I got the rhyme straight in my mind, put the cigarette to my lips, and subvocalized the spell.
I closed my right eye and brought the glowing cigar end almost against the lid.
The emir’s El Fumo leaped up and ground itself into his right eye.
He screamed and fell backward. I soared to my feet. I’d marked the werefennec, and one stride brought me over to him. I broke his vile little neck with a backhanded cuff and yanked off the flash that hung from it.
The guards howled and plunged for me. I went over the table and down on top of the emir, snatching his decanter en route. He clawed at me, wild with pain, I saw the ghastliness in his eye socket, and meanwhile I was hanging on to the vessel and shouting:
As I finished, I broke free and hurled the decanter at the guards. It was lousy poetics, and might not have worked if the fat man hadn’t already sensitized his stuff: As if was, the ball, the ashtray, the bowl, the glasses, the humidor, and the windowpanes all took off after the decanter. The air was full of flying glass.
I didn’t stay to watch the results, but went out that window like an exorcised devil. I landed in a ball on the sidewalk, bounced up, and began running.
VI
Soldiers were around. Bullets sleeted after me. I set a record reaching the nearest alley. My witch-sigh showed me a broken window, and I wriggled through that. Crouching beneath the sill, I heard the pursuit go by.
This was the back room of a looted grocery store plenty dark for my purposes. I hung the flash around my neck, turned it on myself, and made the change over. They’d return in a minute, and I didn’t want to be vulnerable to lead.
Wolf, I snuffled around after another exit. A rear door stood half open. I slipped through into a tour yard full of ancient packing cases. They made a good hideout. I lay there, striving to control my lupine nature, which wanted to pant, while they swarmed through the area.
When they were gone again, I tried to considered my situation. The temptation was to hightail out of this poor, damned place. I could probably make it ad technically fulfilled my share of the mission”. )~ the job wasn’t really complete, and Virginia was alone with the afreet—if she still lived—and—
When I tried to recall her, the image came as a she-wolf and a furry aroma. I shook my head angrily. Weariness and desperation were submerging my reason and letting the animal instincts take over. I’d better do whatever had to be done fast.
I cast about. The town smells were confusing, but I caught the faintest sulfurous whiff and trotted cautiously in that direction. I kept to the shadows, and was seen twice but not challenged. They must have supposed I was one of theirs. The brimstone reek grew stronger.
They kept the afreet in the courthouse, a good solid building. I went through the small park in front of it, snuffed the wind carefully, and dashed over street and steps. Four enemy soldiers sprawled on top, throats cut open, and the broomstick was parked by the door. It had a twelve-inch switchblade in the handle, and Virginia had used it like a flying lance.
The man side of me, which had been entertaining stray romantic thoughts, backed up in a cold sweat; but the wolf grinned. I poked at the door. She’d ’chanted the lock open and left it that way. I stuck my nose in, and almost had it clawed off before Svartalf recognized me. He jerked his tail curtly, and I passed by and across the lobby. The stinging smell was coming from upstairs. I followed it through a thick darkness.
Light glowed in a second-floor office. I thrust the door ajar and peered in. Virginia was there. She had drawn the curtains and lit the elmos to see by. She was still busy with her precautions, started a little on spying me but went on with the chant. I parked my shaggy behind near the door and watched.
She’d chalked the usual figure, same as the Pentagon in Washington, and a Star of David inside that. The Solly bottle was at the center. It didn’t look impressive, an old flask of hard-baked clay with its hollow handle bent over and returning inside-merely a Klein bottle, with Solomon’s seal in red wax at the mouth. She’d loosened her hair, and it floated in a ruddy cloud about the pale beautiful face.
The wolf of me wondered why we didn’t just make off with this crock of It. The man reminded him that undoubtedly the emir had taken precautions and would have sympathetic means to uncork it from afar. We had to put the demon out of action . . . somehow . . . but nobody on our side knew a great deal about his race.
Virginia finished her spell, drew the bung, and sprang outside the pentacle as smoke boiled from the flask. She almost didn’t make it, the afreet came out in such a hurry. I stuck my tail between my legs and snarled. She was scared, too, trying hard not to show that but I caught the adrenalin odor.
The afreet must bend almost double under the ceiling. He was a monstrous gray thing, nude, more or less anthropoid but with wings and horns and long ears, a mouthful of fangs and eyes like hot embers. His assets were strength, speed, and physical near-invulnerability. Turned loose, he could break any attack of Vanbrugh’s, and inflict frightful casualties on the most well-dug-in defense. Controlling him afterward, before he laid the countryside waste, would be a problem. But why should the Saracens care? They’d have exacted a geas from him, that he remain their ally, as the price of his freedom.
He roared something in Arabic. Smoke swirled from his mouth. Virginia looked tiny under those half unfurled bat membranes. Her voice was less cool than she would have preferred: “Speak English, Marid. Or are you too ignorant?”
The demon huffed indignantly. “O spawn of a thoussand baboons!” My eardrums flinched from the volume. “O thou white and gutless infidel thing, which I could break with my least finger, come in to me if thou darest!”
I was frightened, less by the chance of his breaking loose than by the racket he was making. It could be heard for a quarter mile.
“Be still, accursed of God!” Virginia answered. That shook him a smidgen. Like most of the hell-breed, he was allergic to holy names, though only seriously so under conditions that we couldn’t reproduce here. She stood hands on hips, head tilted, to meet the gaze that smoldered down upon her. “Suleiman bin Daoud, on whom be peace, didn’t jug you for nothing, I see. Back to your prison and never come forth again, lest the anger of Heaven smite you!”
The afreet fleered. “Know that Suleiman the Wise is dead these three thousand years,” he retorted. “Long and long have I brooded in my narrow cell, I who once raged free through earth and sky and will now at last be released to work my vengeance on the puny sons of Adam.” He shoved at the invisible barrier, but one of that type has a rated strength of several million p.s.i. It would hold firm-till some adept dissolved it. O thou shameless unveiled harlot with hair of hell, know that I am Rashid the Mighty, the glorious in power, the smiter of rocs! Come in here and fight like a man!”
I moved close to the girl, my hackles raised. The hand that touched my head was cold. “Paranoid type,” she whispered. “A lot of these harmful Low Wonders are psycho. Stupid, though. Trickery’s our single chance. I don’t have any spells to compel him directly. But-Aloud, to him, she said: “Shut up, Rashid, and listen to me. I also am of your race, and to be respected as such.”
“Thou?” He hooted with fake laughter. “Thou of the Marid race? Why, thou fish-faced antling, if thou’dst come in here I’d show thee thou’rt not even fit to—” The rest was graphic but not for any gentlewere to repeat.
“No, hear me,’ said the girl. “Look and hearken well.” She made signs and uttered a formula. I recognized the self-geas against telling a falsehood in the particular conversation. Our courts still haven’t adopted it—Fifth Amendment—but I’d seen it used in trials abroad.