“Rose!” I said, louder.
Midge’s momentum and direction suggested she didn’t plan on slowing down. She slipped briefly on a slippery bit of road, but it didn’t make her seem less threatening. Just the opposite. She stumbled and slipped towards us much like a boulder might take a careening path down a hill.
There was no doubt in my mind that she was gunning right for Fell, planning on plowing through.
Fell seemed to have the same impression. He raised his gun, aiming.
“I don’t think that’s going to do much,” I said.
“I’m open to ideas, Thorburn,” Fell said, a mite testily.
“Goblins?” I asked.
“That might be like throwing fuel on the fire,” Maggie said.
Fuel on the fire. Goblin and gun wouldn’t work, too aggressive, too direct.
Counter with opposites.
In terms of our indirect assets…
Not quite how the idea was meant to be applied. Not every Other fell into neat categories, and Midge was hardly some incarnation of aggression, but it was a starting point when I needed to brainstorm, and the train of thought led me straight to one option.
“Evan,” I said, touching my hand to my shoulder. Evan made the two-inch hop to my finger.
I flung out my hand. Evan flew in the direction I’d cast him.
I was secretly happy that had worked. Theatrics.
Good kid.
Evan used the same maneuver he’d used against the Eye. Through the legs. A little more force than a sparrow should have had.
Midge fell, landing on all fours.
It bought us time to retreat, backing up a step, while she stood up, grabbing the vessel she was carrying.
“That’ll do,” Maggie said.
“Rose!” I shouted, again.
“Midge!” Rose called out. Finally stepping in. I couldn’t tell where she was. “Your task is done! Return!”
Midge shouted something incoherent, tearing the head off the mannequin she carried with her. When she threw it, it moved like an arrow shot from a bow. It passed through the thick, graffiti-covered glass that encircled a bus stop bench and hit a shop window. I saw only a flicker of movement to suggest that Rose was fleeing.
She’d sought cover behind another transparent surface, and it hadn’t worked.
The glass around the bus stop shattered into tiny fragments in the wake of the mannequin part. The shop window broke into large triangles, several feet long, then broke again as they hit the sidewalk.
Midge twisted another piece free of the mannequin. A club-like hand and forearm. She was breathing hard, her eyes scanning the area.
“I order you-” Rose started.
Midge turned on the spot, flinging the hand.
Another shattered window.
It was a really good thing that Rose wasn’t a real person. If the inbred monster from the back-country was something I’d summoned, I wasn’t sure I’d be dodging these chucked objects so well.
“Maggie,” I said. “Rose happen to give you any more details on Midge here?”
“They fall into categories. Natural, they get twisted by their environment. Built for cold, desert, for living in ravines or deep caves, inhospitable places. Social, they form tribes. Cannibal families or that sort of thing. Then there’s the loners. Break from the pack, their pack dies, or they’re exceptional members of a family unit, too crazy or brutal to be allowed to mingle.”
Rose started to speak again. Midge turned to throw another hunk of mannequin, but Evan swooped close, screwing up her aim.
“I bind you, Midge! I bind you as your pa was bound!”
Midge reacted to that. She said something I couldn’t make out.
“You were his precious, his only gir-”
Midge threw another hunk of mannequin. Evan’s interference wasn’t well timed enough.
“Midge was part of a family,” I said.
“She might have been on her way to becoming a special one, but vigilantes came after them all before things progressed. Whoever claims the dead didn’t want her. Rose said, what was it? They think Midge dwells in the darker patches of limbo. The hands that catch the fallen have gaps between the fingers, and nothing caught her. Those who know the name can haul her up for a time, before the depths claim her again.”
“Can we cut whatever connection is holding her here?” I asked.
“Your pa called you his mosquito. His skeeter!” Rose called out. “I tie you to your father, and I bid you to return to him!”
Another broken window. Further from Midge.
Rose was being strategic in the surfaces she moved between.
Except I felt my connection to Rose shift and break. Something had happened.
Had she not moved out of the way?
She was still there, but she’d retreated to somewhere distant. Maybe the house. Catching her breath?
Midge turned in a tight circle, holding the lower half of a torso. Watching and listening. Patient.
Evan flew by. She swatted him, a glancing hit, and I felt the impact.
My familiar found his senses and flew away before she could step on him.
When Rose didn’t appear, Midge turned her attention to us, hefting the mannequin part.
It wasn’t just that she was big, six feet tall and four feet wide. It was how she was constructed. If the bus stop was any indication, it’d tear past us like a cannonball. Fell shot her.
When Midge didn’t fall down, he shot her three more times. The brutish woman took a step back.
Midge had stopped, her damaged hand pressed to two of the bullet holes. She looked up at us and smiled. As if she relished this, or she felt something other than pain when wounded.
“You could spell up that gun,” Maggie said.
“I’ve been working under the Lord of the City since I was twelve,” Fell said. “If he needs a practitioner taken care of, a bullet works. If he needs something bigger taken care of, he doesn’t send the illusionist-enchanter.”
Midge wasn’t throwing. She was waiting.
Evan swooped. Muscles stood out in Midge’s legs.
“Back!” I barked out the word. Too fast and sudden to be a proper shout.Evan veered off with a flutter of wings. Midge’s swing seemed lazy and horribly timed when she hit only open air. I suspected it would have pulverized him, had it connected.She was baiting him in.
“Why can’t she be dumber?” I asked. “Why did Rose have to pick something that could be so fucking problematic when it slips the leash?”
“Subhumans aren’t stupid, they’re socially backward,” Maggie said. She thought for a second. “Really socially backward. And they’re good with improvised tools and weapons. Supernaturally good.”
“Ah. Put a broken chair in their hands, they’re going to be better at murdering you with it than if you gave them a proper gun or knife?” Fell asked.
“Yep,” Maggie said. “And the ones who do get some crazy weapon like a jackhammer or a machete become the subhuman exemplars Rose described. Ones with actual personality, trademarks, and rituals.”
I sighed, not taking my eyes off Midge, watching for any possible sign.Fell’s phone rang. Midge was moving, drawing her hand back.
“Heads up!” I called out.
But Fell was already reacting, and it wasn’t to waste air on warnings. He threw a handful of powder into the air with one free hand.