Reon stood with the amulet in his outstretched hand. The prophecy said our forms would be redeemed when we regained the amulet, he thought. I have it at last! When do I change? How? Frustrated, he shook the amulet. The gold chain made a gentle metallic sound as it swung back and forth like a broken tree limb.

Once again Reon's lungs began to pump. The fire in his chest rose up and poured from every crack in his body, enveloping him in heat and pain. What is the way? he screamed to himself. My followers will turn upon me unless I find it!

       The air was still except for his panicked breathing. His demon soldiers murmured. Their mutterings grew louder, stronger, blending into a new muted, rhythmic sound.

      The new sound grew louder and more insistent, clearer and more staccato. It came from the far end of the living room. Tump! Tump! Tat! Tat! Then a deep, bass creaking sound that swelled into the familiar squeaking of the heavy library door being dragged open.

       And above the creaking was the sharp sound of drums: snare drums, marching drums. Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-a-tat-tat-tat!

       "Fred!" Ginger shouted. "I forget about Fred! Her heart jumped with a burst of hope.

       Reon and the demons turned toward the library.

       The brassy song of a tiny trumpet joined the drums. Tum-ta-rah! it blared with miniature precision. Then another trumpet! A fanfare!

       The shadows near the library began to move. A wavering form blanketed the floor with the clicking rhythm of hard, booted feet. Clump, clump! Clump, clump!

       And at the center of the wavering mass, a larger form leapt forward into the dimly lit living room, into the glare of Reon's blazing body.

       It was Dunkey! Mounted on his back was Teddy clinging to a pair of gold-braid reins with one hand and holding a gleaming saber in the other. On Teddy's head was a peculiar hat that looked like a cowboy hat, except for one side that was pushed flat and pinned to the crown.

       Dunkey reared up triumphantly on his hind legs!

       "Charge!" Teddy yelled at the top of his lungs. "Chaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggge!!!!"

       Just behind them the shadowy form marched out into the light. In perfect precision, thousands and thousands of toy soldiers marched together. French and Spaniards, American Doughboys and Chinese Red Guards, Romans and Russians, Arabs and Masai kept perfect time in lock step. Minuscule metal feet clicked and clattered across the floor.

       All at once the warriors lowered their weapons - their spears, their rifles, their clubs - and charged. Racing masses of soldiers chased after the stunned demons. The rifles opened fire. They popped and flashed as they cut down demons to the right, demons to the left.

      Reon stared in disbelief. His men pulled their ranks together and turned toward the toy army. Never have I seen an army like this, Reon thought in stunned surprise. It is a nightmare miniature of the armies who fought against us through centuries of struggles. Then his mind froze, and he could only watch. Reon stepped back and away from the fight.

       His army poured across the floor into the heat of the battle. In an endless stream, one demon after another sacrificed himself in a flash of flame and dust.

       Dunkey galloped across the floor toward Tony and Ginger, leaping over toy soldiers and demons in his path. Dunkey jumped over Teefr's legs onto the staircase, then up one step and the next. Teddy leapt from Dunkey's back onto the landing and began to hack away at the webbing that ensnared Tony. He chopped and chopped and finally a clump began to yield to his shining saber.

       A battalion of demons clambered up the stairs toward Teddy and Dunkey. They clawed and bit at Dunkey's legs and tore the gray cotton. One tried to disarm Teddy, but he cut the demon down. Ginger pushed gaggles of demons down the stairs with her foot.

      Teefr, however, did not move. He lay still at the base of the staircase, but his eyes never left the amulet.

A flying demon swooped down from the ceiling, grabbed Dunkey's tail in its claws and began to drag Dunkey up into the air.

       "Helllllpppp!" Dunkey screamed as his front legs left the ground.

       Teddy turned around and smiled.

       "Now! Nowwww! NOWWW!" Teddy yelled up the staircase.

       There was a humming, a whirring, a buzzing. The sound grew stronger and burst down the staircase.

       Into the living room swooped the leader of an air force of toy planes from Tony's bedroom. There were wooden bi-planes and sleek plastic jet fighters. X-wings zipped past helicopters and balsa wood gliders and hot air balloons and even DaVinci's flying man. They swarmed into the living room and rained toy bombs onto Reon and the demons.

      Dunkey, meanwhile, was still being hoisted into the air. Two F-11's jetted in and gunned down the bat-winged kidnappers. Dunkey fell safely onto the carpet. He shook himself off and turned around in a daze. "Bent my tail again," he muttered, as he tried to waggle it straight. Two demons rushed him, however, and soon he was busy kicking them across the living room.

       Reon was stunned. Nothing had prepared him for resistance like this. Though he could have swatted the toy planes down like dragonflies, he was unable to do anything but stare. He watched the air battle, paralyzed.

       Unnoticed in the confusion, Teefr observed his brother carefully. Seeing Reon's distraction, Teefr crept cautiously toward him, an inch or two at a time, pausing between each movement he made.

       Suddenly, Teefr rose and lunged at the amulet. He grabbed it tightly in his hand. There was an immediate explosion of the crackling white energy, but Teefr held on. Shocked back to consciousness, Reon turned to face his brother.

       Blinding white sparks were spreading down Teefr's arm like a sunrise across an ocean's horizon. Teefr's muscles quivered, then shook with a violent spasm that tore at his whole body. He was covered with a dazzling glare that lit the room with an unnatural, cold, pulsing light.
 
 

      Upstairs, under the bed, Samantha opened her eyes halfway and yawned. She stretched and crawled out from beneath the bed. As she looked around and saw that she was alone, Samantha could feel her empty tummy rumbling. What a good nap, she thought. And they've cleaned up all the toys in the bedroom while I was asleep.

       Samantha strolled out into the hall which flickered with the reflected light of the glowing energy field. She was so hungry and eager to be fed that she didn't notice what was going on until she was halfway down the stairs. When her nice clean paws got stuck in the webbing that covered the stair runners, she stopped to try to shake it off her feet. Yuck, she thought, what is going on?

       She glared down the stairs and saw Tony struggling out of the last of the webbing that covered him. Between Teddy and Ginger's efforts, Tony was almost free. At the sight of her friend, Samantha leapt down the stairs two at a time.

      "Mowp?" She rubbed up against Tony's leg. Visions of a snack filled her head.

       Tony smiled at her faintly, but he was still too dazed to pay much attention to her.

       Reon tightened his grip on the amulet's chain. Teefr, too, refused to let go. Though his body shook violently, his fist never loosened.

       Gazing out through the veil of intermittent sparks that covered his face and eyes, Teefr could just make out Tony standing up.

       "The sunrise!" Teefr gasped. "The sunrise!"

       Tony was puzzled, then slowly began to understand. He looked out across the living room. The floor still squirmed with demons and toy soldiers battling for every square inch of carpet. The air swarmed with planes and bat-winged creatures. The amulet's aura was so blinding that all these things stood out in relief like black shadows against an empty movie screen. Even Reon's hot red flames faded into obscurity. Like a stroboscope, it went on and off, lighting the room, then plunging it into darkness.

       Tony stepped down the last three stairs onto the living room floor.

       "Mowp?" Samantha asked again.

       "Not now, Samantha," Tony said. "This comes first."

       Ginger reached down and picked Samantha up. She cradled the cat in her arms and stroked Samantha's head.

       Tony began to pick his way through the battlefield, being careful to step only on demons. He worked his way closer and closer to the living room windows. They were covered by the sort of heavy curtains that blocked out the light and kept the house cool on hot days.

      Demons ran toward him, crawled up his legs, and bit his toes. As he scraped each one off, another crawled up to replace it. They climbed up to his knees, up his thighs, along his shirt and down his arms. Demons dropped from the ceiling onto Tony's head. They pulled at his hair, chewed on his ears, and tugged his eyelashes.

       Tony was so frightened that he could barely keep walking. He was covered with demons like army ants devouring a dead animal. Every inch of his body quivered with biting black creatures. Still, Tony kept moving, though the demons were weighing him down. Overburdened, Tony dropped to his knees and began to crawl to the windows.

       There was nearly six feet of demon-covered floor between Tony and the curtain. Tony shook demons off his hands while more crawled down his arms. They clutched at his fingers, hooking their claws underneath his nails to get a better grip. Foot by foot, Tony crawled forward, exhausted by the intensity of the assault. His arms and legs  quivered. His muscles struggled to move. His nerves screamed with pain. Finally, his elbows and knees buckled, and Tony fell flat onto his stomach. In seconds his body was covered with the shimmering blackness of Reon's army. Tony disappeared from view.

       "Mmmmmmowww!" Samantha wiggled in Ginger's lap. She struggled free and dropped onto the floor.

      Jumping daintily over every demon that stood in her way, Samantha crossed the room. She sat down carefully beside Tony's collapsed form. Hungrily, she opened her mouth and took a huge bite out of three demons crawling toward Tony's ear.

       "Mmuckch!" Samantha spat them out immediately. "Mmmmmmmmowwwwuckkk!" she screamed in dismay.

       The cat's shriek startled every demon and toy soldier in the room. For a fraction of a second they stopped fighting and turned toward her.

       Tony raised his head in surprise, dumping dozens of dumbfounded demons down onto the floor.

       "Mmmmooohhh," Samantha purred. She licked Tony's nose with her scratchy pink tongue.

       Realizing Tony's predicament, a battalion of British infantry toys lined up and opened fire on the demons covering his back. They picked them off one by one. The demon's streamed down from Tony's body in trails of effervescent dust.

       Now Tony was able to straighten his arms. He smiled at Samantha and turned toward the window. He grabbed the curtain pull.

      With a fierce yank, Tony tugged down on the cord. The pulley resisted, caught, then loosened. The curtains began to part. Hand over hand, Tony pulled again and again until the curtains were wide open.

       In a panic, Reon tried to protect his face from the sun's light.

       And as he raised his arms, he let go of the amulet.

       Immediately, the energy discharge stopped. Released suddenly from the tug-of-war, Teefr toppled backwards onto the floor. His muscles still throbbed, but he held the amulet tightly.

      "No!" Reon screamed as he realized what he had done. He fell to his knees as warm sunlight broke over him. He grabbed for the amulet. "No!" he howled as the amulet's energy field threw him back again. "No!"

       The sun rose up past the mountain tops, up past the window sills and into the corners of the living room.

       Demons scurried away from the sunlight. Those that were too slow collapsed into puffs of dust as the light washed over them.

       "This way!" Teddy shouted, leading the soldiers toward the back hall to cut off the escape route of any demons trying to return to the crack in the basement. Battalions of Celtic and Ethiopian and Roman warriors marched after him.

       Teefr sat up. He gazed at his brother, who was curled into a frightened ball in the center of the living room. Reon made a feeble attempt to crawl into the shadows, but there was none large enough to cover him. Reon's spined armor began to creak like a rusty hinge.

      Tony turned to see what made that strange sound. All the demons had fallen off of him and disappeared. Samantha rubbed against Tony's leg. He reached down and picked her up.

       Ginger watched from the staircase. Fred stood in the doorway of the library.

       Reon raised his head, keeping his back turned to the window. The gleam of his black armor was becoming dull. Cracks began to form on all of his limbs. The razor-sharp features of his face softened into fleshy forms. A tarnished patina crept over his body with a sound like milk burning onto the bottom of a pot. His wings shriveled like newspapers in a fire. His spines splintered into fragments which fell to the floor and crackled into dust.

       Sunshine covered him. Each shiny, beetle-black facet of his body became a plate of metal armor held together by drying leather straps. His spiny face became the frightened curves of a black helmet crowned with curling horns.

      Slowly the blazing flames faded from the pits that were Reon's eye sockets. They were now just tiny red spots on the damp, black pupils of two human eyes. For the first time in centuries, Reon blinked his eyes. Salt tears ran from soft eyelids, putting out the last of the flames.

       There was a clatter from the back hall as Teddy moved his men into formation. A row of Roman soldiers with highly polished brass shields knelt across the hallway to form a shining wall. They angled the shields toward the sun so they caught the light and reflected it back into every corner of the room. Together, the dozens of small shields formed a large single mirror that filled the living room with sunlight. The demons that remained in the room exploded into whirlwinds of dust. Then the dust folded into itself and disappeared.

       Light bounced off the shields onto the furniture, the walls, the ceilings, off  Teefr's armor and into the front of Reon's helmet. It lit up two deep blue eyes that gazed out from the large eye holes.

       As his vision cleared, Reon stared at Teefr, and Teefr stared back.

       All at once, Reon's helmet crackled like sizzling oil and fell into thousands of crumbling pieces that vanished into the sunlit air.

      As she looked at the scene before her, Ginger shivered with astonishment. Her eyes darted from Teefr's face to Reon's and back again. They are both alike! Exactly, precisely, alike! Their eyes, their golden hair, the curves of their cheeks, the folds of their ears!

       Reon raised himself painfully to his knees. His armor rusted and fell off his body, exposing a soft cotton tunic underneath. The tunic itself yellowed as Ginger watched. Brown spots appeared and flaked away, revealing the boyish skin below. His sharp metal gloves disintegrated, and Reon flexed his fingers in the warm light. For the first time since the curse was spoken, he was caressed by  soft air that touched his flesh.

       Reon's head spun with conflicting sensations. He searched the room for his army, but it was gone. He was unprotected by armor, but somehow he felt safe. He looked at his brother and could find no trace of the conflict that had separated them for eons. Reon knew that it was over.

       Teefr moved closer until the two brothers were barely at arm's length from each other.

      "Together…" Teefr said slowly, "…together we could have had everything." With great care, Teefr removed his chain mail glove and extended his hand toward Reon. "We would have had everything."

       Reon looked up. He extended his arm toward Teefr and gently took his hand, laying each finger softly across his brother's palm. Teefr's fingers closed around them. For the space of a dozen heartbeats, the two brothers knelt, hand in hand.

       Then, with the sound of a spring rain, Reon's body turned to dust. A peaceful cloud sifted through Teefr's outstretched fingers and vanished into the sunlight on the carpeted floor.

       Taking a slow, deep breath, Teefr rose to his feet. A great cheer came up from the armies of toys.

       After a moment, Fred and Tony rushed over to Ginger. Still holding Samantha, Tony bent down and kissed Ginger.

       Ginger blushed. Just like I wished, she thought. Then she patted Fred affectionately on the arm.

       Dunkey trotted over to Teddy. The bear reached up and scratched his friend behind the ears.

      The toys danced and frolicked and smiled in the sunshine of the living room. They yelled and sang with joy. A fusillade of shots rang out in salute from a battalion of American infantry. A line of British cannons went off in rapid succession.

       In their midst, Teefr stood silently. The brightening sunlight lit up every detail of his magnificent green and brass armor. He shimmered in the morning light, dazzling the eyes of the three delighted children who gazed up at him.

       Teefr looked toward them across the room. Smiling softly, he raised the amulet with his left hand, then clutched it with his right. Slowly and carefully, he pressed both hands and the amulet to his chest. Then Teefr closed his eyes.
 
 

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"Teedie and Me" Bear Bob's Story