Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free (19 page)

My hand went to my chest, to the skeleton key hanging beneath my shirt. If I could reach the exit, I could get out.

Frog Face screamed in pain as a spartoi warrior slammed him to the ground. The collar prevented him from paralyzing the spartoi with his poisonous skin, and he was the weakest of the feybloods here.

Smeg.

I couldn't just escape. I had to help if I could.

I pushed myself up. Zenith had Silene's hand to my right, also with their backs to the wall. Our eyes met, and Silene's eyes narrowed into a murderous stare.

“No!” I said, holding up my hands. “Romey, she did something to enforcer Cousar!”

I realized then that Romey was nowhere to be seen. She'd fled somehow. But not before sticking a knife in Reyes' back, I saw. The handle jerked and wobbled as Reyes exchanged blows with her fellow DFM enforcer, and I could tell it was slowing her down, hampering her movements.

Double smeg.

Zenith glanced at Reyes and Cousar battling each other, then back to me. “If you're not behind this, then get us out of here.”

“No!” Silene said, yanking her hand free of the changeling's. “I won't abandon my cousins.”

Sal, still standing as a wall of defense between us and the spartoi, looked back at me. “Use arcana lightnings or fires!”

“I'm not a wizard!” I replied.

We could definitely use a wizard about now, though.

Frog Face leaked greenish blood freely as his spartoi kicked him. The second spartoi had the faun suspended a foot above the ground by a death grip on his neck, the faun's legs unable to kick far enough forward to do much damage. The third had gone in low against Challa and was lifting her off her feet like a wrestler, seemingly oblivious as she shredded the flesh along his muscular back with her claws—if she fell, she'd be vulnerable, and the collar kept her from using her full strength to prevent that.

Only Dunngo seemed to be holding his own. The spartoi's blows and grasps crumbled and broke off chunks of dirt and rock from Dunngo, and the collar prevented the dwarf from regenerating or taking new material from the concrete floor. But the spartoi was a mass of bloody flesh where stone had scraped away skin. And was that a rib poking out of his side? It was a race at this point to see which of them lost too much of their body to function first.

I had no weapons, no artifacts, and if I got close enough to use my necromancy effectively on a spartoi, he'd break my neck before I could exorcise the tiny spark of dragon spirit that animated him.

I still gripped the slender skeleton key in one hand, however, and it gave me an idea.

“Sal! Hold still!”

I reached up and touched the enchanted fingerbone to the back of his collar. The collar opened with a click, and fell to the floor.

The spartoi kicking Frog Face stopped and turned toward us. But he took only a single step before Sal charged in with a roar and his arm swung around in a windmill uppercut.

The spartoi's head snapped back and his jaw ripped free, flying across the room as his feet flew out from beneath him. He slammed to the ground, most definitely dead.

I touched the key to the changeling's collar, and then Silene's, as Sal moved in on the spartoi choking the faun.

“Is there anything you can do?” I asked them both.

“Not in here,” Silene said, tears of frustration building in her eyes.

“You know magic is forbidden me,” the changeling said, and her tone suggested I was still trying to trick or trap her. “But I am well skilled in physical combat.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” I said. Everything I knew about hand-to-hand combat I'd learned watching movies, and what I'd learned from Mister Miyagi was that if I tried to pull an amateur karate move on one of these spartoi, then Finn-san would be squashed, just like a grape.

*I have urged you to learn krav maga or some such art,* Alynon said. *If you get us both killed—*

Now is not the time!
I thought back.

*It never is.*

Cousar's baton connected with an audible
clunk!
to Reyes' head, sending her spinning to the ground.

Not good.

“Sal!” I shouted, trying to get his attention as I sprinted at the enemy enforcer. Sal grabbed the head of the faun's spartoi in his massive hands, and twisted.

Maybe I could distract Cousar long enough for Sal to get to him, before—

The enforcer shouted something, a tattoo glowing around his throat. Lightning leaped from his outstretched baton in a concussive, blinding flash, filling the air with the smell of ozone and lifting the hairs on my head and arms as it arced past me. I tried to intercept the blast—not entirely a suicidal act given a certain Fey tattoo that Alynon had left me with, handy against direct energy attacks and not much else—but I was too slow and only caught the edge of the lancing arc. Just enough to leave me collapsed on the ground, my muscles twitching spasmodically.

The lightning struck Sal in the back. His arms flung out, and he slammed forward into the far wall of the room. Black curls of smoke rose from a circle of blackened fur as Sal fell to the ground.

Silene ran to Sal, and the changeling followed her.

I blinked away the purple-and-green afterimage of the blast, and struggled to my feet.

Cousar kicked me in the gut, knocking the air out of me and doubling me over in pain. I retched and gasped for breath.

*I told you!* Alynon said. *If you had done sit-ups—*

SERIOUSLY?
I thought-screamed at him. I threw my hands up defensively and backed away, grasping blindly for any physical contact with Cousar I could use to summon his spirit. Pain exploded in my left hand as the baton smashed into it. I screamed and jerked both hands in, cradling the blazing supernova of agony against my chest.

A ululating war cry echoed from the concrete walls, and Zenith leaped over me in a forward dive, rolled, and came up under Cousar's next swing of the baton to punch him in his baby-making parts.

His uniform must have taken most of the force of the blow, because he barely flinched, and instead brought the baton back in a return swing for the changeling's head.

She dove to the side, rolled again, and came up holding Reyes' baton. “Go help Silene!” she said without taking her eyes off the enforcer. She smiled a wicked grin, and said, “All right, wizard, let us see what you can do.”

My hand still screamed pain at me, but it was now merely a small nuclear detonation with throbbing aftershocks. Sweat stung my left eye, and I rubbed at it as I looked around me.

Challa's spartoi had her down on the ground, and tickled her feet—the surest way to render a sasquatch helpless long enough to do real harm.

Dunngo and his spartoi were now staggering around each other like two drunks, both looking horribly beaten and broken. I considered trying to reach Dunngo, to unlock his collar so he could regenerate, but getting past the spartoi would be difficult, and Dunngo was just as likely to crush me as thank me.

The changeling gave another ululating cry and leaped at the enforcer, raining a series of blows at him. She seemed to be holding her own, at least for the moment.

I staggered around the perimeter of the room to join Silene and Sal.

Silene looked up at me. “There's nothing I can do. I'm too far from my tree to heal him. But I have … eased his pain.”

Sal gave a low moan, and it sounded more like pleasure than pain. Nymphs could bring near-orgasmic pleasure with their touch.

Silene looked down at her hands. “I thought—I thought I'd lost it, after the strike.”

Challa's spartoi stopped tickling her feet, and stood.

“Frak,” I said. “Stay back.”

I ran at the spartoi as he moved toward Challa's head. He turned at the sound of my shoes slapping the concrete. I tried to do a jumping kick thing at him. He hopped back and to the side, waited for me to land, grabbed my arm, and spun me around. I went flying back to crash into the ground, hitting Sal and almost knocking Silene over.

Squash, like grape.

The spartoi advanced on me, limping, looking as determined as a Terminator sent back to kill the inventor of Teddy Ruxpin before the horrible chain of events leading to human destruction could unfold.

And I lacked a large hydraulic press with which to destroy him.

I tried to push myself upright, both hands grasping at Sal's wiry hair, my left hand screaming in pain. Something sharp pricked my right hand. I glanced at it. Another damn burr.

I blinked, and yanked the burr free from Sal's hair. I held it up, a small prickly brown ball of Velcro pain on my palm. “Silene! Can you—”

She grabbed it from me and threw it at the advancing spartoi.

The burr stuck to his hairy chest. And sprouted.

Blood ran in rivulets down his chest and stomach as roots dug into his flesh. Broad green leaves sprouted out, and stems poked outward, then bloomed into small burr-like flowers.

The spartoi grabbed at his chest, tried to tear the plant out. He jerked once, twice. On the third jerk, his entire body spasmed, his eyes went wide, and he fell to his knees. His hands fell to his sides, and then he crashed face first to the concrete floor.

“Go team!” I said, turning to Silene. She gave me a weak smile, then slumped gracefully to the side, her eyes fluttering closed to the continuing
clang clang clang
of striking batons.

Shoot.

Dunngo managed a blow to his spartoi's kneecap that dropped the warrior, and Dunngo collapsed on top of him, burying the spartoi's face in dirt. The spartoi tried to kick and push himself free, but his movements grew less and less forceful, until he lay still. Dunngo did not rise.

Cousar shouted a shaping. I looked over, fearing another lightning bolt flying my way. He had managed to disengage with Zenith long enough to cast his spell. Concrete flowed up from the floor and over his clothes and flesh, forming a skin that I knew from previous experience would absorb any physical blow yet flow like sand when he moved.

Zenith's left cheek was swollen practically over her eye, and her left arm hung limp at her side. She blinked against the sweat and pain and advanced on Cousar.

She wouldn't last much longer, not against an enforcer able to wield his magic when she could not. I struggled to my feet. If I was going to get close enough to summon his spirit, it would have to be while he remained distracted—

A large section of wall between me and the two duelists collapsed with a loud
THWUMP!
Dust rose from the pile of sandy debris, and several DFM enforcers in full protective gear streamed over the pile and into the room. Knight-Lieutenant Vincent, the DFM enforcer who'd given Pete and Vee their ultimatum, entered last with a protective vest poorly fitted over his belly.

“Drop your weapons!” Enforcer Vincent shouted.

Zenith stepped back, the baton held above her head in both hands. “I claim the rights of—”

“Drop it!” Vincent said again, as he and two of the other DFM enforcers moved to surround her. The fourth moved in my direction, a tattoo glowing around her throat ready for invocation. I held up my empty hands.

“Brad, report,” Vincent said to enforcer Cousar, the man who'd started the fight.

“Arrest them all,” Cousar said. “A feyblood started this whole riot, and the captain is seriously hurt.” Both statements true, technically. Cousar moved to Reyes, who lay unmoving. As my DFM enforcer moved behind me, and grabbed one wrist to force it to my lower back, Cousar knelt beside Reyes and placed a hand on her neck.

There were a thousand ways he could kill her if she wasn't already dead, and then we'd be truly screwed. “Wait!” I shouted. “He's going to kill your cap—!”

“Shut it!” my enforcer said, yanking up on my wrist so that my shoulder screamed in agony.

“Stop!” I said, and tried to pull free, to get them to listen. “Cousar is the—”

The
clunk!
of a baton hitting the back of my skull knocked my next words free of my brain before they could reach my mouth. I didn't see birds or stars, but the pain silenced me long enough for my enforcer to finish binding my wrists and drag me from the room.

 

13

My Prerogative

I sat in a small gray room with the generic one-way mirror, gray metal table, and two chairs. Unlike the cliché interrogation room, however, it had a line of embedded metal runes and symbols running across the floor and under the middle of the table, splitting the room in half. Wards which, if activated, would prevent most arcana or feybloods from crossing it unless permitted. They were currently inactive, but that didn't mean much. An enforcer could more than handle me without the need for wards, especially in my current state.

My left hand throbbed, swollen and stiff, as I turned it over to check my watch. 1:43
P.M
. Lances of pain shot up my arm as I flexed it. And I could feel a lump on the back of my head slightly smaller than an egg and slightly larger than my hopes I'd get out of here without heading straight to an ARC trial for sentencing if Reyes hadn't survived to clear my name.

I hoped Dawn had the sense to just leave when I didn't emerge. I hoped Sal was alive, and that the feybloods were okay.

I hoped they brought me some really good pain-killers.

“What in all the hells did Romey hope to do?” I muttered.

*Perhaps she thought you too slow at completely screwing everything up?*

I looked with one eye at my reflection in the mirror, held up my hand, and pinched the image of my head between my fingers.

*What are you doing?*

I'm crushing your head!
I said.
I don't suppose you have any real suggestions?

*No. Except that Silene has brought much trouble upon her clan with her little rebellion, as I told you she would.*

I don't think the trouble's her fault. If she was going all Charles Bronson on black market alchemists, and was willing to sacrifice her own clan to do so, why did she risk her life to help her feybloods today? Or help Sal? Why'd she heal the wisp back at her tree? I really don't think she's the Big Bad here. Romey is. Or whoever Romey's working for.