purgatory!"

  "I'm real. Can she make it back to base?" asked Marina, nodding to the various lights flashing red in the cockpit.

  The pilot licked her lips and steeled herself. "She'll fly…Might need your help to land, but she'll fly."

  "No problem."

  "My queen. You're a fucking angel. You an LSR? Wait, dumb question, don't answer that." The pilot paused. "Hey, hang on, you ain't Lift-Off, are you?"

  Marina reeled, herself double-checking that she was alive and awake. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd been recognized in California, and she lived there. Not only was this the middle of nowhere, but there was already a much more famous Lift-Off on the East Coast in New Hampshire. There should be no way this was happening.

  "Y-Yeah. What—how the hell—"

  "Holy shit, that's crazy! They were talking about you on the radio when we were fueling up. What a fucking world, man." The pilot introduced herself and the crew, though only her name, Stecyk, managed to stick in Marina's head, too rattled to fully take anything in. "And, of course, you already met Big Momma."

  "The mountain lion?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Queen Bitch of these hills. Helcat numero uno, the fecund cunt from whence they all came. She's a beauty, ain't she? Thirty thousand pounds of hate and hunger, and a pretty face to boot – some girls got it all, huh?"

  Marina hadn't known much about Helcats until she'd started looking into Salem Cooper's situation, but she hadn't heard of them being quite that bad. "I thought they were truck-sized and more…manageable. Saw a story about a hunter taking one down."

  "The rest are, thank fuck. But Big Momma, well, she's something special. Capable of something called parthogenesis or some shit. Got a wild power; each cub she pops out makes her stronger."

  One of the men who'd helped strap her in shook his head. "Parthenogenesis, Stecyk. And calm down. You're going to stain the seat. I can smell you leaking."

  "Fuck you, Doonie."

  "Here," said the man, handing Marina a water bottle. "Recuperate a bit; you look like you could use it. And feel free to take your headset off if you don't want to hear Stecyk yap. We'll shake you when we're close."