“Go for the tall one,” I shouted over to Connor. My partner course-corrected through all the storage, heading for Darryl. I leapt down into the open circle in the middle of the desks, swinging my bat to disarm Elyse. I wasn’t one for going full force with human foes, which threw my timing off, and Elyse ducked under my swings, nicking the prone freshman with her knife before lunging at me. It slammed into my satchel with the scrape of metal on metal ringing out—it hit against my Ghostbusters lunch box.
“Nice lunge,” I said, pissed, but thankful I had avoided a wound.
“Thanks,” she said with a wicked smile and a wild panic in her eyes. “The college provides excellent facilities that come in handy beyond the acting program. Helps to keep me a triple threat.”
“It’s not going to do you very much good with a broken arm,” I said, swinging to disarm her.
Elyse feinted back and dodged the blow. “Darryl!” she called out. “Ready?”
“I think so,” he said, “but the footage isn’t cued up.”
“Then use the office piece,” she said, taking a moment to look down at the bound boy on the floor. “Anything!”
I glanced down as well. The tiny river of blood from where she had nicked Trent had flowed down over the boy’s arm, pooling at the inside of his elbow joint where it touched a fray of the exposed wires from the network cable.
“Launch it!” Elyse shouted, backing to the edge of the circle.
Just as my partner arrived at Darryl’s side, the tall guy fumbled his machine away from Connor’s grasp. He held the laptop out of reach and then flipped it around until the screen of it was facing away from him.
At my feet, a spark rose from where wires mingled with the boy’s blood, causing him to howl out in pain through the gag in his mouth. That distraction was all it took for Elyse to make a break for it. She threw herself back onto one of the surrounding desks, lifted herself into a back walk-over, and landed on her feet.
“Guess that makes me a quadruple threat,” she said. “Looks like all those years of auditioning for roles as an Olympic gymnast paid off.” Already Elyse was backing away across the desks.
I started after her, but stopped in my tracks by the sounds of chaos coming from Connor and Darryl struggling against each other. The laptop in Darryl’s hands was sparking the same way the frayed network cable had when it touched the freshman’s blood. Its screen was taken up by a full video displaying the professor’s office that we had broken into the other night. The camera swept across the professor’s shelves, the ones that were covered with his massive collection of movie monster miniatures, which I was upset to see were coming to life. They flew, ran, and crawled their way toward the camera, the first of them—a tiny Harpy with a considerable wingspan—flying out of the laptop screen itself. Tiny skeletal hands clawed their way along the edge of the laptop screen as bony, undead Sinbad pirates pulled their bodies out and dropped to the floor. Within seconds, dozens of foot-high creatures were swirling through the air or dashing across the floor of the unused classroom. The room quickly filled with enough of them that I started to worry about them as a real threat.
I spun back around toward Elyse. She was putting a greater distance between us with each passing second. I leapt up onto the desk to give chase but something was at my leg. I looked down at one of the Harpies dangling around my ankle, its claws tearing into the edge of my jeans as its wings flapped wildly about. I brought my bat down on it without a second thought and was happy to see it break into a mangled twist of clay and a metal skeleton underneath. What didn’t make me happy was seeing it fall onto the bound freshman, who had several monsters of his own to contend with.
The bound student was being swarmed by a battalion of pirate skeletons, some of which brandished curved cutlasses. I doubted if they could even do any real damage with those, but the boy was prone and I couldn’t just leave the poor bastard there to play pincushion, especially considering he was already bleeding.
“Dammit,” I said and jumped back down into the circle. The tiny skeleton pirates shifted their focus from their helpless victim to me. “Back to the boneyard for you, me hearties!” I swung at the closest one and sent it flying off into the darkness where it landed with a shattering sound. “Who’s next?”
The answer, apparently, was all of them. Before I could pick my next target, the entire group rushed me. The miniature horde was like a track-and-field team as they bolted for me, several of them leaping into the air, climbing up my pant legs. The pokes of tiny swords dug at me along the back of my jacket, but for now they weren’t even piercing the fabric.
I grabbed one of the skeletons climbing up my right thigh and tore it off my body. A piece of my jeans went with it, but I didn’t care. The little monster writhed in my hand, but I didn’t give it time to act. I threw it up into the air like I was coaching little league kids how to play outfield, and then swung at it. The skeleton shattered into tiny pieces, its structure proving to be even more fragile than the Harpies. That gave me hope.
The sensation of the others scrabbling their way up my back started wigging me out. I threw myself backward onto the desk behind me. A mashing crunch sounded as my body slammed down onto the desktops. A few of the broken pieces dug into my back, but compared to the thought of their tiny blades poking at me, I was fine with it.
Prone, my legs dangled over the edges of two of the desks and a skeleton head rose up over the crest of my left knee. I kicked my leg straight out as if a doctor had been testing my reflexes, sending the pirate figure up into the air above me. I flashed my bat out at it and it exploded into dust and fragments of wire.
Jumping up to my feet, I was feeling pretty good with the way things were going. I grabbed another one on my leg, swinging it by its head until there was an audible popping sound and its body separated, sailing off with a distant crash.
My moment of triumph was cut short when I looked down at the center of the circle. Two of my pirate attackers had been smart enough to stay clear of me, and had instead taken position by the bound student’s head. Their swords were poised over the frantic movement of his widening eyes.
“No!” I shouted, diving for them, but they were already lowering their blades. I wasn’t going to make it. I hit the floor hard, skidding into the student with a harsh “oof” as I drove into him.
Connor’s feet shot past my head, one landing on the floor next to the student’s own head and the other lashing out at the two skeletons. They shattered as his foot connected, their pieces raining down on the student’s tightly shut eyes.
“Jesus, Simon,” Connor said, “I thought you were trying to save him, not add to his injuries.”
I scrambled up to my knees and began untying the poor kid. “What happened to the Harpies?” I asked Connor.
Connor lifted up his hand, displaying a fistful of tornoff Harpy wings.
“Nice,” I said. “Remind me never to buy you a bird as a gift.”
Connor tossed them to the floor. “As long as it’s not an evil bird,” he said.
“Where’s Darryl?” I asked.
Connor looked away. “He might have escaped.”
“Might have?”
Connor got testy. “It was a little hard keeping track of everyone, what with the chaos of fighting Harpies and rescuing you.”
“You weren’t rescuing me,” I said.
“On, no?” he said, haughtiness in his voice. “So you could have lived with yourself watching the kid here get his eyes gouged out, then?”
I didn’t bother responding and continued untying the student. I undid the final knots, before a thought hit me. “Where’s the Inspectre?”
We both looked around but we couldn’t see the Inspectre anywhere. “Crap,” I said, but Connor held a finger up to silence me.
Off near where we had come in came the sounds of struggle, even though we couldn’t see much from where we stood. We hurried our way through the maze of stored stuff while the student finished untangling himself from the coil of ropes encasing him.