I could have told them that they were wasting their time. The house wards weren’t run off a talisman that could be exhausted if enough force was applied. They were powered by a ley-line sink, which had unlimited energy. Cheung’s boys could batter themselves bloody, but they’d never get through that way.
“Idiots,” I said with feeling. “It would serve them right if they did get in. I’d like to see how they’d deal with—”
I stopped, staring at all the power expending itself uselessly against the wards.
When it could be in here helping us.
I watched the mud-splattered attackers for a moment and wondered if I was going crazy. No way could the two of us handle a couple dozen senior- level masters. But then, weaker ones wouldn’t be any use againstsubrand’s thugs. And when Cheung’s boys stormed the house, there was a good chance the fey were going to assume they were coming to our aid, and vice versa. If they tore into one another, it might buy me time to find Claire and the boys.
Of course, if they didn’t, I was screwed. But I was screwed anyway, and between the devil and the deep blue sea, the devil starts to look pretty good. At least he can be bargained with. The sea will just kill you.
I felt a hand suddenly tighten around my bicep. I looked up, and saw the same idea dawning in Louis-Cesare’s eyes.
“Can you do it?” he whispered.
“Yes. But Cheung will run as soon as he sees the fey.” If he had any sense.
“He won’t run,” Louis-Cesare said, with a slight smile.
I followed his line of sight out into the yard, where I saw Cheung’s head jerk up. He stared at the house, a scowl spreading over his features. “What did you do?” I demanded.
“I suggested to him that he might have his servant, if he was not too much of a coward to come in and take him.”
“You called a first-level master a coward?”
“Among other things.”
“And they say I’m crazy.”
I mentally felt around for the bright web of power flowing about the house. There should have been a corresponding interior web as well, but it was conspicuously absent. Someone had taken down the internal wards, cutting the link between them and their power source, the ley-line sink. But they’d left the external ones intact, either because they’d wanted to fool me into thinking everything was fine or—more likely—because they just hadn’t cared.
It took only a second to wrap the filaments of the external wards around my mental hand and give a hard tug. Within seconds, the long skeins of energy had unraveled to nothing, leaving the old house bare and defenseless. “I hope this works,” I said with feeling. “Or we just went from bad to—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish, because I was suddenly slung over a shoulder, carted to the pantry and shoved headfirst down the portal. It happened so fast that for a second, I didn’t understand what was going on. Until it spit me out the other side.
Right atsubrand’s feet.
“—tragic,” I finished blankly.
CHAPTER 25
I thinksubrand was almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him, but he recovered fast. His boot came down in the middle of compost and wet leaves, right where I’d been lying. I wasn’t there anymore, because I’d flung myself backward into the now two-way portal.
I crashed to the hard floor of the pantry and rolled into Louis-Cesare’s legs. And then the lunatic picked me up and started trying to stuff me back inside. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Attempting to get you to safety.”
“That’s a damn strange way of doing it!” I panted, bracing my hands and feet on the shelves on either side of the gaping maw, like a cat trying to avoid a bath.
“I will get the others out. You have my word,” he said, trying to prize me off. But every time he removed one limb, I curled the others through the metal supports of the shelves, holding on for dear life.
I was sucking in breath to explain, when he jerked me back, ripping the whole shelving unit off the wall. It came away, concrete screws and all, but I held on like my fingers were welded to the metal. He cursed in exasperation. “Why will you not let go?”
“Becausesubrand’s out there, you complete lunatic!” And then it wasn’t true, because he was suddenly in the house and crashing into me.
I don’t think he’d expected to find someone physically blocking the portal, because he hadn’t come through with a drawn weapon. But that was the only good thing. The portal flung him into me, I lost my grip on the shelves and we tumbled to the ground. And then he was suddenly gone. It took me a moment to realize that Louis-Cesare had picked him up and flung him back through.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said, half-appalled, half-impressed, as he turned toward the door. I pushed the shelving off me and grabbed him. “Stay here. Hold offsubrand.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get my duffel.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now! Ray’s in there! If Cheung gets him before we do, he’ll have no reason to stick around.”
“I will go,” Louis-Cesare said as the sound of crossed swords and gunfire came from the hall.
He left before I got the chance to tell him that I’d really prefer to face Cheung and his men than the ice-cold prince of the fey. But then the portal started to activate again. I panicked just slightly at the thought of facingsubrand with nothing but a short sword for a weapon. So I started throwing everything I could reach down the portal’s wide gullet.
Heavy bags of beans and rice—Olga always bought in bulk—were swallowed up, along with bottles of condiments, large-sized cans of soup and vegetables, and a broken TV that someone had stuck on a shelf. I’d hoped that, if the portal was open and active on one end, someone couldn’t use it to come through on the other. It seemed to make logical sense, but I forgot—magic is rarely logical. As was demonstrated when a bloody leg poked through the portal almost in my face.
No, not blood, I realized, ketchup. I hacked at it with my sword. Okay, now it was blood. And then the fey it belonged to emerged and grabbed me around the throat.
It wasn’tsubrand, but he was damned strong anyway. I slashed at his arm with the sword, and he pulled back, saying something in their language that sounded fairly obscene. I took the few seconds that bought me to shove the shelf over the mouth of the portal.
That didn’t help as much as I’d have liked. It was just ordinary metal shelving with an open back, through which he started slashing at me with his own sword. It was a lot longer than mine and glowed faintly, giving him plenty of light to murder by. Only I wasn’t going to make it easy on him.
The open-sided shelf worked two ways, so I used that, grabbing a mop—we had a mop? — and using it to poke the fey back into the open maw of the portal. It sort of worked—his bottom half disappeared into the swirl of color on the wall—but he grabbed onto the shelf with one hand, preventing the rest of him from getting sucked inside. He made a pass with his sword with the other, and I was suddenly left holding nothing but a mop head.
I danced back out of reach as that sword took a swipe at my chest. But that gave him the chance to bat the whole unit out of the way. And then Louis-Cesare was back with the duffel. He held off the fey with a sword he’d found somewhere—it glowed slightly, so I assumed he’d taken it off one of our other attackers—while I rooted through the bag.
“Hey! That’s my eye!” Ray groused, and then my hand was closing over the explosive putty.
I grabbed it and ripped off a sizable wad. “Move!” I told Louis-Cesare, who spun out into the hall as I threw the piece overhand, like a baseball. I dove for the kitchen as the explosive did what it was designed to do and collapsed the portal—with the fey still partially inside.
That was one visual image I could do without, which was just as well, because I didn’t see it. The pantry exploded behind me in a hail of shelving and flying cans as the portal destructed, and I slid to a stop beneath the heavy old table. I tipped it over, grabbed my guns out of the duffel and slammed home extra clips—my last—as a couple of fey rushed in from the hall.