A few seconds later I heard, " Throw powder. Throw here! " The need in that voice was almost palpable.
"One human first," I said. "You made promise. I bring powder, one human let go."
"Throw bag here, or cut humans! Cut bad!"
"You cut humans, no powder. And no car."
More muttered conferring. Then a man crawled out from behind the counter on his hands and knees. He was in his undershirt. Somebody had used one sleeve of a blue-striped outer shirt to bandage his upper left arm. The fabric was soaked with blood, and ding.
"It's all right," I told him. "Stand up, and walk toward us. It's gonna be okay."
The guy stood, but it wasn't easy for him. I guess he was stiff from sitting all that time, or he might've been woozy from blood loss, or both. Early fifties, probably. Tall, skinny, and scared half to death.
I kept my eye on the counter as Paul led the clerk to the door. The uniforms would get him into an ambulance.
"Drug now!" The goblin voice was a scream. "Drug now, or cut woman. Cut tits off! Now!"
"Here!" I said and tossed the baggie underhand. It cleared the counter and disappeared behind it. I felt my guts, already tight, clench a little harder. This was going to be the tricky part.
More mutterings and stirrings from behind the counter. Then I heard sniffing sounds, the kind you make when sucking in air deliberately. There's different ways to ingest meth. It seemed these gobs were snorters.
There was a clock on the wall above the counter. I watched it for two long minutes before calling "Goblins! Goblins, hear me?"
A new sound answered me. It was wordless but had a rising inflection, like somebody asking a question in his sleep.
"Goblins, you let woman go free. Let human go. Let go now."
Thirty-two more seconds crawled across the face of that clock. Then there was a stir behind the counter. A woman stood up slowly, using the counter as leverage. She was a fortyish brunette who had probably known too many Twinkies in her time. "Don't shoot!" she yelled, and threw her hands in the air. "Don't shoot!"
"Nobody's going to shoot you, ma'am. You can put your hands down. Just walk over to me. Easiest thing in the world. Take all the time you want. Just walk over here."
She nervously looked down and to her right. When nobody tried to stop her, she shuffled out from behind the counter and walked unsteadily toward us, her eyes still wide with terror.
Paul put his big arm around the woman's shoulders and led her toward the door. I still kept my eyes on the counter, although the hard part was over now.
I heard the door open behind me, and Big Paul's voice saying, "Come on, move it. Get her out of here."
Then I heard the door close and familiar footsteps coming back.
"All clear," Paul's voice rumbled.
We could have killed both of them, the goblins. Fired through the counter until our guns were empty and the little green bastards were dead or dying. No one in authority would've said "boo" about it.
But we didn't have to do it that way, so we didn't. Killing is never my first choice when taking down a suspect. Well, hardly ever. And if Rachel's spell had worked the way it was supposed to, nobody should have to die.
"Goblins!" I called. "Stand up! Stand up now!"
And it worked. Instead of being told "Blow it out your ass" in Goblin, I saw two furry green heads appear over the counter top. Two sets of black eyes peered at us blearily.
"Goblins! Drop knives. Drop knives. Now! Do it now!"
After a long pause, I heard the metallic clang of something hitting the floor. Then again. The knot in my guts loosened a little.
"Goblins! Come here! Come to me!"
Without even looking at each other, the two creatures slowly came around the counter. I've seen goblins before, and these two looked typical. Four feet tall, more or less. Green fur over black skin. The misshapen heads were standard, but their confused, vague expressions wereprobably due to Rachel's magic, not goblin genetics.
As they shuffled toward us, I reached slowly for the handcuffs on my belt. An amalgam of cold iron and silver, with a binding spell added for good measure, they would hold the greenies secure until they could be put into a special cell. The county jail's got accommodations for all creatures great and small, human and inhuman.
I cuffed one goblin's paws behind his back, while Paul did the other one. As I went through the nearautomatic movements, I thought about the conversation I'd had with Rachel Proctor, once Dispatch had connected me to her phone.
"I need something that looks like meth, smells like it, hell, tastes like it," I told her. "But instead of getting buzzed, I want them made compliant and cooperative."
"So you can tell them what to do."
"Exactly. It's my best chance of getting the hostages out unharmed. The gobs, too, for that matter."
"Why not a simple knockout potion? Aren't you being a little too clever, Sergeant?"
"Can you guarantee instant unconsciousness for both of them, at exactly the same time?"
"Of course I can't," Rachel said impatiently. "No potion works instantaneously, and there's no guarantee they'd both use it at the same – oh, I see."
"Right. If they felt themselves being drugged unconscious, they might have enough time to knife the hostages. They would, too."
"Quite possibly. They're mean little buggers, most of them," she confirmed.
"I don't want them realizing they've been drugged until I start telling them what to do – not even then, if possible."
"And you need this immediately, of course."
"I need it before two strung-out goblins lose patience and start cutting up a couple of innocent humans. How long you figure I ought to wait?"
"Bastard," she said, but without heat.
"That's between Mom and Pop, and they're not here."
A sigh came over the line. "All right, send a police car over to my place, but tell them to wait outside. I'll bring it out as soon as it's ready, assuming I can make it work. Maybe twenty minutes, start to finish."
"When can you start?"
"As soon as I stop talking to you," Rachel said, and hung up.
As Big Paul and I led the unresisting goblins toward the door, I thought about what I could do to show my appreciation for Rachel's efforts. I was wondering if witches liked flowers when I heard the insane screech behind me, followed instantly by Paul's voice shouting, "Fuck!"
I whirled to see a goblin – the undrugged, uncompliant third goblin that nobody had known about – rushing at Paul. It held a knife with a foot-long blade in one green, furry paw.
I'd seen Paul's scores on the yearly firearms qualification, including "Draw and Fire." He was slower than me, by three-tenths of a second. But he still had plenty of time to draw down on the meth-crazed goblin.
I had my own weapon out now, but Paul's bulk blocked my shot. No problem. I knew he could double-tap that little green fucker without my help, and I'm sure Big Paul knew it, too. Right up until the instant that his weapon jammed.
I heard the click from Paul's Colt Commander, and knew instantly what had happened. And Paul froze. He should have dropped to the floor and given me a clear shot. That's standard procedure. Christ, they even teach it at the police academy. Instead, he just stood there, pulling the trigger on his useless weapon over and over, as if hoping that i would finally fire.
Paul's goblin prisoner was between us, and I wasted a precious couple of seconds shoving him out of the way. I reached for Paul's shoulder with my free hand, intending to push him aside so I could get a clear shot of my own. But by then it was far too late.
I felt the impact as the goblin's blade slammed into Paul's chest, unprotected by the body armor I'd said we didn't need. I heard his grunt of pain and surprise, saw the spray of blood from the wound – the bright red arterial blood that continued to spurt as Paul fell to his knees, giving me at last a clear view of the goblin that had knifed him, its face made even uglier by the rage and drug-induced madness stamped on it, then made uglier still by the impact of my bullet between its crazed black eyes.